Christmas 2008, Part 2

Sorry for the delay in posting a Christmas update! See Part 1 for photos of Katie enjoying specific gifts.

Saturday, December 20, 2008

Our entire family travelled 5 1/2 hours to attend our extended family Christmas celebration. My niece Alli (same age as Katie) threw up a few times that morning, but her dad (my brother) assured us that since she didn't have a fever, he was pretty sure she wasn't sick and that she had just consumed some spoiled milk. None of us wanted to skip out on the party after driving so long to get there, so we all hoped my brother was correct. Unfortunately, he was not.

There were 29 of us attending the party. Over the next several days, 17 of us had full-fledged stomach flu and several others were under the weather. I can't believe a toddler could be so contagious to get us all sick, esp. since the party was only a few hours long and some of us were avoiding her possible germs (including me).

On a happy note, we did have great family time, both at the extended family gathering that afternoon, and back at the hotel that evening with just my immediate family. Since Stephen and Lindsey were heading to Seattle for Christmas, we exchanged gifts with them at the hotel.




Sunday, December 21, 2009

The next day we all travelled back home, and while John, Katie and I made it home before the flu hit, my parents and brothers were not so lucky. They ended up spending the night at my brother Mike's apartment because they couldn't stay out of the bathroom long enough to make it the next hour home. The flu hit Katie and I that night. I won't go into the nasty details, but for me it was 12 hours of violent illness followed by a few days of feeling awful. Katie's little body thankfully didn't have to deal with the intensity I had to deal with, but it did take her over a week to fully recover. And that week unfortunately included Christmas Day. John stayed home from work to care for us and thankfully he didn't get it as bad as we did -- just felt punky one day.

Wednesday, December 24, 2008

Our first Christmas Eve adventure was a trip to the pediatrician's office to see if Katie was well enough to escape isolation on Christmas Eve. No such luck. We were supposed to spend Christmas Eve with John's family, including a super-nice meal and a Christmas Eve church service, but the idea of passing along the grossest flu ever forced our decision to stay home. We were really bummed that day -- John had never spent Christmas away from his family before -- but decided to make our own Christmas Eve traditions at home. Off I went to CVS to pick up medicine and Pedialyte for Katie, as well as a number of stocking stuffers to make the evening a little more special.

So if we carry on our 2008 Christmas Eve into long-term traditions, here's what we'll have:

- Watch "Elmo's Potty Time" DVD.
- Eat Boston Market takeout for our special Christmas Eve dinner.
- Place a two-foot Christmas tree on a TV so we can put presents under it. [We hadn't bothered to get a full-size tree this year for many reasons (we weren't planning to be home for Christmas, Katie would have made a mess of the needles and ornaments all season, I was at half-capacity because of pregnancy and broken foot, etc.). I'm so glad John's parents were nice enough to mail us a little tree so we had one to use!]
- Watch Katie not get through all of her gifts because she's too tired and sick to want to open any more.
- Wait until Katie goes to bed to exchange gifts between John and Jen.

I'm happy to lose most of these traditions in future years, but I like the last one. It was fun to be able to immediately enjoy the gifts that John and I gave each other, rather than have to wait for Katie to go to bed. John gave me a really nice foot/calf massager (esp. appropriate for pregnant feet!) and I gave him a Wii game system. Here are some photos from Christmas Eve.



Thursday, December 25, 2008

We expected to have to stay home on Christmas Day as well. We were supposed to celebrate that day with my family and my grandma, but my grandma ended up being too sick to join us, and the rest of my family had already had the flu, so we ended up being able to spend Christmas Day with them after all. It wasn't quite the exuberant Christmas our family usually has, between still recovering from the flu and some hard times that certain family members are going through right now, but it was still so wonderful to be able to spend that special time with my brothers and parents and niece and nephew. What a wonderful family I have. Here are some photos from Christmas Day.

Saturday, December 27, 2008

Katie was finally well enough on Saturday for us to make the hour trek to John's parents' new house to celebrate with his family. As soon as we arrived, Katie was bombarded with what seemed like dozens of presents! She was in paradise! After 20 minutes of "Katie Christmas", we finally started exchanging gifts amongst the adults. And that's when John and I realized with horror that because of a miscommunication, we had accidentally left almost all of our gifts for his family at our house! Ack!

Thankfully John's family had flexible timing, because our Saturday afternoon visit (that was originally supposed to be a Christmas Eve visit) then turned into a full-weekend visit. I went back home, picked up the gifts and some overnight items, went to a party some of my high school friends were having, and came back up to John's parents that night. And it all turned out for the best, because we had so much more time with John's family than we would have had with our original or even our secondary plans. John's train-loving father enjoyed showing Katie a local train display, and she learned to say "choo choo". We had several meals with John's family, attended church with them on Sunday morning, had an extra round of gift exchange thanks to our little mishap, and enjoyed a sleepover at JayPa and Oma's house (incidentally, "Grammy" has now changed her name to "Oma" since Katie can say "Ama" and since "Oma" is a German term for grandma). Here are some photos from our weekend.

