September 13, 2006
Wow! How lame am I? The real question is “how busy am I?”
and I don’t even want to discuss it. All I have to say is how dare work
interfere with my journaling? Hrumph!
So, here we are almost half a month past Katherine’s 4th
birthday. My little girl is 4. I can not believe it. Day to day life is pretty
much the same as always but I am noticing the lovely little lady that she’s
becoming. She’s an observant little smarty pants and just as loving as can be.
She really enjoys babies and she’s very gentle with them. She’s obsessed with
dogs. As I noted a long time ago, she is showing signs of being a teachers pet
but there are worse things to be in my opinion. It may not make her terribly
popular with her peers but I wasn’t ever popular and I think I turned out
pretty ok. She seems to prefer smaller quieter groups over large boisterous
ones as evidenced by a recent visit to a new daycare that I was enrolling
Lauren in. I wanted to at least offer K the option to transfer from Miss Ana’s
class to the new school if she was interested. The classroom was loud and full
of kids getting ready for recess. Katherine looked at me, with the stress
visible in her eyes, and said “mom get me out of here. I do not want to come
here”.
She’s learning her letters and has quite a few that are
easily recognizable. Her name is coming along and she is now writing MOM on
everything that she does at school. She brought home her first homework
assignment yesterday and we worked on that today. Yes, I took pictures, did you
expect less?
We had a big birthday weekend. Susan and Brad (grandma and
poppy) came down for a couple of days and we did the whole birthday cake thing.
We’d opened presents throughout the day so that she wouldn’t get overwhelmed.
Her favorite gifts were books, a Leapster L-max learning game (handheld
computer with cartridges for drawing, writing, etc), a puppet theatre that I
made from a bookcase and clothes. She got
a lot of books since parentingclub.com was doing a fundraiser for a members son
who has leukemia. I’d forwarded the link to a lot of people and many bought her
books for her birthday. The puppet theatre was the best as far as actually
giving it to her. Mom and I sat behind it and had the puppets sing happy
birthday to her. For some reason my mom was channeling Edith Bunker and by the
end of the song, I had tears running down my face from the insanity of it all.
Our cleaning lady brought over a giant bag of dress up clothes for her and
that, coupled with the Doctors Kit that Vel and Drew got her, has kept her
little imagination going for days.
On the Sunday after her birthday, we packed up the car and
headed to the All Stars Music resort at Disney World. We met the Dennis’ and
got rooms with a door connecting them. It was madness but fun too. Imagine 2
four year olds (birthday’s within 2 days of each other), a 20 month old
(Lauren), a 16 month old (Nora), two harried moms and two tired poppas all
crammed into an area about the size of an average living room for 3 days and
two nights. You’ve got the makings for two things…fun or major meltdowns.
Luckily, we had mostly fun. We spent a lot of time at the resorts pools. We
brought the karaoke machine and that provided about 10 minutes of entertainment.
We went to downtown Disney and walked around a bit and just hung out in the
room and tried to see how many juice boxes, cereal bars, goldfish and grapes we
could mash into the hotel carpets. The big surprise for the 4 year olds was a
“big girls day”. Amy and I took Katherine and Sophia to Downtown Disney and we
spent some time shopping and snacking. Then we went to the bibbidi boppiti
boutique and the girls had princess makeovers. Katherine chose the long hair
extensions which the “fairy godmother” teased on top making her look like a
munchkin 1980’s country music singer. Katherine took the look even further by
choosing blue eye shadow. It was all topped with nail polish and a hefty dose
of glitter. Too funny. The girls really enjoyed that. We then took them to
Planet Hollywood for lunch to show off their looks before we headed back to the
hotel. All in all it was a good time. We went to Sea World the next day and
spent a half day visiting our pal Shamu and the
Lauren is being a nut lately. She’s starting to count but
she always skips “one” and her three sounds like “fee”. This has caused a new
family joke. The girls were running laps around the couch one evening with
daddy watching. Lauren would stop and count, then go. So it was “too, fee,
go!!” Woody interpreted it at “go two feet go!” so now Lauren is two feet. It’s
quite fitting really. I mean she is about two feet tall and she has two feet.
How perfect! She’s also working on colors. I am beginning to suspect that she
likes pretending to not know things. She always says things are green and I’d
swear she doesn’t know her colors at all but the other day she was watching my
computer and some fish were swimming around on the screen. She said “two fish!
