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Katherine has so many toys. We have a basket in the den, a basket in our bedroom, a basket in her room, plus two more storage cubes in the den of toys that are out of rotation right now. I thought about trying to limit the number of toys, but that has not happened. I guess some are ready to be retired because she is beyond their stage, but then we have younger friends like Evie who come over and will need to borrow those toys.

What toy is her favorite? It is kind of random, but she loves the giraffe and tiger from her Fisher Price Little People Zoo Train. She could care less about the girl or the parrot, but she will crawl all over the house with the giraffe in one hand and the tiger in the other.

Now let’s talk about books. The other day one of my friends asked if I got sick of reading Katherine the same books over and over. I said, “actually no. I don’t even think I have read all of her books yet.” I thought about counting them one day. I started on the top shelf of her tall, narrow bookshelf and there were 25. Then I realized that there were three shelves and then there were books in all of the previously mentioned baskets as well as the car. So, I quit counting. I figure she has about 125-150 books.

Which books are her favorites? Her two favorite books are “Ten Little Ladybugs” and “Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See”. I think she likes these books because they are so colorful and have so many animals.

These last few pictures are of her Peek-A-Boo blocks. I actually took them for one of my photography challenges and posted them on my photography blog . We were supposed to take a picture of something plastic. Having a one year old around means you have a lot of colorful plastic toys. They were fun to try to photograph. This was taken at naptime because when I tried to take photos of the blocks while Katherine was in the room there was no artistic ability and she would crawl into my lap. 

to finish baby proofing the cabinet. You locked the bottom cabinet thinking that was the one I could get into. It still opens about 1 inch, barely enough for me to pull out the kitchen towels and pot holders. For some reason you were not thinking that I would stand up and open the second drawer. It is full of so many cool, colorful paper plates, napkins, plastic spoons, forks and KNIVES. I especially love the napkins with rubby duckies on them leftover from Jen’s shower.

Look Dad, I have a knife!

The girls snuggled up on the couch

Hannah came over today to play. Her mom, Meg, and I have been friends from college. We now trade off watching the girls each week but Hannah keeps getting sick so we have not done it for a month. It was such a beautiful day outside wo I spread out the blanket, took out some toys and we played outside.

My little daredevil decided to crawl. I was curious how far from Mommy she would go, but when she reached the end of our sidewalk I decided that game was over. I think she would have gone across the street if I had let her.

Katherine loves to play peek-a-boo

Today we took our first trip of the year to the Arboretum. It was a gorgeous day and my plans had changed to I called Jen to see if she and Evie wanted to join me. We had a great time. Dallas Blooms officially starts on Saturday but the park was still very nice. The tulips were not up yet and they are my favorite.

We had a nice picnic. Evie woke up and the girls were not quite sure what to think of one another.

Take a look at the photo of our family. 

Take a look at a photo of my brothers family.

Could we look any more different? Mom told me that Will and Jaime call Sophia their little “Mocha Bean”. I guess we could call Katherine our little “Vanilla Bean”. We will have no problems telling these two apart.

On the other side of the family however, Katherine looks a lot like Hannah because they both look alot like their dads who are brothers.

In fact, the other day I showed Sam a picture of Emily and Nathan and Katherine when she was only two months old and he thought it was Hannah.

Spring has arrived and brought with it my favorite weather - the 70’s. I took Katherine outsite to swing and to play. She loved it. When she swings, her face lights up with a smile. She likes to go as high as possible.

 I put her on the ground to explore and she loved to play with the grass and leaves. Of course she wanted to eat the leaves.

Do you think they have a lot of protein or fat because that is what Katherine needs these days.

 Daddy came home from work early and joined us outside before we all (Hooligan too) went for a long walk.

While we were outside, a dog (OK it was Hooligan) started barking. Katherine’s face lit up and she started looking for the dog and saying, “da, da”. Then she pointed to where she heard the sound.

 Ephesiand 5:1 Be imitators of God, therefore, as dearly loved children.

Today I learned a lesson. Little eyes are watching everything I do. How do I know this, because today Katherine did two things for the first time, imitating her mommy.

This morning she was playing on our bed while I was dreading getting up. Sam was already out of bed. She got bored with the toys on the bed so she crawled to the edge and took Sam’s cell phone off his bed side table. Then she pushed buttons, put the phone to her ear and started babbling away. The funny thing is that I heard a voice from the other end! She accidentally called someone in Sam’s speed dial. She “talks” on the phone a lot to Nana. I put her on speaker phone and she gabs away. It is kind of funny that the first thing I noticed her imtating (without coaching) was talking on the phone. I guess her mommy does a lot of that.

The second thing Katherine imitated was eating with a fork. She had her dinner about an hour before we ate because she was hungry before daddy got home from work. While we ate she sat and played happily under the table for most of the meal and then she wanted in my lap. I cut up some grapes for her to eat off my plate. Next thing I knew, she had grabbed my fork and was trying really hard to stab the grapes and get them on the fork. We went and got one of her forks that is like ours and that worked a little better.

It is so fun that she is putting things like this together and imitating what we do. It is also a little scary. I really need to make sure I only do things that I want her to imitate. What a challenge as a parent and as a sinful person to always live so that my actions and words are worth imitating.  It challenges me to make sure that I am an imitator of God.

From March 2007

This week the twins came over. Andrew and Caleb are 5 months old now. I was not sure how Katherine would play with kids that could not sit or move around. I feared that she would just try to poke their eyes out. Also, their big brother Jaden really likes to give Katherine huges that turn into a tackle and then a headlock, so I thought she could get revenge on his brothers. It was so cute though. She was really curious about the twins. Then she crawled over to them and picked up a book and started to read it to them. It really di dlook like that was what she was doing. I may have a future teacher in the house.

From March 2007

Katherine is making great progress in the last two days. Tuesday night she got a good nights sleep and on Wednesday she took two naps in her crib. Each nap was over an hour long. She also did fine with my new plan of only nursing 4 times. Last night she slept from 7 pm until 6:30 am without waking up at all. That is the longest she has ever gone. Today she only took one nap that was an hour and a half long. But, she only nursed 3 times and she was even with me all day. That is a huge event for us. I must say part of me is sad and misses it but I also know that she needs to eat those solids better.