Ben, Alissa, Katelin and Lindsay

Katie's First Piano Recital!

2011-04-23T19:19:00.000-07:00

Katie started taking piano lessons from me after she turned 3, so it has been just barely over a month. Ever since she was born she has seen my piano students come every week and has wanted to have lessons like them! We started off really slow, not even getting to play songs for a little while. Then she learned the first two songs in her book and my students' piano recital was going to be in a couple weeks so we worked really hard on those two songs and practiced what to say for the recital and how to bow and everything. She was so excited to do it!

The week of the recital she saw all my students practicing saying the names of their songs and bowing at the end and she thought it was so cool that she was doing that too and that they were all going to play at the recital together. I was going to have her go first at the recital thinking she'd practiced over and over exactly what she was going to do at the recital and she knew that all my students and their families were going to be there and I knew she would do great.

When we started and it was her turn to go up she didn't want to. She asked me to help her so I stood up by her and started prompting her on what to say, but she got really shy. I helped her again on what to say but she didn't want to play right then. Maybe having her be first wasn't the best idea since she didn't see other people do it first. So I said maybe she would try again at the end.

The next two students went and I asked Katie if she would want to go next and she said she wanted to go after a certain two girls, which happened to be second and third from the end. So we went through everyone else and when the second of the two girls was playing I asked Katie if she wanted to go next and she said yes. So in between this girl's songs I snuck back and asked the girl who was supposed to be next if Katie could go before her and she said "Of course!" knowing that if this was the time that Katie was willing to do it, then we better have her do it!

So after the girl was done I got up and went to find my mom who was holding Lindsay but had taken her out into the hallway a little earlier because she was fussing. Lindsay was now asleep so I motioned to my mom that Katie was going to be playing next. So then Katie went up and again asked me to help so I whispered "My name is...." and then she took it from there! The names of her songs are "Right and Left" and "Left and Right." About half the time when she was practicing what to say she would say "Left and Right" and "Left and Right." So we worked on getting those correct and then I thought we'd just have to see what she said at the recital. She still said "Left and Right" and "Left and Right." Oh well, it was cute.

So here she is! It is hard to hear her talking so you might have to turn the volume up, but then probably turn it back down when she is playing. (I would suggest having the volume on your computer up high and then using the volume button that is next to the play button to turn it up while she talks and back down while she's playing.)

Everyone was really sweet and clapped very loud for her, knowing that she hadn't been able to do it the first time going up but that she did on her second try.

There was only one girl after her and after the girl's first of two songs Katie said somewhat loudly, "Now is it time for cookies!!?" Everyone laughed, it was pretty cute. So then the girl played her last song and Katie was excited to have a cookie at the end.

It went well and I am glad Katie ended up going! I had thought if she wouldn't go back up again that after everyone had left we could just record her doing her songs with no one there, since she had done it a ton of times at home and had no problems. But we didn't have to resort to that. Great job Katie!! We are so proud of you!

Pics From My Phone

2011-04-20T23:15:00.003-07:00

Guess I should catch up some of the cute pics I've taken with my phone too. Here they are!

Katie with her cousin Luke watching a video on my mom's iPad. They came up here to visit at Christmas time.

A couple cute snuggle pics of Katie and Ben.

I really like this one.

Lindsay was laying on a black couch here. I like how it looks.

Katie loves snuggling her baby. She did a good job at not smiling while she was pretending to sleep. Usually she can't keep a straight face.

This was Lindsay's first smile that I got on camera.

I took this when we were at storytime at the library and sent it to Ben. He emailed me back asking if I had posed her hand and I didn't know what he was talking about so I went back and looked at the picture and she's signing "I love you."

Katie loves to clean. A lot. The living room hadn't gotten picked up the night before and we came down and she said "What a mess!" and while I was feeding and changing Lindsay she picked up the entire living room. I was feeding Lindsay on the couch and watching Katie clean and it was cute to see her pick up something and decide where she thought it should get put away. After she was done she was so proud of herself and kept saying "Ta da!"

Lindsay trying out the bumbo, and a pic of Katie in the bumbo too around the same age. They look a lot like each other!

I love this girl! I think she is so beautiful!

Her first real dentist visit. She did so good and was able to get everything done they wanted to do. Cleaning, flossing, a check from the dentist, and fluoride. She was a little worried about the chair leaning back, and off and on she kept asking if we were done yet. Oh, and she did not like the little saliva vacuum, it was too loud for her. But by the end she liked the vacuum and said it was her favorite part.

Lindsay chewing on Sophie the Giraffe. She's getting good at holding on to things and getting them to her mouth.

When there's nothing else to put in her mouth there's always fingers!

Katie and her cousins Mariah and Rylee doing the Lite Brite together. My sister's family came up for Spring Break and stayed with our parents. It was fun to go over there every day and spend time with their family.

I had to post all of these because I love how much Katie loves Lindsay.

Happy Katie in the car

Snoozy Lindsay in the car

One Sunday before heading to church

More things for her to figure out how to get in her mouth

Katie helping feed Lindsay.

I have been breastfeeding Lindsay and since she was about 2 months I have not had enough milk for her. She would cry when she had drank it all and wasn't full yet. I thought maybe she was going through some growth spurts so I just kept at it. Almost a month of that went by and we were at Katie's 3 year old doctor visit and I asked about Lindsay and my milk and he gave me some suggestions on increasing my milk supply and said it was probably also a lot due to exhaustion and stress. (Check and double check) I tried and tried and tried everything and I still was not making enough milk and Lindsay would cry every time I finished feeding her (talk about stress, hearing your baby screaming because she's still hungry when you're the sole provider of her food). I wanted to keep at it and hopefully get my milk supply back and not resort to formula. Well, after 1 1/2 months of her not getting as much as she wanted to eat (good thing she started at 98th percentile for weight, she definitely had some reserves), I finally accepted that I wasn't going to make any more milk than I already had and am now supplementing with formula. I'm a little sad about not being able to nurse her exclusively, I absolutely love nursing, but she is happier now when she eats and is actually sleeping longer for naps and at night, since I'm sure it's because she has a full tummy.

In a dress I wore when I was a baby. Man, I think she is just the cutest baby!

And the happiest baby!

And one more of that happy little baby.

Catching Up: Part 1

2011-04-20T21:09:00.000-07:00

So I'm just going to jump in to it!

Here are Lindsay and Katie, both at 4 weeks. Lindsay has a slightly bigger head (try 92nd percentile to Katie's 38th percentile) and was not very happy with me at the time I took these pictures.

Both the girls at 1 month, again, Lindsay not very happy. She is quite the good baby so you wouldn't know from these pictures that Katie was the one that cried all the time the first few months.

Sweet little chunky baby... (she's almost 6 weeks here)

I laid Lindsay in Katie's bed and Katie thought that was so fun. Here she is giving me a silly little smile.

Then I had her pretend she was sleeping.

Looks like they are smiling at each other except I think Lindsay was asleep.

Katie loves her baby sister.

Lindsay started smiling around 6 weeks. Here's one I caught.

A silly little face from our 7 1/2 week old.

Some of Ben's students gave Lindsay this Valentine's outfit, so here she is on Valentine's Day.

Happy two months Lindsay!! Lindsay's two month stats: 13 lbs 14oz - 98th percentile, 24" - 95th percentile, and her head was 92nd percentile. She's quite the big girl!

Showing off how high she can hold her head.

Oh my... I was upstairs with Lindsay and I came down and saw Katie hurrying to hide her hand under the coffee table. From where I was standing on the stairs I could see her hand under the table. A very blue hand. I asked her what she did and she said "nothing." She knows she's not supposed to color on anything but her coloring books. Finally she showed me her hand and she had quite thoroughly colored both sides with a blue (washable) marker. I'm sure she'd have gotten the back all done if I hadn't come down when I did. But it all came off, so that was good.

Going to church one Sunday. Katie's 2 weeks from being 3 years old

and Lindsay is 2 months and 1 week old.

Playing together on the floor. Katie was telling her stories, most of them sounded something like this: "Once upon a time there were two people, and liked each other very much, and got married in the temple. The end." It was very sweet.

March 6th, Lindsay's blessing day!

She's in the same dress my sister, her girls, myself and Katie wore!

Our little family!

With Grandpa and Grandma LaDow

With Grandpa and Grandma Larson

With Bryan, Stacie, Claire and Mia Pratt

Katie and Claire, two cute girls!!

The whole bunch that came to the blessing.

I just have to show off her rolls. She's got a roll in the middle of her upper arm and forearm, as well as the middle of her thigh. And she almost always have her fists balled up like she's ready to brawl. I think she's saying "You want some of this!?"

Oh yeah, and don't forget her calf roll too. Also, you can see that where she wears socks it's smaller and is pushing all that fat up... looks a little weird. When the weather gets warmer and we don't have her wear socks all the time maybe that will even out.

Lindsay just loves to smile!

Cute little outfit from a teacher that used to work with Ben.

And thought I'd throw this one in. This is Katie. Lindsay has such dark hair that everyone asks if Katie's looked like that and I tell them that it wasn't nearly as dark. I found this picture and had forgotten how reddish Katie's hair looked sometimes!

Stay tuned for pictures from Katie's 3rd birthday party!

One Week Old

2010-12-28T21:23:00.001-08:00

That's right! I'm a week old already!

We Love Lindsay!

2010-12-27T21:15:00.000-08:00

We have loved having Lindsay as part of our family. We have known her name since shortly after the ultrasound when we found out we were having a girl. It was great calling her by name the last 4 months and feeling like she was already a part of our family.

Here is her first bath at home. She's holding onto my hand. I love it!

Katie stayed at the different Grandparent's houses for a few days after we had Lindsay so that Ben and I could have a couple days/nights at home with just us and Lindsay. It was so nice. Katie got to see Lindsay briefly at the hospital on Tuesday when she was born, and then not again until Thursday. As you'll be able to see in the following pictures Katie is in love and I have never seen her happier and more loving. I have never heard her make such sweet and soothing sounds and smile so much. It was amazing, I wish we'd have recorded it instead of taken pictures.

