September 2, 2005
Today is the day Katherine is 3. I simply can not fathom how
quickly this has happened. Today she had a small birthday celebration at Ms.
Candice’s and they had cupcakes. This morning, I’d put her hair in buns and she
thought that was pretty funny since she calls her butt, buns too. It did cause
some confusion though. When I picked her up she said “mom, my butts are coming
loose”. I had to laugh at that one.
We went to our favorite pizza place and all of the waitress
& the owner sang happy birthday to her. They love her there and they don’t
usually sing to people. She really enjoyed that. We came home and let her open
the presents from the family. She got a vacuum, a cleaning set with a broom and
mop, a musini (a motion activated toy that plays music when you dance around
it), a doll house, a little people van and a Dora Candy land game. The vacuum
and the doll house were the big hits of the day. She also received a few gifts
in the mail that we let her open a few days ago. She got a ton of play do
accessories from an online friend of mine and a write on board for practicing
her writing skills. She also got a cute doll that she’s been toting around
constantly.
Grandma and uncle mike are coming in tonight. Tomorrow is
the birthday party. Should be fun.
September
3, 2005
We had Katherine’s birthday party today. Here are a few
things I learned about children’s birthday parties.
- Eating contests go over like a lead balloon when
children are encouraged to keep neat and clean most of the time. NOT one
kid would put their face into the whipped cream pie...not even to get to
the pudding at the bottom. K stuck her chin in but that was it. The
decorating of the pies went over ok though.
- Children do not come out of the womb knowing how to hop
in a pillow case. The "potato sack race" was won by Katherine
because she is a natural hopper.
3. Announcing "present time" and having all of the gift bags in one
spot on the floor is not a good idea. I swear you'd have thought we had a bunch
of football players lined up to go ransack her gifts. That was out of control!
I would recommend tying all non birthday children to chairs before announcing
the gift opening.
4. Pin the tail on the donkey is a good idea...even if some of the kids cheat.
Kids this age cheating is just plain funny. They are so obvious about it.
5. Put all breakable toys away. Katherine received a toy vacuum cleaner from us
the night before. All of the kids loved it and more than once I saw parts being
ripped from it. Luckily it's a pretty sturdy piece of equipment so it's not
actually broken but I feared for its life.
The party went off pretty well otherwise. K had a blast with her friends and
she enjoyed being the star for the day. Jenn and Bailey came down for the day
and they spent the night at our house. They had so much fun playing together
but the next morning; both girls woke up in awful moods so Jenn and Bailey
scooted out of here pretty early. K kept asking when her friend was coming
back.
September
8, 2005
Ever have one of those days where you know you shouldn’t get
out of bed but you do anyway? I had one of those days today. My cold is hanging
on but I felt a bit better than I did yesterday. K was being a bugger last
night so she went to bed at 8 which means an early morning wake up at 6am. I
believe that I’ve made my “morning ritual being upset and how it affects me”
clear in previous journal postings so I’ll leave that alone.
So I get up early and luckily K is in a pretty good mood.
Minimal whining & Lauren sleeps in a bit. K and I get on the bed and hug on
Lauren for awhile and I take Katherine to Miss Candice’s. I come home and at
10am I begin the nap time ritual for Lauren. I’ve decided that I’d like her to
stop napping in her car seat (which she’s great at) and have her nap in the
crib instead. Two hours later, no nap, one angry baby and one exhausted mommy
later we both crash hard on the bed together. So, I’ll try again tomorrow.
Then I leave the house at 2:30 to pick K up and take her to
her swim class which starts at 3:15. I got behind every stinking slow car in
town. Apparently today was “go at least 10 mph below the speed limit” day.
Someone forgot to fill me in. We get to swim class late but the teacher agrees
to take K into the pool for the 6 minutes that are left in her lesson. Cool!
Then I get a whiff of Lauren. The child has made what I’ve come to refer to as
a “clothes trasher”. The kind of giant poop that explodes out of the diaper and
up the front, back and sides. It was literally up to her chin. I think she must
have pooped out half of her body weight. It was pretty impressive. But I’m
prepared. I take the 6 minutes that K is in her swim class and I use about 60
wipes to give Lauren a good wipe down and I throw away her outfit. But, since
we’ve not had a “clothes trasher” in the last few month’s I no longer keep an
extra outfit in the car. Not as prepared as I thought. DOH! So we have a nakee
baby. Luckily the rest of the afternoon has gone more smoothly.
