March 25th

I mentioned to Doug that Andy is the same age Kate was when we took her down to Utah for Peter and Karen's wedding. (That's the thing about having kids with the same birthday--you don't have to do any math to compare their ages.) They were married four years ago today. Since that was a few months before I started blogging, I thought it would be fun to share some pictures.



Kate was such a cute little peanut!



She had a bit more hair than Andy does (darker, too, and all rubbed off on the back of her head, as you can see).



Ah, how time flies.



Happy Anniversary Peter and Karen!

in progress

Andy at 12 weeks

Andy's been giving us some really cute smiles, and coos and gurgles.



He blows bubbles when he's bored...



... and likes to grab his burp cloths and wave them around.



We think this neck-craning thing that he does is just too cute.

I've noticed that he's not spitting up quite as much. He's sleeping really well at night, and has his morning nap down pat, too. When I take a shower around 10:00, I put him in his bouncy seat in the bathroom doorway, and he just conks right out and sleeps for a couple of hours.

In which Doug takes up millinery.

When Kate went to the Tracys' house when Andy was born, Catharine (who was her Sunbeam teacher at the time but has since gone on to BYU Idaho) gave her a few things that she'd gotten from her job at the zoo. One of them was this Mama Mirabelle DVD. Mama Mirabelle is an elephant with a video camera, who takes home movies all about animals (it's a National Geographic thing). I remember Doug and Kate brought the movie to the hospital when they came to visit me and Andy, and we watched it there. Anything to do with animals is pretty sure to be a hit with Kate.

Mama's son Max (also an elephant, obviously) has two friends named Bo (a cheetah) and Karla (a zebra--apparently British because she pronounces it "zeb-ra"). Kate has a little baby zebra in her Playmobil toys, and it didn't take her long to decide that the zebra was Karla. So then we had to go online and see what Playmobil made in the way of elephants and cheetahs. We haven't found a cheetah yet, but yes, they do have elephants--a mama and baby set! Perfect!

Last Thursday Doug took Kate out for the afternoon. They went downtown and rode the Link (always fun) and went to the Learning Sprout, which is quite probably the coolest store in town. They came home with the elephants. Kate was very excited. We admired the mama elephant's heft and articulation (jointed ankles!) and the way the ends of their trunks are shaped like Playmobil people's hands, so they can hold things (clever!) but Kate informed us that the set was not complete because Mama needed a hat.

Mama Mirabelle wears a pith helmet with blue flowers on it. Obviously this elephant cannot be Mama without a hat. Doug tried making a pattern for a paper hat, but decided that would not fit the purpose, so he made one out of Sculpey.




(He's so resourceful!) Kate is very pleased with her elephants. You can see Mama and her friends here.

This Little Paintbrush

A few days ago Kate asked me if she could paint. I got her set up at the table, and she was just off in her own little world for a while. (She's definitely right-handed, but seems to be trying out the ambidextrous thing here.) At first she was actually painting, but then it turned into more playing. Her four paintbrushes took on personalities and she named them Andy, Diego, Apples to Apples, and Muddy Octopus. It was so funny to hear her singing to herself and saying things like, "Andy likes to play in the green paint! Oh, Muddy Octopus is getting clean now!"



Here's Kate's creation (before the playing). There's a red giraffe eating grass, a green lion, and two blue turtles. The thing on the right is a mountain.

Andy at 11 weeks

I've been working on some design stuff (and more crocheting) and I'm late posting again. Here's Andy in his crib (which he isn't really sleeping in, but we're trying to get him used to it).





Chillin' with the pigeon.



"Must... eat... pigeon!"



I replaced my lens! Yay! Now I just have to figure out what to do with the old one.

I'm not quite happy with the color on these but can't figure out what else to try.

The Snows of March

This is what we woke up to this morning.

It's been snowing quite a lot the past couple of weeks. Not so much in volume but in frequency. A lot for this area, anyway. It snows and melts and snows and melts. The neighborhood kids have been congregating outside on any day that's remotely warm enough, despite the fact that the ground is often very muddy.

This morning I was up at 6:30 to take a shower, and I could see shadows drifting past the high, frosted shower window. When I got out I took a better look and saw the big, fluffy flakes falling, and the ground and trees dusted white. I went in and told Doug, "It's snowing again!"



Kate wanted to go out and make footprints in the snow, so we got her ready for church first (with her boots on) and then Doug took her outside with him while he brushed off the car. By this point it was turning to rain. I finished getting Andy and myself ready and we waded out to the car in a sea of slush.

It rained harder during church, but when we came out the sun was shining.

Back at home, I got a couple of pictures of Kate before my battery died.




Later we had hail! Such exciting weather today. This last Friday was positively balmy--we could use some more days like that.

Andy at 10 weeks

Double digits! Woo hoo!





Grandma Mary brought this outfit when she came to visit us. I love it! The fabric is so soft, and it has cute little puppy feet!



(It's hard to get a good picture of wiggly little feet when you have to use manual focus!)



Trying out tummy time.



"I don't like tummy time!"

Things are going well--we're getting the hang of nighttime (not nearly as much screaming) and he usually sleeps pretty solidly from 11:00 to 3:00. A few nights ago he actually did a six-hour stretch. I was impressed.

