Late night conversation

Caroline woke up tonight at about 11:30. After letting her cry/scream/yell our names for 30 minutes I finally went in to get her. I am amazed at how alert she was and the conversation we had.

Me: Caroline, what's the matter?

C: Dere (as she points to the rocker)

Me: Do you want to sit in the rocker?

C: Yes

Me: Do you want to snuggle?

C: No, bolk (her way of saying milk)

So, I nursed her. Then she was still wide awake.

Me: Caroline, you need to go to bed.

C: Walk

Me: You want to walk?

C: Yes

Me: Where

C: Cook

Me: Cook, you want to go cook?

C: Yes

So, I put her on the floor and she walked into the kitchen to the stove. I never could figure out why except that she wanted out of her room and where mommy and daddy were. I am amazed at how much she can communicate.

Fancy Nancy Tea Party

Katherine's 4th Birthday party was a Fancy Nancy Tea Party Theme. If you have a little girl and are not familiar with Fancy Nancy, you need to check her out. She is adorable. She loves everything to be fancy. She is just like Katherine and probably most 4 year old girls.

I had a lot of fun decorating for the party. I set out some of my tea pots, used Fancy Nancy books and dolls, had lots of pink, lavender and monograms.
Usually I have made a more elaborate cake from scratch but this year Katherine said she wanted chocolate cupcakes with chocolate icing, pink sprinkles and a pink "k" on it. It was easy!
We had our tea party in the dining room and it was set as formally as you would dare with a group of 4 year olds.

Katherine and I made butterfly place mats and marshmallow and lollipop place cards like in Fancy Nancy's book. She had a lot of fun helping out.

I had a lot of fun making tissue paper flowers to hang and decorate.

We had all kinds of fancy food to eat - fruit kabobs, tiny PB&J sandwiches, blueberry muffins, and spinach dip.

When the girls first arrived, they could either color Fancy Nancy pictures or do their craft. The craft was decorating straw hats with ribbon and flowers. I was so busy getting the food ready that I did not get any photos of the craft. Later I did get a photo of Emma wearing her new fancy hat.

Then we read a story called Tea for Ruby.

Finally, it was time for tea. Though as Katherine reminded us, it was not really tea, just pretend tea. It was actually pink lemonade because 4 year olds don't really like tea too much.

The little girls (and 2 boys) were so cute. They were all dressed fancy and enjoyed the lunch.

Finally it was time for cupcakes.

We also had parfaits (which is fancy for ice cream!)


Mom and dad also dressed dapper and fancy for the party. We could not get Caroline to put on her dress up clothes today.
Pops even wore his tux!
Last it was time for presents.
Grace's mom made an adorable doll quilt. It has already gotten lots of use as both of my girls love to put their dolls to bed.
We tried to get a good shot of all of the guests in their party finery but that is not an easy task.
Nana and Pops received the prize for the fanciest dress. Oooh-la-la

Birthday party preparations

This year it was a lot of fun to involve Katherine in different aspects of her Birthday Party planning. We started talking about it back in December. Of course her favorite part was helping to make the cupcakes. And who doesn't like to lick the beaters?

She tried to spread the icing on the cupcakes. It was not too easy for her.
She made place cards and place mats for all of her friends at the table.
It was a lot of fun to see how her creativity worked.

4 Years

Katherine had her 4 year old well visit. Even though she is the skinniest child I have seen and is shorter than most of her friends that are a year younger than her, she has actually gained in her growth percentages. Of course I can't find the paper with all of the exact numbers but I remember that she weighed 31 pounds (25%, up from 3%) and her height was 12%.

As a 4 year old she also got her blood pressure taken. Katherine has a toy doctor set so she knew exactly what this was.

She also had to do a urine test and she thought that was the silliest thing every. WHY in the world would you peepee in a cup and give it to someone. It was fun explaining the science lesson of how a doctor could tell if you were healthy inside by what comes outside.