Katie and Lindsay exchanged gifts. Lindsay brought Katie this fluffy, soft bunny and Katie picked out a cute little duck for Lindsay. Katie's very happy to have her bunny from her little sister.

Katie looking at Lindsay

Katie is so happy to have our baby in our family!

Our first family picture!

Katie couldn't get enough snuggling and kissing Lindsay.

First order of business for Katie... bring lots of soft things to share with Lindsay!

Sisters!

I took a few pictures for our birth announcement. Here's an adorable little dress my brother and his wife got for Lindsay.

We love our little girl so much! We are so glad you're here!!

Christmas 2010

2010-12-25T21:08:00.000-08:00

We had a very nice Christmas this year and were glad that Lindsay was here and we could be home with our family.

Here is the Abby helmet Katie had asked Santa for and it came with the loudest bike horn ever which she is honking for the picture. She also got the walking kitty she asked Santa for, so she was quite the happy little girl!

This is a dress from when my sister and I were babies, so I thought it was cute (and appropriate since it's Christmas!) to have her in it. I just took a few pictures and then changed her into something a little warmer. Gotta keep those little chicken legs warm!

Opening some presents at Grandma and Grandpa Larson's

More presents

Opening presents at Grandma and Grandpa LaDow's

I love her happy smiles!

Lindsay's Here!

2010-12-21T21:00:00.000-08:00

Our second little girl is finally here! Lindsay Alise Larson was born December 21st at 3:36 p.m. She weighs 7 lbs 10.5 oz and is 19 1/2" long. We are so happy she's healthy and doing well.

Ben took this when she was getting her hospital picture taken for the Kadlec website.

Katie was so happy to come and see her, but had a runny nose and cough so she didn't get to hold her yet. She is so happy to be a big sister!

I can't believe how tiny she is in her carseat! We're happy to be home.

Visiting Santa

2010-12-04T20:52:00.000-08:00

We went to visit Santa again this year. Last year she sat on his lap but was a little worried about me leaving their side. This year, man was she ever ready to talk to Santa. For months she's been telling us what she was going to ask Santa for: A walking kitty and an Abby helmet. If anyone talked to her about Santa or Christmas, they'd get to hear what she wanted too!

Katie was very excited when we got there and saw him. She did great telling him what she wanted and she was very happy to get the candy cane he gave her.

Quick Updates

2010-11-03T00:31:00.000-07:00

Yes, it's been a while since we've posted. Here are some super quick updates of us.

As of September Katie has been sleeping in her big girl bed! She only ever tried to climb out of her crib twice (back in July), so we didn't have a pressing need to move her to a bed, but figured we should do it soon. She did very, very well the first three weeks, and now has decided it's fun getting out of bed instead of going to sleep, so after one warning it's back to the crib. We're working on it.

Here she is the very first night in her big girl bed. She was super excited, as you can see.

Here she is asleep for the very first time in her big girl bed!

I personally love seeing her asleep in her big girl bed. She's just so little in it! And now when I go in to check on her before I go to bed I can snuggle and kiss her (and she doesn't wake up, mwahaha), whereas in the crib I couldn't reach her and just had to settle for rubbing her back and holding her hand (both still very nice).

Also as of September she is basically potty trained. She wears underwear all the time except for sleeping. Since the end of September she's only had an average of 1, maybe 2 accidents a week. She's doing great!

So this was the need to have her start sleeping in a big girl bed... we're going to need that crib soon! I am 31 weeks along with baby girl #2!

She's due December 31st and we are so excited. Katie might be the most excited out of all of us. I never knew a little toddler could understand about babies so much. She constantly talks about the baby and shares everything with her (food, toys, stickers), tells her she loves her and wants to snuggle her in my tummy. It is so sweet!

Also for me Relief Society President-ing is going well, and has kept me quite busy since I was called 11 months ago. I love so much getting to know the sisters in our ward better and serving them. Least favorite: Giving the lesson every three months. It's getting better though!

And this is something new Ben has been up to. Since June Ben has been cycling! He's lost around 15 lbs already and is loving it. There are a couple guys from our ward that he goes out with a couple times a week. Now that it's getting colder they have trainers set up in his friend's garage so they can cycle in place and watch training videos. (This picture was at his friend's house, we don't have a truck or mini van)

That's the exciting stuff you've missed!

Happy Halloween!

2010-10-30T21:11:00.000-07:00

Katie originally wanted to be Elmo for Halloween, but we were opting against that because of the cost of an Elmo costume. When we looked through our hand me down Halloween costumes we found this fairy costume and she immediately said "Just like Abby!" For those of you not watching Sesame Street lately, Abby Cadabby is a fairy friend of Elmo and has been around for 4 years or so.

Here is Katie with her costume, wand, Abby Cadabby doll and I made the puff balls for her hair to look like Abby's piggy tails.

We went to Grandma and Grandpa LaDow's trunk-or-treat (which involved a chili feed, carnival, trunk-or-treating, hot chocolate, and ice cream sundae's. It was very well planned!) Here she's doing a game where you're supposed to start the cookie on your forehead and without using your hands wiggle the cookie down to your mouth and eat it (It's from Minute to Win It, I guess). She saw the cookie coming towards her to get placed and she had her mouth wide open thinking they were going to put it in her mouth. She was probably very confused when it ended up on her forehead. She tried scrunching up her face a little to get it in her mouth, but she'll need more practice.

And this is just a picture of her trunk-or-treating. She did so good saying "trick or treat" and "thank you!" It was sweet.

We went to our ward's Trunk-or-Treat Friday and then this one on Saturday. Both nights she ended up with so much candy in her bucket she said it was too heavy to carry anymore.

The next morning Ben and I were still upstairs and Katie had gone downstairs. At one point I said to Ben, "I better go down and see if she climbed up to the counter with all her candy."

Yep, she was! And she is one happy girl with all that candy!

Her First "Masterpiece"

2010-04-06T14:25:00.000-07:00

This is what Katie was doing while I finished getting ready this morning. When she saw me walk in she knew she was doing something she wasn't supposed to. At least it was only pencil. While she was having a time out I took the picture of it. There's not much, just four lines and three small areas of scribble, it could have been worse.

She then got to help clean it up. She was very happy about cleaning it up, I hope that doesn't give her the idea to do it again so she can clean again. She didn't cry about the situation, probably because I didn't purposely try to make her feel bad about it, it was only her first time doing it. We'll see how she feels if she does it again and gets in trouble again. She told me several times she was sorry and gave me a hug. We had a little talk and she knows now not to write on the wall with pencil, pen, crayon or marker.

Oh yeah, and remember it was her birthday way back on March 12th? There are some birthday videos and pictures coming soon... hopefully.

Catch Up On Cuteness

2010-03-09T19:24:00.000-08:00

So I got caught up on the big events from the past couple months, but I held off on posting some of the more cute pictures because I wanted to do a post of just them.

I love her cute little face here and how she has her finger on her chin like she's thinking about something. Maybe she's trying to figure out why Uncle Brady looks so funny. (Oh snap, yes I did!)

Hugging Grandma and Grandpa Larson's cat.

Giving the cat some kisses...

and this was *just* the instant before the cat decided she'd had enough and scratched Katie on the hand. Whenever Katie gets any sort of scratch, whether it's from a toy or playing outside or something, she points to it and says "cat." So we're trying to make sure she knows that not all scratches are from the cat. We try to stay clear of the mean cat now though. They have another cat that doesn't scratch.

She can fit all the way inside now, unlike three months ago here where she was sticking out. She was having me close the cupboard door and thought it was so fun! (And yes, I just noticed she's wearing the same pants in both pictures, maybe they're her cupboard climbing pants.)

She fits in the pantry too. She likes to shut the door and hang out in there. If I open the door she usually just shuts it again and says "bye!"

This picture was taken at like 2:00am. I was just going to bed and checking on her and in the dim light from the hallway I could see she had her arm around the bear. So I snuck out to get the camera. I think it's so sweet she was sleeping like that.

We had tried to work on smiling and "happy faces" and this was one of her "happy faces." She almost pulled a muscle on this one!

She liked to turn on and off the Christmas tree lights with the little foot pedal.

She got caught!

I had her sit in front of the tree for a pretty Sunday-before-Christmas picture.

And I love how she's sitting in this picture. Like a little tomboy in a pretty Christmas dress.

I laugh every time I see this picture! It's like she's crazy and trying to put a curse on you. The mad scientist hair adds to it.

We got this cute apron from friends of ours. She likes to wear it. And man, she loves those boots. They light up when you walk. Just last week I finally put them away because she was still wanting to wear them when we were going places... in March... having had no snow for months.

She thought it was funny to stick her head under the running water.

But she always loves filling up the watering can and dumping it on her head. We even have a song about it, it goes "filling up the watering can and dump in on your head." Creative, huh!

I love this picture too even though my hand looks crazy. I was just moving her hair from her eyes. I love her eyes, her smile and cute little hand in this picture. I am so in love with her cute little hands.

Valentine's Day

2010-02-26T00:44:00.000-08:00

This is Katie on Valentine's Day. Since it was on Sunday she wore her pretty red dress to church and handed out some valentine's to a few people (adults) in the ward that she knows.

This was my attempt at a heart hairdo. It sorta resembles a heart, right?

Baby Becca

2010-02-26T00:33:00.000-08:00

Katie loves babies. Loves them. She wants to give every baby she sees a big kiss. She has a blanket that she has with her a lot, and when we've had babies come over she looks at me at holds up her blanket and I say "Yes! You can share your blanket with the baby" and she smiles and runs over to share it with the baby. That's some love, because she normally doesn't part with her blanket on her own.

Our friend Lecia was in the neighborhood and stopped by. Katie wanted to hold the baby and give her hugs and kisses. This was a pretty good shot, both girls are looking right at the camera!

Figuring each other out!

Here was a big hug!

I love how she just has her arms draped around Becca, not quite a hug, but just holding on to her. Very cute!

Going To A Birthday Party!

