rollin', rollin', rollin'

As usual, too much time has passed since we last spoke. Spring has finally showed up & here's how we're celebrating:

going to the park

playing after supper

taking tours of the yard to see which flowers have started budding

raking old leaves from last fall

greeting geraniums that are showing in my planters

crawling

pulling up

standing

walking (with her walker)

writing more letters (It was J today)

learning about the feeding of the four thousand

hating baths (the oldest one)

loving baths (the youngest one)

eating table food almost all of the time (youngest one)

struggling to finish all of her food on the table almost all of the time (oldest one)

having our first sleepover at our house (LOADS of fun)

riding . . . her first trike!

This was a seminal event at our house. We live on an extremely steep hill, so while most parents would have already bought & helped their children use any variety of riding toys, Kate has never had any. We never even had a riding toy for inside the house. She does play with Little Tikes car at Mima's house, but, she was pretty much as inexperienced as they come. I finally decided that we could just let her play in the garage or downstairs in the spare room (linoleum flooring), and that this was the year for the trike. I never thought about the back deck! I had dinner to fix, so she begged to bring it upstairs into the living room. Um, no. But, then she came up with a good solution. Before dinner she was crashing into the chairs & was halting at best. By the time she got back up onto the trike after dinner, she was cruising around on her own personal race trak, round & round the table. It was so fun to see her doing such a big kid activity!

Hey Mom, when can I do that??

It's quite funny, she sits right at the threshold when the door's open, but won't cross over. I don't know if it's the texture of the metal threshold or the rug right outside the doorway, but she will not cross over. . . yet.

Trying really hard to show her pedaling skills for the camera.

Look what Kate stowed in the basket. . . she had been playing church earlier, so they were out on the couch from that morning.

Trike Evangelist

Shh, mom, we're having a chat!

cuteness personified!

Look what Kate found when she went to check on Rachel . . .

the face of the earth

where have we been, you ask? around, but mostly here. Birthday month plus sickness plus plain old business of the grocery shopping, meal fixing, baby food crafting, nursing type. I'm hoping this is a phase. . .

As previously mentioned, we celebrated Josh's birthday in early February with a fancy dinner. Looking for some fresh inspiration, I checked out the pioneerwoman blog and boy did I get inspired. Rib eye steaks with a delicious blue cheese cream sauce (that even sounded heavenly to a lactose intolerant person such as myself). I also used her recipe for crash hot potatoes, and this will now be a new way to do potatoes at our house! The name alone sounds delicious! I am not a daily reader or anything, but I like that she uses pictures & simple directions for her recipes. Often times, this fits the way I am usually scanning through a recipe & helps me remember the steps a bit better when I'm back in the kitchen slaving over the hot stove.

On my actual birthday, we went out as a family, but we postponed our real celebration until the next week. I had the most lovely day beginning with a mani pedi that Josh had given to me for a birthday present. Then, I had lunch & shopping with the girls, and bonus: I actually bought some clothes! Not just clothes, but the ever illusive JEAN. When I got home, it was nearly time for our family dinner not prepared by me. I have to say, best day ever! As we arranged the outing, I realized how ridiculous it was that I was soooo excited to clothes shop with only girls -- big ones, that is. It just shows you how rare an event it is anymore. When I was 16, that could have been every weekend. :-)

Gramma's birthday is also this month & we did something quite different & fun for her birthday this year. The ladies in our area all got together and had a sleepover. A real bonified, pjs talking for hours, sleepover! And, the next morning, we got to get Gramma in her finest element as storyteller, on film. What a fun thing to listen to stories of being painted blue, getting kicked out of kindergarten (because she was too young), going to dances every weekend, getting shakes at the local drive through (Green's), and just growing up in small town Augusta, or should I say Mayberry.

In all this excitement, I don't want to miss the fact that Kate has taught herself to write several more letters: P, M, D, and has a new favorite game, Scrabble. In the Bailey hospital last week, she watched her first girl movies with momma on the couch. She really loved Anne of Green Gables, although how much she could really get it all is perhaps showed to you by her favorite scene. She still wants me to show her Minnie May getting croup again. :-)

Rachel is pulling up, has two teeth, is working on the top two, and I really think she tried to say Silly yesterday.

In other exciting news, my sister Becky had her baby, Norah Isabel Alonzo, just last month. I cannot believe she's now a month old! My other sister, Susie, is having a boy in 8 weeks or so. Life is getting fuller by the minute & it's wonderful to see all of these graces from God filling up my life!

bigger sis

Big sis is growing up every day. I cannot believe she is three! Well, maybe I just can't believe she's not five! She acts so old sometimes, it kills me.

