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25 months

I was not sure if I was going to continue doing a monthly post after Katherine's second birthday but she just is doing so many cute things and learning so much that I could not resist. I actually read a blog where she just posted her daughter's 49th month so I guess I don't feel like too much of a dork. Katherine now says "I love you" all the time and to all of her family. It is so cute. She used to have to be coached but now she says "I love you too" after we say it to her and sometimes she says it on her own without responding to us. I love it!

For awhile she has been commenting on the color of people's eyes. Sometimes she will just start listing off "mommy has blue eyes, daddy has blue eyes, fafrine (Katherine) has blue eyes, Hoogan (Hooligan) has black eyes" We are working on extended family members as well. I only remember that Nana has green eyes, Pops has Blue, Jaime and Will have Brown, Sophia has blue and George's family blog name is the Blue-eyed zoo so I assume they all have blue. Grammy and Grandad, what color are your eyes? I need to go look at pictures.

She also knows all of her family members' names and who all is in the same smaller family unit. We will list one person in a family and she will list off all other people who live in that same house. We were especially impressed when we said "Uncle Justin" and she said "Leah" since she has only met Aunt Leah once and we only have one picture of her.

Katherine is getting better at counting. She can go up to 14 pretty consistently. For some reason she was getting stuck and could not remember 5 but after you prompt her she can continue up to 14.

She babbles all the time! Rarely is that child quiet - except when she meets a new person who asks her a question. I can decipher 90% of what she says and Sam can decipher about 50%. There are times though when she tells a long story of gibberish. It is so funny.

As with all toddlers there are a few speech quirks that Katherine has. I have asked my speech pathologist friends to make sure she is OK and at this point it is just cute. One thing she does is pronounce her hard "K" sound with a "T". Some of my favorite words are "tooties" (cookies) and "tean up mommy" when she wants me to clean up.

She "reads" her books to us. She know the name of almost every book and can sit and tell the story. I love that she loves to read. I think it contributes to her huge vocabulary. Today we went to the playground at the library. I went inside to get something and she followed shortly after with Sam to use the bathroom. Then she decided that she would rather sit and read all the books than go back out to the park to play. That's my girl!

This month she learned our first names. She now will sometimes call out "Sam, Sam" when she wants her daddy. The way she says my name reminds me of how my brother used to say it when he was little. It is something like "Sisty". She is also learning what her grandparents' first names are. It is pretty funny to hear her call for us by first name. We are not encouraging it but it is a good thing to know in case we ever get separated.

She knows that on Tuesday we go to Bible Study. One day she was in our bedroom and asked what the book was beside my bed. I told her my Bible Study. Now whenever she sees it she talks about Bible Study. I do hope that she will be a young girl that also enjoys studying her Bible.

Ever since her Birthday she has been fascinated with the ages of people though I do not know that she truly understands what it means when she says she is 2. She will say, "Fafrine is 2, Robert is 2, Evie is 1, Ben is 2, Fa (Sophia) is 1. Mommy 2?" and then she laughs because she knows that I am not 2. I have taught her that Mommy is 35. The problem is that a "th" sound is hard to say and usually comes out as a "f" and therefore "Mommy is firty-five". I do not like that she adds 10 years to my age.

I think she is going through a growth spurt. Almost every night this week Katherine has eaten the same thing for dinner that Sam and I have eaten. other parents of toddlers know that this is sometimes a challenge. For us it has been a huge challenge since we are always trying to get her to eat more. We are really trying to encourage more eating the family meal. We also have started eating dinner in the dining room and requiring her to stay in her booster chair until all three of us are done. We realized that in eating in the kitchen and letting her get up when she was finished had created a toddler with a short dinner attention span. Not a big deal at home but a huge deal when we go out to eat.

We pray before every meal. There have been a few times that we have forgotten and Katherine has reminded us to pray. We all hold hands and bow our heads as one of us prays. She really enjoys the prayer time and sometimes will ask to pray again later in the meal.

We are making great strides in potty training (note all the dedicated posts this week). we have been without any diaper or pull up for almost a week. Today she woke up dry in the morning and after nap as well as only having one tiny accident. At 25 months she is one of the youngest of her peers to be potty training but she is doing great. Everyone comments on how we are doing it so early. I encourage other mom's of toddlers to go for it.

