Friday, January 23, 2009

Tiny Talk Saturday

Well I've given up trying to post Katie's funny sayings on Tuesdays like my friend Mary does. Instead, you'll get my stories while my preggie memory is still fresh, and when I have time to type them up! :-)

Today Katie and I were cleaning out the room that will become her "Big Girl Room" (actually I was cleaning; she was pulling things out of the closet). One of the things she pulled out of the closet was the top half of my gift wrap organizer (which is basically a big container that holds all your gift wrap rolls; the top pops open to allow you to store scissors, tape, etc). Here's what the top looks like:


While I cleaned, I noticed the distinctive smell of a dirty diaper, and I mentioned it to Katie. She started banging on the organizer top like a drum and saying "Pie! Pie!" I figured her actions were unrelated to our conversation, until she sat on the open organizer top and continued to say "Pie! Pie!" And suddenly I knew what she was telling me. She thought she was sitting on a potty! LOL!

I give all the credit to Katie's new DVD "Elmo's Potty Time" (thank you for the Christmas present, Stephen and Lindsey!). Katie's been watching it off and on for a month now, and now proudly talks about "pee pee", "poo poo" and "doo". It's a hysterical DVD to watch as an adult as well (at least the first time). There are songs about how everyone has accidents sometimes (my family uses that song to joke about our bouts with the stomach flu), and about how everyone uses the potty. There's also a segment where kids and Muppets discuss which words they use for pee pee and poo poo, which is where Katie is getting her new vocabulary.

Needless to say, I'm seizing this opportunity. I ordered the Baby Bjorn potty seat from Amazon tonight. Who knows, maybe we can start a bit of potty training before our son arrives -- he's due in 8 weeks.

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Another fun talking story:

One of Katie's favorite books these days is Dr. Seuss's Mr. Brown Can Moo, Can You? I had never heard of this book before my friend Beth gave it to us for my baby shower, but Katie adores it because it features the sounds that all kinds of things make -- and Katie has always chosen to refer to things (esp. animals) by the noises they make rather than by their actual names.

One of the sounds Mr. Brown makes is "Dibble dibble dibble dopp" to sound like the rain. Although I've pointed out rain to Katie before, there's been no recognition that she understood what it was. So last night we were reading Dr. Seuss's Green Eggs and Ham before bed, and Sam I Am asks, "Could you eat it [Green Eggs and Ham] in the rain?" Suddenly Katie started bouncing in my lap and saying, "Dobba dobba dobba".

She had been a bit distracted during our whole reading time, so I thought she was just goofing off. But then it hit me: She's making rain noises! And I said, "Katie, that's right! It's the rain!" And you should have seen the proud expression on her face when she realized that I understood her. She literally started leaping into the air from my lap and laughing. It was adorable.

And today when we got into the shower together (which we do almost every day now -- it allows me to use her naptimes for my own naps instead of for my showers), she again started her noise: "Dobba dobba dobba". What a smart girl -- she connected the water falling in the shower to the rain that falls. She is constantly astounding me with the connections she's making. I'm sure I don't notice or understand 95% of them, but it sure is a delight when I do.

Thursday, January 22, 2009

Wrapping Up 2008

Lest you think that I was finally caught up on blogging, think again. Here are a few more photos from 2008 that needed to make the blog but haven't yet.

November 2: Three former high school friends and their babies gather for a baptism.

November 9: Beach time with Mommy and Daddy.



November 9: Playing with the rocking horse that JayPa (Daddy's daddy) used as a child.

November 13: Playgroup! Here's our attempt at getting Katie and her two best friends Kai and Daniel to cooperate for the camera.

November 16: Using the remote control as a cell phone.

November 16: Enjoying a wonderful evening with Mommy and Daddy's mentor couple and dear friends, the Farahs.

November 17: Playing with "BFF" (best friend forever) Daniel.

November 21: Reuniting with Mommy's college friend Dawn and her daughter Madeleine.

November 29: Trying to get a family picture to go in our Christmas letter. Not only did we need a tired Katie to cooperate, we needed Bella to as well. And Mommy had to pretend that her foot wasn't broken and that her back hadn't gone out on her that week. The last photo is the one we finally chose.


December 1: While Mommy is in her CBS leaders meeting every Monday morning, Katie and a few other young ones are watched by a woman named Angela. We've been trying to delay her nap later and later, but this particular morning Katie simply could not wait another minute. Here's how I found them:

November 21 and Dec 1: A few cute photos of Katie.
December 4: We were visiting my good friend Amy and her daughters and were unexpectedly invited to stay for dinner. But we didn't have Katie's bib or highchair. So a shirtless Katie practiced using a spoon while standing on a big person's chair.December 17: Katie and I brought dinner to our friend Claire, who had recently delivered twins. While Baby Colin slept peacefully in his swing, Mommy got to cuddle with Baby Carleigh for about an hour. Thankfully Katie didn't mind.... too much.

December 26: Mommy and Grandpa went to see the Nutcracker, featuring two beautiful cousins. Heather (left) is the daughter of my dad's boss, and Anna (right) is my mother's helper and one of Katie's favorite people.

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.



Katie's Raven and Tigger impersonations

Despite Katie's best cheering attempts and outfits, we were disappointed not to see the Ravens advance to the Superbowl this past weekend. However, our little Raven lifted our spirits during the game with her Raven impersonation:

She also tried on her new Tigger pajamas this week. She can't yet say "Tigger" or "bouncy bouncy", but she's pretty cute regardless:

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:

Thursday, January 15, 2009

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.





Monday, January 12, 2009

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!