What is Kate up to?

Learning her letters -- she's got a few down cold K, J are her two best letters. So far, her favorite associations are people's names. So, we have L for Lydia, J for dad's name, K for Kate & Grandma Kathy. We've started adding B, P, R, and M to list. Her best letter in writing is E. No promises on how many bars it will have though.

Drawing -- she has started to EXPLODE in her artistic expression. She has always had great fine motor skills (i.e. she likes to draw very tiny things, and has a fine time picking up tiny things too), but she's finally putting her skills to use in creating things that are other than squiggles. She can now draw a smiley face (the same pattern every time -- two dots that are very close to the perimeter, if not actually ON, the circle. Two bars over the eyes for eyebrows. One line perpendicular to the eyebrows is a hair, and usually a straight line for a mouth. I know, it's supposed to be a smiley face.) She can also draw balloons, dots, and cats. And circles. The other night she drew maybe thirty circles on her page, some very small (like the size of an a lower case o). After she would draw ten or so, she draws a circle around the entire lot of circles.

Matching -- she's very good at picking up on whether things are matching or not. She has a harder time with the idea of complementary -- so on Sunday she told Josh that his tie did not match his outfit. :-)

Memorizing -- we are working on a few Scripture verses, but she likes to memorize all sorts of other things, too. We have a Between the Lions Cd of stories and she likes to recite parts of the them (Red! Green! Red! Green! On one side the hat was Green. On the other side the hat was red!).

Potty -- she wears undies all of the time now, but we still have a ways to go with finishing up our training. We'll just leave it at that!

Mothering -- She plays mommy games every day. Now she has an entire troupe (like 8) of friends, children, daddies, and mommies that she moves from one room in the house to another. The other day I was making dinner, and I peeked into the living room to see her entire "family" arrayed on the couch. And the couch was full. She uses dolls, stuffed animals, large, small, it doesn't matter. Favorite names -- Mountain, Falia, Steve, Micah, Emily Charlotte, and then a random assortment (as if that wasn't random enough) of names from whichever book she's been reading. Today we had Mr. Mallard, Mac, and Baby Mallard. Today she had me take care of her kids while she had to take a nap. Taking care of her kids involved driving them to Mexico in the car (couch). She even had one baby in a car seat & put the stroller in the car (couch) before she left. She made me promise that if they wanted a snack, I'd give them one; and if they wanted a toy, to give them that too. Oh, and take them to a store with breakable things. They're very 'sponsible, mom. They can touch breakable things. Sounds like Kate's dream trip!

Thinking -- I think she spends a good deal of time thinking about things, figuring out things, and she has a really great intuition about people. A funny example of this: Last night we were driving home from prayer meeting & she realized that she'd forgotten to thank Mima (prayer meeting is at their house) for giving her snacks to take home. We called Mima and she got to talk for a bit with her, then Papa. Then, she asked me if I needed to talk to Papa. I didn't. But, she really insisted that I thank Papa for the chili (we eat there too). So, I reached back & grabbed the phone from her. I put it to my ear and realized the line was dead, but I decided to play along & say, "Papa, thanks for the chili; it was delicious. Bye." A few seconds past & then she asked me, "Was Papa there?" I couldn't believe she had figured me out. I laughed & confessed that I had just pretended. A few more minutes past & then she said, "I forgot to thank Papa for the chili, too. Can I call them?" I told her it was too late & we would just talk to them another day. "But, I want to do how you did it, mom." Ahhhh. . I handed the phone & she had her pretend conversation, too.

And lastly, and pretty uniquely, Kate is really into families. I know I've mentioned this before. She loves to have Josh or I go through all of the names of people that she knows. I didn't realize that this love for names extended outside of our family, but in our Family Bible Story books, some of her favorite pages are the family tree charts. She LOVES to have us recite all of the Noah had three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth. Japheth had a son, and he had a son, and . . . you get the picture. Maybe we have a future genealogist or historian on our hands.

Her schedule (if one even exists):

8:00 Wake up

12:30 Lunch

2:00 - 4:00 Nap or not (lately it's been not)

6:00 ISH (very ish) Supper -- she always eats w/ Josh & myself, unless Josh gets home extremely late, like tonight, and then she, Rach, and I eat together.