2010-02-25T23:22:00.000-08:00

Katie's friend Claire had her 3rd birthday in January. We got to go to the fun Dora the Explorer themed party! This was Katie's first real birthday party to go to, so I made sure to take a lot of pictures!

Getting ready to leave, we were both very excited! This is Katie's "happy face!" For some reason she thinks she needs to stick out her tongue for a happy face. Silly.

Carrying her present for Claire.

When did my little girl get so big? Off to a little birthday party, too cute!

We got to play "Pin the Tail on Swiper." Claire's dad Bryan did a great impression of Swiper, too bad Katie doesn't like Dora that much yet, or it would have been more exciting for her.

Silly face!

Coloring pictures of Dora. Katie amazes me when she colors. She actually colors things. She tends to go for eyes, articles of clothing, shoes, flowers, stuff like that and she'll color them all in!

Playing a little Dora cornhole. Looks like she got a cornhole!

Fishing game! She pulled out a sucker and a toy.

Wanting her turn for the best birthday party game ever.......!!

It was called "Pick up the balloons and put them in your bucket!"

Holy moly, the kids all loved it. Katie loves carrying bags/buckets around so this was right up her alley.

Full bucket!

Then they would take the balloons over to Bryan and put them in the big garbage bag and go get more balloons. This was the first time at the party that she left my side. She knew those balloons needed to get in the bag. She was willing to make the sacrifice of leaving my side to get the balloons where they needed to go. (If you know her, you'll know how funny this is because this is soooo her. Everything has it's proper place.)

They had a cute lunch including half a banana, a piece of cheese quesadilla, fruit snacks and some juice. I shared with Katie and it was all very yummy! She liked wearing the Dora party hat.

Munching on her quesadilla! They were so yummy! I don't know why but for some reason I absolutely love this picture of Katie chowing down on that quesadilla.

Claire blowing out the candles on her cake!

A Dora piñata! Everyone got to pull a ribbon and one of them opened it up. Katie was happy just to have the ribbon she pulled off.

Some of the treats she got from the piñata!

Some of my favorite pictures ever! She was telling Claire happy birthday and thanking her for having her to her party. (Well, okay she probably didn't say any of that except "thank you", but that's what the hug was for.)

Another cute hug!

We got to take home one of the balloons from the party... The party was on January 20th... what's today, February 25th? The balloon is still alive and full of helium! It's some sort of magical balloon, it's crazy!

Thanks for having us to the party! Katie (and Mom) had so much fun!

Christmas!..... In February

2010-02-24T19:41:00.000-08:00

So it's been 2 months since Christmas! Oh my! Katie is still enjoying all the presents she got from Santa and Grandmas and Grandpas.

We video taped Katie opening all the presents from Santa at our house, and then only took a few pictures before we left, so all you get to see is the trike.

Man, she loves this trike. There are 5 buttons that face the "driver" that play different music/sounds, and a little knob that turns like a key and makes it sound like the engine is starting. Then in the front you can push down Flounder or Sebastian and they play some music. And one more thing (that Katie doesn't know about yet, shhhhh) is that whenever you push any of the buttons, there is a little spot to put bubble solution, and a little ring will dip into it and come up and there's a blower to blow out bubbles! It goes up and down several times before you'd have to push a button to make it go again. We thought we'd try it when she can play with the trike outside because the hole for the bubble stuff is just wide open, enough for little fingers to get in there, and for it to spill if you tip the trike... so yeah, we'll do that outside. We, I mean Santa, wasn't even planning on getting this for her. Several weeks before Christmas he saw it at the store and it was greatly on sale and he thought about it and even went down a few more aisles at the store and went back and got it (last one there!). Then a few days later we were at a friends house and they had a trike. Katie had never seen one before. She hopped on that thing and was scooting all around and LOVED it, so Ben and I were very happy at Santa's choice and couldn't wait to give it to her for Christmas. I'll have to see if I can upload the video of her seeing it for the first time. Her eyes got really big and she patted her chest as if to ask "for me?"

She got a baby and the baby's stroller. She kept wanting to sit in the stroller herself and after about 15 times of telling her it was only for the baby, she understood and didn't try again.

Giving the baby kisses. She loves giving kisses to babies. We'll see a baby a little ways over at church and she throws her entire body and head into blowing that baby a kiss. (Natasha, she does this for Clara every week.)

She also got some Elmo slippers! Katie is in love with Elmo too. She calls him "deh doh" but at least we understand what she means. She got an Elmo DVD with three Elmo's Worlds on it and she really likes to watch them. She even can sing along with the song at the end of each one. She doesn't quite say the right word, but she knows the tune (it's the Jingle Bells tune).

She got this cute pink chair! It fits great at the table Santa got her for her toy room. She loves to sit there and color or do puzzles. It's so much fun!

She also got this duck game, Lucky Ducks. She loves to play with the ducks. She lines them up in a row, or will put them in a bucket and carrying them around, or put them all in the back of her trike, and occasionally she'll actually put them all on the base and play the game!

This is a fridge-phonics thing. The base and letters are all magnets.

It has all the ABC's and you can put them on the base and it sings a song about the letter name and the sounds it makes. Katie plays with this every day. There is also a button that will make it play the ABC song and she loves to sing along. She knows the tune for sure (even the faster part for l, m, n, o, p) and can say several of the letters while singing it. Her favorite letter to say is X.
She can identify several letters and knows which words start with those letters.
B - bunny (she says "bop bop" for bunny, because bunnies "hop hop")
C - cat
D - Daddy (yah yah)
G - Grandma or Grandpa (ga ga)
I - she can say I
J - Justin - This is new as of today. She remembers my brother Justin from Christmas time because he would chase her and tickle her. For the past two months if I say "What did Uncle Justin do?" she smiles big and runs to me and says "Mama!", because I was the one that saved her from Uncle Justin's tickles. She can't say Justin but if I asked her where J for Justin is she can find it.
K - Katie (Kay-dee)
M - Mommy (mama)
O - she can say O
Q - quack quack (gwock gwock) - this one was new today too that she could identify Q and say "gwock gwock" for it.
X - she can say X
Wow, I didn't realize how many letters she knows! She can find any of these letters and tell you the word she knows for it. I told you she was smart!

Just thought this was cute. This was a big present for Mom and Dad.

Of course I thought this was cute too, how she has her head tilted waiting for Grandma to open something.

Fun new puzzle, she loves that it has a bunny and kitty on it.

She got this New Moon game... okay it was actually for Aunt Julie.

Trying on Grandma's new sweater.

She got this cool book, the images move as you read through the book. It's hard to explain, but Katie likes to read it.

We got this huge binder of FHE lesson plans. Each plastic sleeve has a lesson plan, the songs to go with it and a copy of anything you'd need for an activity to go with it. Can you see how many pages there are in the book? This'll last forever because once we get through them all it'll have been so long since we'd done the beginning ones that you just start over.

Here's Katie pulling the ribbon off a present.

It was an Elmo chair! When you squeeze his hand it sings a song of "Elmo Says." The seat can also twirl around on its base, so that's fun too!

She carried it around for a little while.

Love that happy little smile!

We all had a great Christmas!

Hair Styles

2010-02-23T18:54:00.000-08:00

Here are a few things I've been doing with Katie's hair!

I really liked this one. All day long I was saying "criss-cross!" (It was from a Simpson's episode a little while back - the saying, not the hair style)

Here's how I did the back of the criss-cross one. I sprayed the curls like crazy and they didn't stay past an hour or so. She has natural curl at the bottom, but all on her head is straight and doesn't stay curled.

Here's her hair on Thanksgiving. I had four ponies across the top, then three in the next row, then all gathered together in one big pony tail. And I had to put this one in because I love how she's laying playing the game.

Cute little piggies on our way to a birthday party!

And some twist piggies. This type doesn't stay in for long because she likes to twirl her hair and it undoes the twists.

Presents in the Mail!

2010-02-23T18:37:00.000-08:00

A few days before Christmas we received a package in the mail from Ben's Aunt and Uncle. We opened it up and there was a big gift bag for Katie. Ben gave it to Katie and told her to go put it under the tree. Well, how was she supposed to resist wanting to see what was in it when she knew it was for her. We let her open it.

Here she is excited to have a big bag (she still loves carrying bags around. I was looking for a new purse/bag the other day and she was in heaven carrying purses around.) She's off to put it under the tree.

It was a big and heavy bag, full of lots of things!

She's just put it by the tree.

Then I said to go stand by it so I could get a picture. I think this picture is hilarious. I can just see her thinking, "and why am I standing by it?"

We let her open it. One of the presents was an adorable tutu!

This was the next morning, she wanted to have the tutu on first thing.

And this was two weeks later, still loving that tutu!

Visit to Santa

2010-02-22T14:11:00.000-08:00

Katie didn't know who Santa was before this December. We were going with Ben's parents to go have her sit on Santa's lap one day, but before that we saw Santa at the mall. We didn't stop, but we waved and I talked up Santa and how nice he was and that he says "ho ho ho." When it was the day to go sit on Santa's lap (not at the mall, a different place) she thought she wanted to, but decided it worried her. We got a few okay shots.

Ever since then, well more since after Christmas, she has loved Santa. We'll ask her who gave her a certain present and if it was Santa she'll say "ho ho ho".

Here's the picture the place took, I'm standing right next to them, Katie didn't want me to leave her side. It was outside. And freezing.

Here's one I took, this is the better of the two I took, since she was worried I wasn't right there.

She loves these pictures of her sitting on Santa's lap. I ask her if she wants to sit on his lap again and she says yes. I ask what she is going to say to Santa and she says she's going to say "thank you, ho ho ho" for the presents she got this year.

Whenever we see a picture of someone in a book with a big white beard she thinks it's Santa. She still remembers that a neighbor down the street had a big Santa on their roof and when we go outside sometimes she wants to go see that Santa, but he's gone home we tell her.

I love that she is still so excited about Santa and I hope she does well with him this Christmas.

Thanksgiving

2010-02-22T13:55:00.000-08:00

Ben's brother's family (Brady, Marsha and Molly), came up for Thanksgiving and we spent it at Ben's parents' house in Kennewick. It was fun having them here and Katie got to play with her cousin. We didn't end up taking that many pictures, but here are a few.

