Katherine says, "mommommommommom"

Yes, fans, that's right!!! Katherine now says mommommommommommom and dadadadadadadadadadadada. She doesn't quite understand which is which, however she yell them until she gets your attention!!!

Stephen got to hear the mommommom thing first. I didn't believe she did it. I'll admit, I thought Stephen was taunting me. A week I waited. Begged really. Pleaded each time we had Mommy/Katherine time. She just looked at me and laughed. (She really is her father's daughter.) A laugh like... I know what you want me to do, but nutah. Not happening. Then, we had our moment. mommommommom I totallly love the sound!!! Of course, I also remember my own mother telling us once we were quite capable of yelling MOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMMMMM... That she'd changed her name to Geronimo. She figured we couldn't say it and therefore couldn't call her. It worked for a bit... but then we'd just yell Geronimo. I wonder if I'll use that line?? Or say things like, the chair has four legs... sit on all four. Ug.

This week we are preparing Katherine to "move up" to the next room at daycare. It's where the "waddlers" are. She will be reunited with her boyfriend Jacob and friend Ava. Her friend McKinley is coming with her. Apparently she and McKinley are staying close these last few days. Something about safety in numbers. I think they're under some misguided impression that together they can take the Waddler room. They forget that Elise is over there. :) She rules the roost! They're cute if they think they stand a chance.

In order to prepare Katherine they are supposed to take her over to her new room, for a few hours a day. So far... hasn't happened. Tomorrow I'll be having a chat with the Director to make sure she makes some visits. After all, she needs to meet her new teachers and get a lay of the land before she makes the leap. I mean, what if she gets over there and she can't find the blocks? Or the baby dolls?? I know. Horror, right!? No worries, Mommy's on a Mission. *queue music*

My baby is growing up. I know I'm being dramatic, but I feel like she's going off to college. I'll have to drop her off in the morning, in the classroom across the hall from where she is now. Eeek. Maybe we'll just keep going to the infant room. Do you think anyone will notice?? :P

Another sign our Nugget is growing up... She now does not get a bottle before bed. She's completely "off" all bed time assistance devices such as pacifiers, music and bottles. Daddy reads her some bedtime bible stores (God's still on a vengeful mission... Tonight in their reading He created a plague and killed half the people that were with Him. It was somewhere out in the dessert... Apparently He said He'd give them enough food for a month. The people ate and said, but God, there won't be enough food to last a month... so He killed half of them. Then basically said, there. Now you'll have enough. The Old Testament is not the happy God. Note to self... stay on His good-side!!!) I'm not sure this is exactly my idea of a great bedtime story, but I'm thinking better to get the smiting out now before she starts to actually understand the words. Now she's more interested in grabbing Daddy's nose, hitting his mouth and trying to tear at the pages.

Christmas presents provided Katherine with enough toys that I think we can open a new toy every week between now and her birthday!!! This week we opened her Dinosaur Ball Pit. I'm not 7 months old... and even I want to play with this thing. It looks like fun. Like one of those toys that when you're older you say... "Ohhh I LOVED that thing!!!" Come on. You remember your "I LOVED that thing." Admit it. This might be hers. Or maybe it will be mine, for her... hm. Something to think about. She's quite enjoying the fact that she can pick up the balls (one in each hand if she so desires) and has discovered how to swing her arms around and make the balls go everywhere. In addition to tossing them. I was smart (it's all relative) and only opened one of the bags that came with 30 or so balls in it. I'm saving the 2nd bag of balls for after she loses, breaks or in some other way destroys the first set. That's right. I stopped 60 balls from flying all over the house.

Below are some pictures of Katherine in her Dino Ball Pit... Yabba Dabba Dooo!!! http://picasaweb.google.com/daleksza/MyBallPit#

Marshmallow's Movin' on Up??

A very exciting thing happened this week. It snowed. I know - those of you in the Northeast are saying, "Ok... so it snows all the time!" Not here. We've waited YEARS for this day to come. Before we moved it seemed like there were snow days every week. The office was closed and we (Stephen and I) were two of the very few people that could continue to work even though the office was closed. Raleigh would get two inches and the office would close. Meanwhile I'd be going outside, shoveling or snowblowing (ahem) 32".

