One from the archives

Today for lunch my mom came to visit. As we were talking in the kitchen, Katherine had very quietly pulled her rocking chair into the kitchen and was rocking in it. But to add some shock value, she had her Cabbage Patch Kid (Baby Peyton) hiked up under her shirt and was breastfeeding her. My reaction was more like: that's sweet! My mom's reaction was more along the lines of "does she do that in public?" And my answer would be, not yet.

Since I'm using this blog as my version of a journal, I've got a story from the archives:
When Katherine was 18 months, she was getting pretty good at signing. At home she was fluent with the words: more, thank-you, milk, stars and a couple others I've forgotten (perfect reason to journal). One day I went through the drive-through at McDonald's. The lady handed me my drink and noticed cutie-patootie sitting in the back seat so she handed me some type of toy to give to her. 'What a perfect opportunity to practice 'thank-you' on strangers' I thought, so I turned around facing the back seat, gave Katherine the toy and told her to thank the kind lady while signing the word thank-you (it's supposed to look like the picture on left). I looked back at the lady and told her, "My daughter is learning sign language and she's telling you thank you." There was this awful look of horror on the lady's face and some disgust as she looked in the back seat then looked at me. I then turned around to find my daughter with her hand up to her mouth/chin but with only ONE finger up! Yup, you guessed it, the middle finger. There were some rapid explanations spewing from my mouth and correct hand gestures, but nothing was more effective than driving off. We practiced a little bit more at home on that one before trying it out on anyone else.























Katherine at 18 months old.

She also has this cute ritual every morning when she takes her vitamin. I bought the Publix brand vitamins which are in the shapes of animals. When I hand it to her she says the animal on one side, then says the animal on the other side (which is always the same). Then, while examining the indentions around the sides, top and bottom of the vitamin, she says 'ladder' four times. So EVERY morning, depending on the animal, she stands still holding the vitamin in her hands and turns it around and around and I hear, "lion, lion, ladder, ladder, ladder, ladder." I would say she might have some quirky habits; again, must get that from her father. :)

The good news on the home front is: they've starting to sleep in past 7:00! Whoo hoo! This morning at 6:30, Katherine called from her bedroom, "Mommy, I'm awake!" and my response, "But it's only 6:30, go back to sleep." I don't think she did because there were an additional 53 books strewn across her floor. At least she was quiet. I woke up about an hour later to her singing while sitting on the pot, "The B.I.B.L.E., yes that's the book for me." Nathan has figured out that crying anywhere between 5 and 6:30 in the morning does no good. Nobody is going to rescue him, so he just goes back to sleep. His crawling has become very fast also. I think I got the first sign of him wanting to crawl away from me.

I've been dog-sitting for a neighbor this week, and they were so kind to let us use their pool. My munchkins have LOVED it. Katherine has become very comfortable with jumping in, going under and swimming all around by herself with just arm swimmies on. She's doing very well. Nathan loves to splash the water in front of him, then look around at whoever just put all that water on his face. He prefers me holding him and not the cute little floaty made for 8 month olds. He also keeps wanting to put his face in. I'm not ready for that yet, nor am I correctly trained in underwater swim lessons for children or kid CPR. He'll have to put his daredevil-ness aside for a little bit.