Birthday weekend part 3

Sunday afternoon we attended our third and final birthday party of the weekend. It was for George's 33rd in August, Hannah's 2nd birthday a few weeks ago and Nathan's 5th this week. Also celebrated were Shannon and Emily's 1/2 birthday and George and Shannon's anniversary. Both sides of their family and a few friends were invited to an evening in the park. The kids had a pinata. You can see how much Katherine enjoyed it. She just walked away. She was even pretty shy when the pinata was broken and the candy and toys fell to the ground.



Katherine was not shy about the cake though. She knows that birthdays are for cake, ice cream, candles and presents. She was scoping out the cupcakes long before we had dinner. What is ironic is that by the time we actually were served the cake we had a hard time getting her to eat and she got bored with eating to go play on the playground. She never ate cake.

Nathan used his scuba bath toy to open his presents.
Hannah is such a cutie.

Birthday Weekend Part 2

We went straight from Kyle's party to Ty's party. Ty is Katherine's cousin and he turned 3 this week. The party was at a mall that has a carousel. I must admit, we were skeptical about how fun a party at the mall carousel would be. The kids loved it. They could ride as many times as they wanted and they rode many times.

The birthday boy.

Cousins Hannah and Nathan

Katherine with cousin Emily

Caroline with Grammy

Here are a ton of fun carousel pictures. Like I said, the kids loved it so you will see them on all the different animals.

Hannah, Shannon, Mom, Kathrine

Ty

Nathan

Caroline was not a fan of the carousel.

Sam, Katherine, George, Hannah

Sam, Katherine, Nathan, Ty

Birthday weekend part 1

This weekend we had three birthday parties. The first was for Kyle. Katherine and Kyle were in a few kids classes a year and a half ago but have become better friends recently because they are in the same mothers day out class. They also live in our neighborhood. Kyle loves all things transportation related so the kids did a dump truck craft. Katherine loves to use glue so this was a big hit.
Kyle's mom does a great job making a birthday cake.
The kids are ready to eat cake.Caroline slept through the entire party.

This girl can sleep

And I am so thankful. It seems that Caroline is a much better sleeper than Katherine. There are some days that it seems she is only awake long enough to nurse and go back to sleep. On Thursday night she went down in the office at about 10. I moved her to her crib at midnight. She woke up at 5, nursed and went back to sleep until 8:15. She was awake for about an hour and then I put her in her carseat to nap since we were leaving for the arboretum. She woke up at about 10:15 and was a little grumpy because we were trying to take pictures and she was sleepy. She fell asleep in the sling at noon. I transferred her to the carseat/stroller at 12:30 and she did not wake up until 4:30. In that time I even went to a pottery place so we could get her footprints on a plate. She did not wake up when we did that.At 4:30 she nursed and fell back asleep again. This time she slept on the boppy on her pack and play. I just set her there and she stayed. I then loaded her up at 5:30 so I could take Katherine to Nana's house. She woke up for about 20 minutes during dinner and then we packed her up again so Sam and I could go see a movie. She nursed and fell asleep for the entire movie and then still slept all night, only waking up once. This is pretty typical for this week. I think she must be growing.

Fireproof

This weekend Sam and I went to see the movie Fireproof. It was a wonderfully wholesome and uplifting movie. Those are not easy to find these days. It stars Kirk Cameron as Caleb Holt, a firefighter (come on ladies, you all know you had a crush on him in junior high school when he was in Growing Pains). His wife Catherine is a PR rep at a hospital. Their marriage is struggling. It is about to end when Caleb's father issues him a 40 day "Love Dare". The things that Caleb is asked to do in this Love Dare are things that we should all be doing in our marriage, struggling or not. It was a great reminder to me of some areas where I am weak.

The allegory of marriage withstanding a fire is powerful. The tagline of the movie is "Never leave your partner behind." This is true of Caleb as a firefighter and he learns it to be true of the marriage covenant. In our day and age of marriages being temporary though vows of "for richer, for poorer, for better for worse, in sickness and in health" are taken, it was great to see a movie that upholds marriage as the way that God intended it to be "to death do us part".

The movie will not be a blockbuster. Wholesome movies, especially those with a spiritual message never are. But, I encourage you all to see it. Both because it is a wonderful, entertaining movie and because I think it is great to support such films so that more will be made in the future.