Sam and I feel that we are in a really sweet spot right now. Katherine is eating, sleeping and pottying well. We remember the times in the beginning where those three things were our constant focus and source of stress. We are glad to have a few months in this sweet spot before we welcome Squeak when we can really enjoy Katherine without stressing about those things. Of course we are dealing with all kinds of other issues such as discipline, sharing, respect. . . but we are really enjoying where we are.

Wooohoooo!

This morning Katherine woke up totally dry! Huge accomplishment for a potty training toddler who is not wearing pull ups at night or nap or anytime at all. We are so proud. We are not accident free yet but we are progressing very well.

Good Friday!

Today is Good Friday and for us it has been a good Friday indeed. Nothing too monumental and some days that means it was good. My little girl is such a sweetie and we have had fun playing together today.

In the hustle and bustle of life and a week of potty training, I have almost forgotten that this weekend is Easter and that today is Good Friday, the day Jesus was crucified for our sins. Easter did come early this year and it kind of snuck up on me. In fact, this year is the earliest Easter any of us will ever see the rest of our lives! And only the most elderly of our population have ever seen it this early (95 years old or above!). And none of us have ever, or will ever, see it a day earlier! Here are the facts: The next time Easter will be this early (March 23) will be the year 2228 (220 years from now). The last time it was this early was 1913 (so if you're 95 or older, you are the only ones that were around for that!). I doubt my blog (or any blog really) has readers older than 95. I was ahead of the game by buying Katherine's Easter dress last May. Luckily it actually fits a year later. I, however do not have anything to wear to church on Sunday. I am still in that awkward phase where my normal clothes are too tight and my maternity clothes are too big. Maybe I need to go shopping. I do not yet have much of an Easter basket ready for Katherine and we have not had an Easter egg hunt yet.

I struggle with how to to present Easter Katherine. I don't want her to think it is all about bunnies, eggs and candy yet Easter has become so commercial like every other holiday and it is hard to find books that are not about bunnies, eggs and candy. On the other had, how ready is a two year old to hear about the death and resurrection of Jesus. I obviously want her to know the true meaning of Easter but that is so hard to explain on her level. We do have 2-3 books that are about the true meaning of Easter so she is being exposed and we are going to downplay the rest. This weekend we plan to go to a neighborhood egg hunt on Saturday and church on Sunday followed by lunch with Nana and Pops.

So I am curious, how does your family celebrate Easter and how do you explain it to your toddlers?

Cleaning Out

I am desperately trying to clean out the guest room to prepare it to become Katherine's "big girl" room. My goal is to move her into her new room in April so that she does not associate it with being displaced by her baby sister.

Our guest room has been a spare room that is a catch all for everything for the past 4+years since we moved into this house. It has been quite a chore to clean it out and it has led to cleaning out many other areas of the house. This is not a bad thing as our entire house really needs to be purged of a lot of stuff but it is making it take a lot longer than I had hoped to clean out the guest room.

Here are a few pictures of the room before I started cleaning it out.

The bed full of stuff
Hmm, my childhood desk, a box covered by a quilt, an antique (broken table), an exercise ball and a bookcase. A very random collection of things for one corner.
The closet full of all kinds of random things.

I started really by cleaning out my closet. Yes you read that right, my closet, not the guest closet. Hmmm, my closet is not in the guest room. Why would I start there? Well, in the guest closet are all kinds of things like my off season, outgrown and maternity clothes. Also there are some Christmas decorations, all of my gift wrap and gift bags, costumes (from years as a youth leader and camp counselor), leaves to our kitchen table and travel gear. When I clear out that closet, I will need to put all of that stuff somewhere and a lot of if will end up in my closet. So I now have a clean closet. I have cleaned out and given away a lot of outgrown and outdated clothes. I have put most of my summer wardrobe in bins in the garage and made room for my maternity clothes. I also cleared out a lot of space on the shelves for things like the travel stuff and Christmas decorations.