Katie and Molly playing Hungry Hungry Hippos!

Katie giving Molly a great big hug. Katie is the most affectionate little girl! Quite often out of the blue she gives us kisses and hugs. When I tell her we're about to do something she likes to do (take a shower, take a bath, go to the pet store, wash the kitchen floor, yes you heard right), she'll give me a big hug and kiss and then squeal and run off to whatever we're going to be doing! Sometimes she squeals and jumps around first, and then runs back to give us a hug really quick before she runs off. I love it so much.
(We'd been to Burger King earlier in the day, hence the crowns.)

Katie Likes Playing the iPod

2010-02-22T00:01:00.001-08:00

Ben got an iPod Touch around 8 months ago for his birthday and almost ever since then Katie has been playing on it too. There are probably 7 or 8 pages of apps on it, and she knows exactly which of those apps are games she likes to play. She knows how to unlock it, scroll through the pages and find the doggy game, or the Santa game (she's currently obsessed with Santa, and it's February!), or the shapes game, or lots of others. She has learned to recognize 10 shapes because of the shapes game. She can sit and play a game all by herself. When she's done with that game she knows to press the "home" button and then she finds another game she wants to play. It is so adorable, and she surprises us at how smart she is! (Because, of course, she's the smartest little girl ever! :)

I thought this snuggly one was cute. (And yes, the poor Cabbage Patch's leg needs some surgery. It was mine from when I was little and the thread came out that held the leg and toes all together. Katie doesn't mind her disability.)

Playing with Aunt Julie who had just woken up.

This picture we get playing and some hair twirling action too, she can multi-task!

Hold On To Your Hats!

2010-02-21T23:18:00.000-08:00

Yes, three months later and we have some catching up to do! Thanksgiving, Christmas, Valentine's Day and everything in between! Look for new posts soon!

Response Video

2009-11-21T19:51:00.000-08:00

We have some friends, Bryan and Stacie, and Katie absolutely loves their almost 3 year old, Claire. We look at their blog a lot and there are quite a few videos of Claire on it and Katie loves to watch them over and over (and over and over).

Here is a link to their latest video. You may want to watch it first so you know what Katie is doing in our video below.

At the beginning of the video when I ask what Claire says, Katie rocks back and forth. That's what we do when we're watching the video of Claire as she rocks back and forth on the horse. We first watched the video several times in the morning on Thursday, then later in the day she would put her arm up and twirl it around and she'd smile really big. I didn't know what she was doing at first but then I caught on and asked her if she wanted to watch Claire's video and she would squeal with delight and we'd go watch it.

I recorded this the next day, Friday. She doesn't quite get the whole "yee-haw" down, but you can't say it's not adorable!

CAUGHT UP!

2009-11-14T23:17:00.000-08:00

I am finally caught up with posting two months worth of pictures. Ben asked if I was posting everything all at once, or spreading them out like I had in the past when I was trying to catch up. Well, I decided to post everything at once so that I would be caught up right away and not have posts scheduled for every day over the next two weeks. Hope you like everything! Take a break if you need one and then come back for your cute fix!
(If you start at the top and go down you'll be going backwards from today back to 9/1/09)

Yes, Even More Hair Pictures

2009-11-14T23:14:00.000-08:00

We bought these flower barrettes months ago, but Katie wouldn't let them stay in for a second. Not that she didn't like them in, but she just wanted to pull them out and look at them. My friend at church mentioned last week that she puts in a ponytail first and then the barrette over it. I tried it today and she kept them in all day and I loved how it looked!

Katie and Daddy

2009-11-14T23:13:00.000-08:00

Katie loves to play on Ben's iPod Touch. He's found several games for her that she loves. There is one game that shows 3-6 shapes and then says to find a certain one and she does so good! It's so much fun to watch her playing little games on it.

Here were Ben and Katie the other night and I just thought they were so cute together I couldn't resist.

And her hair is all done up again! I've been having a lot of fun with it lately!

Post Of Cute-Silliness

2009-11-14T23:12:00.000-08:00

11/10/09

A week or so after Halloween ended we went to Toys 'R Us. As we walked in we saw this adorable 12-24 month costume marked down to $1.50. We couldn't resist. When Katie saw it the next day she wanted to put it on. Since then she's worn it at least 4 times.

More silliness. She wanted to wear one of my shirts and it was like a dress on her!

Showing me her fat tummy.

And, of course, pointing out her belly button.

A little braid I did.

She likes to twirl her ponytails or pigtails, but found it hard with the braid. She couldn't keep her little fingers from investgating what was up there!

She's my cute and silly little girl!

Sunday Hair

2009-11-14T23:11:00.000-08:00

11/1/09 and 11/8/09

There are a few Girly Hair blogs I look at from time to time. They are here, here, here, here and here. I just started trying out a few things I thought I could do with Katie's hair. I have been having Katie sit on the toilet lid so she wouldn't be able to run away. She always does so good sitting when I just do a pony tail or even piggy tails, though she turns her head every which way at the exact time I'm trying to get a straight part. And she did very good for these two hair styles below, but with the same problem of the head turning. But as of today (11/14/09) she's figured out she doesn't have to sit there and tries to wiggle off the seat. It will be a lot (a lot!) easier to do all this stuff when she'll sit still for me. It was so much fun to try though, and I loved how they turned out!

So here are my first two attempts at hairstyles a little more "fancy."
Attempt #1
There are 5 ponies along the top and then they go down and separate out into 4 ponies which I put into one big pony.

And she even got to wear a pretty "new-to-her" dress this Sunday.

Twirling!

And here's the next Sunday, attempt #2.

She couldn't keep her fingers out of the braid so by the time we got to church it was loose and mostly out. So I just undid the braid and pulled the three small ponies into a larger one with no braid.

Halloween!

2009-11-14T23:10:00.000-08:00

10/31/09

You knew there would be some Halloween pictures in these posts somewhere!

Katie was a Tiger for Halloween. We didn't take her out trick-or-treating. (Well, we tried one friend's house down the street who we thought would think Katie was absolutely adorable and they weren't home! Somebody was too busy winning the "Golden Mummy" award. You know who you are! :) But she did get to go to Grandma and Grandpa Larson's Trunk-or-treat the night before.

I am not a fan of passing out the candy, and Ben, being a teacher, didn't exactly want more kids to know where he lives. So I had an idea! Katie could pass out the candy! Oh my... she loved it so much!

Here she is ready for someone to knock so she can put the candy in their bags!

The big bowl of candy.

Putting candy in the bucket, and finally has the hat on.

Showing Daddy all the candy!

More candy to give away.

Hoping someone will knock so we could open then door and give out more candy!

Watching out the window for more kids to come!

During the night when kids weren't at the door she wanted to give away the candy so badly she wanted me to open the door. We explained to her that there are only kids out there if they knock to let us know they're out there. As soon as we would hear a knock she would squeal and not know what to do for a second because she was too excited! Then she'd grab some candy and head for the door. It was slow going having her put the candy in all the bags, but she loved it and most of the kids (the older ones), thought it was so cute that the "baby" was putting the candy in and several of them (girls mostly) told me she was really cute. So that was fun! I was pretty surprised that she wanted to give out the candy. I guess she's not old enough yet to think she wants to keep it all to herself. She was so happy sharing and while we would wait for more kids we talked a lot about sharing and making all the kids happy by sharing. I hope she always stays this sweet!

Good Litte Helper

2009-11-14T23:09:00.000-08:00

10/12/09

Whenever I'm cleaning I just need to give Katie a sponge and she goes to work! Here are a few of the things I found her cleaning.

The floor.

Scrub scrub scrub!

The mat under the piano bench.

And the walls.

Pooped after all that cleaning!

Cute In Skirts

2009-11-14T23:08:00.000-08:00

10/5/09 and 10/11/09

We got at least 5 skirts in our 2T hand-me-downs because one of my nieces loves skirts. Katie seems to like them too, it's been fun to have her running around in a skirt and tights!

When Katie was born someone had given us these super cute tights. They were size 12-24 months and it seemed that it would be forever before she could fit into them, so I put them away and forgot about them. I found them when I was cleaning/organizing her room and I was so glad I found them before it was too late!

I just love her in this cute little outfit!

And I love this picture too, heading off to church one Sunday.

Foam Curlers

2009-11-14T23:07:00.000-08:00

10/4/09

I remember growing up and having pink foam curlers. My mom would put them in my hair and I remember sleeping, very uncomfortably, in them at night. I'm sure I didn't always sleep in them, but that's just the memory I have of them.

I thought it would be fun to get some and try out Katie's hair. First of all.... holy moly she doesn't sit still, so it was rather hard to get them in. But I did and here they are!

I tried blow drying them a little to speed up the drying process. I let her run around for a while too, but then I got too anxious and wanted to take them out so I could see the curls!

I took them out a little too early and they weren't dry all the way through. Here's what her hair looked like right after I took them out.

And here's what her hair looked like when I tried to "style" it. It didn't work out so well. I did get a barrette in for a few minutes, long enough to get a couple of pictures.

By a few hours later most of the curl was gone. It was fun though, and we'll try again some other time.

Ski Vest

2009-11-14T23:06:00.000-08:00

9/28/09

We thought this hand-me-down vest made her look like she was off to Aspen to be a cute skier. She is also wearing nail polish for the first time and loved showing her "pretty pink" nails to everyone we saw.

Here is her sign for "thank you." I don't remember what she was thanking me for though.

Sitting nicely so I could take a picture.

And coming to give me a kiss!

Cavegirl

2009-11-14T23:05:00.000-08:00

9/26/09

Anytime Katie finds a headband she loves to put it on. This headband is slightly too small and resulted in a funny face that had Ben and I laughing for a long time.

I don't know how well you can see it, but it was totally pushing down the skin over her eyes. We thought she looked cro-magnon. She had put it in and then when Ben and I couldn't stop laughing she left it on and kept walking around and showing us.

This was the best shot of the bunch, too bad the poor lighting.

