Sisters

Here are some photos taken yesterday of Emma and Katherine. It doesn't work out so well these days to find them both looking at the camera at the same time. Emma is in her Cinderella dress and Katherine is wearing her Fancy Nancy tiara. Enjoy!

Happy Valentine's Day!

Here are some lovely photos of Katherine from Valentine's Day. The crown you see her wearing is her new Fancy Nancy - she liked wearing it even with it still on the cardboard.

She's 1!! Happy Birthday Katherine!

Katherine is officially 1 today. I can hardly believe it. If you are a stickler for time she is not exactly 1 until 7:38pm tonight since she too took all day to come just like her big sister. But her delivery was much less dramatic than Emma's was. Thank goodness. I just can't believe our baby has grown up so much in the past 12 months. She is practically trying to run now.

We went to the Doctor today and he is proud to announce that she is a very healthy girl despite her picky eating habits of not wanting to try a lot of real food. Just keep giving it to her is what we are told. And not to worry about still feeding her baby food. Although the formula we can finish off - 1 last bottle tonight and then say hello to 2% milk. She does not have to drink whole milk because of her size! She is over the 97th percentile in both weight and height. Katherine weighed in at 26lb (we thought for sure it was more) and 32 1/4 inches long. Emma was 23lb 2oz and 31 3/4inches at 12 months. The poor girl has had a runny nose from teething for the past 2 weeks and an ugly cough because of the all the drainage but she takes it in stride. She had 5 shots today and did great! The only tears were because she did not want to be restrained - she just wants to go.

We had a party for her on Saturday and it was fun. A bit different for us because we are used to having Emma's parties outside in the summer so we were not sure how it was going to go with lots of people in the house. It went great! Kids played, adults talked, food was eaten and enjoyed. My husband did a fabulous job with the main course. I contributed snickers salad - one of few things I really know how to make. I had a fabulous cake made by a relative of one of Emma's preschool classmates. It was the hit! Everyone enjoyed the taste of it too except for Katherine. She showed no interest in trying the frosting or the cake! Is she really my daughter? :-) We had 3 flavors - chocolate, yellow, and pumpkin spice. Her party theme was barnyard animals. So the cake was a cow, pig, sheep and chick. I will post a photo. She did enjoy opening her gifts. She received some great gifts - a stuffed dog, an animal sounds farm, adorable clothes, blocks, rumble and learn driver, big legos, books, a mozart music cube, and a fancy nancy tiara (which she loves to wear). She stuck around much better than I thought she would to open gifts.

She is saying doga now for dog. She says "dada" for a lot of things. She knows how to stomp her feet - she will do it as part of her dance or she will do it when she is mad about something. :-) Just yesterday I taught her where her ears are and she quickly caught on. She had a 5th tooth pop through last Thursday and more are on the way we think.

Emma did well with the party. She is used to a lot of attention for her since she had 3 years of solo time before Katherine came into our lives. She was a good helper with presents and overall did great. More photos to come from the party - have to wait for E to download them on to the computer.

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.