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Holidays

Katherine and Mom

Well, now Mom (I) can claim that Katherine teethes when Steve leaves town. In this case, he’s been traveling almost every week this year (grumble), so it’s not all that hard for that to happen. Katherine and I have been spending lots of quality time together these past two weeks. On Monday night, Katherine was inconsolable. She did a lot of “ah ahhing” even as we pushed around the kitchen in a cardboard box. She didn’t want to eat dinner and was just really unhappy. Finally, I asked Steve to stick his clean finger in her mouth, and he said “there something coming out.” I did the same later that night. Katherine cried and I felt her second molar breaking thru her gums (right above her first molar). As a matter of fact, my finger had blood on it, so it must have really been hurting her terribly. We played with her and finally I went downstairs to get a teether from the freezer. Well, Steve tried to give Katherine her baby Advil and it didn’t go so well. I came upstairs to see Katherine streaking by in a blur of pink around her mouth and all down her PJs. Needless to say, she’s learned to spit out the baby Advil. ๐Ÿ™‚

Tuesday didn’t go much better for Patty and Katherine. At 4PM, Patty called to let me know that Katherine was cranky and hadn’t slept all day. I suggested some baby Advil to dull the pain and she finally took an hour nap. Katherine and I went to our toddler group class that night and she did pretty well. She clutched her lamb for the first 20 minutes of class, but was fine afterwards. After class, we went home, played and went to bed.

Wednesday night got dicier. I met Patty and Katherine for her haircut after work. Katherine’s hair had been getting very long, and we wanted her first hairdresser to trim her hair. I got to the store to find Katherine zipping a shopping cart around the store and tearing around. She wasn’t too excited about sitting for her haircut, but I supplied dried apple which kept her busy. Good news is that her haircut looks much better than the last, and she is very presentable. We stopped by Hallmark to get Dad’s V-day card. Katherine grabbed a couple cards, and I chased her around so I wouldn’t have to buy them all. Finally, after Katherine screamed for a few minutes in my arms, I selected a card and we escaped the store. Luckily, the other women shopping at the store were very understanding.

Last night was extremely trying. Katherine has definitely learned when Dad is home and when he isn’t. When he’s home, she sleeps thru the night. When he’s not, she wakes at least once and insists on sleeping in our bed. Not only did she get up at 1AM last night, she woke up at 3AM crying very hard. I walked her around and finally calmed her down by rocking her in her chair. I asked her “do you want to sleep in mommy’s bed” – she shook her head hard. I then asked “do you want to sleep in your crib?” and got more shaking. Finally, I asked “do you want milk” and got a “huh” so we went downstairs and drank milk. She finally fell asleep at 4AM.

Tonight confirmed that Katherine truly understands what I’m saying and that she’s talking to me. She picked up her sticker box and handed it to me. She said something that sounded like sticker and then “pwea” which sounded a lot like “please”!! I almost fell over!

We then went upstairs and Katherine decided she wanted toys out of her closet. I explained as usual that she would have to put one of her toys in the closet to get one out (the room is packed with toys). I asked her “do you want to put your phone in the closet?” She walked directly to her phone, picked it up and handed it to me. After a few more minutes of playing with her new toy (a bus), she went back to the closet. I asked “do you want mommy to put one of your toys away” and she shook her head. Wow!

Katherine Language

Now that New Year Day is over, things are looking up. We’ve had an amazing 2-3 days with Katherine. It’s going to be tough to go back to work tomorrow and leave her at home all day. One small consolation…I bought and inserted pictures of our family in frames to take to work. Also, we are scheduled to start a family evening class with a local toddler group – part education for parents, part socialization and fun for the children – and a Kindermusik class on Saturday mornings.

Katherine Language

It goes something like “daba daba yib … yib….” and many other sounds as well. She’ll point at Bisco and say “dao.” We still don’t have a consistent “mama” but we get plenty of “dadas” and “da”. She’s definitely talking to us! We’re just not sure what she’s saying.

