Dog Water

Warning:  The content of this blog post may be very disturbing to people who do not have dogs or children.  You may even need to have both dogs and children to find this amusing.

One of Kate's favorite activities these days is bathing in the dog's water dish.  It's downright disgusting, but I let her take her time yesterday so I could take pictures and write about it.  I meant to add this to my fifteen months post, but I forgot!  

Don't judge.  These are memories.  I'll break these pictures out when she wants to date.

No child or dog was harmed during this experience, and Kate has since been bathed in a real tub with soap and no dog slobber.

Fifteen Months

I simply adore the way Kate walks, or toddles, around the house.  Her steps are so deliberate and I love the concentration on her face.  She is walking more and more each day, but she still crawls quite a bit.

The way she snuggles this little baby doll is absolutely precious.  She will cry, "bubba" if the doll is out of her reach, and when I ask her if she loves her baby, she snuggles it in her neck and rocks back and forth.  It may be the sweetest thing I have ever seen.

She LOVES these little baby dolls.  The one in the picture above is Reagan's doll, and she has had it for quite a while.  Reagan named it "Karate Baby" for some reason.  Since Kate fell in love with it, I bought two more (they are about $3 at Target), one that Kate carries around and sleeps with (in the picture below) and one I put away just in case the other gets lost!  I am constantly cleaning the baby because it is always covered in whatever Kate is eating.

On Monday, Daddy offered Kate her choice of cookies from a container and Kate took two!

She was very happy about the cookies and would not put them down!  She used her forearms to pick up her cup so that she didn't have to let go of the cookies!

I have never seen a child this young enjoy sweets as much as she does!

Kate also loves frozen blueberries.  If the freezer is open, she will look for them and grab the bag.  She eats so many that her fingernails often look like this:

Gross!  That is all blueberry, no dirt in those nails.  I promise.

One of my favorite things about Kate right now is that she finds music and rhythm everywhere.  Not only does she dance to real music, but she also bebops to the sound of Kelly drinking out of her water bowl, the sound of a grocery cart moving over pavement, ice dropping into a pitcher, and any other consistent noise.  It is so very cute.

Sleep has been rough for Kate lately.  I don't know what happened, but she is having trouble falling asleep (lots of crying) and is waking up in the middle of the night.  Her naps are hit or miss too; sometimes she naps and sometimes she doesn't.  I am SO very tired.  Poor Reagan (Kate's roommate) has been woken up a lot lately too.  I hope Kate gets back to her routine soon.

She Walks!

For the last two months we have been saying that Kate will be walking any time now.  Over this time, she has taken a step here and there but she never really followed through with actual walking until this weekend.  Yesterday was the first day that she took multiple steps several times throughout the day.

I didn't walk around all day with a camera around my neck, so I didn't get to capture the best moments of her taking steps.  I did manage to grab the camera once and of course Kate was crying; oh well, it will have to do!

I am officially saying that she walks now, even though she still prefers to crawl.

Just for the fun of comparison, Tyler walked at 11 months, Reagan started walking three days before her first birthday, and Collin and Katelyn both started walking at 14 months.

Let Me Out

Fourteen Months

At fourteen months, Katelyn:

- has eleven teeth (six on the bottom and five on the top)
- struggles with teething
- wears size 12-18 months and still has plenty of room
- is super ticklish
- adores her siblings
- will push me away if I try to take her from Tyler when he is holding her; the other day Tyler had to shower and he had to put her down on the floor so that I could pick her up because she kept pushing me away when I tried to take her from his arms
- enjoys going out to eat and is very good in restaurants
- makes animal sounds for dog, cat, bird, pig, and cow
- says the following words:  Mama, Dada, Tyler, Grandma (she says "Mamma" just like Reagan did at this age), doggie, ball, balloon, keys, book, more, uh oh, thank you, love you.  I'm sure there are words that I have forgotten.
- takes two naps (typically around 9 and 1) each for about an hour, but seems to be close to eliminating the early nap
- goes to bed between 6:30 and 7:00 and sleeps about eleven hours, although she has woken up in the middle of the night a few times recently
- loves cereal with milk and bananas more than any other food
- screams for ice cream (seriously)
- begs for sweets
- hands me books to read to her all day long; she is particularly fond of Sandra Boynton books and Reagan's old issues of Babybug
- enjoys coloring

- will spend a lot of time filling and dumping; here she is filling up a container with pom poms and then dumping them out to fill it again

- still enjoys taking things out of the kitchen cabinets and is especially fond of my dish washing gloves

Kate is such a joy right now.  We all have so much fun with her.  She is clever, funny, silly, happy, and loving.  Honestly, she brightens every day and we all love her so much.

The Return of Kate

Yesterday was the first day in a week that Kate was back to herself.  The whole week that Kate was sick, she was very angry, cranky, and unable to be comforted.  I held her so much over the last week that my hips and back are still sore.  There was one day that the only way I could keep her calm was to run the vacuum CONSTANTLY.

