Melts my heart

I love all of the fun things that Katherine says. As Nana and I say, she is now fluent in English. I am amazed at her vocabulary and ability to communicate. Here are a few of my recent favorites.

Friday when I was reading to her and snuggling at nap time we had the following conversation.

Katherine: "Mommy, I wish you were a kid still."

Me: "Why"

Katherine: "Because you would be my best friend."

Then Saturday she had a surprise afternoon with Nana and Pops. Here is a conversation with Nana.

Katherine: "What day is today?"

Nana: "Saturday."

Katherine: "Saturday is my favorite day."

Nana: "Why?"

Katherine: Because Saturday is a Nana day."

Day of Birthdays

A few Saturdays ago we had 3 birthday parties in one day. It was a fun and tiring experience.

First was Kyle's 4th Birthday party. Kyle was in Katherine's class at school last year and lives in the neighborhood. He had a fire truck theme and the kids played all kinds of water games. You can see Kyle's daddy is getting attacked by water balloons.

Next we went to our cousin Ty's 4th birthday party. It was at a neat kids play place. Unfortunately I broke my camera lens while there so I do not have many photos.

Last we went to the 2nd annual family birthday party for Sam's brother's family. We celebrated Emily's 8.5 birthday, Nathan's 6th birthday and Hannah's 3rd birthday. It was at a fun park. The photos are thanks to Shannon's sister, Laura since my camera was broken.

Caroline is becoming quite good at playgrounds. She climbed up the playground and went to the slide and down it all by herself. At first I would hold her hand and she would run down the slide. I will have to watch out for her or she will really get hurt. You can see she has quite a scrape on her head and that was from falling while walking on our sidewalk.

Katherine's Pumpkin

Last year I bought on clearance a cute "Mr. Potato Head" set that was specifically for a pumpkin. It was the perfect pumpkin activity for us. No huge mess and a really cute result. Plus, it won't make our pumpkin go all icky before Halloween. We may still carve it closer to the holiday but for now we have "Mr. Dragon Pirate" on our kitchen table. I see that Target also has a princess set so we may be purchasing that one next.

State Fair

My sister in law and I braved the fair with 5 kids and no dad's for help. The day could not have gone better. It was a little cool but very pleasant. Kids were overall well behaved. Crowds were not huge. We had fun.

We started off in the auto building because that was the gate where we came in. The kids were really not too interested though I saw a sweet minivan. Did I just call a minivan sweet? I must be getting old and "uncool" but my goodness, it had a table in the middle and the middle row could turn around to face the back row. How much fun for road trips. There was also a wireless router in the back. The price tag was almost 40K though so I don't think our family will be purchasing that minivan anytime soon. The favorite things in the auto building were the remote control cars and the robot.

Next we went to the dog show. Here is a photo of me and Caroline and not the dogs.

A favorite is always the petting zoo. There were the typical sheep, pigs, baby goats and the more rare giraffe, camel, ostrich and bison. I gave in and bought Katherine a cup of food for the animals.

After lunch we went to the kids farm. The kids get an apron and basket to go through the farm and water plants, feet animals, plants seeds and harvest the crops.

Next we went to the butterfly house at the gardens. It was pretty cool though I am not sure it would be worth the price if we did not have a coupon. They had papers with pictures of the butterfly species and the older kids were trying to find all of them.

It seemed that everyone had a lot of energy and wanted to run around, especially Caroline so rather than going back out into the fair we stayed in the gardens for a bit. The cousins had a game of tag and just ran around.

This was the cheapest visit to the fair I have had. I spent only $19 - $10 for parking $1 for the petting zoo food and $8 for the butterfly museum. I had free admission tickets for all of us and we did not buy any food. I am doing a strict diet cleanse and could not eat any of the fried fair food. I was a little sad but my brown bag lunch was good. I mainly craved a soft drink.

Naptime woes

I have written about this numerous times on Facebook but don't know that I have recorded my nap time woes on the blog. We are really struggling with naps and have been for a few months. Really it has been a challenge since Caroline was born in that I don't want either child to wake up the other yet I want them to sleep at the same time. That means that often one will be fussing either because they don't want to go to sleep or because they have awakened and want me to let them out.

We have never been strictly scheduled at our house meaning naps happen at flexible times. That is good and bad. Katherine was pretty regularly taking a 2 hour nap and it started any time from 2-4 but it seems to be getting later. That in turn is creating a later bed time. Being 3.5 years old she is trying to give up her nap but she really still needs it. We are in that phase where no nap creates an evening disaster but going down for a nap often is a challenge because she really is not tired yet. If I let her skip her nap we have a hard time getting her to bed earlier than usual so that solution is not working well.

So right now we are in the phase where Katherine still has nap time about 6 days of the week. There always seems to be one day where it really does work better to skip it for one reason or another. During that nap time she will sometimes sleep and sometimes have "quiet time". I never know what kind of day it will be when I read her books and put her down. Usually she starts off fine and about 10 minutes later it starts. I hear her voice calling over the monitor. It is supposed to be quiet time but it is not really that quiet and I have to go in there numerous times. Sometimes it wakes up Caroline and that is really frustrating.

Today it got to the point where it truly was comical. I was in the office with the video monitor on but the sound off. I could tell Katherine was awake and talking so I turned on the volume. She talked for at least 20 minutes.I was laughing at all she was saying as she looked straight into the camera.

"Mommy do you hear me or are you pretending not to hear me? I need you to hear me. Will you answer me? I love you mommy. Did you hear me? I love you. Are you there? I don't hear a word. Are you answering me or not? Which one? No or yes? Maybe yes or maybe no. Do you hear me? Please. Pleeeease!"

After she had been in her room long enough (though no sleeping took place) I let Caroline to in her room to play. A few minutes later I hear, "Mooooom, baby Caroline is taking off her pants! Caroline, you need to leave your pants on. I can see your bottom. Baby Caroline is taking off her pants and I'm not. I am just playing."

Oh what an adventure.

Pumpkin Patch #2

Sunday we went to the Arboretum as a family. It was such a fun day. It was perfect weather and actually felt a bit like fall. It was cloudy and cool but not too windy or cold. Of course we spent most of our time at the pumpkin patch. The kids had fun running around, getting dirty and playing with the pumpkins.

We had someone try to take our family photo. The kids are at such a tough age for this. She made the comment to smile like a monkey so Katherine started acting like a monkey. Then we were tickling them so we had lots of fun faces.