I think Katherine gets pretty frustrated sometimes with us. For instance, she was yawning by 4PM today when we were shopping. I popped her back in her crib for a late afternoon nap, but she must have spent 10 minutes crying intermittently before I heard a thump. It turns out that she had dropped her lamb and one of her shoes on to the floor. I got the picture and took her downstairs for a small snack. She was very hungry and ended up eating a bunch of green beans, cooked chicken and a fried egg – she had eaten less than 3 hours earlier!

Stranger Anxiety

Katherine has been definitely going thru a bout of stranger anxiety. This first showed up over the holidays whenever she saw Steve’s sisters’ in-laws. She’d seen them before, but they would look at her directly, and she would cry very hard.

This happened again last night. One of our PEPS friends, Frank, looked at Katherine and said “hello.” She just cried and cried until we distracted her with toys. For at least an hour, Frank would avoid any eye contact. Finally, towards the end of the evening, she walked straight up to him, smiled and handed him Bisco’s toy. What was really weird was that she was fine around all the other adults – they held her and she didn’t have any issues.

Katherine also attended a birthday party for her friend Mac yesterday. She spent the first 20 minutes of the party wanting to be held or right next to us. She then ventured to play with her friends in an inflatable house with plastic balls. Once we were fully into the party, she joined other children playing with toys and even riding on a plastic rollercoaster. We put her on it a couple times and she was pretty excited to zip up and down the curves and then coast for 20 feet on a plastic cart with wheels.

More New Foods

I gave Katherine a fried egg for the first time this afternoon. She loved the yolk and ate the pieces as fast as she could pick them up. She would also pick up an egg pieces, place it on her spoon and then try to get the spoon to her mouth!

The other new food that she just wolfed down was a carrot cake cupcake at the party. I crumbled the cupcake and gave her maybe 6 or 7 little bites. Steve took her away to get cleaned up. After they were done, she walked back, stood next to my leg, raised her arms and pointed to indicate that she wanted more cupcake. I guess while she didn’t want to eat her own birthday cake, eating someone else’s birthday cake was fun.

Sporting New Sweaters

We’ve had record low temperatures, snow and ice over the last week. In addition to her cool new boots, I bought Katherine a couple new sweaters to see her thru the winter. On of the sweaters has this matching cupcake hat that looks really cute on Katherine. Check out the pictures to see her new duds – a whale sweater, a striped sweater with matching color hat.

What a Fun and Busy Christmas!

What a Fun and Busy Christmas!

We had yet another wonderful holiday. We spent Christmas with Steve’s extended family: his parents, Ramsays, Olbrights, and Fialas. To celebrate Christmas Eve, we went to Everett and a children’s Christmas service. Lots of families with little ones attended and Katherine and Kevin both did very well during the 30 minute service. It consisted primarily of singing and children enacting the Christmas story. Katherine was so taken by the service that she would zip around to the back of our seats and sing (off key) in a very spirited way. After the service we went to Steve’s sisters house and had a nice pork BBQ dinner. The cousins played very well with each other – Kevin even took Katherine’s hand and led her to the tree to see all the ornaments and lights. After the excitement, Katherine took her bath and we discovered a new rash, brought on we think by the heavy tights she wore. Thankfully, by the next morning, it had disappeared.

We opened our presents Christmas morning with Grandma and Grandpa Bush. After they left to participate in gift opening in Everett, Katherine took a very early morning nap. This was highly unusual as she’s been on a 1 nap schedule for several weeks. When she woke up, we piled back in the car, headed north and enjoyed an hour or so with the Olbrights. Katherine had great fun eyeing all of Kevin’s gifts. Kevin had received a musical keyboard with bright plastic instruments. Katherine wanted to play with the instruments and Kevin was determined to keep them with the keyboard. After tussling over them for a bit, Katherine finally grabbed two of the instruments, thrust them to her cousin, lifted her chin, turned around and walked off in the opposite direction. We weren’t sure if it was a case of “sharing” or having had enough, but it was quite amusing.