K has her 3 year checkup at the peds tomorrow. I have a lot
of questions to ask him like. Why won’t my child eat? Why won’t she sleep? Why
is she so flipping cute? Is she really mine all mine? Geez, I’m going to sound
like her. Woody has started calling her “cause why” since that’s about all she
says now. Oh the joy of Three!!!
September
10, 2005
Katherine’s doctor appointment went well yesterday. She’s 25
lbs and has jumped from the 3rd percentile at 2 years old to the 5th
percentile. The pediatrician was pleased with her growth. She’s also 36 inches
tall which puts her in the 25th percentile for height. Other than
that, she’s doing great. He was a bit worried that she will be board to tears
in Kindergarten since she missed the cutoff by 2 days. She will not be able to
enter school until two days before her 6th birthday. I am going to
look into what grade you can test them up and possibly just home school her
until then. I believe that would entail home schooling for K, and first grade
since I believe that 2nd grade is when you can test up. Then again,
socially, with her shyness, I’m thinking that perhaps starting later may
benefit her. As you can see, I’ve made no decision yet. I need to research some
things. Do I just put her into kindergarten at 6 years old knowing that she’s
probably more equipped socially to deal and just let her be board academically?
Bah! I just don’t know.
Lauren is the sweetest sleeper ever. I’ve been working on
getting her used to sleeping in the crib at nap time so that when she goes to
Candice’s in Dec, she will be prepared and not give Candice too many fits. I do
love nursing her to sleep though. She is so different than K was. When I used
to nurse K to sleep, it was a battle. She’d stay attached and as soon as I
tried to pull her off she’d wake up and scream. Lauren on the other hand, will
pet my arm while nursing then pull off a few times and roll over to go to sleep
only to wake herself up a bit after a few seconds, and roll back over to nurse
for another minute. This goes on until she starts playing with her hair. That’s
the sign…I know she’s almost asleep. She lets go and passes out. Precious.
September
13, 2005
I think I jinxed myself with the “Lauren is a great sleeper”
talk. She is now a teething demon. Someone
has taken my sweet baby and left a screaming, slobbering monster in her place.
The cold I've had for two weeks is not getting any better and that's most
likely due to the fact that I've had 6 hours total of sleep over the last 3
days. I had been feeling better before the "baby switch".
Lauren is usually such a great baby. She plays alone long enough for me to get
my work done, she eats great, and she sleeps great. Now, none of that is true.
She's woken up every night since Saturday, screaming and won't nurse or settle
back to sleep for more than 15 minutes at a time. She won't nurse much or eat
many solids and lord help me if I try to put her down at all. The kicker? She
won't nap for more than 15 minutes at a time either unless I'm holding her.
That's the worst since I do work at home and I can nap when she does if we get
a poor nights sleep. But not recently. It's like she's dangling the nap in
front of my desperate eyes and I want to believe it so much. Then I do, and I
lie down with her but I'm rudely awakened pretty quickly by the screaming &
crying.
I normally don't mind holding her as much as she will let me but unfortunately
my work is being audited and it's requiring some pretty intense brain work
(really hard when you are sleep deprived) and time. I worked one handed all day
yesterday from 9am until 11pm and I would say I actually got about 3 hours
worth of work completed between double checking myself for errors due to lack
of brain capacity, and holding Lauren.
Teething tabs, check. Advil, check. Ice pops, check. Sleep?? Not so much. 
I don't see any bumps on her gums but the mild fever she's had and her attitude
all point to teething. I hope they hurry up and pop through. K never really had
a problem with cutting teeth...or maybe she did and I blocked it out...sort of
a post-teething-stress-disorder?
I can't nap today even if Miss fussy-butt does since the maid is coming soon, I
have a hair appointment that I will be charged for if I don't go, K has
swimming lessons and I have to go to the grocery store or we will be having
pasta with nothing on it for dinner. Ok, I know that sounds bad. “Oh, man, the
maid is coming. Woe is me”. I can laugh at myself even when I’m wallowing in
self pity.
September
15, 2005
Ok, things are better. She’s slept better for the last two
nights. Whew! I was getting scared there for a bit. Lauren ate almost 2 full
jars of baby food last night. Maybe she’s starving? That’s a lot more than
usual. Weird. Still no tooth but I’m sure it’s coming.
She has started to repeat things you say and she can now say
Ma-ma, na-na (nursing), da-da, dat (cat) and uh-oh. Super cute! Love it. She
also has a sign for “I’m hungry, feed me now” and that would be the lip
smacking when she’s looking at you. Funny stuff.
