pipandsqueak.com

This week I have been very busy with family and dad’s surgery. Because of this, I have spent more time away from Katherine than usual. I really have missed my baby girl. She has done really well spending time at Mother’s Day Out and friends houses. One thing that has resulted from this week and time away from Katherine has been that we have set a new record for nursing. On Wednesday we went over 19 hours! I nursed her at 11 before her nap. Then I took her to a friends house. Sam picked her up after work and by the time I got home after Dad’s surgery, she was already asleep. She did not wake up until 6:45am. This was the first time that she went to bed without me having nursed her within the previous hour or two.

With this decrease in nursing, I am seeing an improvement in her eating but she is still not a huge kid. I weighed her two weeks ago and she weighed 17lb, 2 oz.

We belong to the LHAECPTA (Lake Highlands Area Early Childhood PTA). There is a monthly moms meeting, weekly playgroups and monthly kids activities all helping me to meet neighbors with kids.

 So far Katherine has been too young to participate in the kids activities (like pumpkin carving and bowling). This month there was an Easter egg hunt and she was able to participate. They had it divided by age and Katherine was in the under 2 division. It was really not so much an egg hunt, but an egg gather. All of the eggs were inplain site on the flat lawn.

Katherine did not really get the concept of gathering as many eggs as possible. She would pick one up, shake it, look at it, put it in her bag, take it back out, shake it some more. It took some help and encouragement to load up her bag with eggs. Mommy and Daddy have been enjoying eating the candy out of them.

 The Easter bunny made an appearance but she was not to excited about it. I guess a person in a big fuzzy costume is a little scarry to a toddler.

Katherine loves to swing. I am so glad that we have a good tree in our front yard so we can hang a swing. We go out there almost every day when we are waiting for daddy to get home from work. It is a good way to make it through that difficult last hour.  

You can see though that in true Katherine form, she is trying to get out of the straps. Even though she loves to swing and is obviously happy, she wants to get loose from the straps.

The Easter Bunny came to the Arboretum

Today our playgroup went to the Arboretum (4th time in less than 4 weeks for me and Katherine). Attending were Jen and Evie, Kathy and Sammy, Janna and Robert, Sara and Eden, Meg and Hannah, Madi and Ben, and Danielle with Zane and Caldwell.

We started off with lunch on our picnic blanket. Katherine was not really interested in eating her lunch. I even brought a very large variety hoping to find something she wanted. No such luck. She was interested in everyone else’s food but she would pick it up and not actually eat it.

She is so mobile. She would crawl away from the group to investigate a patch of grass, a tree or a pile of dirt. Even though she would not eat lunch, I knew she was hungry because she would try to eat the dirt, leaves, grass, etc.

We took a partial gropu photo of the kids intheir strollers. Notice who is not in her stroller. I could not keep her in there. It is really becoming a problem. She was fully strapped in, very tightly. She rolled over and pushed herself up out of the straps and was starting to try to climb over the side.

I also tried to carry her in the sling, but she was so squirmy trying to get out that I thought I was going to drop her. So, Katherine and I cut our trip to the Arboretum short and told our friends good-bye.

Last week our family was apart, Katherine and I in California and Sam here at home. So, today we spent the day together having fun. We started off with a trip to the Arboretum. It was perfect weather and we were there early enough that it was not too crowded. Katherine is on the verge of walking and so we were able to capture a lot of photos of her standing and taking a step or two before falling down.

Then we went to Hannah’s first birthday. The birthday girl was stylin’ in a cute outfit sent by her grandparents. Hannah and Katherine are great friends since they play together every week. Today Hannah kept wanting to give Katherine a hug, but Katherine was not really in the mood.

Once we were home, we all three spent sometime outside pulling weeds. I am sure that our next door neighbor who has a golf course type lawn was very appreciative since our backyards are separated by a chain link fence. We put Katherine in the pack and play in ths shade and she had a great time reading and playing with her toys.

Here are more photos of our trip to visit Sophia. She is so cute. I can’t wait to see her again.

Will and me with our kids 

Family portrait

Reading to Sophia

After 10 hours and 4 flights on Southwest, Nana, Katherine and I finally arrived in Sacramento. We chose to travel that way because it was free since my brother is a pilot for Southwest. I am not sure if it is better to go free but take a long time or go ahead and pay for a direct flight, especially when traveling with a toddler. Katherine did great and there was very little fussing. Of course there was very little sleeping as well, but she remained pretty happy.

Sophia is such a cutie! She is one month old now so she has filled out a little and can focus her eyes a little. She has such dark hair and skin but her eyes are actually blue right now. Wea re not sure what color they will end up.

Katherine likes Sophia but is not sure what to think of her, especially when Mommy is holding her. This morning Katherine seemed especially intrigued by Sophia’s bib and wanted to try to take it off. She also was giving Sophia one of her toys. I have to watch her carefully when Sophia is in thehbouncer because if we are not careful, Katherine will try to turn the bouncer into a catapult!

Will and Jaime live close to a walking trail and park so we take walks each day. Katherine really enjoys the swing and slide.

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. 

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.

HowManyOfMe.com

There are: 5 people with my name in the U.S.A. How many have your name?

• There are 115,488 people in the U.S. with my first name.
• Statistically it is the 477th most popular first name. (tied with 4 other first names)
• More than 99.9 percent of people with my first name are female.
• There are 12,059 people in the U.S. with my last name.
• Statistically it is the 3045th most popular last name. (tied with 12 other last names)

Apparently my maiden name was much more rare. There are only 660 people in the US with my maiden name and there are currently no people in the with my first name and maiden name so I was the only one.