Next I cleaned out under my bed. Again, why my bed? Well, gift wrap is under the guest bed and now it and the table leaves need to go under my bed. I am embarrassed that under my bed was about 3 years worth of magazines and books. It seems that when company is coming over they get neatly stacked under the bed and out of sight. Luckily that was easy to clean and I put

the books on shelves and trashed a lot of the magazines with a goal of trashing at least one additional magazine per day. While there was nothing under the bed, we moved all of the furniture around and did a good vacuuming of the floor. Probably our floor under the bed has not been vacuumed since we moved in. It is amazing how dirty it can get under there.

Another day I ended up working on my craft armoire in the office. Yikes, still not in the guest room. That is because under the bed in the guest room was also some random scrapbooking stuff. When I went to put it in the craft armoire, there was not room so I started to reorganize my crafting supplies. I did not totally clean out my scrapbooking stuff but I did make room for everything I needed to put in the armoire.

The closet is now almost empty. The Christmas decorations are in the attic with the exception of the candles which will melt. The travel gear is in my closet. I spent most of a week organizing my gift wrap, gift bags, bows, ribbon and tissue paper. That stuff is breeding in my closet. You can see the fruits of my labor by a rainbow colored box of tissue paper (I know-Type A). Most of that is in the hall closet or under my bed.

There is still a lot to do and there is no telling when Katherine will finally get to move into her "big girl" room. But, when she does, the entire house will be a neater, cleaner place. And that my friends, is a very good thing.

I do already have bedding for both girls' rooms already. I found Katherine's on clearance at Pottery Barn. Her walls are yellow and it will match perfectly. She likes it a lot and talks about her big girl bed.

Even though we are having a second girl, we planned to buy both a new crib and new bedding. Both were handed down to me by college roommates (thanks Ashley and Diana) so we don't feel badly about spending money. I think it will help Katherine who is in the possessive "mine" stage to have it different and it is just fun to redo. The walls in that room are blue. It is not the easiest thing to find blue girl bedding that is cute. I found a new set on Craig's list this week and you can see it below. It came with everything but the pictures, mobile and lamp.

Much improved day

Today was a complete 180 from yesterday. Thank goodness. I was really nervous because we left the house at 9 and returned at 3. Yikes, how do I do that while potty training? (For those of you not interested in the details of my day, stop reading now. For those of you in the potty training world, rejoice with me!) And, I promise my next post tomorrow will not be about potty training.

I was determined not to use pull ups and to keep Katherine in "real" underwear all day even though we were going to be on the go. We were successful. We started out at Lynette and Caedmon's house for a short playdate with them and Julie and Dani. Katherine was dry by the time we drove 45 minutes to get to their house and she used Caedmon's toddler potty twice. Then we went to the chiropractor (the reason for our cross town travels for the day). Katherine remained dry and attempted to use the potty once. Then we went to visit Katherine's cousins who also live on that side of town. Shannon bought me a sit and stand stroller at a consignment sale last weekend so I wanted to pick it up. Katherine was still dry when we got there and used their potty once. Our one accident of the day was when the kids were in the backyard playing. Katherine said, "uh-oh poopoo" and I thought "great, I have to change poopy panties." Luckily she had just gone #1 and was about to go #2 so we made it on time! We drove home and she was dry at the end of over an hour in the car. Dry after nap, dry after dinner at the mall and dry when we got home! An excellent day in the potty training realm.

The only change I made was each time she was dry and each time she had a success, we not only put a sticker on the chart but I gave her a cookie. In reality, the cookies were organic animal crackers and in all she ate less than one snack pack. If it motivates her to hold it until she is in the right place then I am all for a little snack motivation.

Redo Part Deaux

Thank you to all my friends who emailed me some encouragement. It was just one of those rotten days. When I got home, I heard a funny noise in the kitchen. Well, there is a leak where the ceiling meets the chimney. Add that to the list of things to do. When Sam got home he said there was water in the garage. It has rained so much today that the sub floor of our house (pier and beam) has up to 3 inches of water in places. Our house is on a hill and the garage is 8 steps below the level of the house so the water is flowing from under our house and into our garage. Urgh when it rains it pours - literally today. (I just saw on the news that a school in our neighborhood reported 7.66 inches of rain today!)