The Talking Tally, January 2009

Katie is quickly becoming a little talker. In the last few weeks, her vocabulary has grown immensely, and now she is trying to say almost every word she hears regularly. It's quite amazing. I've been trying to write down as many words as possible over the last several days, although I'm sure I'm still missing some. But here are most of the words she can currently say.

Fictional shows and characters: "See-see" or "Elmo Cookie?" (when she wants to watch Sesame Street), Abby (one of the newer characters on Sesame Street), Elmo, Cookie (Cookie Monster), "Buh buh" or "Boo-ard" (Big Bird), "Book" (Bert), Pooh, "Teh-tale" (Veggie Tales)

Real people:
Family: Bella, Dada, Mommy, Mike (my brother), "Aah-ee" (her cousin Alli), "Ah-drew" (her cousin Andrew), "Ama" (Oma, formerly known as Grammy) , “me!”
Friends: Mark, Anna, Kai, Amy
"Whooz dat?" (used for everyone else)

Animals: Bee, "Coggy" (Doggie), Cow, Puppy (and countless animal noises and motions to indicate the others)

Eating: "mawk" (milk), juice, apple, "balla" (banana), "cocker" (cracker), cookie, chip, cheese, "ah gah" (all gone)

Clothes: coat, sock, shoe, diaper, hat

Parts of the Body: eye, nose, "mock" (mouth), toe, "eyebow" (eyebrow)

Toys and Fun: ball, beach, book, Bible, "baa" (Bath), bead, "bubbles!" (always said with an exclamation point), "boon" (balloon), car, hug, "Whoa whoa whoa" [Row, Row, Row (Your Boat)],"tock" (asking us to make her toy talk), see

Other Words and Phrases:
Hi, hello, bye
Happy, sad
Up, down
Hot, cold
"Peas" (please), "dank doo" (thank you)
Yes, no
Amen
walk
"s*it" (directing Bella to sit) (and yes, I did get a good shock then chuckle out of that one)
two
"pah-ee" (potty -- I wish being able to say it made potty training happen automatically!)
yellow (learned this week when she wanted another M&M)
baby (important to learn right now!)
"sah" (star)
"lat" (light) "Whoa" and "Wow" (learned while admiring Christmas lights)
"Where's... (da cow, Bella, etc.)?"
"Es dat... (Elmo, Dada, etc.)?"

Over two months ago, when Katie was just starting her vocabulary drive, she learned "beach" and "happy" in the same weekend -- a great pair of words, I might say! Here she is practicing her new words in the car on the way to the ocean:

Christmas 2008, Part 1

Happy New Year!

I'm hopelessly behind on this blog, so I'm going to throw up a few photos and a video of Katie enjoying some of her Christmas gifts, and will tell you our family's Christmas tale a little later with more photos.

Katie was sick on Christmas, so we spent Christmas Eve at home. Poor baby -- you can tell she doesn't look well in these photos. On Christmas Eve, she opened up some Sesame Street DVDs and a Melissa & Doug puzzle:


Since the rest of my family had been sick that week as well, we were thankfully able to get together with them on Christmas Day without worrying about spreading germs. Grandma and Grandpa (my parents) gave Katie several gifts, including an Elmo Live! doll and an interactive Elmo book:

My parents gave me a pretty pearl necklace/earring set, but Katie quickly claimed them for herself:

And Uncle Mike (my brother) gave Katie a giant car, which she loves riding around our house these days:On Christmas Day, Katie also got to open up another gift from Mommy and Daddy -- a barking, walking dog that we picked up for her at the beach. Despite the wierd expression, she loves her "puppy"!

Several days later, when we were pretty sure the flu was a thing of the past, we were finally able to celebrate Christmas with John's family. Here Katie's Aunt Laura helps her ride the beautiful neighing rocking horse that Uncle Jamie and Aunt Amanda gave her.

John's parents, Grammy and JayPa, spoiled a happy Katie with a boatload of gifts. That's what grandparents are for, right? Here Katie sits atop a packaged alphabetical/numerical puzzle mat while holding her new baby doll. The box with her new playhouse is at her feet.


Katie also received a LeapFrog magnetic farm from Aunt Laura (John's sister). The highlight of the farm should be that Katie gets to match animal heads and tails, but she's been having way too much fun dancing to the songs the farm makes:

Thanks to everyone who helped turn my sick daughter's Christmas week into a week of fun and toys!