She's Still Silly

2009-11-14T23:04:00.000-08:00

9/25/09

Katie loves to be silly and I love to be silly. It makes for some fun pictures.

Here's Katie after she had to have some shorts on over her pajamas.

She still loves to do "Touchdown!"

And I still love that smile.

My Birthday

2009-11-14T23:03:00.000-08:00

9/24/09

Last year on my birthday I made sure to get a picture of Katie and me. So this year I wanted to do the same thing and then have both pictures up on the blog.

I had to take the picture myself because I didn't think about it until after Ben had left for karate. (So it's not the greatest pic.)

And here we are last year. She was such a little girl (just 6 months old)!

And because I thought it was cute, here we are showing our teeth.

Katie's in the Nursery!

2009-11-14T23:02:00.000-08:00

9/20/09

This was Katie's first day of nursery!

We were very excited for her to get to go! I took her in, played for a minute and then left. She was doing sorta okay when I left, she was asking for me as I walked out. I peeked through the peep hole several times during the two hours and she seemed to be doing great! I had a friend that went in there for a little bit tell me that after snack time Katie was going around throwing all the other kids' napkins away. It made me tear up a little because that is sooooo Katie. She absolutely loves to throw garbage away. When I went to get her at the end of church the nursery workers said she did really good for her first time. She cried a little towards the beginning, but then it sounded like she did well. They got to color a picture and so I'm keeping it to remember her first day!

Climbing

2009-11-14T23:01:00.000-08:00

9/7/09 and 9/9/09

Katie figured out if she emptied the cupboard she could fit inside...

Well, kinda fit inside.

But she realized there wasn't much to do in there!

And she can also get into her highchair by herself (which scares me. I try to keep the tray on so she can't climb up when I'm not right there).

Such A Sweetie

2009-11-14T23:00:00.000-08:00

9/1/09 and 9/5/09

She propped up this little book I made last year that is just pictures of her. I love that she's laying there looking at it. She loves that book. A lot.

You may be wondering what she's doing here... She has a sticker of a teddy bear on her hand and she's snuggling it!

And more snuggles.

She is the sweetest girl ever!

Trip to the Water Park on 9/2/09

2009-10-05T19:24:00.000-07:00

There is a little water park behind the Library on Union in Kennewick. My mom and I took Katie there to go play in the water and on the toys. It was lots of fun!

We had gone with Ben's family previous to this and she was really loving the water. When my mom and I took her she was more interested in the toys. Here she is climbing through a tube.

Going back up so she can either go down the slide or through the tube again.

I didn't have this picture in originally because I didn't think Grandma would like it, but when Grandma saw the picture she thought it looked fine. Katie loves the picture and whenever we look at this post she asks for "Ga Ga" so I decided to add the picture so Grandma would be in the post.

Watching this boy putting his foot over the water that was about to spray out.

Trying the same thing...

But then the water came up!

And in the words of Monty Python and the Holy Grail, "Run away! Run away!"

It happened again!

And again!

The button on this one wasn't working. I kept trying to run in and push it really fast and run out so I didn't get sprayed, but the water never worked. Katie kept trying after she saw me do it.

I'm glad after she played on the toys for so long that she did end up playing in the water quite a bit.

She's trying to turn the water on. Aren't those just the tippiest toes ever?

Here's a little video of her running around. I love how she runs!

Oregon Coast: Day 3

2009-09-04T21:39:00.000-07:00

This was on the way home. We stopped at Multnomah Falls for a few pictures and to break up the drive a little.

We took this hat with us to the coast but didn't really need it. It was blazing hot when we stopped at the falls though, so we thought she should wear it so she didn't get sunburned. And of course she looks cute in it.

Daddy and Katie by the falls.

Mommy and Katie by the falls.

And the three of us.

This is when we stopped for dinner, Grandma with her two girls.

Oregon Coast: Day 2

2009-09-02T19:17:00.000-07:00

The morning of day 2, the girls in their jammies.

Ready to say the prayer before lunch.

Katie was very lucky to have Aunt Julie sitting in the back with her for the entire trip. It didn't go so well for naps though (we were hoping she could take a nap while we were driving, but Aunt Julie was just too fun to sleep!)

Katie loves wearing sunglasses. She always wants mine in the car. Here she is wearing Aunt Julie's.

We went to the Oregon Coast Aquarium in Newport while we were there. I loved the blue of her eyes next to the blue of this tank.

Daddy and Katie got to swim with the fish.

There were wooden panels all around with questions and answers underneath. Katie enjoyed lifting each one.

She got to touch a real sting ray.

And this little shark.

We thought this was so cute, the ledge was the perfect height for her to stand and rest her chin on while she watched the fish.

She got to touch some starfish.

I'm sure Aunt Julie won't like this one, but I think it's so cute! The fish in the tank behind them could open their mouths freakishly wide, so that's what they were trying to do.

This is what Molly did for the first half of the aquarium trip.

Walking around, looking at all the stuff.

This was in the aviary, they were doing a little presentation and the lady was feeding some of the birds.

I can't quite remember why she kept making these faces. I'll have to ask Ben.

Molly finally woke up!

This is a sea lion jumping out of the water

A little family picture.

I love me some snuggles!

Trying to touch the sea lion through the glass.

Playing with Grandma through the glass. She really likes knocking on things.

Katie would "sneak" up on Uncle Brady but then he'd turn around and tickle her. She would squeal and giggle and then want to do it again.

Oregon Coast: Day 1

2009-09-01T19:34:00.000-07:00

The end of July we went with Ben's family to the Oregon Coast. Ben's brother Brady, his wife Marsha, and their daughter Molly came up from Utah to go with us. We had a great time!

Here we are walking the short distance to the beach after we arrived at the beach house Ben's parents rented.

Finding the stairs down to the beach.

Daddy and Katie

It was a nice evening when we got there.

We got down to the beach and I tried to let Katie walk on her own. The sand was so soft that she couldn't walk, her feet kept sinking and sliding, and she absolutely freaked out. She refused to walk and was screaming and reaching out for me. It was so sad! She was so scared about not being able to walk. I snatched her up and she calmed down. I let her try walking on the harder sand by the waves and that was going fine until one came up higher than I was expecting. I thought Katie and I would just stay there and she could get her feet wet in the ocean water. Well, first of all it was absolutely freezing water, but then as the water came in and out it made the sand wash away where we were standing and it had the same effect on her where she didn't feel like she could walk, like maybe something was holding onto her feet, and she freaked out again. So. She didn't like the beach, well except for one thing...

Grandma got the girls buckets to use at the beach and she LOVED filling that bucket up.

She didn't want to sit on the wet sand so I helped balance her while she dug in the sand.

Molly didn't like the sand either, so she sat on a towel.

Aunt Julie helped fill up the top of the bucket and then turn it over for...

Katie's first little sand castle!

Here we all are at the beach. Well, actually you can't see Marsha very well, she's behind Julie, and I'm taking the picture, so I guess it really isn't "all" of us.

Oregon Coast: Day 2 coming next!

Then and Now, A 5 Month Difference

2009-08-31T21:50:00.000-07:00

Katie was looking out the window yesterday and it reminded me of a picture I took 5 months ago. So I thought I'd put them both up so I could see how much she's grown since then. In the first picture she's up on her tippy toes but in the second she's just casually standing there. Her hair has definitely gotten longer and has lightened up, and everything about her just seems bigger! I can't believe she's growing up so much! She's even going to be in nursery in 2 weeks!

You Read That Correctly

2009-08-29T23:40:00.001-07:00

Yes, 8 new posts (well, 9 including this one). There are 4 more to come and then I should be caught up. So scroll down to see all the new ones!

The Adorable Sleeper

2009-08-29T23:32:00.000-07:00

I went in one day to get Katie from her nap and I found her like this, asleep and with her little toes poking through the bars. I can't say enough about how sweet and adorable I think it is. I just want to go get her out of her crib right now and snuggle the pieces out of her!! But I won't, because it's 11:32pm.

Going Swimming In The Backyard

2009-08-29T23:20:00.000-07:00

Katie was being so cute and silly while getting dressed to go swimming out back that I had to take some pictures.

This is Katie stretching.

This is "touchdown!"

I'm not sure what this was but I think it's hilarious. It looks like she should be in a Broadway musical or something.

She kept trying to pull the shoulder straps down

Finally ready to go splash in her pool.

Katie's Hip Fashion Sense

2009-08-29T23:06:00.001-07:00

Katie enjoys wearing all kinds of things. Sometimes we pick it out, other times she picks it out.

This was one of Daddy's creation.

This was Katie's. If she sees a lil' swimmer diaper or her swimsuit around she desperately wants to put them on.

Hence the swimsuit over a onesie, and a lil' swimmer diaper over that.

She found a pair of my pants and had to have them on.

Not a silly outfit, but she put the sunglasses and hat on by herself.

She put this headband on all by herself too.

She definitely keeps us entertained!

More Swimming

2009-08-29T22:49:00.000-07:00

Ben's parent's neighbors have a nice pool that Ben always got to swim in while growing up. We took Katie a couple times this summer. She's not quite sure what to think of it. It might have been better if we had a floating thing that she could sit in and be in the water. But since we didn't she just wanted us to hold her, tightly.

Here's Katie and Aunt Julie walking over to the pool.

Katie and me.

Katie, Daddy, and Aunt Julie playing in the pool.

Miscellaneous Pictures

2009-08-29T22:14:00.000-07:00

Here are a few pictures that don't really have a "theme" so I'm just posting them all together.

After I finished doing our breakfast dishes I came out to find Katie like this. On her own she took the doggy up on the chair and decided to just sit and snuggle him. Oh I am so jealous of that doggy!

Katie LOVES carrying bags around. Anything with straps she will put on her arms and walk around. She loves to fill them up, empty them out, and get as many bags on her arms as she can find.

We bought these little barrettes, which she currently will not leave in for very long. Here she is the first time we tried one out. I thought she looked so beautiful!

And if you do a close up on this picture you'll notice that she has Ding Dong crumbs on her lips.

