Let's buy it!

Today Katherine was watching Sesame Street on the computer while I was in the office. We had the funniest conversation.

K-Mommy, I want to buy something on the puter.

Me-Really, how are you going to do that?

K-Will you help me?

Me-I want to see if you can do it

I really was curious just how much she knew. She then proceeded to click to a different page which was in fact a page where you could buy Sesame Street merchandise. She saw a blank and filled in her name. It was actually the search box but she had no clue. Then she asked me our phone number to fill in another blank. That is not what it was asking for but still! I decided to ask her a few more questions.

Me-Katherine, if you buy something, how will you get it?

K-It will come out of daddy's puter.

Me-Where?

K-I don't know, maybe there. (She pointed to the tower where there are all the disk drives and such)

Me-How will you pay for what you want to buy?

K-(very excited) I know, I will go get my money out of my bunny bank AND my piggy bank. I have lots of money. (She has maybe $4)

Me-And where will you put it?

K-Into daddy's puter.

We stopped at this point and had a very serious discussion about how you NEVER put anything into daddy's computer. I also explained that when you buy something online you actually use your credit card and don't put your money in the computer. Then you don't get what you buy right then, you have to wait a few days or weeks for the mailman to bring it to you. That did not discourage her, she then said,

"Mommy, why don't we use your credit card to buy this and I will wait a few days to get it."

I am pretty scared. It will not be too long before she can read and really figure out how to buy something.

Bagel snatcher

Every morning Katherine has a bagel with cream cheese for breakfast. I know it is not the healthiest meal but she can eat it independently and she will eat it. I even let her eat breakfast while watching Sesame Street if it is a day I am in a rush to get ready. The other day I was getting my breakfast ready (also a bagel with cream cheese) when I hear,

"Mom, Caroline is eating by bagel!"
"Well, Katherine, don't let her eat your bagel."
"But Mom, I think she likes it."

So, I run in to get the bagel away from Caroline. It was in her mouth and she had cream cheese all over her face and hands. I was a good mommy and took the bagel away before grabbing my camera. At least she is old enough that the ingredients of bagels and cream cheese are OK though without teeth it is a choking hazard. As you can see in the picture, Caroline did in fact like the bagel and she was trying her hardest to get more.

faces

The girls were being cute this evening sitting on the couch, playing together. Of course I wanted to take photos. I asked Katherine to smile and this is the face she gave me.
She told me it was her sad face. I thought it looked like a pouty face. I can see a faint smile hiding under there. She thought she was pretty funny, pretending to be sad. I told her she was silly and then she gave me this face. Isn't she lovely? I think one time she saw her older cousins making silly faces for a photo and now she things it is the greatest thing. Finally, I got a smile. She is so sweet when she cooperates. We went outside after the rain cleared up and I wanted to get photos in Valentines shirts. Katherine was not smiling so I thought I would ask her how old she is about to be. The "three" would make it look like she was smiling just like when you say "cheese". Instead she held up her fingers. She is so excited about her birthday. It is just around the corner.

The Helmet

Caroline was on my lap in the office today and she kept stretching toward Katherine's Dora bike helmet hanging on her tricycle. I decided to put it on her. She thought it was pretty funny. It is pretty big on her but look at that adorable smile.

This will make you smile

Caroline is a very happy baby who smiles a lot. She makes all kinds of cute baby noises - coos, gurgles, squeals. She has laughs but it is usually a short chuckle or a squeal. Today though she got going like we have never seen before. Katherine was playing with some penguin toys and something about it was hilarious. Enjoy the cute video.

Where is Katherine?

We knew that Katherine liked to be Houdini, even as a baby she would get out of her swaddle blanket. Then it was getting out of high chairs, strollers, basically anything. Now she is trying her hand at contortionist. She figured out that she can fit into her play kitchen refrigerator.

Katherine sayings

Katherine is a funny girl who loves to talk ALL. THE. TIME. She is constantly cracking me up both by the funny things and by the fact that she imitates what we say but sometimes in the wrong context. Here are some of the funny things she has done and said in the past few week.

"I want my 'mote" - said after we told her that she could watch TV in 5 minutes. She wanted her remote to turn it on now.

"Mommy, I want to see the thunder." - said during a thunderstorm. She knew that whatever made that loud noise must be cool. This was the week after we saw fireworks.

"Let's get in the car" - We told her we were going to have a smoothie after dinner. She wanted to get in the car to go get it. We were planning to make them at home.