Quality Time with Grammy, JayPa, and Krista

On Sunday, John's parents (Grammy and JayPa) brought us dinner and cheer. We love how much we get to see them, and Katie always loves spending time with her grandparents.

After dinner, JayPa sat Katie on his lap so she could play piano with him. Doesn't she look like she's reading music? She even has her fingers curved. Looks like JayPa already has a pianist-in-training!



And Grammy sang "Old McDonalds Farm" to Katie using a finger puppet book:


The next day we got to have dinner with our dear friend Krista, visiting from Colorado. John and I met Krista through church, and Krista later helped me get my job at Heritage. She's been a dear friend for many years, and I've missed her since she moved back home to CO a few years ago. What fun to catch up with her, and to introduce her to Katie.

Reverend Daddy

Last summer we spent nearly every Sunday at the Grachur Club, a place we belong to along a local river. This summer we've only made it down twice, the first being July 6, when John was scheduled to organize the Sunday morning service. John preached about leaving a legacy, and I pulled together an offertory at the last minute. Accompanying us on the keyboard was none other than John's dad, "Jay-Pa," and Katie decided to help "warm up the organ" beforehand. She also rang the bell to summon everyone to the service (with the help of Daddy and Uncle Jamie).

She's Walking!!

On Sunday, June 8, just a few hours after learning that her best friend Daniel (7 weeks older) was walking, Katie decided she couldn't let Daniel outpace her and walked for the first time! She took three steps to get to a toy. So exciting! While I couldn't get a video of the first few steps (we were watching National Treasure 2 at the time -- how dare she not give us warning beforehand?), here's a video taken shortly afterwards which shows a step or two.

And while I'm sharing the good news, let me share a few more highlights from this past week:

While we were dodging tornadoes, my friend Amy and her daughters took advantage of the regional blackout to come over for a fun sleepover! The next day, after our power finally came on, I babysat the girls and Katie fell asleep on 10-year-old Caitlin's lap as they watched "Hairspray."

Friday night our family took advantage of the 3-day weekends that John now gets every other week (what a blessed life we have with his new job!) and headed to the beach to visit with John's parents. It was way too hot to actually lie on the beach this weekend, but John's parents watched Katie several times so we could sleep in, go to the movies twice, and go out to dinner. What a wonderful, relaxing weekend -- especially when John's parents were supposed to be celebrating their own 36-year anniversary. (Speaking of which, HAPPY ANNIVERSARY, GRAMMY and JAY-PA!) Highlights from the weekend were Katie walking for the first time, trying chocolate ice cream for the first time, and enjoying her new doggie raft in the pool. She also now moo's spontaneously when I point to a picture of a cow.

Lacrosse Day!

Yesterday we gathered at John's parents' house for lunch before going to a lacrosse game (which our team won big -- hooray!). While John's parents watched Katie, we had special guests at lunch and the game: John's friend Eric and his two daughters, ages 5 and 3. John and Eric are HUGE lacrosse fans and this was the girls' first game, which was very exciting for them. (I doubt Katie will have to wait till age 3 to go to a lacrosse game -- in fact, she may go next week.)

Anyway, the 3-year-old and Katie had much fun with each other. Here are a few photos, and I've posted many more fun ones here.

And in case you were wondering about Katie's onesie, it's a gift from Eric's wife and it says: "Eat. Sleep. Lacrosse." That's pretty much the motto of Katie's daddy every spring! :-)

Katie's baptism, Dec. 30, 2007

Blessed Christmas and Happy New Year to everyone! Well, I'm ridiculously behind on this blog, and the more busy I got, the more fun photos I wanted to share with everyone. So please bear with me and we'll get them all up eventually, even if they're not in chronological order.

The big post-Christmas event for us was Katie's baptism yesterday, followed by lunch back at our place afterwards. She was baptized at the 9:30 service by our senior pastor and overall she was a doll -- as the pastor walked her down the aisle, she gave him funny looks, ate her dress, sucked her thumb, and even waved at the congregation.



Then she got back to the front of the church, where I noticed snot starting to appear -- and soon she had a good glob of it coming out of her nose. I knew from my own experience what Katie does with a snotty nose, and waited for it to happen... Yep, she took her little snotty nose and wiped it across the pastor's shoulder. Well done, Katie. Then as the pastor sprinkled her with water, she fussed a little until she came back to Mommy. But now she's a child of the covenant, and for that she got a big party afterwards. In fact, she partied so hard yesterday that she broke a new sleeping record last night -- nearly 9 hours straight! HOORAY!!!!

I hope to get many more photos from the baptism, but here are the ones I've received so far from John's parents. Here's us with John's parents before the baptism (the beautiful baptism dress and shoes were gifts from them):

And here's Katie at the party, celebrating with her Uncle Jamie and Santa Winnie the Pooh.