I filled out her ASQ developmental questionnaire the night before. I always find those things so interesting. There are always some questions that amaze me that they are on there. And then there are some that I would have not thought she should be doing. For example, it asked if she could identify 5 colors and list 3 things in a category such as animals in a zoo. Those seemed easy. Then another question was if a child could list 4 of the following things first name, last name, home town, gender, age and phone number. I have not tried to teach her our phone number yet but she did know the rest.

Another thing we did this year was a hearing test. And, Katherine failed in both ears. After looking at her chart, Dr. H realized that she failed both ears last year and one ear at age 2. We discussed what this could mean. For one thing, since her birthday is in February, it will always come at a time where she is likely to have congestion. We felt that her speech was pretty articulate and did not indicate an actual hearing loss. She did not seem to have much fluid in her ears at this time.

I have a friend who is a Dr. of audiology who does home hearing tests. She came over to test both girls (Caroline failed at 18 months too but did have fluid at that time). It was very interesting and Katherine thought it was fun. She was able to do the entire adult test of pressing a button when she heard a beep and in repeating words when she heard them.

The result was that both girls have mild hearing loss in the middle ear. This is probably due to fluid in the middle ear but we will be referred to an ENT to see for sure why. Neither of the girls has had many ear infections so tubes are not really what I see in our future. Hopefully it is just that their hearing test was given when they have seasonal allergies and fluid in their ears.

I also ended up at the doctors office this week with Caroline. She has been having a rough time with sleep lately. She wakes up multiple times a night and pretty much just talks and yells for us. She is not really crying most of the time. I have let her cry and yell for a really long time hoping that she would give in and she does not. When I go to her, she wants to nurse and then she falls asleep. But, the moment I try to put her back in her crib, she wakes up, grabs me and says "no!". She even then will tell me to read or that she wants to eat. After a few days of this several people suggested that maybe she had an ear infection. One was even a friend who is in the medical field and she thought she had all the classic signs, especially since she was congested a week before.

So, we went to see the doctor. My intuition was that she is just a stubborn child but if she did in fact have an ear infection I thought I should know and treat it. Well, the ears were perfectly clear so I was right, I have a stubborn child who just wants to be with mom. So, this weekend we are having baby boot camp and letting her cry it out.

Snow Day 2

After snowing for 24 hours we had a lot of snow, more than I had ever seen. I wanted to try to go on a walk to take cool pictures and I invited Katherine to join me with her camera. A few houses down a neighbor boy wanted to get Hooligan for a walk. I was glad for him to get out her energy but after about 3 minutes Hooligan was handed off to me. So much for taking cool photos with a dog shaking my camera.

A lot of neighbors lost large branches and even trees as they were so weighed down with snow. We were lucky and only lost a few smaller limbs. A lot of people were also without power.
Katherine really enjoyed measuring the snow. She did it over and over just like a good little scientist.

The official measurement was just under 9 inches at our house. The airport measure over a foot which was a record snowfall.

We invited a few neighborhood friends to come over and play as well as to stay warm since they lost power. One family ended up spending 2 nights at our house. It was a fun slumber party.

Valentine's Day

I have never been one to do a big celebration on Valentine's Day. Sam and I usually exchange a card and small gift. We celebrate all holidays more with kids though.

Sam brought all three of his girls our favorite flower - tulips. The girls loved smelling their flowers. He also wrote all three of us a letter to be put in our keepsake box. I love these letters and know they will be cherished by the girls too.

He also bought supplies for us to make chocolate fondue. He and I ate at a fondue restaurant a few weeks ago and talked about how it would be fun to do with the girls. We got out our fondue pot that we received as a wedding gift 7 years ago and used it for the first time. We were a little nervous about the hot surface and sharp fondue forks so one it was melted everyone had their own bowl of chocolate.
Fondue made a huge mess but the everyone loved it and had a lot of fun.