For dinner, we went to the Fialas where we had a delicious potluck with ham, beef, turkey (I think), beans, salad, pink stuff (yum), and mashed potatoes. The dinner closed with a vast array of cookies and ice cream that the Olbrights had brought. While the food was very tasty, the parents really enjoyed watching the three children interact. Will and Kevin ran around and by the end of the evening, Katherine had figured out that she could run around too. So, we had all three cousins doing laps in the living, dining and family room – with Katherine waving her hands and screaming (ahhhh!!). Even better, some adults joined in the fun too. ๐Ÿ™‚

Another highlight of the week was visiting the Seattle Aquarium. It really is a wonderful resource for families, and the whole family trooped out to see it. Will and Kevin were in perpetual motion, and Katherine took turns riding in her stroller and braving the crowds by walking around. We saw the fish get fed by a scuba diver (very cool), other fish get tossed food and the otters eat their shrimp. After a fun-filled couple hours, we headed to the Spaghetti Factory. Katherine ate mac and cheese, the boys played with plastic barber toys and crayons. The boys even treated us and neighboring diners to a rousing rendition of the ABC song.

Prior to a family dinner, we visited the Redmond Town Center and tried to go to Gymboree. Unfortunately, they were closed, so we stopped by a Paint store – its one of those places where you paint some object and then they put it in a kiln. I painted three ornaments, Steve painted a cake platter and Grandma Bush a heart platter. Katherine had her hands painted (three times!) and then stuck to the platters. That was probably the most interesting part of the visit, because she couldn’t check out the pottery or paints or brushes…Grandpa was a good sport and took Katherine around the neighboring stores while we painted. We did eventually go to Gymboree later with Grandpa, which was a good workout for Katherine.

On the last day of the Bush’s stay with us, we hosted a family dinner potluck at our home. It was a nice way to spend some quality time with family and allow the children to play together. Will really enjoyed playing with Hokey Pokey Elmo. The children took turns playing with the trike, and there was just a lot of running around and excitement in general. Grant seemed to enjoy the mayhem from the family room (what an adorable baby!). By the time the evening ended, both Will and Kevin were determined to stay and were very sad to leave. I guess that’s the mark of an enjoyable and successful play event!

We capped the visit off with a family photo sitting at the local mall. While the Olbrights weren’t able to join us, we did get some nice shots of the Bushes with Katherine, us with Katherine and then all five of us. We’ll be sure to send pictures to the family.

Another Growth Spurt
Holy Cow – Katherine has been eating a ton lately. Two days ago, she must have eaten 5 meals. With every meal, she’s been stuffing down a lot of food. Favorites these days are spaghetti, tofu, peas, bread, yogurt…There really isn’t any food that she doesn’t eat. We also found that while we eat dinner that Katherine would tug our pants and try to climb in our laps. Grandpa Bush was very accommodating and we found Katherine perched in his lap pointing at food and trying to explore the food in his mouth. During a rotation on my lap, Katherine pointed at salmon, got a taste, wanted more and double fisted fish into her mouth. Of course, this whole eating thing has been accompanied by real growth. She now sort of fits into a while sweat suit that Grandma Chang gave her for her birthday. She also is starting to outgrow one of her red jackets.

More Learning- “What a Busy Child”

We must of heard this at least 5 or 6 times during the holidays from family, friends and random strangers. Katherine is indeed busy. She never stops very long for any one task or event. For instance, this morning I took out all of her shape blocks from her puzzle and asked her to put them back (a new development!). She inserted one, picked up another block, tossed it aside and headed off to her toy bin.
Katherine is so funny with her Jumbo Knob Puzzle. It has big wooden knobs with shapes – circle, square, pentagon, etc. For a couple weeks, this puzzle had been on our coffee table. Katherine would do a quick drive by, grab a puzzle piece and take off. We had encouraged her to put the pieces back, demonstrated and even had her friend Audrey play with it. Finally last week, she took the rectangle piece and managed to put it back in. Steve and I cheered and Katherine loved it. Now, she will grab any puzzle piece, put it back and look up to make sure we saw her do it. At a minimum, she gets a big smile – other times clapping and always encouragement.