Reading the website for the movie I learned that it was actually produced by a church's movie and media ministry. All of the actors except for Kirk Cameron were pretty much local people and even church members. The writers of the movie have also authored a book The Love Dare as mentioned in the movie that they say is great to use whether your marriage is hanging on by a thread or healthy. The music was also great featuring two of our favorites, Casting Crowns and Third Day along with others that I was not familiar with. You can purchase songs from iTunes via the Fireproof iMix. I think I may just do that right now.

Pumpkin Patch #1

I love the pumpkin patch at the arboretum. Since we have a membership, we will be there often in the next 6 weeks. Today I met about half of the stay at home moms in town at the pumpkin patch. At least that is what it felt like. Our group alone had at least 20-25 moms, all of them
toting at least one or two kids.

Here is a photo of our entire group eating. Look at all of those stroller.

Katherine woke up and seemed to be having a good day. At least she was having a good hair day and that counts for something when your mom will be wanting to take a ton of pictures. Her hair is in a funny stage right now with the curls and the length. Without a ponytail or a bow it can be quite unruly.
Once we arrived at the pumpkin patch, she was more interested in climbing on the pumpkins and rolling them all off of the hay bales and onto the floor than posting for a picture. I feel lucky to have gotten a few decent shots and I love the first one at the top of the post.
I was really ambitious and dressed both of the girls in denim and white. Katherine even had overalls to go with the fall harvest theme of the pumpkin patch. This was the only picture that we got. Caroline was not thrilled to say the least.
I also wore denim and white so that we could get a cute photo of all three of us. This picture is the only one where all three of us are in the frame. Between a very active toddler and a very upset baby the cute family picture was not going to happen. I did however get a cute picture with my half-sister, Anne. She was in town on business and finished everything up last night so that she could play today. I actually had Nana, Pops and Anne all there to help me, which makes it even more comical that I could not wrangle the family for a cute photo.
My main objective of the day was to get a cute picture of Caroline to be flashed on the "jumbo tron" at church in a few weeks when she is going to be dedicated. The rules are that they are to be alone and fully clothed. All of our cute photos are either in a diaper only or with someone else. Any time we tried to take a picture she would scream. I bought a basket and made a cute place for her to sit amidst the pumpkins. No luck.

This was her best shot in the pumpkins but I am not sure it is the best for the church photo.

We tried a close up while Nana was holding her and they are OK.
I have until Monday to send in a picture so if I don't get a better one this weekend I have a few decent ones to choose from.
Katherine enjoyed the pumpkin house and especially the hay bale maze. It bothered her that there were gaps and holes in the maze. Here she is pointing to one.
And then she would collect hay to fill in the holes.

We finally left the pumpkin patch to go to the fountains. She wanted to take off her shoes and overalls to play in the water. She actually wanted to take off more but that was where I drew the line. The funny thing is that she is so timid that I don't think anything but her feet actually got wet.
I could not get her to put her clothes back on so the rest of our trip was in her shirt and panty cover. Here she is using a stick to point to the pumpkins.

We had an overall fun day and plan to return next week. Hopefully the weather will cool off soon.

Average!

Today we had Caroline's 2 month appointment. I am happy to report that she is average. This is the most excited I will probably ever be to have an average child. Why? Because with Katherine she was and is way below average in height and weight and it always produced stress on my part trying to make sure she ate enough. Here are Caroline's stats for the day.
Height 22.75 inches (55%)
Weight 10 lb 7 oz (47%)
Head 38 cm (30%)
Dr. H said that she looked very healthy and perfect. I agree.

For comparison, at 2 months Katherine weighed 9 lb 9 oz (15%) was 22 in long (45%) and also had a 38cm head.

Tricycle

Katherine received a tricycle for Christmas from Nana and Pops. It is one where there is a handle for the parent to use to push and steer. Katherine has not wanted to ride in her stroller on our nightly walks for some time now so she rides her tricycle. Until this week it was mainly one of us pushing her because she could not get the tricycle to go on her own. All of a sudden she was able to do it. Now she gets mad if we touch the handle so our walks are at a much slower pace now. She still has not mastered steering so luckily our street is straight and we walk right next to her in case she accidentally turns. I realized that it had never occurred to me to get her a helmet. Now that she goes on her own we thought she needed one so we headed to target and picked out a cute helmet with butterflies on it.