Quarterly Results

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In three months a lot of things happen. Particularly for a two year old. We’ve had a weekend or two at the beach, a visit with family in MD and NJ, family vacation in Orlando, a fall festival, a JDRF Walk, a half marathon (me, not K, but she was a key part of the day) and Halloween. So I'll share what I can remember!

We took a trip in September to NJ to celebrate the engagement of Aunt Roro (my cousin Cheryl) and her fiancee Jay. On the way we stopped off in MD to visit with our cousins Brian and Kelly and their cutie pie boys. Katherine had a GREAT time playing with the boys and continues to refer to their youngest son as "her baby" or "baby brother". She loves her a baby.

We were in NJ for less than 24 hours (literally) and were really happy to be able to get in visits with The Aleksza/Tomanek/Francis families and then head over to the engagement party where we were able to visit and celebrate with my cousin, her friends and most of my aunts. K and I were asked to be part of Cheryl and Jay's special day. I was asked to be matron of honor and K will be the flower girl. Here's hoping K's version of "practicing" isn't like Andrea's. :-) It was a great weekend, albeit a quick trip.

We took a trip to Orlando in mid-October. This was our 2nd year going to Orlando for vacation. We still had our season passes to Sea World and Aquatica so we thought we’d make use of them again. (We’re thinking Disney will be after K is 4 or so.) We arrived on a Saturday and while checking in a woman told me about Sea World’s Halloween festivities. We had arrived for the first weekend of “Spooktacular!” So Sunday we headed to SeaWorld for some trick or treating!

This was the first time Katherine understood that if you say “trick or treat” people give you candy. It took us a few tries to get her to say Trick or Treat but once she realized the treasure for doing so… She was all in! She had fun going from station to station to collect her sugary treats.

We also found out that day that Shamoo had a baby. Okay, so maybe it wasn’t “Shamoo” but some cousin, friend or tank-mate. Either way one of the stars of the Shamoo show had a baby. That meant, no Shamoo shows for at least two weeks. Bummer. I’d been talking about the Shamoo show for weeks to get K ready for the big trip. Thanks Shamoo (friend, cousin, tank-mate). Fortunately K was just as excited to see the baby whale as she was the actual show. *whew* Crisis averted. The baby was super cute and so very small (in comparison to mommy whale). K asked if she could hug the baby. Hm. Don’t think that’s a good idea. How about we just blow him/her kisses?!

Monday we took Katherine to her first water park: Aquatica. She big fat puffy hearts the water. Any water. Bath tub, pool, ocean… you name it. Girl’s there. The kid pool at Aquatica was a HUGE hit. The slides… equally awesome. I don’t think she came out of the pool for the four hours we were there, with the exception of the 30 minutes we drug her out to feed her lunch. (She acquiesced when she heard it was pizza.) Tootsie & Poppy spent most of the time there in the water pulling Katherine around and going up and down slides. The slides required two people to make the event work (one at the top and another at the bottom. Katherine would go down, yell again again, and the person at the top would need to run down the steps to grab her, get her back up, down the slide… she’d get caught by the person at the bottom, yell “again again,” and the process would start again. Another good day!!!

Tuesday was Date day for Stephen and I. Our 7 year anniversary. We took a helicopter ride over the parks, went to the Outlets to get some socks and got sucked into some shopping :) and then returned to the room to get cleaned up for dinner. We went to Blue Zoo at the Dolphin. The first time we ate there it was amazing. This was no different. Amazing meal… and we had a gift certificate. Doesn’t get much better than that!!! (If you’re in Orlando and looking for a nice place for dinner – I highly recommend it!!!) K spent the day with Tootsie, Poppy and Aunt Jacki. She was in heaven with all of the attention!! And she got ice cream that night for dessert. Given the size of her cheeks in the picture – It was a large bowl!!!

Wednesday, Thursday and Friday we hung out with the family some more. We had another go-round at Sea World, a trip to Downtown Disney and our annual dinner at Café Tu Tu Tango. (Never a trip to Orlando with out a meal there… Sangria and Tapas! Yum!!!)
A great trip to Orlando again. Katherine had fun with Aunt Ikki, Aunt Soapie, Aunt Jacki, Tootsie and Poppy.