So yesterday, it finally snowed. Imagine our surprise. We'd been saying. "It's not going to snow. It never snows here." All day. Although, I did encourage those around me to wear their PJs inside out and backwards. You do know that's how snow comes right?! Enough people have to wear their PJs inside out and backwards to bring on the storm. Apparently, my power of persuasion got enough people to do it, and thus, we got snow. I know. A miracle, right?! (Hogwash on the cold front, meets wet front, meets... BLEH!! PJs inside out and backwards.)

As is the standard in Raleigh, the schools closed at the mere thought of snow. They were closed by 10pm on Monday evening. The first flake hadn't fallen. I'd say I waited and waited and waited by the window for the first flake, but I'd be fibbing. I went to bed. I went to bed and didn't even check outside before I called the office emergency line at 6:05 to see if I could sleep in! Excellent news... The office was working on a 2 hour delay. Hm. Is daycare open?? I called at 7. Yes. It is.

Ok, so here's where events of the past haunt me. The first year we lived here there was an ice storm. I say ice storm rather loosely. The real issue was too many dopey people rushing out of work at again.. the mere THOUGHT of something happening. As a result the salt trucks didn't have a chance to put down sand, salt, or whatever they spread and thus we were the laughing stock of the country. We live 20 minutes from our office (at the most) and it took us 8 hours to get home. It was like Armageddon. One of our friends called us from a gas station/convenience store and was convinced she wasn't making it home alive. People were buying beer at the gas station, opening it and drinking it right there. I guess, figuring, if they were going to die, they'd die drunk. Welcome to NC.

Ok. So why does this haunt me? What if we went to work and the same thing happened. And I couldn't get to Katherine?! So the decision was made to work from home. And so we did. Katherine was a trooper. She played for a bit in the snow (more to come on that) played in her jumper, took naps, watched the fire, and cuddled when she cared to. She also helped me type on occassion. Mr Jesse got a few instant messages that had him responding... Huh??? Sorry, that wasn't me. That was Katherine... Oops. She loves the computer. Shocking, right?!

Before we got started on the whole "working" thing (which by the way the office eventually closed), I decided I would put on the oh so cute snowsuit I'd gotten for Katherine this summer (for $4... bargain, right!? YEAH) and take her outside. Before I got her into the suit, she wanted to test it out. By eating it. Just one hand of it. But enough that it was full of slobber. Right on.

Into the snowsuit she went. She looked like a stay puff marshmallow. ADORABLE!!!!! Ya just wanted to squeeze her!!! Of course, I had to take her to Stephen (who was in training upstairs in the office by this point). He ate her. Or tried to. :)

Outside we went. We first just looked around. She didn't seem impressed. Then we went to test just standing in the snow. Hm. No tears. Not really excited. But no tears. Then I sat her in it. Marshmallow just sat there. Looking from side to side. I immediately took a picture with my cell phone and sent it to some of the family. One response was "OMG, it's Ralphi's little brother!!!" (Jaclyn) EXACTLY what she looked like. She was just scoping things out. I fed her a little snow. Don't worry. It was clean. :) She liked it. Refreshing I think she thought. Then we tried to make a snow angel. Before you judge I swear she was bundled better than an eskimo!!!! Anyway, that lasted all of about 15 seconds. Enough for me to get two pictures. An angel, we did not make. *sigh* Oh well.

Inside we went then to get warm again. Stephen had built an amazingly toasty fire that we sat beside and played for a bit. Then it was time to get to work... and so we did. You see, our company gives us all laptops so in the event we can't get to work due to inclement weather or some other such reason... we can still work.

We did take a break around 11:45am to watch the inauguration. I don't think Katherine was all that impressed. She yelled the whole time. Screeched really. I don't know who she voted for, she wouldn't show me her ballot, but I'm thinking... maybe it wasn't Obama?!?! Or could it be that she was just so excited "for change" that she was yelling "Go Obama!" I guess we'll never know.

