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Last night Sam was going to work late so I called my good friend Madi to see if she and her son Ben wanted to hang out and eat dinner because her husband also works late sometimes. Well, Andy has a different summer schedule so he was home but they invited me to join them. So Katherine and I went to play with Ben. Time with Madi is always fun and this evening was no exception. It was time for her to bathe Ben and get him ready for bed and I asked if I could bathe Katherine as well. You see last week we had tile put into two of our bathrooms and currently the toilets have been removed and are sitting in the bathtubs. So, it makes it more difficult to give Katherine a bath. So, we gave Katherine and Ben a bath together. This is certainly something that they will outgrow soon, but it was convenient and fun for now.

Another night this week I watered the front flowerbeds after a family walk. Katherine stayed outside to “help”. She was so interested in the hose and kept wanting to put her hands in it. She was getting so wet and muddy that I stripped her down to her diaper. (the dark backside is mud by the way) She helped by holding the hose too. She loves the water whether it is a sink faucet, a hose, a sprinkler, a dog’s water bowl, a pool or a bathtub. The only thing she does not like is when I have to wash her hair.

Will, Jaime and Sophia were in town this weekend. Will had to come into town for work. Jaime and Sophia were not going to join him but since he works for an airline and they can come free, they came as a surprise. I knew about it a few days prior because I need to go pick them up with a car seat base. We beat mom and dad to the house so Jaime and Sophia hid on the back patio. Mom and dad were so excited to see them.

Don’t you just love those blue eyes?

We had a very enjoyable visit. Last time they were here for dad’s surgery so it was a more stressful visit and we spent a lot of time at the hospital. This time we were able to go out to eat, grill out and visit the arboretum and spend a lot fo time just hanging out.

The Sunglasses Women

Butterfly 

Walking with Nana

 

Looking at the fish

I think I want to give Sophia a hug.

Katherine was very curious about her cousin. When Sophia was on the floor, Katherine did try to lay on top of her and she tried to pick off her strawberry birthmark. Luckily Sophia was pretty good natured about it.

Time to Read

We enjoyed an evening with our friends Lauren and Zach and their almost 2 year old, almost big brother Cole. (Lauren is being induced with baby boy #2 tomorrow morning.) When we get together with them, we usually order pizza (I highly recommend the chicken florentine pizza from Picasso’s) and then the dad’s play with the kids while the moms work on their scrapbooks.

Sam and Zach loaded Katherine and Cole in the wagon to take them to the elementary school down the street. Notice this is not your old radio flyer. This wagon has seatbelts and cupholder. We need to get one of those. The kids had a fun time in the wagon and playing on the playground. The moms thought it was fun for the dads to have a playdate.

Eating takes up a large portion of our day. I am constantly trying to get Katherine to eat more. We are always trying new foods. If she does not like something, I am not always persistant to get her to try it again. This week Sam and I had spaghetti carbonera for dinner and I put some on Katherine’s tray. She had a lot of fun with it and actually ate some as well.

Sometimes I have to feed Katherine before Sam gets home is she is hungry before he arrives. Then while we eat she plays in the kitchen. This week she decided to wear Hooligan’s food bowl as a hat. Luckily Hooligan had already finished. She got pretty good at getting the bowl to stay on her head. Then she also got pretty good at tipping it off so it would make a fun, and very loud, noise on the kitchen floor.

Katherine has new sunglasses. Last year she hated them and would pull them off. This year she thinks she is pretty cool. I think she looks like a little movie star. She wanted to wear them while snacking on grapes.

You will notice in this picture that Katherine has a bloody nose. She bit it on the kitchen floor. i am not really sure how. She was crying and I picked her up. She buried her head in my shoulder so it was a few minutes before I realized that she was covered in blood. Both Amy and Jen called while she was still crying. Jen asked if I took a picture for the blog. I said, “of course not, I am taking care of my baby.” Well 20 minutes later, a happy Katherine, finishing her snack, still had a blood nose so I did take a picture. She was having a lot of fun wiggling the spoon in her mouth.

Today we went to Play Daze at the Heights Church. It was so much fun. We met Amy and JG, Heather and Quade, and Lauren and Cole. They had wading pools on the sand volleyball court and the kids could just play.

Katherine loves to get dirty. Gravel, grass, cement, dirt, sand - you name it - she will sit down and dig in it, not caring how filthy she gets.

The kids were given a special treat of a popsicle. Katherine had never had ont before. She really liked it. Of course she made a huge mess and had orange all over her face, hands, legs . . . She would set it down in the sand to play and then pick it up again to eat. Gross.

As you can see, all of my friends are very pregnant. Lauren will be having a baby this week, Amy in July and Heather in September. I later wished I was in the picture so I could sing that old Sesame Street song, “which one of these is not like the other”. At least I felt very skinny! 

