April 11 - Nice weekend so far!

We had our 34 week appointment on Wednesday. Baby T seems to be head down, which explains why I have to go even MORE often :-) I thought Margaret was more active than Katie, but I mentioned this to the midwife, and she said Katie had stretched the uterus, so Maggie has more room to move around. It's so trippy. I feel like I have an alien in my belly, and there's frequently a tushy shoving its way out, making my tummy completely lopsided! I don't know if I find it fascinating or just plain creepy. Probably a big mix of both!

Other than my being sick with a cold this week (bad enough that I missed work Wednesday), we've had a pretty good weekend. SO much stuff happened, and I'll be darned if I can remember any of it. Katie was very good for me on Thursday, which I greatly appreciated.

We skipped Story time at the library on Friday, in case my cold was still contagious. Katie and I spent the morning playing with play dough and getting in Daddy's hair. In the afternoon, after a great nap and late lunch, I called Grandpa to see if Brittnee and Austin were going to be at the house. G'pa confirmed, so I
asked Katie if she wanted to go see Brittnee. She kep repeating over and over, "Go see Brittnee?" "Go Outside, see Brittnee?"

It was a good motivator to get her dressed, her shoes on, her coat, etc. Most of the way to the g'rents, Katie would say, "See Brittnee?" and occasionally "See Austin?" She even brought Brittnee a carnation (the last living flower from my beautiful birthday bouquet) We were happy to see Grandma was at home as well. It's funny, when Brittnee is over at the G'rents, it's like Grandma doesn't exist. Now G'ma knows how I feel when I'm over there and Katie favors the g'rents instead of me :-) We stayed there through dinner and got home late.

Gosh, there are SO many new developments verbally with Katie... things that just crack us up, and Kevin and I tell each other we gotta put it in the blog, and then I forget to write it down. Really gotta keep my phone nearby and do some notes in it. One thing that impresses us is Katie now seems to be able to put 4 & 5 word sentences together pretty regularly. Another thing that makes us try not to laugh is her response to a question... It's usually, "No, No" and she'll repeat our request. Example:

US: "Katie, do you want to take a bath?"
KATIE: "No, no take baff"

This has morphed into:

US: "Katie, do you want to take a bath?"
KATIE: "No, no take baff"
US: "Yes, Yes"
KATIE: "No, no 'Yes, Yes'"

We have a pretty hard time keeping a straight face with that.

We are also trying harder to employ Love and Logic techniques. Katie is pretty smart, though, and if she does something she shouldn't, she beats us to the tag line of "What a shame" In the last few days, we've started to institute a 'warning' sound. L&L calls it the "Uh Oh Song". We use "Uh-oh" too often, so we're trying out, "Ah Ah Ohhhh" or something like that. Well, twice at least, she's done something like through her fork on the floor and has beat us to the "Ah Ah Ohhhhh" punch.

She has also started to get some "chair time" We have a camp chair that Grandma and Grandpa gave her last year for her 1st birthday. It's in the living room, and she doesn't use it very often. So, if she does something like ignores a request (diaper change, pick up toys, lay down to put on sleeper, etc), she gets a little chair time. It's sort of like a time-out, and it is easier to use that than getting her over to the stairs or up into her crib (which I think is a terrible place for a time-out!!)

So, a couple of times today and yesterday Katie got a little chair time. It has been fairly effective so far. Yesterday, she through a bunch of diapers on the floor, and I asked her to pick them up. She said, "No, no, Mommy pick them up" She didn't pick 'em up, so she ended up with a little chair time. I counted to 10 verbally. Katie counted along--MUCH faster than I did! After she was done with chair time, I asked her to pick up the diapers. She hesitated just a bit, but then she picked them up. I was so pleased!