She really likes to sit on the bottom step of the stairs. She'll take a book over there and read it, or point next to her on the stairs which means she wants you to sit by her. It's the perfect sitting height for her!

Here she is hiding behind some curtains by the back door. I'd given her a piece of an oreo and I guess she decided she wanted to sit back there and enjoy it. She'd never done that before. She did it the next day too when I gave her more.

Family Pictures

2009-08-29T21:25:00.000-07:00

While we had all of my side of the family in town my parents had a family friend, a photographer, take some family pictures of us. Katie wasn't happy about the whole thing (it was naptime), but we did get one good family one of us...

Even though it's with Tigger.

Here is my family:

Back Row L-R: My brother Justin, his wife Heather, Tonya (Chad's wife), my brother Chad (holding their son Jeff), my mom, my dad, Ben, me holding Katie, Aaron (Stacy's husband), and my sister Stacy.
Middle Row L-R: Justin and Heather's sons Luke and Tim, Chad and Tonya's son Robby, then Stacy and Aaron's kids Matt, Mariah and Rylee.
Front Row L-R: Justin and Heather's girls Hannah and Emily.

Reading, Playing, and Mowing the Lawn

2009-08-29T20:45:00.000-07:00

These are also back from the beginning of July. Daddy was out mowing the lawn and Katie and I were reading some books and playing with her Leap Pad and watching Daddy out the window.

I absolutely love that she likes to read books so much. I always am finding her sitting and looking through a book.

I could not pass up posting this award winning smile.

Looking out the window for Daddy to walk by.

Award winning smile #2.

And then a silly smile.

This one you can see Ben out the window. She loves to watch him mow the lawn. Usually we go outside but I think it was right about naptime so I didn't take her outside because it would be really hard to bring her back in after only a few minutes.

She LOVES playing with this "My First Leap Pad" toy. She knows exactly where to press and has several favorite pages, it amazes me that she already understands how to do it (and has for several months now since this was almost 2 months ago).

Swimming With Katie

2009-08-29T20:35:00.000-07:00

These are actually from July 1st, yikes! We had all of my family in town for the 4th of July week and we all had lots of fun swimming in the two different pools and playing on the slide.

Here's Katie kicking her feet in the "big" pool.

She loved splashing in this shallow water at the bottom of the slide.

She could climb up onto this step...

but then couldn't make it up the climbing wall.

Here we are in the pool.

Katie loved the kiddie pool, it was the warmest of all the water.

Though mostly she just loved climbing in and back out.

She's our little fishy!

The Little Pool

2009-08-20T19:35:00.000-07:00

WARNING: Lots and LOTS of pictures of Katie swimming and splashing in this little pool. (Oh, and they're from July 11th, don't tell anyone how old they are)

She liked splashing...

And kicking...

And splashing some more.

We love that big, happy grin.

Ben's favorite. He likes how she's just chillin'.

Katie's Book Arrangement

2009-08-01T21:34:00.000-07:00

Katie has enough books to fill up this shelf and the one below it. One day, (and almost every day) she emptied this shelf of all the books and after we were done reading and playing with them I asked her to put the books away. Ben and I were sitting on the couch watching and she was so adorable. Seeing her running back and forth from the shelf to grab another book, using her little hands to try to stand the books up... it was so cute! She only got a few put away, and I'm sure it's just because we're her parents, but we thought how she arranged them was one of the sweetest things. I gathered up the rest of the books and put them on another shelf so that we could leave her book arrangement. Every time I walked by and saw the books how she'd put them it made me smile. (It's probably totally just a proud parent thing)

Going On Walks

2009-07-23T23:23:00.000-07:00

Ben and I take turns getting up with Katie in the morning while the other sleeps in. Some of the mornings when Ben gets up they've been going on walks. He takes pictures so I can see how cute (or silly) Katie was dressed.

She's gotten used to the sunglasses so she'll wear them for the entire walk now.

Apparently she found this t-shirt of mine and wanted to wear it on the walk that day.

It seems like she's saying "Tuh duuuuh!"

Sandals over her pajamas, silly girl

She's blowing a kiss in this picture. She's very good at kisses.

At The Park

2009-07-22T23:16:00.000-07:00

We went to a park a little ways from my parents' house. It wasn't too exciting, but Katie liked a few of the toys.

She liked this little motorcycle

We were hoping there would be baby swings and there was! She looked so cute in the bucket seat and she enjoyed swinging!

Katie On The 4th

2009-07-21T22:11:00.000-07:00

Here's Katie on the 4th of July at my parents' house. It's the first time we've put her in this outfit without a onesie underneath, so we liked to see her cute shoulders.

Going Down The Slide

2009-07-20T22:07:00.000-07:00

The last several years all, or almost all, of my siblings and their families have come to my parents' house for the week of the 4th of July. In the past my parents have bought a slip 'n slide and it seems they had to buy a new one each year. This year they decided to buy this huge banzai slide for all the grandkids to play on. It was a surprise to everyone so when they each made it to Grandma and Grandpa's house after their 8-10 hour drive they saw the slide set up in the backyard. They were all sooooo excited! It was so much fun!

Here's Katie and I going down the slide. She seemed to really like it!

If you click on this picture to see it larger, you can see how excited she is!

Here we are about to go down the slide again.

Here is my brother, Chad, taking Katie down the slide. There is water that sprays down right as you start going down (to keep the slide wet) and I don't think she's screaming in this picture, I think she must have got sprayed in the face and didn't like it.

Here's my brother and one of his boys, Robby, going down the slide together.

And here are a couple more pictures of her enjoying the slide with me.

Fun With Luke

2009-07-19T23:41:00.000-07:00

Here is Katie and her cousin Luke. He's 2 months and 4 days older than Katie. They loved running around and getting into things together, it was very cute to watch. She learned several things from him that she hadn't ever come up with on her own (climbing on certain things and finding new knobs to turn she'd never noticed before, hehe).

Anytime they were playing together we tried to get them to give each other kisses.
Katie: "Come here I want to give you a kiss."
Luke: "Uh, I got this wheel on my thumb."

My parents have this little car that the bigger kids can actually drive around. Katie and Luke liked to climb in and talk on the phone that was in it.

I believe they are fighting over the phone right here.

Luke was helping Katie get the buckle fastened.

And then, of course, I told Katie to give him a kiss, and she did.

I love how she's got a hold of his face, and smooching his nose.

I'm Ready To Go

2009-07-18T23:39:00.000-07:00

Katie loves carrying bags and things with straps. She'll just walk around the house with them and occasionally stop to put something in it and then keep going. Here we were about to leave to go over to my parents' house while everyone was in town. I said we needed to get packed up and ready to go... this is how she ended up. She got her things and was ready, I guess.

"Just A Sec Mom, I'm On The Phone"

2009-07-17T23:17:00.000-07:00

I thought she looked so cute in her skirt, sunglasses, and ponytail while chatting away on her phone!

Climbing

2009-07-16T22:49:00.000-07:00

Katie hasn't been a huge climber. She hasn't tried to get out of her crib yet, and I've never found her on the kitchen table or anything, but she does love to climb. She gets a little frustrated when she can make it up on the couch sometimes and not other times.

We borrowed Grandma Larson's booster chair to use over the 4th when my family were all in town and we were going to need another baby chair for meals at my parents' house. She loved climbing up in it of course. She brought her blanket up with her and put it over her lap.

Here's another day we still had the seat, this time she brought the diaper bag up with her.

Climbing up in the little lawn chair taking a break from being in the pool.

She can get in and out of her bumbo (she used to get stuck if she got in). She likes sitting there and trying to get the tray on because she wants snacks.

She can get into the walker... kinda.
Here she is happy.

Here she is a little worried about being stuck.

And here she is upset at being stuck while I had to take a picture first before I got her.

Pics With Dad

2009-07-15T22:29:00.000-07:00

Here are a few pictures that Katie has had with her Daddy.

Her Little Idea

2009-07-14T22:01:00.000-07:00

Katie has been playing with a large cup of old pens and markers. She'll take them out of the cup, put them back in, over and over. One morning when all the pens were scattered around the floor, she wanted the paper towel I'd been using for my breakfast. She took it, laid it out on the floor and proceeded to gather up most of the pens and put them on top of the paper towel. I started taking the pictures because I wanted to see what she was going to do. I hadn't told her to do anything with it or the pens and I loved watching the little idea she came up with. I don't know what was going through her head that she decided to lay out the paper towel and then think, "I want to put pens on top of it!" So cute!

This is her proud of herself and saying "I did it!"

Sprinkler Fun!

2009-07-13T21:33:00.000-07:00

These were back from 6/18. When I uploaded the pictures from the camera there was almost a month's worth! Hopefully I can catch up a little.

So I really wanted to see Katie in her swimsuit out in the water. It wasn't hot out but I thought it would be okay. Turns out after she got in the cold water she was freezing and shivering, but I still think she liked it for a little while.

This picture cracks me up! I guess she got more in her face than she expected and Ben caught the split second moment of her funny face.

Gotta love those chunka chunk thighs!

More swimming/water pictures to come!

Piles Of Animals

2009-07-11T19:56:00.000-07:00

Katie has a ton of stuffed animals. A few we got as baby presents from friends/family, some were mine when I was growing up, and a couple are hand-me-down from her older cousins. I usually have them lined up on the love seat in the living room according to size, of course (that's always how I had mine as a kid). I'm not quite sure how it started out, but now she likes us to bring over her animals (usually one at a time, then she'll point to the next one she wants) and we put it on her and around her. She's giggles and is happy once all the animals from the love seat are around her. The last time she wanted me to do it I just grabbed all the animals in a big armful and she started cracking up, it was very cute.

With just a few of them...

And then all of them.

Here's a different day, she wants to do it fairly often

This is one of my all time favorite pictures!

She's such a cutie! I love her so much!

15 Month Check Up

2009-06-23T10:57:00.000-07:00

Katie turned 15 months a little bit ago (back on the 12th). We had her doctor visit on the 19th and it went great! She is doing everything (and more) that she should be for her age.