During this sickness, she would not wave or blow kisses or play or dump out the contents of my drawers and cabinets; she wouldn't do any of the things that are part of who she is right now.  This worried me so much.  I know that it is normal for a child who does not feel well to act out of sorts and not feel like playing, but I still worried.  Most of my worry stemmed from the fact that Kate had a flu shot two days before she got sick.  I am a strong proponent of immunizations and flu shots, but I always worry for a few days after my children have shots.  I hope and pray that they do not have any kind of negative reaction.  So, when Kate got sick and just wasn't herself right after her flu shot, I couldn't help but worry about a connection.  I was thrilled yesterday when she woke up happy and seemed to be herself again.  She played, waved, blew kisses, smiled, and made a lot of messes!

One of Kate's favorite things to do right now is put straws in lids.  She spent a good chunk of time doing this yesterday afternoon.

She is very good at it, especially with the reusable hard plastic lids and straws.

Kate also likes this shape sorter.  She always goes right for the cylinders and usually gets them in without a problem.  The other shapes are still a challenge for her.  These pictures were taken this morning.

I can't even begin to explain how happy I am that my baby is back to herself.  I hope she makes many messes all over the house and I will happily clean them up all day!

Sleeping

If you know me, then you know that it bothered me that I had no pictures of Kate this week.  Bothered me so much that I took a chance (a crazy chance!) and took a picture of her (flash and everything) sleeping in her crib.  Don't worry, she slept right through it.

She is wearing mismatched pajamas!  I wish I could say that I don't care!  That owl blanket was given to Katelyn right after she was born.  My friend Sharon bought it on Etsy (love love love Etsy).  Every time I check on Kate, she has the blanket under her like that.  Doesn't she look so sweet?  I love the way her hair looks in this picture, all messy and cute.  And those little lips.  I just love this baby girl.  I love those Quick Zip sheets too - my favorite baby product ever!  They are from Clouds and Stars and I first discovered them when Collin was a baby.  

Reagan and Collin love to camp out in the living room.  They both look uncomfortable in these pictures, but I tried to reposition (reposition isn't a word?) them without any luck.  They are both completely zonked from a hard day of play.

Kelly doesn't usually sleep by the front door, but that is where I found her when I decided to take these pictures.  She likes to sleep at the foot of our bed, all ninety pounds of her.  It's nice in the winter when my feet are cold.

No sleeping picture of Tyler; he's still awake!

Pictures from our Week

Kate had her first play date this week.  Mason is about six months younger than Kate, but he certainly doesn't look younger.  Kate seemed to enjoy his company, as well as the company of his big sister, Madison.  There was one incident when Kate either threw a block at him or pushed him over, and he was a little upset about the whole thing, but for the most part they seemed very interested in each other.

Reagan is about five or six weeks into gymnastics and still enjoys it a lot.  I was able to get some pictures of her on bars today.

I made fall pretzel bites earlier this week (Butter Snaps, Hershey Kisses, and candy corn), but I used dark chocolate kisses and the kids didn't like them.  Tom and I thought they were delicious.

I made up for their lack of a sweet treat (ha ha ha, as if they are ever lacking sweet treats around here) today by enlisting the help of Reagan and Collin to make cookies and cream muddy buddies.

 We used the Halloween Oreo cookies to make the snack.

Just a sweet picture of my girls one morning this week right after Kate woke up.

Sleep

This is Kate waking up this morning.  She doesn't look happy in this picture, but I promise she was smiling. 

Kate is officially sleeping in her crib.  On Sunday night, I realized it was time to move her out of my bed and into her own sleeping space.  The biggest reason is that once I decided to wean her from nursing in the middle of the night, sleep became a battle for us.  She was waking up every couple hours and the only way I could get her back to sleep was to get up and walk back and forth (sometimes for an hour) until she was sleeping again.  Obviously, this was not fun for either of us.

She did cry a little on Sunday night, and I have to admit that I cried too, but she really didn't cry that long and last night she only cried for a few minutes.  Now, she is sleeping better than she ever has before and I think it was the best decision.

Our nighttime routine starts around 6:30 PM when I nurse (she is now only nursing this one time each day) and rock Kate, read her a few books, and sing "Sweet Dreams and Jellybeans" (our family good night song) to her.  Then I place her in her crib and push the button on her soother.  She shares a room with Reagan and there is a night light and white noise machine on the whole night.  Reagan has been sleeping with white noise since she was a baby.

This morning, Kate slept until 8:00 and woke up happy as can be.  She is so much happier in the morning.

Water Table Play

We have had beautiful weather lately, and Friday was absolutely gorgeous.  In the afternoon, I set up the water table for Kate and she played for almost an hour.  She loves to play in water; this was a great birthday present for her.

I love her little bare feet standing on the leaves.

Whenever Kate plays in water, she likes to put it in her hair; that is what she is doing in this picture - wetting the ball and her hands and smoothing out her hair with a little water!

While we were outside, I tried to get some pictures of her with our pumpkins.  Every time I sat her down with them though, she touched them for a minute and then crawled away to get back to the water table.  I should have done this before setting up the water table.

Kate was so dirty by the time we finished playing outside that I had to give her a bath.  She was also tired.  Right after the bath, I put her in the stroller and we walked to school to get Collin and Reagan; Kate was asleep before we left our driveway.