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:

Update on our Yard

Many of you have been asking for an update on our Yard Demolition and Reconstruction. Thankfully, the landscape company finished in just over a week (and that's with a few days of bad weather) and they did a fantastic job waterproofing our foundation, regrading our backyard, and leaving our entire yard looking much better than it did before. Yea! If anyone's looking for a landscaping company, we definitely are happy to recommend ours (even though they didn't do any actual landscaping; they were doing just the things we HAD to have done to protect our home).

Anyway, here is what our yard looked like on December 10, and below are the photos from just before Christmas.

The Beauty of a Big Family

As the oldest of five kids, and as someone who will soon have two children under age 2, I have a huge appreciation for this video!

H/T: Not Before 7

Missing Stephen

My brother Stephen left for 3 months of Army boot camp this week in preparation for his assignment as a Chaplain in the Army Reserves. Although he and I have rarely been in the same state over the last several years as he's completed college and seminary, I've been spoiled to have him and his amazing fiancee Lindsey around for most of the last several months.

Before he left, we were able to take him out to a local steakhouse for his 26th birthday. Our mischievous family especially chose this location because we knew (and he didn't) that birthdays are celebrated there with a big stuffed moose. Stephen was a true sport about it though, and the video below just brings a smile to my face. I have no better video clip that better shows Stephen's fun-loving personality.

A few of my favorite photos from this restaurant are below. The first is of Katie greeting a wooden moose outside the restaurant the night we celebrated Stephen's birthday. The second is of my youngest brother Daniel being honored (and embarrassed) by the moose a year ago. :-)

Go Ravens!

Katie is showing her Raven spirit today as we celebrate John's football team's big win! Go Ravens!

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!

Once We Had a Yard...

and now it's gone!

We're undergoing the house project of our lives right now. In preparing to finish our basement and turn it into a playroom, John discovered small cracks in the cinder block walls. While we were assured by many that it wasn't a huge deal, we've come to realize over many months that our foundation was never waterproofed, and thus the moisture from the yard outside has been pushing our walls inward and compromising the foundation of the entire house. Ugh.

I'm thankful for honest and helpful contractors who have helped us diagnose, and now fix, the situation. This week we are paying an exorbitant amount of money (equal to more than 50% of my early post-college paychecks) to a landscaping company who is pulling up all of our bushes, digging 7-foot trenches around our house, taking a closer look at newly-discovered cracks in the walls, waterproofing the foundation and walls, and demolishing our backyard in order to regrade it. This is no small feat. There are typically a half-dozen guys here working their butts off, and we've also seen some heavy machinery.

Boy I wish our little boy was able to see this -- he'd go crazy checking out the trucks! One of Katie's little boy neighbors has been watching intently from the sidewalk across the street.

Here are some photos of the demolition. I sure hope we have enough money leftover to actually do the playroom! And we're definitely interested in any of your recommendations for small, shade-friendly, low-maintenance plants that deer won't eat. We'll have to replant our entire yard.

Backyard:

In this first photo, you can see the top of a man's head in the trench near the corner of the house. The second shows all that's remaining of our backyard -- just the swingset and the shed! -- and you can also see the pieces of the window wells, which they had to pull out. The third photo is of a forklift, which was carrying huge cement slabs out of our yard. To be honest, I really have no idea where those slabs even were to begin with.




Front Yard:

This first photo is from our front door, showing the pile of just some of the trees and bushes that they've had to pull up. The second photo is another similar pile, and also shows the tree stump from a tree that John and our neighbor Sean pulled down this weekend by themselves (ack!). The contractor offered to pull up and haul away anything in our yard that John was able to cut down, so John took the opportunity to get rid of an ugly tree that was interfering with some power lines.

First photo: A row of bushes used to frame the path leading to the backyard. Second photo is a huge piece of equipment (is it called a backhoe?) that they had to specially bring in today when they realized that our wall cracks went below the level they could dig out with their smaller machines.

Here's the trench in the front yard, as well as a larger view showing a very bare front yard.

As a point of comparison, here's what our house looked like six years ago when we bought it. Not that the landscaping ever looked that nice again after we assumed responsibility for it. :-)