Here are her stats:

Weight: 23 lbs 3 oz - 56th percentile
Height: 31.5" - 80th percentile
Head Circum: 46.2 cm - 60th percentile!!!! (She's usually been in the 30's, so her head is average now!)

She is doing so many things and keeping us very busy. Some of our favorites (and ones I can think of off the top of my head) are:

She can whisper. If you ask her to whisper she'll say "bah bah" really really quiet. It's so cute!

She's starting to sign "thank you" and "please" without being prompted (she does the same sign for both).

She can understand and follow multi-step directions "Go get your shoes, come here and sit down please" (her shoes are in the closet, and she comes out with a matching pair) or "Get your gorilla and give him a kiss" or "Get a ball, find the box and put it in the box." She's been doing things like this for a while now, but it still amazes us that we can tell her to do something and she knows exactly what we mean.

She loves to dance when she hears music. She can turn on the radio on my alarm clock and then she stands there dancing. She has three different dance moves, the "sway side to side", the "up and down" and the "stomp your feet."

She's been walking on her own since the end of April. It is really cute to see her side step around things so she doesn't trip. She didn't quite roll over or crawl when some other babies did and in my mind I thought, "she's never going to roll over," "she's never going to crawl or walk." So I just love that she is walking and I love to watch her.

She loves going to Petland and seeing all the animals. There are usually around 40 or so puppies there and she loves to look at them and watch them play. She also likes the fish, lizards and little hamsters that run around on their wheels (okay, maybe it's ME that likes to see that). Occasionally they have kittens and she really likes them also.

Her vocabulary consists of:
ball
dada - usually when we ask her for dada she says yaya, but on her own we'll hear her just jabbering dada dada dada with the actual "d" sound
mama - which usually sounds more like buh-buh for some reason
and sometimes she'll say bye

She tries to repeat things when we ask but they usually all come out sounding like "bah." She also tries to say clock, but the only thing she does is click her tongue, it's pretty cute.

She is keeping up on her animal sounds. I'm not sure which ones I've posted about last, but her most recent additions are: monkey, rooster, turkey (Ben's favorite), whale, kitty, seal, chicken and frog.

Here's a smorgasbord of pictures that I thought were cute. They were actually taken from 5/21 through 6/5 so they're not the most recent.

One day after I'd just washed her hair

Found Daddy's mowin' the lawn hat

Both the Grandmas! (sorry if either of you object to the picture)

She had just been snuggling but I missed it. I still thought she was cute with her pile of blankets and animals

Ready for church one day. I did her hair in a little pony that just took in the top part of her hair. It was soooo cute, but it only last for about 20 minutes of church

Here's what it looked like from the back

We brought home a hat and belt from some hand me downs we were going through. When she saw them the next morning she had to have both of them on

She got 2 little skirts in the hand me downs also, I really love them on her. Here's the pink one

And here's the denim one

And I couldn't help but put this one in because she's sitting so lady-like in her little skirt

Our Sleeping Beauty

2009-06-16T21:14:00.000-07:00

We love this little nightgown that Katie got in her hand-me-downs! It is SOOOO cute seeing her run around the house in it. It's our new favorite!

Katie goes down for her first nap at 10:00 am. Usually she falls asleep right away and then sleeps until 11:30 or 12:00. Two days in a row she didn't fall asleep until after 11:00 am (she just talks and sings in her crib until she finally falls asleep). So on those days I had to wake her up at noon so that she'd be able to take her second nap ("preserve the second nap"... powerful and very true words from Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child). So the two days I had to go in and wake her up I took pictures of her while she was still asleep. I think she's beautiful!

This one is my favorite. I LOVE her feet in this picture.

I can't remember now why she's just in a diaper here. I don't think we've ever done that before. She probably needed changed out of her onesie (for messy diaper reasons) and then maybe it was right at naptime and maybe it was hot in her room so I just ended up not getting her dressed? I have no idea.
She sleeps in this position most of the time. We go in every night before we go to bed to check on her and put a blanket over her, and one of her legs is almost always up like this and one is straight out. I think it's cute because that is EXACTLY how I sleep.

This day I went in when she was asleep and then went out real quick to get the camera. She woke up before I got back and had this "I just woke up and what's going on" look.

Happy Birthday Daddy!

2009-06-13T07:02:00.000-07:00

Happy Birthday Daddy! 30 years old!!! Holy moly!

I thought I'd incorporate some recent pics into a special post for Ben's birthday.

You can tell he loves his little Katie McMuffin

And he's such a great Dad!

She's giving him snuggles before bed

We love you so much!! Happy Birthday!

In The Tub

2009-06-11T19:41:00.000-07:00

Katie loves taking baths, it is so fun!

Here she is excited to get into the tub. (I'm sitting right there, but she can't climb in by herself anyhow)

This is why she wants to get in. TUB TOYS! She has toys that she only gets to play with in the tub, so she's always excited to get to take a bath.

Happy girl!

She loves to splash, you can see water all over in the air.

Had to try a mohawk

It works better when there's soap in her hair, like this

This picture was cropped. It had some content that was a little inappropriate for our blog.

Where To Start...

2009-06-08T23:03:00.000-07:00

So you've probably noticed I haven't blogged for a while. A LONG while. Or maybe you haven't noticed and that's okay too.

I have another 5 or so posts I'm preparing, so there will be some new ones coming up!

To start, I thought I'd post some pictures of her snuggling her blankets. Man oh man, she still absolutely loves to snuggle her stuffed animals and blankets. Occasionally Ben or I get to be involved in the snuggles and it is seriously heaven on earth.

I love this one, how she's resting her head on her arm

Snuggling and calling Grandma, can't get much better than that!

Picture Catch Up: Part Deux

2009-05-14T22:37:00.000-07:00

So another week has gone by and the blog has been neglected. I have been taking pictures though, so that's good. When I uploaded the pictures to the computer there were two weeks worth on there, so just another quick catch up (for the Grandmas).

Katie is currently a little under the weather and also getting new teeth, so the last week she's been having a hard time. Her 5th tooth just came up last week and #6 is on it's way soon, we can see it through the gums. Two weeks ago she figured out how to push herself to a stand and since then has been walking everywhere. I've only seen her crawl maybe 3 times in the last two weeks. She keeps me entertained constantly with playing, laughing, chasing, and especially by surprising me with new animals sounds she all of a sudden knew: chicken, rooster and wolf. SO CUTE.

I love it when she peaks around the corner to find me

Folding her arms for prayer before we had lunch (she does it without any prompting now)

Sometimes she wants to get shoes on even if she's wearing pajamas. This day we decided to also put shoes on her doggy

We got her this no-spill cup with a straw and she absolutely loves it

I love the little scrunched up face that comes with a big grin

We thought this one was really funny, her trying to get the straw in her mouth

I can just see it now, her in 4 years at her first piano recital

My favorite part was she wanted to wear Sunday shoes, and she was just kicking away while playing on the piano

We had some hand me down duckie slippers that she absolutely loves, and then she found one of my shirts and wanted to put it on

I think she looks like a rock star - shades, baggy shirt, tight pants and shoes that look funny with the tight pants... okay so maybe she's a rock star from the 80's, it's still cute

More duckie slippers

We also got some little canvas type shoes from the hand me downs, and I love them on her

Grandma helped her pick me a flower on Mother's Day

One day when I was taking out the garbage I came back in to find her pushing the garbage can around, she had a hard time when she made it on to the carpet

Picture Catch Up

2009-05-06T22:06:00.000-07:00

Here are some cute pictures we got the last week or two. I had a piggy tail obsession for a little while so every day last week she had pigs in. They usually didn't make it past her second nap because she'd pull them out after I laid her down. But I still think they're super cute and love her in them.

We got some really cute sleeveless shirts from our friends, but she didn't really have any short sleeve t-shirts to wear during spring or summer, so we went out and got a few. So all the shirts in these pictures are some of her new ones! (And that's exciting for us because besides onesies and some pajamas, these are the first items of clothing we've bought for her. We've been blessed with lots of hand-me-downs, but it's so fun actually getting to buy cute little girl clothes!)

I love it when she throws her feet or legs out anywhere that's comfortable so she can be comfy when she looks at a book

She thought this was really funny

Katie LOVES going outside. We keep our door locked during the day but I unlock it when my piano students are going to be coming, and every time I unlock the door she thinks we're going out and gets really sad if we don't. She and Daddy have a tradition of going to get the mail together every day when he gets home from work. She loves getting to hold the keys and point to the right mailbox.

A Day at the Park

2009-05-05T22:46:00.000-07:00

Well, it was more like 10 minutes...

We have a little park two blocks down from us. A week or so ago we decided that since the weather was nice we wanted to take Katie down to play. We were pretty underwhelmed. We had thought there were swings and hoping there would be the seat swings for babies/toddlers, but there were no swings at all. She ended up liking only the rocking duck and horse. She didn't get excited about much else, but I'm sure she will when she gets a little older and can climb around by herself.

Here she is on the rocking duck

We thought we'd try out a slide

She wasn't very impressed

She wanted to go back to the rocking duck, so we tried out the horse instead. She liked that too

Daddy and Katie ready to go down a big slide

Ready?

Go!

She didn't want to try the rock wall

She had one more ride on the duck and then was ready to go. It'll still be fun to go play every now and then, but it'll be more fun when she starts getting more excited about it.

Reading Books

2009-04-27T23:16:00.000-07:00

Katie loves books. Ben and I are so happy that she loves books so much. I remember hearing stories from people saying their babies/toddlers would just find a book and sit and flip through the pages looking at it. I thought that sounded like the cutest thing and hoped that I would have a baby that would do that. Well we do. I love finding her pulling out books and looking through them.

Here she is at her shelf of books. Notice currently only two books on the floor

Here she is finding the duck in the appropriately named book, "Find the Duck." She can find the duck on each page. By now she knows right away where the duck is and doesn't have to search for it, but I love it in books that are "find the picture" with lots of things on the page. We'll ask her to find something (ball, balloon, car, shark, fish, bear, tree, sun, cat, frog, flower, sock, dinosaur - just to name a few of the things she can find) and I love to see her eyes scan the pages looking for it and then pointing to it with her cute little finger. So cute!