We took her to the local children’s shoe store to get snow/rain boots. The sales person said as Katherine stomped off in her shoes, “what a busy child…” The shoes by the way are very cute – purple patent leather boots with flowers. She also got some pink leather shoes with a mouse chasing a piece of cheese. We can’t get away with putting her in this stuff much longer, as she’ll soon have her own opinions. So, we might as well buy it now!
Katherine has also reached a number of other milestones as well. She’s points consistently at food that she wants to eat and objects that she wants to checkout. It may be food on our plates or things on the counter. It’s been very handy for us, since we can now respond directly to her requests. The only downside is that she can be very insistent with what she wants.
We also have been trying to encourage scribbling…on paper that is. I read in a parenting book that scribbling is a key milestone. So we put her Crayola washable big crayons in a diaper wipe box. Assuming the box is open, she’ll dig around and pull one or two crayons. Katherine likes to walk around with crayons, and occasionally she’ll even draw a line on paper. ๐Ÿ™‚ Her other favorite activity is handing Bisco her crayons. He’s managed to eat and destroy a couple already. At least the stains wash off the carpet. Grrr.

An Inauspicious New Year
We sincerely hope that 2004 is better than what happened New Years Day. To start things off, I managed to get a nasty 24 hour stomach bug around…1:30AM on New Years. I’m about 90%, but to shake it required a ton of sleep and rest. While New Years Day sucked for me, it was even worse for Steve.

He decided to build his own PC from scratch (why, I don’t know…) Anyway, he goes to Fry’s and gets the parts. He comes home and discovers voila, no processor in the box! He heads back to Fry’s and they think that he stole the processor, so he has to wait at customer service while they figure this all out. He comes home, and I’m passed out on the couch trying to watch Katherine who can’t figure out why Mom is stuck on the couch. He then makes lunch for Katherine and in the process spills coffee beans, breaks a glass and then cuts himself on a soup can. Even worse, the credit card company thinks that between a gas station visit and Fry’s that the card has been stolen. Wait…it gets worse! The processor that he gets from Fry’s doesn’t even work because the box had been opened already and the pins had been bent.
Its a good thing he made the bean soup because we’re going to need all the luck we can get with 2004!

Final Stages of Weaning

Our goal had been to breast feed Katherine until she was 12 months old. Between pumping at work and managing milk inventory, we made it! Starting at 12 months, we began to remove one milk feeding every week. By late November and early December, we were down to one feeding at bedtime. The last several days have really been a great opportunity to finish the weaning process. My production has been down with the flu, and Steve has been home to feed her a bottle of formula at bedtime. Hopefully, in the next week or so, we can wean her from her bedtime bottle, and we’ll be done! From here on out, Katherine will be drinking full fat, organic milk and water from her Playtex insulator cup and straw.

Christmas is so much fun!

Climbing Everything in Sight…

Katherine is climbing everything possible. This past week, she’s climbed the stools in our house: put right foot on stool, pull left foot up. Crouch like a frog on the stool and figure out what to do next. She’s practicing putting her right leg on the wheel of her trike and climbing into her seat. We’ve even seen her crawl awkwardly into her little Gymboree chair. She puts her right foot in, stands up as much as possible and uses the back of the chair to turn herself around. Steve and try not to hover and to let her explore, but we worry that she’s going to go tumbling. So far, we haven’t had any accidents, and she’s been pretty good at climbing down backwards or sliding on her bottom off the stool. It’s funny, because we can see her think to herself “I wonder how to climb this…”

Christmas is so much fun!

The best part of Christmas so far has been the bows. We bought a big shiny package of bows at Costco and put them in three Christmas boxes. Katherine discovered these this past week. Her evening routine is to open the boxes, throw the bows up in the air, finger them and then put the top back on (maybe!). She’s pulled bows off of packages, and figured out that she can reaffix the bows if she presses hard. The bow for Patty’s present never had a chance. Katherine must have pulled it off and put it back on the present a least 4-5 times.

We can read again

For a while, it was virtually impossible to read to Katherine before bed time. She would just want to run and run and not stop for anything. Recently we’ve altered our routine, where I’ll feed Katherine, Steve will come upstairs and then we’ll read a couple books. Katherine sits still and likes the touch and feel books and now some peel back books with colorful pictures. If we read too long, she’ll squirm off my lap and head to her crib.