8:30-9:00 Bedtime -- She is a night owl, like me. . and can stay in her bed awake for a very long time. Isn't there a shut off switch somewhere?

turning 8 months

A funny thing happens when you go through something like this "mothering" process for the second time. Things you thought you'd never forget, like the day when Kate looked & smiled at me & called me mama -- well, they get accessed less frequently, and other memories get recorded so close to them (now, was that Kate or Rachel?) that you end up with a hazy, although happy, fog surrounding babyhood. Also, when in the midst of daily parenting, it is easy for me to lose track of the big picture. THIS is what babies do at 7 months, 8 months, 9 months, etc. I just live it!

So, I took a little walk down memory lane & read through some of my old posts about Kate. And was immediately convicted that I'll have no such prosy posts to refer back to for my little Rachel. So here goes. . . .

Rachel's latest accomplishments include scooting backwards -- and not just a small distance. Combined with her mad rolling skills, she can navigate her room pretty well until she gets backed into a corner (Nobody puts Baby in a corner!). Just this last week she has started getting up on her hands & knees and doing the wobbly dance just like that. The funniest thing is that if I ever work with her on crawling or get overly encouraging, Kate so badly wants in on the action that she starts crawling.

Mom: Come on, Rachel, you can do it! Come to mama!

Rachel looks for her toy & bounces her head up & down. This makes her feel like she's moving. She also reaches forward & strains for the toy. But then, inevitably, her legs start making her scootch the wrong way. While this is happening. . ..

Kate starts talking like a baby & *trying* to crawl. Then, she succeeds & wants some praise. I guess I don't get excited enough about her walking anymore. :-)

Rachel loves to eat, a lot! I'm continually amazed by how much she would put away, if I let her pig out. Her favorites are peas & sweet potatoes (not together), although she's learning to love avocado/mango puree a lot. I am giving her a few things to self feed, and she is so adorable! Tonight she had some sweet potato pieces. She grabs the food, smashes it if it happens to be soft, and then tries to get it in her mouth by putting her thumb in her mouth & then willing that little piece of smooshed potato to slide into her mouth. She also makes adorable faces while eating; really playing with her lips. She's already clever enough to repeat actions that get a response, so if I laugh out loud, she looks incredibly pleased & repeats! Also on her menu: lima beans, green beans, butternut squash, bananas, carrots, and oatmeal. I have tried so many new foods with her than with Kate; I guess the seasons are making some of the difference.

Her favorite toys are those little shapes that go into a shape sorting box, some bowls that are also a stacker, and basically anything that will fit into her mouth. Which happens to be a lot of things. She loves to be read to, although it doesn't happen as much as it should! The other day, Kate wanted to read all together, so she brought one book for sister to chew on, and three books for mom to read to the girls. Kate really has Rachel all figured out. Typically during the day, she plays in the living room on her quilt if she's not eating or sleeping. If she's having a particularly hard time before dinner, and I need to be in the kitchen, I'll just sit her on the floor in the kitchen & instantly she has a better disposition. What is it about being close to mom? I guess she figures she can keep on eye on her dinner preparation.

I still carry her in the baby bjorn, but have just started transitioning to putting her the cart sitting up like a big girl. It's just too hard to figure out where to put TWO girls! I really try NOT to go to the grocery store with both of them, but it happens. The other day I had Rachel in the front seat, Kate in the back with a few items, and then two baskets underneath chock full of groceries. There's got to be a better solution for this age, right?

Her sched:

7:00 - 7:30 Wake up!

8:30 Breakfast

10:00 - 12:00 Morning Nap

12:30 Lunch

2:00-4:00 Afternoon Nap

5:30 Supper

8:00 Bedtime

Sometimes she squeezes an extra nap in before bedtime -- like 6:30-7:30. But this isn't often. She nurses 4 times a day & eats people food 3 times. I say people food b/c that's what Kate would say. There's kids and people in her world. I keep telling her that she's a person too! :-) I guess she's just leaving off the "big" in "big people" but it's a bit disconcerting to have my daughter asking me if she can have some gum & is it just for people, meaning not her.

Rachel went to her last check up at 7 months (she is now 8), and weighed 16 lbs. which was average for her age. She was average height, too. In our family, this qualifies as world class chunker, and her cheeks definitely speak for themselves.

family time

We've tried twice to get some good pics of the family with my camera and timer. . . at least the process gave us a lot of laughs. There' s a certain lack of ... something. But, some of the practice shots with an eye behind the lense came out quite a bit better. At least 3 out of 4 ain't bad. Merry Christmas to everyone!!

*This wasn't exactly a practice shot, it was just a darling shot of Josh w/ the girls.