"Mommy, I go peepee by myself. You wait right here."
"Do you want me to come help?"
"No Thanks."
-Sure enough she did the entire thing all by herself, including dumping the contents of the little potty into the big potty and rinsing it out with water!

I love it when she is sweet. Tonight after playing outside she asked if she could have a snack. I gave her a package of Goldfish. 5 minutes later she came up to me and said, "mommy, thank you for the goldfish you gave me".

"Mommy, baby sister is hungry. She wants to drink your milk."

"When I's a baby did I . . ."

"Daddy, you have a monster in your ear, eat it!"

"I want fresh juice." Said after I took her sippy cup out of the fridge. It had juice in it from the morning and she wanted new, fresh juice.

"Something bad happened. I have a bug bite. Medicine helps it, or my new tooth brush." She has a new toothbrush that sings.

"Mommy, let me see your belly button. Your belly button is clean, Daddy's belly button is dirty." Really I don't think Sam's belly button is dirty. More likely his tummy is just hairy!

"Mommy, I hungry. My tummy needs food!"

"Baby sister doesn't have teeth yet. She can't eat food."

8-8-08 "Mommy, when I grow up I be a pwincess like when you grow up you be a pwincess too." Funny since we really don't have many books or movies about princesses. It is just a given that all little girls want to be a princess I guess.

8-8-08 "I need to eat babies. I hungry."

8-8-08 "I need money right now mommy!" Said after I got my change from Sonic.

8-8-08 "You not have Dr. Pepper mommy. Only have water." Pretty convicting when your 2 year old tells you that you need to drink water, not Dr. Pepper as you are in line at Sonic for Happy Hour drinks.

8-10-08 Nana: "Katherine, that is a pretty new dress. Where did you get it?"
Katherine: "In my closet."

8-11-08 Sam: "Katherine, do you know where raisins come from?"
Katherine: "Yes, the box."

8-11-08 "I eat a bugger from my nose." Icky!

Friday's Random Blog

I have a few random things for today.

First of all, it is summer and it is hot. We have all read about the tragic deaths of children who are left, usually by accident in a car. Two years ago, while Sam and I were watching the American Inventor on TV, we had an idea for a product that would help prevent this kind of accident from happening. We did not tell anyone about it but we did not make it either. Well, someone else did. In fact, the Child Minder is pretty much exactly what we had in mind. There is a sensor that you put under the pad of your child seat and then it has a partner on your key chain. If there is a baby in the carseat and the key chain travels more than 15 feet from the carseat than a reminder alarm sounds. Dang it, we got beat to the punch on this invention. What do you think about it? On one message board it was criticized a lot. On another blog I read an interesting take on the fact that parents can forget their children in a car, especially when a routine has changed like a different parent taking the child to day care. Didn't Mary and Joseph lose Jesus for 3 days? If the parents of GOD could have a miscommunication or forgetful episode, how much more could I?Second piece of randomness. A few posts ago I had photos of Caroline, some on a colorful blanket that I crocheted. Many of you commented on how impressed you were at my skills. Well, here is a photo of the blanket. Are you still impressed? Notice how the sides are not straight and it is not finished, thus the ball of yarn hanging off one end. I was just very strategic in how I wrapped it around Caroline to get the photo.Third, do you remember my new beautiful bathroom? Well, after reading how Holly has started to shower with Bree to save time and make things easier, I started having Katherine shower with me. While I am washing my hair, etc., she is playing with her letters and crayons until it is her turn to soap up. Doesn't my bathroom look lovely now?

Licky and the monsters

Katherine is doing some funny things lately.

One is "Licky". Lately when we ask her if she will give us a kiss, she replies that she will give us a "licky". This is literally sticking out her tongue to lick our face. Here are some pictures of her trying (and succeeding) in giving me a licky. When Sam asked her if he could give her a licky she replied, "no daddy, that's gross".
Katherine has also started talking about monsters. We are trying to make it fun and not scary by reminding her that Elmo and the rest of the Sesame Street gang are monsters and that they are not scary. She tells us that there are monsters in our ear. A blue one in the right and a red one in the left. How do we get rid of them? We eat them. Another monster is the tickle monster. It lives under Daddy's baseball cap and when he takes his hat off, he turns into a tickle monster. The tickle monster is green and there are also purple ones. The pink monster is the one that sings.

Summer nights

I love the evening in the summer time. Being in Texas it is so hot during the day but once the sun starts to go down our backyard is all shaded by our workshop (great since we no longer have a tree). Last night Sam was working late and Katherine took a late nap (I woke her up at 6:15) so there was plenty of time to enjoy the evening in the back yard.