Next year: Santa Training

We headed to Nordstrom this past Sunday to visit Santa. We knew that Katherine might be a bit off put by Santa, although he did his best to be welcoming and friendly. But…when we got to the front of the line, Katherine started to walk to Santa, and then turned and grabbed my leg. I lifted her up and carried her to the chair. In a nutshell, she wigged out – totally cried, kicked her legs and wanted nothing to do with him. So, Santa said “bye bye” and make a big deal about leaving. Katherine sat on Steve’s lap with me on arm of the chair. Santa sneaked from the back and put his arms around me and Steve. Katherine had no clue and we think we had a nice picture taken. The nice helper said “next year, you may want to do some Santa training.” visit the mall, read books and get her used to Santa.

I do think we’re jinxed with the Santa pictures. This is the second year out of 2 years that we’ve suffered some sort of camera damage visiting Santa. Last year, I dropped Steve’s Coolpix on the garage floor and broke it at the shopping mail getting Katherine out of the car. This year, Steve packed his Nikon equipment in his carrying case. He pulled out his flash and the display was cracked. These Santa photos are getting very expensive.

We’ll post pictures of Katherine in her very spiffy outfit and red, wool full length, black muffed coat once we get the pics off the camera.

Flying Katherine

Katherine was on a tear this week. We bought her a medium Patrick the Puppy from Zany Brainy last weekend, during their going out of business sale. We’d been eyeing Patrick for years and decided now was the time to buy since this was likely our last chance. Katherine loves Patrick. She hugs him regularly, laying her little cheek next to him. She also learned that she can fall into him, so she now flings herself onto Patrick. Literally, she’ll walk towards him and fall straight into him. As Steve said, Bisco is now even further down in the food chain, after Patrick and Spanish-speaking Elmo. ๐Ÿ™‚

She and Steve play hide and seek now with each other. Steve hides in the nursery and she’ll walk as fast as she can after him. It’s very cute. When she sees him, we say Hurray and raise our arms. She raised her arms sometimes too.

Katherine has moved two naps a day to one pretty regularly now. This past week she would fall asleep around 11:30A to 12:30P for an hour and a half. To make up for this, she sleeps a bit longer and doesn’t wake up anymore at 6:30A in the morning.

No Longer the Screamer – Just Peas Please

We braved the local mall salad restaurant yesterday. Unlike our previous experience, Katherine was virtually sedate by comparison. She sat relatively quietly in her high chair, occasionally chirping at us. No screaming at all. That said, she did manage to make a mess still (sigh), which we tried to clean up before we left. She ate a few foods like Mac and Cheese, plain pasta, white beans and green peas. She ate probably a third of a cup of green peas. I put a few down and noticed that Katherine picked them out and then would stuff them into her mouth as quickly as possible. Steve and I went back to the salad bar twice more to get peas before she was full.

I bought and defrosted some peas last night to see if it was a fluke – nope. She ate even more peas, delicately picking them up with her pincer grasp and putting them in her mouth. Wow!

Fascination with Crayons

We went to a holiday tea yesterday afternoon, and Katherine got to watch her older friends play with PlayDoh and draw with Crayons. I think Katherine managed to ingest both. Thankfully, both are non-toxic. Steven and I took turns watching her, and Katherine went everywhere. She would wander down the hallway, check out the holiday boxes and walk after her friend Audrey on her trike. The kids watched a Rudolph video, and Katherine stayed on the sofa for maybe a minute. While the kids were watching, she shook the crayon container, picked them up and carried crayons all over the room. She had such a wonderful time that I took out our crayons at home. She seemed to get the concept of drawing, but she was more interested in eating the crayons. We’ll try again next month.

Tickle Katherine

Katherine and I have a new game. We play this little piggy, and when we get to the last toe, I tickle her tummy. She loves it, and has started to play with her other toes when I recite the rhyme. Patty and I have been reading “where’s baby’s belly button” and showing her nose, etc. for the last several months. I ask her periodically to point to her nose. We’re still not there yet, but maybe it will happen soon.