Stephen went outside to shovel after the snow stopped falling (around 2pm). We got approximately 5" or so where we live. Impressive for a place that doesn't get snow... and for a city that only has I think it's 3 plows. Seriously. For those that don't know, when we lived in Easton we bought a snowblower. We bought it after a snowstorm that brought 32" with 6ft drifts. I was home alone during said snowstorm. I'll remind you all... I'm not 6ft. 5'3" maybe... but certaintly not 6". :P

We only got to use the snowblower um, maybe, twice that year. Not because it didn't snow, but rather because the snowblower had an unfortunate accident. Ok. I might have had something to do with it. Poor Marty. Our neighbor. I think I gave him a heart attack that day. Picture it... 2004-ish... snowing... 6ft drifts... me with a brand spanking new snowblower that I insisted we buy because I wasn't shoveling another storm by myself. Staring at our snowblower in awe, I tried to start it. Hm. I have no idea what I'm doing. Marty comes to help. He gets it started for me. weeeee this is cool!!! I start to head down the driveway. Then I look left. To where the snow is "blowing" out of the snowblower. What's THAT? Huh. Looks like... newspaper??... It was at precisely that moment that the snowblower siezed. Just stopped. Curious. I can probably fix this. It is probably at this point that Marty looks up because he hears the snowblower stop. I'm now sitting on the ground trying to figure out what to do. I stick my hand up in the turny things of the blower... Marty SCREAMS: NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO. Yeah. That's when I think I gave him a little heart attack. Apparently you're not supposed to stick your hand UP the snowblower with the "sparkplug" still on/attached/working, whatever. Huh. I'll add, I didn't know where the plug of sparks was to remove it, or turn it off. But alas, Marty assisted. By the end of our inspection the snowblower was, um, kaput. Inoperable. This is where MY panic began. Oh my goodness I just broke the $500 snowblower that I insisted Stephen buy. Eeeeek. Good news is, he took it well. Didn't cry or yell. Whew. I did tell him over the phone, when he was 800 miles away. :) Something you can all learn from my experience: When newspaper dries in a snowblower's blady things, it turns to a consistency much like concrete. Bad. Bad. Bad. Seriously. Bad. It had to wait for spring, and all of the neighborhood men to circle the beast to figure out how to unmangle my masterpiece. The cure? Drano. It eats EVERYTHING. Even newspaper from a snowblower. :) .... That summer we moved to NC. And we brought the beast with us since Stephen never had a chance to use it.

Now... 2009 Stephen's in our shed and looks at the snowblower and thinks... If it starts on the first button push.. It's fate!! I'm going to use it. 4 years later it starts on the first button push. It had been waiting longingly to be used. Neighborhood men, women and children came to watch the beast at work. Stephen did the whole block. I'm not certain but he may have done the street too. A proud moment it was for him. The beast was working... moving snow... and he was "driving" it. This is a memorable day. :)

In other news... We received a note in our diaper bag on Monday evening. Rather big news. The note indicated that Katherine is ready to "move up" to the next room at Daycare. The Waddler room. OH MY!!! My baby is like Weezie. She's movin on up. Stephen and I started at the note in awe. I see the other babies in her classroom every day so I know she's the oldest... but still. Moving up?? So soon? Will Ms Shawn, Ms Lisa and Ms Donna be coming with her?! I'm told no. No, they won't be. She'll be getting new teachers. Eeeek. What's to come of us?! When is this "event" going to take place. February 2nd, the note said. The week before (next week) she'll start spending part of the day in the waddler room. *deep breath* Everything WILL be okay. She'll be just fine. I take some measure of comfort in knowing her friends are already there. She's the last of her group (she was the youngest) to move over. Jacob, Ava... both over there. I know she misses her friends so she'll enjoy seeing them again. She and Ava bonded. And Jacob and she were making "eyes" at each other for months.

I'd been pretty remiss in posting picture for the last few weeks. No worries, I've caught up. On the left under the picture links section there are all new photos from 1/7/09 through present. Below is a link to the snow pictures from yesterday.

http://picasaweb.google.com/daleksza/SNOWDAY#

I have some videos I took with my cell phone of our time in the snow. I'm trying something new with posting videos to the page. There's a link along the left side of the page. The resolution isn't great, but have patience while I work on figuring it out. :)

Katherine vs Mommy & Daddy: She won.

Today we had Katherine's 6 month check up. Yes, yes, I know she's 7 months old. With the holidays we couldn't get in to see our favorite doctor until today.