The following weekend (busy October) we went to Myrtle Beach for the weekend. I had my first half marathon on Sunday and a couple of friends were also coming to town to run the race. We decided to have a carb dinner to prep for the big race at our condo. We had lots of fun hanging out Saturday night with Allison and Rick. Katherine was treated like a Princess (literally… crown, gloves & purse!) and really thought the homemade ice cream cookie sandwiches were the highlight of the weekend! Me… Highlight was crossing the finish line 9min 10seconds (yes, the seconds count!) under my goal time. I had AWESOME cheerleaders that day. K and SA met me at mile 3, mile 10 and the finish line. (The gap between 3 and 10 provided a respite for them to go get some Krispy Kreme donuts for breakfast… They were kind enough to bring some for me for post race!!) It was a great race and I can’t wait to do it again. Even better, after the race Katherine got so excited by watching the race she told me she wanted to be a runner like Mommy. So sweet. She still tells me just about every day “Mommy, I a runner! Ok? Ok!” That’s my girl!!!!

The Friday before Halloween weekend we had Fall Festival at school. K had a great time, although we have learned that the hayride (at night) is NOT a good idea. She woke up the next morning still talking about the “scary hayride”. Not sure why it was scary… but it seriously was to our KK. Poor kid. She had fun going room to room and participating in all of the fun activities. There was touching spooky body parts (brain = watermelon / heart was peeled tomatoes / eyeballs were grapes, etc.); going through a spooky obstacle course, walking the balance beam and getting her fortune told (she’s loved by LOTS of people, said our very knowledgeable fortune teller).

The JDRF walk was up next. The Walk brings thousands of people together who are all raising money for the same cause: Finding a cure for Type 1 Diabetes. We were three of about 100+ on the Allscripts team and three out of the 15 or so on the Young Leadership Committee (YLC) for JDRF. Thousands of others were there for the event. It was a great day – gorgeous weather and a cause I’m proud we support. Our family raised about $500 for the event. Next year we need to kick it up a bit. Thanks to all of our family & friends who donated to support us!! We’re blessed to have a healthy little girl… So many children Katherine’s age, and younger, diagnosed with a disease that affects every single day – every single hour of their lives.

Halloween was the following day… K picked the costume she wanted to wear. She was a cowgirl. A seriously CUTE cowgirl. We went to about 3 houses and she told me she was done. In sign language and verbally. She usually only breaks out the sign language when she’s quite serious. It was the dogs at one of the houses that sent her running home. She decided she could make up for what she missed by trick or treating at our house. 5 times. I wonder if she thought we didn’t know who she was because she was in a costume?? Silly girl. She had fun giving out candy to the kids that came by. We had about 150 or so kids this year. Not as busy as last year and the previous year but still enough to keep things exciting.

We’re now getting ready for Thanksgiving and the upcoming holidays. K thinks that fall is awesome and loves collecting leaves. One day we collected a handful of pretty ones and she brought them inside so we could throw them in the air and pick them up… again, and again, and again.

Some random facts about our girl:
Favorite Color: Purple
Favorite Food/s: Pizza, ravioli, cheese, ham, milkshakes (aka milk with a weeee bit of chocolate syrup), pancakes and cupcakes. (Thanks Poppy for the last one… She’s still talking about that particular incident.)
Favorite activity (Indoor): color. She LOVES to color. We flipped over the top of her lego table so it is flat and now she sits and colors and draws all sorts of pictures for us. Usually circles. She also loves to trace her hand. Well, I trace it and she yells LOOK!!!!
Favorite Song: ABCs, Wheels on the Bus and (oddly) Take me out to the ball game. I have no idea where/how she heard the latter but she loves it. We have a new CD that we play in the car (Toddler Car Tunes) and she thinks it rocks! (But Take me out to the Ball game isn’t on it.)
Favorite Outdoor Activity: Well, at home it’s running.  At school, apparently it’s picking up pine straw and putting it in a pile. Is OCD contagious???
Favorite Helper Activity: Cooking. She LOVES to stand at the kitchen counter on a stool and “help” me cook. I know what you’re thinking – YES, I do cook. Sometimes. When I do, she’s my right hand girl.
Favorite Saying: “WHATCHA DOIN” Spend 20 minutes with her and you’ll have been asked 400 times. Her teachers have made it into a song. For real. The conversations generally go something like this:
Mommy, whatcha doin’??
I’m driving KK.
Mommy, whatcha doin??
Still driving KK.
Mommy whatcha doin??
Driving the car to school.
Mommy whatcha doin??
Driving.
Mommy, whatcha doin??
Going crazy.
Mommy, whatcha doin?
Same thing I was doing 30 seconds ago.
Mommy, whatcha doin?.... And so it continues.

I’ll try to do better with the whole blogging thing but can’t make any promises. Instead consider the blogs I do post as tiny little unexpected presents. Yeah. That’s a great idea. Lil presents of Love sent via the web. *virtual xoxo*

Enjoy some pictures! :)

Hoot Hoot, She's Cute!

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Family Weekend in NJ

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Orlando Vacation

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Pumpkin Picking

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Halloween

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"I HAPPY!!!"