Christmas Shopping

Katherine was very patient with us this weekend. We probably shopped 6 or 7 hours for gifts. She would sit in the shopping cart and look around. Every once in while, we’d let her walk around for a bit if things weren’t too crazy. She really enjoyed exploring a local children’s bookstore in Issaquah. The play area with the Christmas tree, cushions and stuffed animals were soooo interesting. She spent quite a bit of time investigating while I talked with the owner. Thankfully, she didn’t cause any damage. ๐Ÿ™‚ We have two more gifts to buy and then we’re DONE! This was also an exciting weekend for shopping, because we turned Katherine’s car seat forwards. Funny enough our first or second trip out she fell asleep!

Are You Watching Her??

Steve and I must say this to each other at least several times a night now. We can’t turn our backs on Katherine. She’s a little speedy toddler now who can stand up without any assistance and who is on the verge of running. From a sitting position, she can stand in one of two ways. She can go from a sit to squat and then to a stand. Or, she bends on one knee to push herself up. She used to walk in a wide stance. Now, she places her feet more in front of each other and she can walk quickly from the family room to the front door in no time flat.

One of Katherine’s favorite past-times is rummaging around the brown leather bag near our front door. She bends over and reaches in for one of Bisco’s red retractable leashes. She used to put the leash in her mouth but has learned that we’ll take it away from her if she does that. Instead she’ll walk throughout the house clutching the leash, perilously close to tripping on the nylon. We’ve clipped it to Bisco several times and Katherine is well aware what the leash is for. She will tug the leash and try to take Bisco for a walk!

We’re also teaching her to be gentle with Bisco. She’ll pat him on his back and occasionally pull his hair. Bisco is a total sport. ๐Ÿ™‚ We’ve also caught Katherine try to hug Bisco. She places her cheek next to his fur and then gives a big grin. It’s just adorable.

Happy 1st Birthday Katherine!

Our log entry is a good week late, but better than never. One of our big commitments was to celebrate not only Katherine’s first birthday, but our getting to Katherine’s first birthday as well! To that end, we hosted two celebrations – the first a Chinese dinner that my Mom cooked on Katherine’s actual birthday and the second a big party at our house with lots of kids and parents.

The dinner with family was very nice. Steve’s immediate family attended and Katherine opened her gifts. She surprised all of us by saying “Kevin” very clearly! She also played with her cousin upstairs in our TV room. They competed for a push toy, and Kevin ended up next to a wall trying to keep it away from Katherine. This was especially note-worthy because this was the first time that Kevin and Katherine really interacted and were able to “play” actively together.

About 35 adults and 15 children/babies attended the Saturday party. No other word can describe it except chaotic. Kids were running around. Parents were milling around eating the food and attending to their children. This was sort of like trial by fire – everyone barely fit in our house and our friends, family, and PEPs group got a chance to meet one another.

A couple funny things happened at the event. First, Katherine slept two hours before her party. As a matter of fact she was sleeping when the first guests arrived. Steve took her picture as she snoozed. Second, she passed on her birthday cake (not like her mom at all!). We put the cake in front of her; she squirmed and wouldn’t taste the frosting. Oh well…we also had a storyteller come and tell a few stories to the kids. I think some of the children enjoyed the stories; others looked rather dazed. Anyway, Katherine started to squeal halfway through.

After the party and a 90 minute nap, Katherine woke, we ate and opened gifts. Katherine had a blast. She took all the cards from the gifts and brought them over. She also grabbed paper and tried to rip it off the boxes. The gifts were all very nice and we put many away for a later surprises. She’s now busy enjoying her “Little People,” her caterpillar, little books, wood puzzles and all of her other toys. I’ve tried to put a bunch away in her closet, but boy does she have a lot of stuff…

Katherine’s First Year Checkup

Katherine is still a skinny beanpole – 90% height at 30.5″, but only 19 lbs still at 25%. Here’s a picture of happy Katherine on the scale before the 3 shots in the arms. She had a blast on the table ripping the paper and walking all over the room.