I always feel guilty on "shot" day. Katherine wakes up so happy and so ignorant to the fact that her chubby little legs are going to get multiple shots in them. I cringe when I have to get one. When my baby has to get five... Yikes!!!!

I'm happy to report her 6mo check up went splendidly. Dr Hewitt said she's awesome!! He was quite impressed with our girl's ability to sit up very well on her own. He said that doesn't generally occur until 7.5 - 8 mo old. (Katherine's been sitting up since before Thanksgiving. Mensa??!!??)

The first part of the visit is the "test" portion of the visit. We get asked if whether she's bottle or breast fed (seriously now... they can stop asking me...), what type of formula she's on, is the house safe, things we might consider doing in the house based on her age/mobility, is she sitting up (yup), can she bear weight on her legs (since she was 3mo old - so yup), does she roll (yup)... etc. Then we progress into the math portion of the testing. Length (eeek), weight, head size...

So first I'll remind you of her 3 mo check up stats.

- Length: 23 3/4 inches (grew one inch since her last visit at 2 months old)
- Weight: 13lbs 9.5oz (Up about 2lbs since her post ER visit in August)
- Head: 40cm (I don't remember what this was last time... I need to look when I get home.)

She's in the 25 percentile for length (no shock there); 45th percentile for weight and 20th percentile for her head size. She's still got a nugget noggin. :)

At 7 months her stats are
- Length: 26" A little longer and she literally will be half my height!! :-/
- Weight: 16lb 5oz (Up a little less than 3lbs) (Save your comments for comparing her weight to mine. Thanks.)
- Head: 41 and 3/4cm

She's in the 40th percentile for length (ROCK ON GIRL); 40th percentile for weight and 15-20th percentile for head size. The nugget noggin continues... and we continue to hear her head is "growing at the correct velocity, which means her brain is growing".

We then proceed to the "parents get to bombard doctor with questions" portion of the visit. This is why we love Dr Hewitt so much. He's great. He never makes us feel like we're dopey first time parents. No matter what we ask.

At the end of the visit I felt like Katherine must have had a call with him to get him on her side. The girl "won" 4:0.

Our questions...
- Katherine punches herself in the head. (go ahead... gasp, then laugh, then wonder if there might be something that is a little "off". After all, we have!) Apparently this is normal... Dr Hewitt said that it happens. (Then you wonder... does he say that to all the parents??) And apparently our reaction has been exactly the opposite of what we're supposed to do. We are to have NO reaction. Ignore it. Pretend she's not doing it. When you see your child hitting herself in the head, it's pretty hard not to have a reaction. But alas, that is now the rule. And you know how I follow rules. :)

- Katherine eats/chews her fingers. It's become a battle of wills between she and I. She puts her hand in her mouth. I pull it out. She puts it back. I pull it out. She is now trying to see how quickly after I pull it out she can get it back in. Ooohhh you little turkey!!!! Then she laughs at me. A belly laugh. Like... You're a fool. I'll win. I've got nothing to do all day BUT eat my hand!! HA!!! The verdict... Let her eat her hands. This one is hard for me. For real. No kidding around. Tonight I had to stop myself about 15 times from stopping her. Dr Hewitt said that no amount of me pulling her hands out is going to stop her. He said that in fact, my pulling her hands out will probably only, from a behavior stand point, encourage it. *sigh* She wins. She can now put both fists in her mouth, if she wants to, as she's been attempting to do. Tonight she also figured out if she bends over she can get her foot in her mouth. She chewed on this little piggy for a good 5 minutes. Quite honestly, I'm not sure how she managed that because her feet STINK!!! For a 7 month old, she's got a funk that can't even be paralleled by her Daddy. Whew. P.U.!

- Pacifier... Take it away now? When?? Is it better to give the paci or let her eat her hands... The short of this one is, we (she) can do whatever she wants with the pacifier until she's 18 months old. At that point the paci becomes a behavior issue, not a soothing one. He said that if we take it away before 18 months - it's just gone. No drama. If you take it away after that, be prepared for Queenage as she'll be a full of drama. Win #3 for Katherine.