Katherine was a sweetie today. Other than the fact that she had numerous accidents, she really was in a good mood and a joy to be around. I think she is rebelling the idea of panties, but at least she is not doing so in a tantrum, disrespectful way. I think she just would prefer her diaper and is being a little lazy.

The bright spot of the day was that when I woke up from my nap Sam called to tell me that the electricity in his building was out due to the storm and he was coming home early. This was a great day to hear that news and it was so helpful to have him here at 4:15! I am watching Dancing with the Stars right now and plan to go to bed when it is over at 9:30. My back is killing me and I am ready for bed.

I need a redo!

Can today please start over from the beginning? It has been a not so good, horrible, very bad day (I don't remember exactly how Shel Silversteen's poem went).

It started when Katherine woke up at 7 not with her usual "mommy, daddy, up" but with a weird whiny cry that I just knew meant that she was very wet and not happy about it. Sure enough, her training underwear and PJ's were soaked. I was expecting that. By 8:30 we had two more accidents. The first was just wet and the second was both wet and dirty. Luckily both were on the kitchen floor which is so easy to clean. As a bonus, mom's maid was at my house today (since they are remodeling) so not only did it get wiped up but the floor was properly mopped within an hour as well.

Not all of my desire for a redo has to do with potty training though. I had invited friends over for a playgroup Easter Egg Hunt. Only one person was able to come and then they called to cancel today because in a stroke of luck for their family her husband was off today and able to spend time with the family. So, I was now on my own for the morning. I had a midwife appointment scheduled at 2. I had just firmed up my plans to leave Katherine at a friends house when the midwife's office called to see if I could come in at 11:15 or reschedule for another day. I took the 11:15 appointment but that meant Meg could not watch Katherine because she had her own OB appointment this morning. I decided to just take Katherine since she did well last time.

This is where it went from a blah day to a horrible day. It was raining pretty hard so we got wet going in. The midwife was running behind. Katherine did OK but was getting pretty restless in the waiting room after being there half an hour. By the time we had been there an hour, she was done with it. She had one accident which luckily did not leak out of her training pants and she was hungry. Finally, the nurse said that there were still two people ahead of me and would I prefer to reschedule. I chose to do that because it would be at least 30 more minutes and Katherine would not have made it. When we left it was pouring even harder and there was a river flowing through the parking lot so I was soaked from the waist down.

We get home and I lost it. I was an emotional wreck and crying. Katherine was so sweet and empathetic. She kept saying, "mommy crying, mommy very sad, I sorry". She gave me hugs and kisses. Her training pants were wet but she did pee in the potty. We ate a good lunch and she went down for a nap. But not without peeing in her panties while 12 inches from her potty.

I think we are in a consciously rebellious phase with the potty training. At the doctor's office she found her changing pad that I was using for her to sit on to protect the couch. She proceeded to pull off her pants so I could put on a diaper (which I did not have). then at home she searched through her dresser for her diapers. Luckily I had put them all away. It is so tempting though. I will not give in! I expected to have accidents. It is a part of the learning process. Today she commented that it was icky. That has to be part of what motivates her to stay dry.

So, from 7am to 1 pm the tally is:
use the bathroom successfully - 2 times
have an accident - 6 times
I can't think of the last time when went to the bathroom 8 times in 6 hours.

PT Day 1 update

Well, today was our first day of panties, no diapers. They are all hidden. There were no protests at all this morning when I told Katherine that there were no more diapers but only panties. I showed her the sticker chart and explained that every time she went on her potty she would put a sticker on the chart and every time I checked and her panties were dry she would get to put a sticker on the chart.

A new sticker because I am dry!

I set a timer for every 30-40 minutes and when the bell went off we would check that her panties were dry and then she would run to the bathroom to put her sticker on the chart. Her first time to use the potty was not until 11:30. I was starting to get worried that we were going to have a HUGE accident. After her first success, we went outside to play. We took her potty out there with us. She immediately sat on it outside and did nothing. 5 minutes later she went to it again but had already pooped in her panties. Bummer! We cleaned up and talked about it. Outside she was more into the potty and she went to it about 5 times just to practice.