 Katherine has started pointing to her belly button on command. It is so cute. She gets frustrated when she is wearing a onesie because she likes to lift up her shirt to point to her belly button. This can be akward when asked where someone else’s belly button is because she wants to lift up their shirt too!

 

Shannon and I went to the zoo with the kids this week. It was a great day, no rain but cloudy enough to keep it cool. Katherine did great. For some reason she was really content to be in her stroller rather than trying to escape as usual. She also seemed much more interested in the animals than last time.

Her favorites are the birds. She really liked when we went into the area where you could feed the birds.

In the past week I have stumbled across a few blogs about EC, Elimination Communication, or Infant Potty Training. Hmmm, I have read about this before and thought it was a little weird. Basically it is trying to go no diapers from the beginning, teaching your baby to hold it until the parent holds the baby over the desired location. Then I was at the library looking for a book about health and you know how the non-fiction section is - random. Anyway, I saw a book on early potty training. I checked it out. It is really interesting.

Did you know that until the 1940’s most kids were trained to “go” on cue by about 4 months. Then the automatic washing machine came out meaning that parents no longer had to hand wash cloth diapers. Dr. Spock wrote his child rearing book and was criticized for his recommendation to delay potty training until a child was older and more ready - 7 to 9 months. That seems absurd to us now. In 1961 the disposable diaper was introduced. Another pediatric heavy weight, Terry Brazelton, was brought on board to promote pampers and he now recommended that parents wait until the kid is ready and they initiate potty training. That means that now the average age of potty training is 33 months for girls and 39 months for boys. Pampers got a great deal out of that. 70 years ago kids used only a few diapers a day and were out of them really early and now they are in them for a long time.

I could go on about all the things I have learned in only the first three chapters of this book. Very fascinating bedtime reading.

Well, I had been thinking for awhile that I needed to buy a toddler toilet for Katherine’s bathroom just so she would get used to it. I thought she might sit there for fun. I did my research and bought the Baby Bjorn Potty Chair. Last night I put her on it, fully clothed and she was not crazy about it. Today, when she woke up from her nap, she was dry (a sign of toilet training readiness) and so I put her on it clothed and she was curious. She climbed on and off, on and off. When I took off her diaper, she hopped off and immediately peed on the carpet of the bathroom. Luckily, we are having the carpet removed and installing tile tomorrow anyway so I did not worry too much. I continued to let her go without a diaper for awhile, closed up in the bathroom with me and a few books. Then I could tell she needed to go #2 so I put her on the potty and she was successful. I could barely believe it. Then before bed she went #1 in the potty.

When I told Sam, he said he was astonished that we were already at that phase. I know that two successful times is no where near being potty trained. That is quite a ways off. But, it does show me that I am not silly for trying and with some effort I may actually get a break in doing cloth diaper laundy before I start over with another kiddo some day.

I thought I would share a picture, but I have to be tasteful so the only picture that was taken was of her playing while still fully clothed.

Shannon and I went to the zoo with the kids this week. It was a great day, no rain but cloudy enough to keep it cool. Katherine did great. For some reason she was really content to be in her stroller rather than trying to escape as usual. She also seemed much more interested in the animals than last time.

Her favorites are the birds. She really liked when we went into the area where you could feed the birds.

Today Katherine reached a major milestone for my family. She wore “two hairs”. Growing up one of my family nick names was “Christy Two Hairs”. The story was that one of the first times mom put my hair in pigtails I said, “look mom, Christy has two hairs”. The name stuck and so did the hair style. Until age 10 or 11 there were very few times that my hair was not in “two hairs”. Probably it was down only for school pictures and Easter. I did not mind because my mom would not let my hair be any shorter than the middle of the back and it was HOT to wear down. There was a brief time when I wanted to have corn rows like my friend LaTonya. Mom let me go to school one day with a lot of little braids. I am sure it looked horrible. Then I was Pippi Longstocking for Halloween one year but thatwas really just a variation of pigtails. I always wanted to wear my hair in a french braid but until I learned to do it myself I was out of luck. In fifth grade I decided that I was too old for pigtails and I wanted to get my hair cut like my older half sister Anne. She had a bi-level. You know where the hair feathers back. Well, needless to say, it was horrible. My hair is so straight and fine that it did not hold it’s style. I pretty much had a horrible mullet that took several years to recover.

So, why do I tell you about my pig tails? Well, today I put Katherine’s hair in pig tails for the first time. I did not really think her hair was long enough but decided to try it. They lasted several hours. I thought it was very cute. So, today, Katherine has two hairs, just like her mommy did.

We are currently owners of only one house! We sold the house that Sam bought right as we started dating and we lived in for the first 8 months of our marriage. We rented it out for three and a half years.  It was a learning experience to be landlords but we decided not to continue it. Today we closed on the house. We have a great realtor so if you need one, we’d love to refer her to you.