- Finally... Food... She used to eat so well. Veggies, fruits, oatmeal. But ever since around Christmas (25th Christmas) she's gotten really fussy. To the extent that she'll spit her food at me, or as I've mentioned in the past, will make herself gag and throw up. (We mentioned this bulimic thing to Dr Hewitt and he looked at Katherine and said... oh little girl you aren't starting that stuff now!!! I think she listened to him. He's a Dr after all.) Anyway we told him how the only thing she'll eat with any regularity is Oatmeal and only Oatmeal with bananas. I inadvertently gave her oatmeal without bananas. You'd have thought I fed her peas. She spit it at me. Clamped her mouth shut and turned her head and refused to look at me. I get this attitude at 7 months old?? We're in sooo much trouble. Already she's showing her father's tude. (hehehehehehehe It's fun to say it's HIS gene. I refuse to admit it might be MY picky food gene. Nope. His tude!) He said let her get good and hungry. He also said that she should be having 3 meals, not two. Huh. Breakfast: bowl of oatmeal and a bottle; lunch: veggie, fruit and bottle; dinner: oatmeal, veggie, fruit and bottle. Yikes. We're nowhere near that and she won't eat the two meals I am trying to feed her. *sigh* We'll just keep trudging along here. You think she really is just a picky eater??? :P

Below are some pictures from our appointment. It was a milestone after all.
http://picasaweb.google.com/daleksza/7MonthCheckUp#

I will be coming back sometime later this week to "document" the goings on from New Years and Katherine's first OC Christmas. :) Stay tuned...

Christmas 2008

Katherine made her first trip to FL!! We didn't see Mickey but we did see Tootsie Pop!!! :P

We went to FL to spend RC Christmas with the Rents, Jacki, Nikki and MomMom. Katherine was quite stoked at 3am when we woke her up to start the drive. No, that's not a typo. I did say 3am. We thought it would be better to start early so that Katherine would sleep during a bulk of the driving. I'm happy to report... It worked!! Of course a happy, let's play Katherine at 3am isn't what I was hoping for but as soon as we got in the car and started moving she went back to sleep until around 7:30. Success!!!

During our drive Stephen and I noticed several things... Driving south down 95 is VERY different than driving north. The types of eating establishments change dramatically. The scenery.... um, I don't remember much of that. And there was one road that we thought we might commit hairy cary on. Seriously. The speed went from 35 > 50 > 25 > 40 > 25 > 55 > 35.... Did I mention that was in a 4 mile stretch??? CRAZY!!!! Oh and only in FL do you see billboards, yes billboards, that say > Speed trap ahead. Who does that??? Clearly with speed limits like that all they want to do is distribute tickets. Can't I just get my ticket, pay $100 and go 55 straight through??? Needless to say we avoided that road coming home. Neither one of us could take it. I'd drive an hour out of the way to avoid that.

Another thing we found in FL is a highway that has a bike path that is something like 40 miles long. Stephen, at one point, says I think you can take this bike path all the way to the airport. So I asked... um, how would you get your luggage there?? Tie it to your bike and drag it by the wheels??? I got a look. :)

We arrived in FL at around 3-4pm. We think we made pretty good time. And Katherine was pretty chipper when we got there. Tootsie and Pop had just gotten their new kitchen countertops installed. Organizing the kitchen took a backburner to getting some snuggles in with Katherine!!

After snuggles and dinner Dad took us over to show us around the house we were staying in. A lady he'd been doing some remodeling work for was nice enough to let us stay there. (She wasn't there. It's like a vacation home for her.) We put up the playpen and Katherine zonked out!!! She was up bright and early the next morning though. Because we knew no one else would be awake at 6:30am we watched Santa's coming to Town. Katherine liked it.

So I neglected to mention something that made quite an impact on our visit to FL. I'm about to jump the shark on the blog. I'm going to talk about poop. For those non-parents... I'd been told before becoming a Mom... "You'll understand someday". That's all I can say to you now. If you're not a parent, at least you'll be able to laugh at our misfortune.

On Monday Stephen and I realized that Katherine was... um... having some challenges relieving herself. You know how our daughter gets when she's ... you know.... pooping. Our daughter has never had a poop that you didn't know about. Seriously. She grunts, moans and her face gets cherry red every single time. Sometimes she even gets tears in her eyes from grunting. Those that have witnessed it know I'm not kidding. And MOY (Mom of the Year) that I am... I can't help but giggle sometimes with tears in my own eyes from laughing so hard.