Our little scientist called to me that there was a spider on her slide. Most two year old girls would squeal and run away but not Katherine. She wanted mommy to come see it. Well it was not a spider but a dried out shell or carcass of some kind of insect. I was a science teacher but bugs were not my specialty. I am not sure if this one is actually deceased or if it outgrew it's shell and left it behind. The good thing was that Katherine did not know the difference and since there was not a moving, living insect, it was much easier to look at.

Ooooh mommy, look!
I show it to baby.

After the excitement of the bug wore off we ate dinner and just played. Katherine explored her new sandbox but since it does not have any sand yet it was pretty boring.

Aspiring photographer

Katherine is always interested in my camera. She tries to carry around my big digital SLR and that makes me so nervous. I do often allow her to carry around my small "diaper bag camera". She has figured out which button to push to turn it on and which button to push to take pictures. The problem is that the camera is pretty small and for her to hold it her fingers are usually over the lens.

This first set of pictures is from a play date with Jen and Evie at the mall playground.

Jen's legs, her head is covered by the finger.

A playmate at the play area, again, covered by the finger.

The second set of photos is from an evening at home with dad in the den. Note the beautiful wood paneling, artistic angles of the photos and again, the finger in the third picture. She did do much better with a few by having the entire photo fingerless.

The wall of our den

Dad's foot and knee along with toys

Daddy is using the remote.

The third set of photos was in the back yard. Most photos taken this day only showed the finger with no grass, slide, dogs, etc. These were the best two shots.

Mom's shoe on the grass.

This last photo is my favorite. It actually would be pretty good except that the entire photo was upside down.

I thought about getting Katherine her own camera for her birthday. Her cousin Ty has the Fisher Price Toddler Camera which takes actual digital pictures that can be downloaded and printed off though they are pretty low resolution. It is easier for her to hold but it was not cheap.

Her friend Penelope also likes to take photos and you can see them on her blog. I am pretty impressed with Penelope's ability to keep her fingers out of the picture. These toddlers love to imitate their parents don't they.

That's funny mommy, that's funny

Katherine says this a lot. She things everything is funny or silly. Usually I think she is the one that is being funny. She does do the craziest things.

Today in the car she sat in the backseat talking to her feet. She was actually scolding her toes for getting out of the shoes. She said, "toes not stay out or spanking (then she spanked her feet). Obey Katherine". I think she understands the choice we give her of to obey or to be punished.

A few nights ago when we were in her room she decided to run around in a circle from her room, her bathroom, Squeak's room and the hall. She thought it was so funny and kept saying, "I running, I running fast!"

She loves to climb in our front yard tree. She is not quite big enough to really get up there because of they way the tree branches out but she has fun playing in it. In this photo she is silly because she is wearing her pajama tops with normal pants - she wore it all day long.


Katherine had a few days where she insisted on carrying a specific pile of stuff everywhere she went. She would circle her hands over the pile and say, "my stuff mommy". In this pile of stuff was her small blanket, little lamb, baby, her baby's patapum (carrier), baby's blanket, "dada" (doll), "dada's" blanket, her pillow and what she calls her napmat but is actually an waterproof pad that we have her sit on when she is on the couch in case she has an accident. As you can imagine, this is a lot of stuff to carry and she gets quite frustrated when she can't carry it all. If I offer, she says, "no mommy, my byself" - her version of "by myself".

The day before we ripped out the bathroom, Katherine sat at my vanity table and combed her hair. She kept saying, "I pretty, hair pretty, so pretty".

Today when we were in the car I wrote down her commentary on the workers. I was pretty amazed both at what she was comprehending and at how many thoughts she was stringing together in a way that I understood.

"Nana workers come Nana's house, and Katherine's house. Come everybody's house"

"Workers make mess. Workers cleaning now."

"My workers, mommy workers, nana workers"

"Where workers go?"

"Workers fix mommy bathroom"

Father Daughter Time

Tonight Sam came home early from work. Katherine was very excited because he was home very late last night. We spent a lot of time in the backyard. It is funny to see what kind of activities a father and a daughter will do together.