September
16, 2005
Oh man are kids ever funny. Yesterday was “favorite animal”
day at Katherine’s daycare. Apparently, all of the kids picked sheep as their
favorite animal. When Woody asked K why a sheep was her favorite, she replied
“because they have meatballs all over them”. Too funny!
So this morning I asked Candice where Katherine may have
gotten the idea that sheep are covered in meatballs. Candice laughed and said
that when they were doing their craft for animal day, that she was going to let
the kids make sheep by gluing cotton balls on the paper but she didn’t have
enough so instead they made lions with brown pom poms…I guess that in
Katherine’s brain, all round brown things are meatballs.
September
17, 2005
Due to football season, your schedule
will be temporarily revised.
So Woody wants to be able to watch
football. With two young kids in the house, that’s pretty much impossible. So,
we’ve worked out a fair solution. He watches the girls for 4 hours on Saturday
and I get them on Sunday for 4 hours. That way we each get some free time to do
what we want. Today, I will sleep. Last weekend I worked and it really didn’t
feel much like a break at all. I just worked and wished I was playing with the
girls instead.
This morning we all went for a swim and
Katherine showed woody some of her new swim class skills. She can now float on her back all by herself
and swim a short distance from the wall to a waiting person. She’s really doing
great.
Now for my rant. Stupid Nickelodeon. They
are wrong. What are they thinking? Honestly, getting kids addicted to ‘Go Diego
Go’ and then not having it on at all over the weekend?!!? Grrrrrr. All I've
heard today is "can we watch go Diego go mom? I've been a good girl".
How do I explain to her that out of 1000 channels go Diego isn't on a single
one of them for 48 hours?
I did let her play on the website and she had fun with the Go Diego games and
videos but it's not enough. It's like giving a virgin daiquiri to an alcoholic.
It's gonna be a long weekend
September 25, 2005
Quirky. That’s what these girls are.
Quirky. For example, Katherine’s obsession with the drum that sits in the
hallway. Every time she passes it, she must hit it. If she’s running to the
bathroom, it’s usually a quick loud bang! If she’s coming to the living room after
waking up in the morning, she will walk up to it slowly, place her babies and
blanket on the floor, give it a sleepy tap, pick up the babies and blanket and
continue on her way. She can not, not hit the drum in passing.
And Lauren is already exhibiting
similar actions. I was playing one of the Baby Einstein videos in the car for
her on the way to drop off Katherine and go to the gym. Lauren would start
fussing every day. She’s never fussed in the car before so I was wondering what
was up. Then I noticed that it was the scene where there is a yellow spinning
top and a sun dancing. She hates them. Flat out can’t stand them. They make her
cry. So now, I know the music cue to forward to the next section…which begins
with Robots. Lauren does not have a robot phobia.
Speaking of Lady Lauren. That dang
tooth still hasn’t popped through. Is she going to be one of those kids who
teethes for months and is miserable then like 6 teeth come in at once. Well, I
for one sure hope that’s the case because seriously, if only one little stinkin
tooth pops through after the last two months of “signs” and pain, I’m going to
be a bit more than miffed. Poor kid. I’m
convinced that it’s right around the corner. She’s had “drool stool” all
weekend and she’s started to chomp me occasionally. Biting worse than pinching?
Hmmmm. I dunno…which do I dislike more? Oh, both really about equally.
Katherine is still playing soccer but
she’s not really playing. She gets all hyped up on the way to the game and she
will kick the ball into the goal during practice but when the game actually
starts, she distances herself from the ball as much as possible. Most of the
other kids will get into the pile and kick each other & knock one another
down but not my K. She’s hanging out in the corner of the field watching the
madness and looking oh so cute in her soccer uniform. She’s also really great
about cheering on her team from the sidelines. That’s my girl!
Just a side note for any of you who are
anxiously awaiting news of any other Wright offspring. There will be none. We
made sure of it Friday. Woody had the operation and is healing up nicely after
taking only one day off of helping with the girls. If we decide that we really must impose our
parenting on another kid, we will just have to adopt some unsuspecting
boy-child and call him ours. J However that would but Woody and I at a
distinct disadvantage as far as being outnumbered by shorties so I’m thinking
it will probably not happen. Thus I’m trying to enjoy Lauren’s disappearing
babiness as much as possible.
This coming week we have swim classes
on Tuesday and Thursday and a Soccer game on Friday night. Next Monday is
Lauren’s 9 month checkup.