PICTURE WAS REMOVED, AS PROMISED, TO AVOID FUTURE HARASSMENT. :)

(Note: this picture will be removed before her first birthday to protect her from future harrassment.)

Well, anyway... we realized that she was having a bit of a problem winnie the poohing. In retrospect we think it was because she'd been eating a new fruit - bananas. Did you know they stop you up?? I didn't. So, we decided we would help her out. We put a teaspoon of prune juice in 3 of her bottles and gave her some applesauce and a smidge of gerber prune food. She wasn't a big fan of the prune food so she only had a wee bit. We thought that would help get her going. Help is the wrong word.

We started our corrective measures on Tuesday during the drive. Fortunately nothing happened then. Instead it happened on Wednesday morning when she and pop were cuddling up.

Look how sweet they look. Awww... Pop had his arm around her. Then all of the sudden we realized she was into grunt mode. And um... well, things were not contained. I've never seen my dad jump so high so fast and scream so loud. Really. He was sqealing.... "Is it on me? Oh my god, is it on me? Check!!! Is it on me??!!!" We couldn't stop laughing long enough to either check to see if it WAS on him. Tears were streaming.

Over the course of the 5 days we were in FL Katherine blessed everyone except Aunt Nikki. We don't know how that happened, but Aunt Nikki will have her moment I'm sure. The person who responded best to poohtacular 2008 was Aunt Jacki. She gets a gold medal. We won't go into details but it involved both Jacki and Katherine needing new clothes.

Moving past the winnie experiences... Christmas was awesome. All of the girls wore matching PJs. Yes. Matching. I totally dug it. They were sooo cute!! (thanks Mom!!!) The boys wore red pants with christmas palm trees on them. hehehe Cute!!! And the best part... We wore them ALL day. Even for dinner. The only person who changed was Dad. (Note: Stephen and I showered and put the PJs on that morning.) :))

Katherine did very well for her first first Christmas. :) After seeing the stack of presents all Stephen could say was... Well at least she didn't get a pony. Um. Well. About that. After all the presents were opened... A large bag appeared and guess what happened to be inside said bag?? A pony. A pony that even I can ride. (No comments Nicole!!!!!) Katherine thinks the pony is really cool. She tries to ride it and eats the pony's hair. We're trying to teach her NOT to eat the pony's hair (mane) but she doesn't seem to care. EVERYTHING goes into our girl's mouth.

What did Katherine get?? Let's see... I won't remember it all but... Books, stack of rings (HIT), stuffed animals, baseball diamond thingy, her first laptop (V-tech), clothes, a pony, drums (which actually I liked so much I'd gotten for her for Christmas #2... and returned after she got them for Christmas #1)... She was a very lucky little girl!!

What did I get?? Wii Music and Wii Boogie Superstar. Let me say Boogie Superstar ROCKS. I think I'm the next American Idol. Ok, maybe not, but it was soooo much fun. We all sang. Including Dad!! He had no idea what the song was that he was singing, but he did it. Nikki, Jacki and I sang and danced. We could all use a little practice on the dancing front. Singing... we're rock stars!!! hehehe I'd post a video of the various stars, but I might be disowned. And that wouldn't be good. :P

During our trip to FL we also made a visit to see our friend Marie. We had breakfast with her and her husband Jerry and Katherine got some good Aunt ReRee bonding time in. :) Well, good, prior to her nap. She was so sleepy that she rested her head on my hand and went to sleep. Poor girl had been worn out from the weeks events.

On Saturday we packed up and headed home. We arrived home at around 8pm that night. We were all tuckered and starting to get sick. Ick. Well, Stephen & I were. Katherine, fortunately, was good to go. The trip home started a 3 week illness for poor Stephen that landed us in the doctors office twice and at the pharmacy three times. Poor guy still isn't feeling 100%. This illness however can not be blamed on "patient zero". She didn't get sick at all!!! And daycare wasn't involved either!!

The following week was new years... I'll save those stories for the next installment. There isn't a whole lot to tell from the week since we were all holed up at home hoping that Stephen would feel better soon. But surely I can regale you with something!!! :)

Pictures from Christmas #1 (2008):

http://picasaweb.google.com/daleksza/MyFirstRCChristmas#