We are rarely home for the entire day so that was different for us. I tried to make sure we stayed busy. We watched TV (the mattress pad to protect the furniture). We played with play-doh, played outside and made chocolate chip cookies.

For nap I told her that she was not going to put on a diaper and so she needed to stay dry. I did put a pair of plastic pants on over her panties. She stayed dry! Our time between nap and dinner was not as successful because we took some time to make chocolate chip cookies together and that distracted her. We also had a contractor come over so I was not as attentive. So, she had two accidents. It was not as bad as I thought it would be. I was imagining floods of pee on my furniture or carpet. It was all contained in her panties so there was not really a mess at all.

Overall a pretty good day. The accidents were expected and really they are a part of the process and motivation. She has to know what it feels like to be gross in order to be motivated to stay clean and dry.

Happy Birthday Hannah

Hannah is a month younger than Katherine. We celebrated her 2nd birthday at the zoo. Katherine was a little confused and was saying "My Birthday" but I think she finally realized that it was Hannah's birthday.
This is the only picture of me and Katherine. There are no animals in the picture but if you look closely you can see what animal was almost in the picture.
I loved the turtle eating. You can tell he is old and I think he looks so wise.
Zoo pictures are usually of the back of Katherine looking at an animal. Pretty impossible to get a picture of her face and a picture of the animal. Her comment on the elephants, "big nose". We have a new book by Dr. Seuss about noses that she likes.

At lunchtime we ate at the kids zoo area. When finished the girls played on the spider web toy.

A lot of kids were in swim suits or stripped down to play in the water. I let Katherine do it as well. She thought it was so much fun.
The cupcakes had cute zoo animals on them. Katherine could not wait to eat hers.
The birthday girl enjoys her cupcake.

Time for a little "PT"

I only wish I were talking about Personal Training but no, it is time for Potty Training. This is the week I have chosen to make the final push for potty training. Katherine has been using her potty for quite sometime now but she has been wearing diapers as well so there is not the need in her mind to be totally potty trained. She has been ready for awhile but we are so busy that I have not set aside the time needed to do it.

This week is spring break for all of our activities so there is no Mother's Day Out, no Bible Study, no MOPS. Therefore, there is NO EXCUSE! We plan to stay home with the exception of my midwife and chiropractor appointment so that we can focus on potty training. Please do not call or email and tempt me to leave the house until at least Thursday. If things are going well at that point, we will think about it. But, do feel free to call or email to say that you want to come play at our house.

Here is my plan. Tonight I took all diapers and pull ups and hid them so that they are not an option for Katherine. I heard that some books suggest that you actually thrown them away, but that seems a bit wasteful to me. Maybe we will throw one away in the morning for the symbolism if that even means anything to a 2 year old. We will be wearing panties and training pants (without plastic covers) all day tomorrow, even for nap. I have my sheet saver ready for nap time so that I do not have to clean a huge mess if she does not wake up dry. I plan to play outside a lot so that messes (if they occur:) will be easier to clean up. I do have some training pants that I bought from a cloth diaper company to use if we need to run errands. They are also required for MDO.

So if any of you experienced potty trained moms (not you the mom being potty trained but your toddler - Ha) have any tips or last minute advice. let me know. Please pray for us.

Arboretum (yet again)

Yes we go to the Arboretum a lot and therefore have a lot of pictures there. We love it and have a membership. Right now the spring festival is going on and the tulips are out. It was pretty but I think in a week even more flowers will be in bloom.

We met my mom's friend Linda, her daughter Karen and granddaughter Katelyn for a morning at the Arboretum. Karen and I are 6 weeks apart and have known one another since birth and our daughters are 3 months apart. Every time we get together with the girls we have more fun. Now they are both not just walking but running and were quite a handful. I think everyone was exhausted by the time we went home.

Katelyn and Katherine

Katherine was running everywhere. She wanted to walk through the flowers (a big no-no) and she wanted to pick flowers. I was glad to have mom there to manage the stroller so that I could chase her around.