One more L&L thing we're doing is stopping an activity when she knows she shouldn't be doing something. We've been lax on allowing Katie to throw utensils, food on the floor. But no more. Starting Friday, when Katie does that, we will say, "What a shame, looks like breakfast (or dinner) is over" I did that Friday morning, and she had a hissy. L&L says you should not explain why you took the food away (just employ empathy and say something like, "perhaps you can join us for lunch later" or something like that) I think she's still a little young, so I say something like, "What a shame, looks like breakfast is over. When you throw your spoon on the ground, we think maybe you are done eating. Perhaps you can have a nice lunch later. I love you" and take her out of the high chair. She wasn't pleased on Friday, but I was able to distract her with an activity. I did make sure she had a LARGE snack that morning so she didn't go down for a nap hungry. Probably not an L&L sanctioned reaction (the extra large snack), but at this point I'm not willing to let her go down to sleep hungry. She wouldn't sleep, and it's not worth having a cranky baby in the house!!

One thing Katie LOVES is being outside. Katie gets a LOT of time at the g'rents. When the weather was REALLY nice early this week, she spent nearly all day outside. Even had multiple meals outside (easy clean up!!) On Saturday morning, ALL morning long, she kept saying, "Go outside, pull weeds?" I mean ALL morning long!! So, by 9:30, she had Daddy outside pulling weeds. I was kinda surprised, because it was chilly outside (upper 40's) She was very good about keeping her hat on.

Around 10:30, Daddy brought Katie in, and she and I decorated Easter eggs. She only broke 1 egg (we had just 10 to dye). I was a bit of a control freak with the eggs, but I sure wish we would have had more to dye :-) Maybe we'll try it again in a few weeks... after all, who says we can only die eggs at Easter???

Katie had a great nap today, and I got to get my hair cut while she was sleeping. I got home and she & Daddy were back in the yard again, pulling weeds. I brought groceries in and then I mixed up some liquid bubble stuff from a recipe I found on the internet. I brought that out, because, of course, Katie was asking for bubbles. Katie and I played bubbles while Daddy pulled weeds (daddy got the raw end of the deal!)

After playing for what seemed like forever, Katie decided she wanted to take a walk, so I tagged along. She was so funny-- reminded me of "Navin Johnson" (from The Jerk) She had a container of bubbles in 1 hand, and she had a drip line from our back yard in the other. She's always doing that. She'll have the remote control, a teddy bear and 3 crayons or something, walking around the house. Silly :-)

Daddy met up with us, and he fortunately had the wagon with him. We had a very nice walk, with Katie collecting quite the bouquet of Dandelions. We finally had to put Katie in the wagon and drag her up a rather large hill. The walk was really nice, but my back paid the price. Hopefully I'll feel better tomorrow.

One more thing about Katie. She loves to sing. A few weeks ago, she was singing something that I vaguely recognized, and I realized it was "Baa Baa Black Sheep" She learned that at Grandma's. She has also started singing "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" (or how she seems to sing it: "Crinkle Crinkle, Widdle Star")

She loves singing the alphabet and is really good and in tune with letters A - G. Then I think she glosses over HIJKLMNOP (that LMNOP can be tough on the tongue, ha) She does pretty well at the end of the alphabet, too, and she does a good job completing the "Now I know my (A, B, C) Next time won't you (Sing With Meeee) She also loves to sing/dance the Hokey Pokey (which we have on video-- I really need to post) and "I'm A Little Tea Pot"

Couple Last things... Katie is really funny about her loyalty to who gets her in the morning. If Daddy gets her first and I walk into her bedroom, she'll say something like, "BYE BYE Mommy", the moment she sees me. Same thing if I'm the first one to get her in the a.m. or at nap time or something.

And, speaking of getting her out of bed in the morning and singing. At Storytime, Katie learned a "Good Morning To You" song, to the tune of "Happy Birthday" Sometimes I'll sing it to her. The other morning, she was looking around the room for objects for me to sing good morning to. She'll sing 1 phrase and want me to sing the song, (Good MORNING to Pooh", etc. She had me sing good morning to her Pooh nightlight, the bee on the pooh nightlight, her Pinky Bear, and then she said, "Good MORNING Yellow Blanket" For some reason that made me laugh out loud.

That's about it. I gotta do better about updating the blog, because there is so much fun stuff to document, and my brain can't seem to retain it. Besides, the blog entries will be much smaller/more manageable if I do it more often, right???