Anytime we go into the backyard one of the first activities is cleaning up Hooligan's poopoo. Katherine likes to go around the yard pointing it out to us so that we can clean it up. Lovely bonding experience.
Then she sat on her ball while watching daddy clean up some clippings from our tree and vines on the fence.
Now this is quality bonding. Daddy got excited when he heard the trash truck. He took Katherine out to see the robot at work. Daddy and Katherine love to watch robots on YouTube. Now this is more what you expect a father and daughter to do. They are looking for lady bugs. Katherine is very interested in nature. She loves to look at the "poly polies", grasshoppers, lady bugs and lizards. We are talking about how we need to get some kind of terrarium to put things in for an evening or a day when we catch them so that we can watch them and learn. Of course being a former science teacher I love this curiosity.

I do also want to point out Katherine's rather unique outfit. I don't think she could have found two items of clothing that matched less if she had tried. She was wearing the cute blue polka dot shirt with denim shorts. But, since she refused to potty before nap she woke up quite wet. She did not want to put on her khaki shorts but insisted on blue. There were no more blue shorts. So, she went to her drawer and pulled out those pants and put them on by herself. Oh, well. We had no where to go and it is pretty funny.

Nervous habit

Katherine has started to twirl her hair. She pulls is into a ponytail or just plays with it. She also loves to play with my hair though sometimes she pulls a little hard.

When she was done with dinner, she started to use her fork to twirl her hair. Ouch!

Well, she twirled and twirled enough so that the fork stayed when she let go. She thought that was pretty funny.

Inside Joke

Today we saw a joking side of Katherine that was quite funny. She actually made a comment that was an "inside joke" between the two of us.

Earlier this week we invited Jen and Evie to come over for lunch. Being our second week of staying home more than usually for potty training we wanted some fellowship and entertainment. While I was on the phone with Jen, Katherine said, "hoodan eet Evie". I was shocked and repeated for her "Hooligan eat Evie!" because that is what I thought she said. She said it again and I realized that she was saying "Holding Evie". She is really into holding babies these days and any child smaller than her is considered a baby. I was relieved that she did not want Hooligan to eat Evie but explained that Evie is only a little smaller than her and she would not enjoy being held.

Please don't feed me to the dog Katherine!
I would rather just be fed thank you very much!

Well tonight (4 days later) I was asking Katherine who she played with at MOPS. She said, "Hoodan". I laughed and said, "Hooligan, noooo, not at MOPS" and then realized that she was saying "Holden" a boy in her class. She laughed after I said Hooligan and replied "Hoogan eat Evie" as clear as day and then started laughing hilariously as did I. Sam was a little lost on why all of a sudden his girls were both laughing so hard.

I thought it was so fun that she remembered something that made me laugh several days ago and brought it up again. This is officially Katherine's first joke.

Fashion Faux Pas

Katherine, you sure have some definite preferences on what you wear some days. Usually I start off by giving you a choice of dress or pants. You choose and then I offer two outfits for you to choose from. Usually it works well. Most days I honestly could care less what you wear and it is not a battle I want to fight. If you want to wear a blue shirt, fine. If you want to wear a pink one, that is fine too.

Well one Sunday I had you dressed for church in a light pink and white skirt, white shirt, tights and pink dress shoes. After church we were having portraits made and you were going to change the skirt for a dress but I planned to keep you in the same tights and shoes. Well, on your own you went to your closet, took off your shoes, put them away and put on your hot pink crocs. Needless to say, they did not go well with the outfit. I asked a few times if you wanted to put your other pink shoes back on and you repeatedly said, "no, these". I decided to let you go to church with your hot pink crocs and your light pink outfit and deal with the shoes for pictures. It all worked out OK and I sure wish I had taken a picture of the ensemble.

When watching cartoons in your Santa jammies you ran to get your tennis shoes and insisted that daddy put them on. Cute!
Today I let you choose your shoes. You choose the boots. Not my first choice, but it was OK. One day for school you wanted to wear a red dress with brown and green flowers and you would not let me put on your cream colored tights. You went to your drawer and pulled out your pink, blue, green, yellow and white striped tights and almost got them all the way on by yourself. Talk about a clashing outfit. Luckily I was able to get your cream tights on before going to school or the fashion police would have arrested me for sure.

The day that it snowed you insisted on wearing your rain boots all day long. At least I chose an outfit that they did not clash with but they are too big and kept falling off.

I love the independence. I really have decided that most of the time letting you choose what you wear is perfectly fine. So what if it does not match perfectly. There are so many other battles that I need to fight with you. Wardrobe choices are not that important. It was funny because at church today I saw another mommy and we laughed about this very thing. Her 5 year old was wearing a black and orange dress with pumpkins on it with red shoes - in March.