Karen and Katelyn

Both girls loved playing in the water.
In the flower beds.

The kids always love to play in the little houses so we saved that until the end. Katherine loved this house and was obsessed with shutting the door yet the door opened on its own. It was pretty funny.

200

This is my 200th post on this blog since I began this blog on July 15th. Before that I blogged at another site for 18 months. So, 200 posts in 243 days. As I said earlier this week, it is an addiction.

So, to celebrate my 200th post I am going to do a little walk down memory lane and share something cool that we have done. I read a book on photography of your baby when Katherine was a baby. It suggested picking a picture that you took every year on a birthday. We had already taken a family photo of our hands when Katherine was a newborn so we decided that we would take an annual photo of our hands. Kind of random but this book showed a similar project where a family had done this every year until the father died. The hands of the family grew in number and age and it was pretty cool. So, here are our "hand" photos from the past three years.

February 2006

February 2007

February 2008

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.

Allow me to introduce myself

My friends and family who are regular readers will find this title a little odd. You obviously already know me. As I have mentioned before though, I read quite a lot of blogs. I guess you could call it an addiction. It is what I do in the evening to unwind. As I look at my reader, I currently subscribe to 53 blogs of friends and acquaintances, 3 blogs of family members, 11 blogs of parents of multiples (just because I find it fascinating), 41 blogs of photographers, and 45 other blogs that I classify as "random mom blogs", ministry blogs and just other stuff that I find interesting. I started blogging in the summer of 2006, originally on another domain but I switched to this one this past summer when our family went to Norway on a 14 week business trip. I mainly blog about our daughter and just life. I read a lot of mom blogs which are much more "professional" than mine. They have large readerships with advertising and giveaways and from time to time I have thought about trying to build that but then I think that I spend way too much time blogging as it is and I have no business trying to do more.

One of the blogs that I subscribe to is 5 Minutes for Mom and this week they are hosting the Ultimate Blog Party. Since I was out of town last weekend I am behind on reading my blogs and therefore late in submitting my post for the Ultimate Blog Party.

So, for those of you who don't know me, I am Christy. I have a wonderful husband, Sam. We have been married for just over 5 years. Our daughter Katherine just turned 2 and we are expecting another baby girl in July. We also have a 4 legged friend, our dog, Hooligan.
I am currently a stay at home mom. Before this wonderful job, I was a teacher for 9 years in various school, mostly private schools. I love staying home with Katherine and would not trade it for anything. Sure, there are difficult days but I cannot imagine missing all of the things she is doing right now. Though I am a stay at home mom, we do anything but stay at home. Twice a week she goes to MDO and I run errands or get stuff done around the house. One day a week we go to Bible study. Every other week we have playgroup and every other week we have MOPS. If there happens to be a day with no regular activity, we usually end up with a playdate with someone. We rarely are home all day with nothing going on.
Our family loves to travel. Katherine is quite the pro having already been to 4 foreign countries and 4 other states for a total of 12 round trip plane trips (the numbers don't add up due to multiple trips to visit family in California).

We are very involved in our church. Currently we are community group leaders and I have been involved in a lot of other areas in the church over the years.

Well, those are the highlights of who I am. Thanks for stopping by for a visit. If you are visiting from the ultimate blog party, make sure you leave a comment. I will make sure to go check out your blog as well.

Preparing Katherine

Last night I posted about books we are reading to prepare Katherine for being a big sister. We do talk about it a lot. I was really close to my baby brother and mom said that she thought part of why I adjusted so well was that she included me in as much of the pregnancy as possible.

Katherine seems to get that there is a baby sister in mommy's tummy. Today she started saying that there was a baby sister in her tummy too! She loves the baby sister in mommy's tummy. She will rub my belly, kiss it and even give it zerberts/strawberries. Sometimes she is not as gentle and will sit or jump on my tummy and that is not fun.

This week she decided that the baby was hungry while she was eating her snack of goldfish. She lifted my shirt and proceeded to put goldfish in my belly button. Tonight she decided that the baby was thirsty and gave her a drink of juice through my belly button. Perfectly logical for a 2 year old to think that the hole in mommy's belly would be how to get food and drink it.