Just looking through all the books

I love this!

Apparently she didn't want to read "My First Book of Sushi." (We got a ton of used books off ebay, over 50, and surprisingly only two were duplicates of ones we already had. And no, the sushi one wasn't a duplicate, I can't even pronounce some of the words in it, I guess I don't know my sushi very well)

Katie and the pile of books she pulled off and looked through

We love you Katie! We hope you keep your love of books!

Couldn't Resist

2009-04-21T15:37:00.001-07:00

I just couldn't resist putting this picture on I took today.
One word... ADORABLE!

Our Mornings

2009-04-20T07:00:00.000-07:00

Katie's been sleeping with a blanket for a couple months now. A month or so ago she also started sleeping with a bunny. Then about two weeks ago she started sleeping with two bunnies. When I go in to get her in the morning to give her a bottle of milk she grabs a bunny in each arm (she used to just grab her blanket) so now I have to grab the blanket so we can all sit on the glider and have her bottle. I've made the mistake of not grabbing the blanket and believe me, she wants it. After she drinks her milk I put her down and she usually plays with her toys or books but the past few days she has wanted back up on the chair, so I've sat her back on the glider, blanket on her lap and her two little bunnies. Then of course she wants a book to read.

Happy to be all snuggly

Looking at her book (this is usually a Mom or Dad only book... you'll see why)

Doing what a doggy says, you stick your tongue out and pant

And this is why we usually have to read it to her, it's foam and she would love to get her little bite marks all over it

The Two Outfits

2009-04-18T07:55:00.000-07:00

I usually let Katie pick out what she's going to wear from two choices. She looks at both and then points to the one she wants. I love it, it's so cute!

This is what Dad had to say about these two outfits:

"Preppy"

"Hoochie"

Apparently he thought the second one made her look like she came from the little baby trailer park. But I think they're both cute.

Random Pictures

2009-04-16T22:25:00.000-07:00

Here are a few cute pictures we've taken recently

Another cute one in the glasses, and her hair is crazy from taking her ponytail out. We like it

We taught her how to clean her glasses (Not really)

Coming to see what Dad is doing with the camera

She put her gorilla on the leap pad and was pushing it around the kitchen

She's learned "TOUCHDOWN!" It's also part of our version of Pat-A-Cake ... "pat it, roll it and throw it in the sky!" (It's her favorite one to do)

Wheeeeere's Katie?

Doing a fishy face. I didn't get the picture quite fast enough to get her cheeks even more sucked in, but it was pretty cute

Our Easter

2009-04-13T23:49:00.000-07:00

Here is Katie on the day before Easter

We went to Ben's parent's house to have a mini Easter egg hunt. Katie was excited to take the basket and do whatever it was we had in store for her

Finding the eggs out on the lawn

Putting the eggs in the basket

Found a leaf!

It was pretty windy outside. I can't believe how long her hair is getting!

Walking with her basket full of eggs

I liked this picture

Found another egg! Let's go get it!

Coming back inside

She got some cute sunglasses from Grandma

She already knows how to look cool in them

Pretty tulips from Ben's mom's yard

Katie on Easter

I couldn't get one of her smiling, but at least Dad is!

We had a fun Easter weekend! It was fun to watch Katie walk around with her basket and find the eggs on Ben's parent's lawn. Too bad it was so windy or we could have stayed outside longer.

On Easter Sunday we went to my parent's house for dinner and before we ate my mom hid some Easter eggs in the living room in very plain site, like a few on the couch, chairs, coffee table, etc. I helped Katie walk in with her basket and she would get so excited to see them! She would see one and then turn around and see more and she couldn't decide which ones she wanted to pick up first! She wanted me to hold the basket so I followed her around while she put each egg in the basket. We hid them all 4 or 5 times and she loved finding them every time! It was so much fun to watch!

Outside and Another Cute Outfit

2009-03-31T08:26:00.000-07:00

On the first day of Spring the weather was so nice! We went outside to play in the grass so I took some pictures. Here's another super cute outfit we got passed on to us from our friends. There are also shorts that go with this too, but we'll do that in the summertime as well as have her wear it with no onesie underneath.

Love this picture!

Her top two teeth came in at the beginning of the month, I don't think I've posted a picture showing them yet. They're so cute!

She LOVES this book, it's her new favorite

Here she is after I asked her how old she was. Not a great picture of her, but at least she's doing the 1!

And then she's back to the animal book

The Snuggler

2009-03-30T08:06:00.000-07:00

Ever since Katie got this gorilla last week she gets so excited when she sees it and always wants to have it. I find her snuggling with it a lot and I think it's so sweet! (Now I only wish she would snuggle with us that much!)

(He's in there. One "trick" we found is if the gorilla is between her and us and she snuggles it, we get to enjoy the snuggle too!)

Cutie Cakes

2009-03-29T07:51:00.000-07:00

I loved the little outfit she was wearing this day. We got it from friends of ours that were giving away all their baby girl clothes (there was so much cute stuff we got from them!). It has matching shorts but it's not quite shorts weather yet.

Here's Katie walking by herself over to the window

I don't know if you can tell, but she's on her tiptoes. I think it's ridiculously adorable

She walked over to the chair and her stuffed gorilla was on it. She says "whoa" all the time when she sees something exciting, surprising, or that she likes. I'm not sure if it's her second word (after dada), but she says it all the time and it's sooooo cute. So here she is saying "whoa" when she was surprised to see her gorilla on the chair

Happy to get her gorilla

She's our little cutie!

Pots and Pans

2009-03-28T19:32:00.000-07:00

Katie finally discovered that we have other cupboards besides the one she usually gets into that has all our tupperware. She found the pots and pans cupboard the other day and was so excited! Nothing landed on her toes, thank goodness, but she loved pulling them out and hearing the loud CRASH as they hit the floor.

Some New Things

2009-03-24T22:17:00.000-07:00

Katie is doing cute new things all the time. Here are a few I got pictures of:

She can turn on and off the light and the fan with the remote. Here she is looking at the light after she turned it on.

She can climb up onto the chaise now. I was in the kitchen one day and she was playing by the couch and the next time I looked at her she was sitting in the middle of the chaise! She was so proud of herself. The chaise slopes down a little and she figured out if she used the bottom of the walker as a step she could climb up.

There have been times that I've put snacks she wasn't eating into this little corner of her highchair tray. The other day she decided to move all of those cheerios in there by herself! It was very cute to watch her pick each one up and drop it in there.

There were a few things laying around on the floor that she'd gotten into, and I guess she thought they needed to get washed so she was "helping" me by putting them in the dishwasher as I was emptying it.

She decided to do this one day and we thought it was so cute. She would stand on one side of the coffee table, throw her stuffed gorilla across it so it would slide off the other side, then would walk to the end of the table and "peek" over the table at the gorilla. It looks like she's about to topple over but she wasn't. How she's standing was the reason I wanted to take the picture because she was leaning and leaning further over on one leg trying to peek at her gorilla. She would giggle when she saw it, then go get it and do it again and again. We were just cracking up. Ignore the outfit, it was her Sunday outfit without the dress on. We took it off so she wouldn't get lunch all over it.

Who Does Katie Look Like?

2009-03-18T22:45:00.001-07:00

We have people telling us she looks more like me, or more like Ben, but it's hard for Ben and me to see that she looks like either of us. So I guess, according to this, she barely looks a little more like me. I guess she's the right blend of the two of us because I think she's beautiful!!

MyHeritage: Look-alike Meter - Free genealogy - Dynasty

Katie's Birthday Party!

2009-03-17T23:27:00.000-07:00

We had so much fun on Katie's birthday!

Here's the birthday girl! When I ask her "How old are you?" I taught her to hold up one little finger. She can do it but only will once in a while. It's really cute though!

Here's the birthday girl a little earlier in the day. Because of all the birthday party preparations, the day didn't go like our normal days do and she didn't take it very well. It was the worst day she's had in a long time. She just really wanted to get her hands on all the new stuff that was out (frosting, cakes, wrapped presents, etc). But she was back to her normal, fun self after her second nap.

She got a cell phone from Ben's parents

She got a pull toy doggy from my parents, and some board books (try 57) from Ben and I

Here's how Katie's cake decorations turned out:

I found the duckie I wanted to use and made a copy

Here is the gel food coloring I used

Put a piece of parchment paper over the copy. Made a frosting outline and put it in the freezer to harden

Filled it in and did the beak, inside of mouth and eye

SO, the great idea was to freeze it and then peel it off the parchment paper and lay it on the cake. I checked on it after a couple hours, and yeah, it was not freezing good enough to be able to pull off the paper. So I waited another hour or so, and decided it was not going to work. I wondered if maybe I needed to use the other side of the parchment paper. I had some left over yellow frosting, so I did another duck and stuck that one in the freezer too. As the time came to have the cake I tried them both and neither wanted to come off. So I just cut around the parchment paper and laid it on the cake so we could get a picture of Katie with it (then I took it off as she started going for the cake). Turns out that since I used frosting from a tub (Betty Crocker), it wasn't going to get hard enough in the freezer to come off the parchment paper like I hoped! Next time I'll have to make my own frosting.

Anyhow, here's the finished cake:

Here's the video of Katie eating her cake. She mostly just liked the frosting.

Before

After, but before she got it in her hair

She didn't get too messy, but it was white cake so it probably seemed less messy than if it had been chocolate. It was so fun to watch her eating it and trying to share with all of us. She's such a sweetie! It was a very fun birthday and we're glad the Grandma's and Grandpa's could share it with us.

Happy First Birthday, Katelin!

2009-03-12T00:01:00.000-07:00

Katelin Kay Larson
Born March 12, 2008 @ 10:46 pm
7 lbs 5 oz, 19.5" long

Photo and video editing at www.OneTrueMedia.com

We can't believe it's already been a year since we first had our precious little baby! She has changed our lives in so many wonderful ways. We feel so blessed that she is part of our family. We are so happy that she is growing and learning, and we are excited for all the new things to come. Happy Birthday Baby Bear. We love you!