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I love my rattle

My Grandad is very talented. He likes to turn wood on a lathe. He makes all
kinds of neat things like bowls, plates, chair legs, pens, you name it, if it
can be turned on a lathe, he likes to make it. When we were in Wichita Falls
for July 4th, he made me a rattle. What is amazing is that the rattle is a cylinder with two rings around it and it was all one piece of wood. I don’t know how he did it. You can see that I really like to chew on it. You know who else would like to chew on my rattle - Hooligan. I have to make sure that it stays off the floor (Hooligan’s territory) because Hooligan likes to chew wood and she already has her teeth.

Mmmmm, Toes

Open mouth, insert foot - in the literal, not the proverbial sense. Let’s hope
that she does not learn to eat her words as easily as her feet.

Katherine is fascinated with her feet. She loves to play with her toes. Her
favorite time to play with and eat her toes is while mom is changing her diaper. It is really getting difficult to change her. It is amazing how limber babies are.

5 months old

I cannot believe that my little girl is 5 months old. Time has flown by and she has changed so much. Yet, it seems like I have been a mom forever. I love it.

Katherine is so much fun. Each month she gets to be more and more fun as she learns to do more and more things. How long does this trend continue?

I think Katherine just continues to get cuter and cuter each month. I would think that I am biased as her mother that she is the cutest baby ever, but we have total strangers come up to us all the time telling me what beautiful features she has. I think it has to be the blue eyes and blonde hair. We have one friend who went on and on about how she was the cutest baby he knew, even cuter than his own baby who is only 3 weeks younger than Katherine. More important than being a cute baby though is that she is such a sweet baby. She loves to cuddle and has such a happy disposition. That is so much more important and as she grows up, I want to make sure that we are more concerned with nurturing her character and not so concerned with her physical appearance. It is sure hard right now with her closet exploding with all of those cute clothes

We had another busy month. Katherine is so easy going and portable. I know that soon I will have to start scheduling my days so that we are home at more consistent times, but for now I am really enjoying getting out a lot. Big activities this month included a trip to Colorado, trips to the Arboretum and Fort Worth Botanical Gardens for concerts, Canton First Monday, July 4th celebrations, first trip to Wichita Falls to visit the Broyles extended family, playgroups and playdates, yoga, and a few birthday parties.

She learned to roll over right at the end of last month. Now she is all over the place. If I put her on the floor and leave the room, there is no telling where she will be when I come back. She cannot really plan where she is going yet or roll toward a specific object, but she sure gets around. I have even found her half way under her bed a few times. The good thing is that now that she can roll around so well she loves being on her tummy. She used to hate it. She is scooching around some as well. It will not be too long before she is crawling. Babyproofing the house is high on the priority list over the next few weeks.

Katherine has really taken notice of Hooligan as well. When they are in the room together, she cannot take her eyes off the puppy. When I am holding her in my lap and Hooligan comes by, she reached out her hand to touch the puppy as well. It is so cute.

Katherine has finally started laughing a little too. We have the first time on video (maybe sometime we will figure out how to post video on here) This was great news. Our doctor had us fill out a 4 month developmental survey and the only area where she fell short was communication and that was only because two of the six questions were about laughing and she had not done that yet. She still does not laugh often, but she is always smiling, cooing and squealing.

Toes - need I say more. Katherine’s favorite thing to play with are her toes. This makes changing a diaper really interesting and she will get mad when I take her toes away to snap her diaper.

I love my little girl so much. I cannot wait to see what this fifth month has in store. I know we will have fun and she will continue to learn many new things.

Swimming with Daddy

Katherine loves to go swimming. I have taken her to swim at various friend’s
pools numerous times, but it is always during the day while Sam is at work.
Finally this weekend we went swimming when he could join us. We went to Jenn
and Roger’s pool and swam with their kids Jacob and Ellie. It was a lot of fun and he really enjoyed seeing her enjoy the water.

Emily, Nathan and Katherine at the Superchick concert

We believe that we should not let a baby change our life - Ha Ha! Seriously, Katherine has changed our life immensly, but we do believe that we still have a life. So, we have taken her to do just about everything we would want to do. This weekend we took her to a rock concert. Now, before you freak out on us, it was an outdoor concert, so it was not quite like taking her to a concert at the American Airlines Center.

We went to see Superchick at the Fort Worth Botanical Gardens. George, Shannon, Emily and Nathan joined us. We set up a nice picnic area where we thought we were far enough back so that it would not be very loud. We were wrong, so we eventually moved. We had a nice picnic and the kids ran around. I don’t know where Nathan gets all his energy. He did a dance that he said was inspired by jumping rope. Katherine did pretty well. She slept for part of the time.

Christy, Katherine, Karin and Katelyn

Karen and I have been friends since we were born, she is 6 weeks younger than me. Our moms are still best friends. When we were young we would play together all the time. Our favorite thing to do was to play dress up in our mom’s old nightgowns. For some reason we thought they were pretty. We would also make up dances. Each Christmas our families would get together with another family and the kids would do a pageant. The much coveted role in the pageant was the angel that came to Mary, Joseph and the shepherds. We liked that role better than Mary because the costume was prettier. We would go eat at the Magic Pan in Northpark and go shopping with our moms until we were older. Sadly, the Magic Pan is no longer there.

Our moms are still best friends and they are so excited because Karen and I both had baby girls this spring. Katherine and Katelyn are 3 months apart. This week we got together with the three generations of girls for the first time at Mi Cocina. We look forward to many more get togethers and the grandmothers look forward to when the girls are old enough to go shopping at Northpark.

Hooligan on Katherine's carpet

Today we want to wish a very happy birthday to our first baby, Hooligan. Today she turns three. We got Hooligan for Christy’s birthday when she was only 7 weeks old. What a cute puppy she was. She still is a beautiful dog.

We actually did go to obedience training for 6 weeks, but mom and dad were not too disciplined in Hooligan’s training. She is a great dog when it is just the two of us at home. She has settled down a lot actually. Her main problem is when a visitor comes over so most people think she is really wild. She is just too excited and jumps all over the poor visitor.

Some people (Nana to be specific) were very worried about how Hooligan would react to having a baby around the house. I did everything I could to prepare her. I set up the nursery as early as possible so that she would get used to the room and all the new smells. I bought a CD called “Preparing Fido” that plays different baby sounds.

I don’t know that Hooligan knew quite what to think of Katherine at first. She did not like the crying but she got used to it. If Katherine was really crying, she would ring the bell to go outside and escape it all (we did train her well to ring a bell on the back door knob to let us know she wanted out.) It seems that Hooligan always wants to go outside right after I have sat down to nurse Katherine. I usually ignore her, but I have been known to get up, continue nursing, and open the door to let the dog out.

Now Hooligan really loves Katherine. She has welcomed her into our pack. If Katherine is fussing, she lets me know. When Hooligan makes her rounds at night, she goes into Katherine’s room to check on her. Her favorite place to sit and chew her bone is the soft carpet in Katherine’s room. She loves it when the entire family takes a walk together, especially if that walk is at White Rock Lake.

They don’t really play together yet. Katherine is not quite ready for that. Hooligan loves to lick Katherine if we give her the chance though. Katherine loves to watch Hooligan too.

So, dear puppy, happy birthday. I am sorry that we forgot it was today until 11pm tonight. I guess that is what happens when you have a baby.