Last Friday we drove down to MB for the weekend. Our plan had been to call and order pizza as we got closer to the condo so that we could pick it up on the way there. Best laid plans… The wait for pizza was 90 minutes for pick-up. So, we decided to eat in. Apparently the wait for sitting there wasn’t much better. No one told us this however. So, we ordered some garlic knots while we waited for our pizza. We didn’t realize that our pizza was going to take more than 90 minutes to come out of the oven. (The garlic knots, by the way, are the BEST I’ve ever eaten in my life! For real! I could eat a whole dozen by myself… Stephen and K know you better get it fast or I’m going to eat them all. I have NO self control.)

K and I muddled through but *someone* (no names) was er, um, not happy. K on the other hand, for the first time in her little life expressed a positive feeling through words: “I HAPPY!!!!” Neither of us had ever heard her say this before and I really do believe she meant it. She was smiling ear to ear, playing with a piece of pizza dough. We did “magic” (I hid the dough in one hand and had her guess where it was – very popular game) and sang songs. After waiting 80 minutes we decided we’d get the pizza to go as it was getting very late. K had eaten enough (pre-pizza) to be okay and the not-happy one needed to get out of there.

Little did we know that would start a week-long request for “I want pizza.” Tonight we finally fulfilled little miss’s wishes. She was QUITE happy. Of course as soon as she finished that she said “I want ice cream!!!” Girl knows what she wants.

Over the weekend we took Katherine to the SC Children’s Museum which she enjoyed although there were a lot of rude children and parents there. One little girl insisted on taking everything Katherine was playing with. We kept moving, she kept following us. We finally went to another part of the museum to get away from the little bully.

Sunday we took Katherine to the beach. It was our first time at the beach with rain. Off and on for the 3 hours we were there. It worked out just fine and Katherine had a great time. She LOVES the water and “jumping” the waves. I got a good arm work out!!

We had planned on staying till Monday but our stay was extended when Katherine and Stephen started to get sick on Sunday evening. Katherine started running a fever and Stephen wasn’t feeling well either so we ended up staying till Tuesday.

On our way home we stopped at a Mexican restaurant (i.e. location for a margarita). Stephen needed a little help in order to manage through the ride home. (Note: I was driving.) Margarita’s were $1.75 and they had fried ice cream. It doesn’t get much better than that.

While we were there I tried to teach Katherine some Spanish. I taught her “que pasa”. Two little words had an entire restaurant of servers eating out of her two year old hands. They thought she was the funniest thing! She LOVED yelling QUE PASA any time a server walked past. They’d yell QUE PASA back and she’d get into a fit of laughing. She even taught the southern hostess how to say it. (The servers believed Katherine said it better than she did.)

It was Katherine’s first time having fried ice cream. To be honest, I’m not sure how much she got of it because I was all over it. Stephen and Katherine had a discussion after dinner that the next time we got it for the family they needed to form an alliance against me. Apparently Survivor: Fried Ice Cream is ON! Whatever familia. Bring it on!!! =)

I’m still working on K’s 50’s poodle skirt/dress. Tonight I was able to find the finishing pieces. Tomorrow or Sunday I will work on the goods. The Sock Hop is on Tuesday. Clock is ticking so I need to get to work!!!

Some other miscellaneous Katherine facts:
- Her favorite color is purple.

- She’s still in love with the yellow boat that she went in while we were at the Wildwood boardwalk. Last weekend she asked if she could go on them and I said they were far away. She said, “we go in the car”. So wonderfully logical.

- She loves turtles. The school had someone come that brought small animals with them for the kids to see/touch. Katherine (shockingly) touched every animal, including a snake, hissing cockroach, bunny and turtle. The turtle continues to be a hit. She will repeatedly tell you “I touched a turtle.” Sometimes this will be the first thing she says when she wakes up. And I mean from snore, to stand up in her bed saying “Mommy, I touched a turtle.” There are turtles in the pond in our condo complex. Last weekend she played peek-a-boo with them. Quite cute. And she was totally in love with them.

- She can count to 10 well. 11-20 is iffy. 21-30 we’re good again. She loves 30.

- She can say her ABCs. Last week she sang her ABCs in an opera voice. Quite entertaining.

- She LOVES to race. We race often. Down sidewalks, through the house, to her daycare classroom. Amazing how this one thing can stop a total melt-down from happening. Last weekend I had her “racing” herself for about 15-20 minutes. She didn’t tire. I did, just watching her.

- If allowed her menu would consist only of pizza, hot dogs, cheese, chips, ice cream and cake.

- She loves water. Regardless of where it is. One night I took her outside to play in the rain. We had SO much fun running through the rain, jumping in puddles etc. Now when she sees puddles she wants to jump in them. If there’s water – Katherine wants to play in it. Fortunately she doesn’t equate the toilet to playing water. The sick, bathtub, puddles, pools, ocean, etc. are all fair game though. When she “swims” she says, “look!!! Shamuuuuuu!!!!”

