11 months plus! and more

I am a little behind with my monthly post based on Katherine. She is now 11 1/2 months and Emma is now 4 1/2 years old. She was quite excited about this! The only reason I made a point to tell her is because they celebrate 1/2 birthdays at school for students who have birthdays in the summer. We brought the treat that day. And believe it or not I did not go with store bought treats - we made homemade chocolate chip cookies. Emma had fun helping. I am excited and a little sad that our baby is going to be one already. Where did the year go? I don't even know where to start with all of the things she does now including making us laugh daily and of course, smile.
A list of what Katherine is doing - it may be incomplete or instantly updated at any moment.

• Most recently on Monday she started going down the steps backwards. I showed her Friday evening and Monday morning she started and has not looked back.
• She can climb up into a little rocking chair (we have 3 of them for Emma) or chair, turn around and sit down. She is very proud of herself when she does this.
• She understands directions - she loves the food pantry. She likes to take out the fruit snacks or, her new favorite, the hard taco shells. We can ask her to put it back and close the door - and she does it! I am completely amazed by this!
• She has this little car that a friend gave me and she figured out how to sit on it and ride it forwards and backwards.
• She loves the tupperware cupboard. We have an empty puffs container which she has discovered when she talks into it - it echoes. She likes this.
• Her walking is greatly improved. She likes to pivot a lot when she is standing. We have had a few people say to us she may be a good basketball player. She also likes to do squats.
• She likes to give love to her dolls and stuffed animals.
• She likes to wave bye-bye to anyone.
• She really seems to like farm animals, dogs (a lot!), dolls, anything that you can put something inside of (cups)...
• She definitely likes to "ham it up" and laughs when she does it which makes it even more funny to us. This afternoon at lunch she put a carrot in her mouth between her front four teeth and made a goofy sound and laughed. You had to see it. My brother saw it and he can attest it was quite funny.
• She loves other kids - at storytime yesterday she walked around and patted all the other kids on the head. She will try to give love (what we call it) to any other small kids too but usually they do not know what she is doing because she goes in head first towards their head or chest. :-)
• She is a pro at shots - she had shots a month ago and didn't cry one tear or even wince. It is amazing because I don't think she has ever cried at shots but with her thighs I can't imagine she feels much. :-) Although Emma is a tough girl too. She had a flu shot the same day as Katherine and not a tear out of her. She was a tough baby as well although we think some of her toughness came from all the poking and prodding she had as a newborn in the neonatal intensive care unit.
• She says "da-da" a lot but she says it to many things not just to Daddy.
• She likes to make this new "o" face with her lips especially when she is looking at something.
• Oh, how could I forget - she loves to dance and it is so cute. She puts her hands together and sways back and forth. She will do it standing or sitting in a seat. You say music and she sways.
• She can be a handful at church because she is walking. She just wants to go. I let her walk up at the offertory and put a dollar in the basket. She understands to put the dollar in the basket (again I was surprised at how quickly she caught on to this) but then she wants to take a dollar out and does not want to walk back to the pew. She has other ideas on her mind.

For all of the things she does I wish I had a video camera on her 24 hours a day. I can't believe she will be 1 in 13 days. It seems only yesterday I was pregnant, close to my due date (Feb. 7), and everyone kept saying you have not had the baby yet. She is definitely her own person. How are 2 children so different from the same couple? :-)

She and Emma have both had bad coughs in the past two weeks and runny noses. The runny noses have diminished. The coughs are still trailing on but not as bad as before. Ethan and I are healthy so far. We have been running (training for our respected marathons) which is probably helping our immune systems. Training for both of us is going quite well. I ran 5 miles last Saturday averaging about a 9:30 pace and felt great! I have not run 5 miles in over a year. I still have to decide which half-marathon I will be running this spring. Ethan will be running the Cellcom Green Bay full marathon.

Emma is doing well. Keeping busy with school, art class, and now a music class called Kiddy Keys. She seems to be enjoying all of it. She will be off to kindergarten next year but not quite sure where yet. We are trying to decide between 2 private schools and public. Her new thing is to play PBS Kids games on my computer. I figure it is good practice for her since all the Kindergartens we saw have the students going to the computer lab. Wow, how times change. She still loves her princesses and dolls. She enjoys using her imagination and play school, daycare, or have a "birthday party" with her play food. She seems to be rather good with numbers. She also continues to love books and being read too. Definitely in the stage of soaking up as much as she can. I think Emma is our "thinker" and Katherine may just be our "jokester". Tonight Emma asked me where is Sesame Street. I told her Sesame Street City. But she wants to know what state. Anyone have an answer for me. I eventually told her New York. Time for bed. I will post new photos soon.