Blue and green!” and she was right, there were two fish. A blue one and a green
one. She’s a stinker.
I have noticed her hitting lately so I’m going to have to
keep that in check. Her jumping skills are getting better and she’s almost
getting some air. She is enjoying dancing and singing and reading. This child
loves to look at books. Katherine was reading to her today and it was way cute.
September 18, 2006
It’s starting. The sibling stuff that you always hear about
but swear that your kids will not go through. Today, all the way home from the
store we hear “mom! Lauren’s touching me! Stop it Lauren!” We turn around and
Lauren has her hand on K’s arm…then we pull her arm away (as she smiles and you
know she would roll her eyes if she knew how) and 2 seconds later we hear “Mom!
Lauren’s foot is touching my leg!” and sure enough upon inspection, Lauren is
in fact stretching her leg out to touch her sisters leg with her pinky toe. Oh
the torture!!!!!!!!!!!!
Katherine had a good one today. When we drove into our neighborhood
Woody said “hey! We are in our neighborhood” and Katherine said “do you know
why they call it a neighborhood? Because the people wear hoods”. Wha? Hua?
By the way, this is one of her things. “do you know why they
call it
oh! we did have a breakthrough on Sunday. Every
morning when Katherine gets up it's "mom. I want Caillou (or the show
du'jour) and chocolate milk" god forbid I dare to go pee or heat up a cup
of coffee before I jump up to make her stupid chocolate milk. As a certifiable
non-morning person, it always put me in a snit right away. So, I put her milk
on a lower shelf in the fridge, set a cup, the chocolate (slightly opened so
she can tear it the rest of the way easily), a spoon and a towel for messes.
She's so proud that she can make her own chocolate milk. The only drawback is
that she was so excited with her new skill that she got up at midnight on Sunday,
made her chocolate milk and left the milk on the table all night. She didn't
spill a bit though and frankly, I'd rather wipe up a bit of milk than be
directed by a 4 year old immediately upon waking.
September 26, 2006
Lauren is potty training. Poops and all…yahoo!
I finally got meds for my anxiety and I’m feeling
like a new, happier woman.
Katherine has been in sweet girl mode for about a
week. She had some homework this week. 25 words. Most of them two-three
letters. Hi, Me, Mom, And, If, Be etc. She and I were working on the first 5
tonight and she sounded out cat! She actually read it. I was so proud of her
and you could tell she was proud of herself…which is even better in my opinion.
She said, “daddy! I read cat!”
Grandpa Henry has been visiting this week and the
girls are really enjoying his company. I suspect he’s played more rounds of Go
fish, Candy Land, High Ho Cherry-O and the fishing game, than he’s ever played
in his entire life.
Last weekend we all went to Tarpon Springs and took
the eco boat tour to the gulf. We didn’t see much wildlife but watching
Katherine and her daddy on the prow of the boat as it sped through the water, his
strong arm supporting her little body. Her pigtails were flying backwards and
her little arm was clutching his back…it was almost too much for my heart to
take in. It was beautiful. Lauren slept through the whole thing.
September 27, 2006
I took Katherine to have her blood drawn this
morning. I’m having her tested for allergies. She was so brave. She wasn’t
exactly happy but she didn’t cry at all and she was still as can be. There was
another little boy getting his blood drawn at the same time and he was FREAKING
out. Katherine was quite proud of herself.
September 28, 2006
It’s a phase….right? It has to be a phase or I may go
utterly mad, and soon! Lauren is not only hitting her sister and engaging in
typical irritating little sister antics, she is also unable to be left
unsupervised for a split second. Doing such things as going to the bathroom or checking
your email, while she’s under your care, may result in such things as; all of
the wipes in the wipe warmer being pulled out and spread all over the house,
the emptying of all Kleenex boxes within the confines of the home, climbing on
the kitchen table or up on the top bunk, or drinking something and then
promptly spitting it back out on whomever (sister, pet rats) or whatever
(carpet, tables and clothes) may be in her way. Today, I made the mistake of
staying on the couch when she ran past me into the bathroom. She stayed a
little too long for my comfort so I called out…nothing. I got up to check on
her and guess what? The little stinker had emptied the bathroom trash can into
the toilet. Let me add that pull ups, all 6 of them, are very absorbent when
wet and will actually soak up all of the water in a toilet. How’s that for a
useful nugget of info?
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