- She’s still terrified by dogs. The girl has Dog-dar. She can see a dog from a half a mile away. If she says MOMMY, DOG – I have NO doubt there is a dog. Somewhere. Even if I don’t see it. She’s fine with them until they come into her cone of safety (which is about 5ft around her). We’re trying to work on it little by little with our neighbors’ little dogs.

It’s amazing how much she’s changed in just a couple of months. I think Stephen and I are both enjoying seeing things through the eyes of a two year old!

Pictures for the week:

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"I chshoo"

If you ask Katherine how old she is she’ll tell you, “I chshoo” and try desperately to hold up two fingers. She just can’t seem to master that part yet.

A few weeks ago we took Katherine for her 2 year check up. If you haven’t noticed by now, they are consistently about a month behind. Apparently my mess up in scheduling her check up back when she was oh, about 6 months old will follow me through her childhood. Or so it seems. It’s part of my parent “permanent record”. There’s all these rules about how you can’t have the next shot in a series until a full 6 months after the previous shot. Since I messed up early in her little life I’ve condemned her to one month late check-ups. I’m hoping this is the worst thing I do as her parent… but I’m doubting that to be the case. I mean who of us doesn’t have some food scaring? Those little old Italian Grandma’s who are amazing at everything are few and far between… and certainly aren’t in my house. *sigh*

During our two year and one month old appointment Katherine had all of her “stats” taken. A growth update for our girl:
* Height: 34” (for those of you doing the math, YES, that’s 25” shorter than I am) This is up 2” from her last appointment at 18 months.
* Weight: 23lb 9.5oz This is up about 2lbs since her last appointment.
* Head: We don’t measure that anymore. Apparently noggin growth following the 2nd birthday becomes inconsequential.

Katherine had a couple of shots during her appointment. She took them like a trooper. I’m pretty sure she consistently takes a shot better than I do.
Dr H allowed us to ask our questions. Of which we always think we have none and then somehow ask him stuff for 10 minutes. This time we learned that she no longer needs her full fat milk. “fat intake is important for the first two years of life and then we spend the next 80 minimizing our fat content” Says Dr H. Girlfriend is slurping on skim milk now. Woot woot!!! Only one kind of milk in the house again!

Katherine’s adjustment to the new school is… going. While Stephen and I were away on vacation she did great. Tootsie reported no drama at drop off and pick up was fine.

I get back and take her to school and I get leg clutches and full on crocodile tears. What the crap, I say?! My girl knows drama. “And the Emmy goes to….. Katherine Aleksza for Best Daycare Drama Scene” I get comfort from the other Mom’s in the hallway saying, “don’t worry, it’ll get better. My son/daughter did the same thing.” Hm. I wonder to myself if they won an Emmy.

The new school has brought on other challenges for our family that I’ll admit I wasn’t expecting. There’s a lot of very cool, very fun stuff that they do with the kids. I’m waiting to see if this is a year-round kind of thing or whether this is for “summer camp” as they refer to the summer months of school. The first time I realized I was out of my league was at the Fairy Ball. Mmmhhhmmm. The boys were to dress in their best prince attire and the girls as princesses. I thought I was doing a pretty rock star thing by dressing Katherine up in a pretty little dress with a crown that lit up. (A gift from my 2006 Conference & Expo team… Thanks team!!!) Well, when I arrived at school to see Arials, Cinderellas, Sleeping Beauty and heaven knows all of the other princesses I felt as if I’d dressed her as Fiona from Shrek (AKA Mrs. Shrek). Lesson learned… I gave Tootsie the next challenge for Cowboy/girl day. Tootsie ROCKED it out. Katherine LOVED her hat and cowgirl boots.

Next challenge: 50’s sockhop is next week. I feel a need to be Suzie Homemaker and MAKE Katherine’s outfit. We’ll see how it goes. So far I’ve looked at the sewing machine sitting in our spare/empty room. I glared it down (given that the last time I used it – taking it out of the box – it hurt me). I’m considering hot glue and iron on tape for her outfit. I suppose the real first step would be identifying either a pattern or some fabric. I keep thinking – how hard can it be? She’s two… it’s a little skirt with a poodle on it. I have about two weeks. Amazon ships in two days. Pray for me… Better yet, pray for poor Katherine. Her Mommy’s gonna dress her up funnyyyyy! ;P

Instead of an album of her birthday, an album of the 4th of July, etc. I decided I would just put together one album of some of my favorite pictures from the last two months. Hopefully you’ll enjoy like these pictures as much as I do!

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