Analog

I pulled out my old View-Master to show Kate. When she saw the reels, she said, "Oh, it's the DVDs!"

Blankie and Binky

Isn't this just adorable?

Braids and Curls

I've been braiding Kate's hair at night to keep it from getting tangled. Sometimes I curl the ends by laying the ponytail holder along a pencil, wrapping the hair around, and fastening. This is what it looks like when we take the braids out:




Kate does have a slight wave to her hair (she gets that from her daddy), so it holds the curl better than mine does.

Nap Time

(Doug doesn't quite have the hang of the manual focus)

"Sounds like...."

There's a game that we play in my family, that goes something like this:

"I'm thinking of a word that's not board."

"Is it a plant like a squash?"

"No, it's not gourd."

"Is it the fiddly bits around Norway?"

"No, it's not fjord."

"Is it two or more notes played simultaneously?"

"Yes, it's chord!"

(Homophones count as the same word, so "The thing you use to plug in electrical appliances" would also be a correct answer.)

Of course, to play this game you have to understand rhyming. Barb told me she once tried to play it with some kids who were just a little too young, and it didn't quite work.

I've noticed that rhyming is a common theme in kids' programs, but I didn't realize how hard it is to grasp at first. Kate has recently been experimenting with rhymes and really not getting it yet. She knows that rhyming words sound alike, but she doesn't understand how they sound alike. The other day she told me that "Helena" rhymes with "hyena." Gee, thanks.

Andy at 9 weeks

Our cute little guy is two months old now!

Here's Andy in the bouncer that some friends passed on to us last week (Fisher-Price Rainforest Waterfall, coincidentally matching the Rainforest Waterfall soother that my parents got for us).







He seems to enjoy the bouncer. Last night he was sitting in it and just kicking and grinning, and making that funny little almost-laughing gurgle. So cute. He naps in it pretty well, too.

How I spent my thirty-eighth birthday.

My birthday was on Friday. Yep, another year older.

Andy was pretty cranky Thursday night, which I put down to just having a bad night, but he was not any better on Friday and I eventually figured out that he really wasn't feeling well. I thought it might be a reaction to his immunizations, though that was on Monday so it seems like a rather delayed reaction. Kate was having "intestinal difficulties" and was not much fun to be around either.

In the middle of all this, I had scheduled a visiting teaching appointment. (This is something that we do for church--pairing up to visit each other every month.) My companion is Sister Nebeker (she's a grandma) and we have three ladies that we visit. Doing the stereotypical thing and leaving it till the end of the month, we had appointments on Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday that week. Friday was my idea. I told Doug we could go out on Saturday and do something for my birthday.

We visited Sister Wood on Friday. I took Andy with me. At that point I was just glad to get him out of the house, and hoping he would fall asleep in the car (which he did, after complaining loudly for a while).

My family called my cell phone while I was at Sister Wood's house, to sing Happy Birthday to me. I asked my mom if I could call them back after I got home, but she said that Dad and Kirsten were about to leave to go grocery shopping, so I put them on speaker phone so they could entertain everyone. I've mentioned that the Happy Birthday tradition has evolved into not just singing but singing badly. As badly as possible. Betsey truly outdid herself and performed what was quite possibly the worst rendition ever. My mom was laughing so hard she couldn't sing at all, and it sounded so bad Sister Nebeker couldn't even tell what the song was. (Even though I had mentioned the day before that it was my birthday, she still didn't recognize it. I thought that was hilarious.)

Andy slept the whole time we were there and started waking up just as I was getting home. Good timing. Doug was outside with Kate, playing with the neighbor kids. After Andy woke up and ate again, I bundled him up and took him outside too. I wanted to get a picture for my birthday, so I got my camera and enlisted Doug to take it.

I chased Kate down and tried to straighten out her hair a bit with one hand. Then I squatted down and called her to come stand next to me. She practically knocked me over trying to climb on me, and then ran away and put her head down on the ground, messing up her hair again. I tried to herd her back over ("Stand here, sweetie... stand... here... on your feet...") while she fidgeted and jiggled like she had restless leg syndrome all over. When I finally got her to stand next me she wailed, "I need a little rest!"



Andy was not happy by this point either. This was the best we could do!

Doug took Kate to the library for a while. I don't even remember what I did while they were gone. Probably tried to comfort Andy. Peter called and sang to me, and Barb and Kyle did too. (They don't do the "badly" part.) There was a ward activity that night (breakfast for dinner) that I kind of wanted to go to, but we decided to stay home. Doug got a couple of pizzas from Cerello's.

By nighttime Andy was feeling better, and he just slept like a log. Yay!

The next day we went to Bombay Bistro for lunch. It's more expensive than most other Indian lunch buffets I've been to, but the food is really good. Kate didn't really eat anything but rice and naan, and then spent the rest of the time playing with the ice in her glass and asking, "Are you done yet?" We make a lot of Indian-type foods at home, but she just didn't want to try anything there. She's missing out.

Andy slept for a long time that afternoon and we got some good de-cluttering done. Still lots more to do!