Another week

As I think back upon this past week, it's hard to come up with much really noteworthy. We had our normal weekly morning activities, following by afternoons and evenings spent outdoors. Monday through Thursday were absolutely beautiful, but Friday, Saturday, and Sunday were pretty cloudy and rainy. By Sunday evening we were all feeling a bit cooped up.

I suppose one of the exciting events was that we (meaning Matt) finished our backyard play area on Friday. Hooray! Over the past three years, we've aquired quite a bit of outdoor play equipment (slides, swings, etc.) so we finally decided to enclose a portion of our yard to keep all of this "stuff". We (again Matt) also enlarged our sandbox in the process. Our own playground, as Anna calls it, is great; the girls, and some of the neighbor kids, love it.



Kate is getting more and more confident with walking, although crawling is still faster most of the time. She's also pretty good with table food; in fact, we may be able to retire the baby food pretty soon ... hooray! She is certainly a meat and potatoes (and cheese, her favorite) kind of kid, although she's been enjoying her veggies and different fruits a lot more lately. She surprises us sometimes with what she really seems to crave. I didn't really know that you could succesfully eat raw pear chunks with only two teeth, but Kate ate almost half a pear the other day at lunch :)

Sweet Anna is gettting really excited about Matt's birthday (on Friday). We've had cards and gifts for him for about a week now and she keeps reminding him that she wno't tell him about our surprises or secrets :) She's actually been really good about keeping birthday secrets from him, even when he pesters her about it.

Well, like I said, not too much noteworthy. Sometimes I feel like it takes a lot of effort to just maintain status quo here, and we've had a few of those days lately :) It probably doesn't help that Kate is fighting another cold, our first one in over a month. Hopefully it's short-lived and contained.

Ups and Downs

The "honeymoon period" from me being gone lasted until about Wednesday last week. Monday and Tuesday were wonderfully fun days, even if we were already getting back into routines. But by Friday at lunch I was ready for another long weekend away :) Here's a snapshot of Thursday's challenges ... Anna fell asleep on our bed at 4 p.m. while I was feeding Kate.


To really understand this, you must know that Anna is a very consistent 1 p.m. - 3 p.m. napper, but for some reason on Thursday, she got up after 1 and was wandering around inside looking for me (I was out back planting potatoes and missed the door noise on the monitor). Our rule is usually she needs to rest until she sees a 2 on her clock, but most days she's alseep pretty fast anyway. Well, we had a nice, long, loud disagreement about whether or not she needed to stay on her bed until she saw a 2. Needless to say, she didn't take a normal nap that day. Instead, the "plan" was to go grocery shopping after Kate woke up. Kate got up, I fed her, and we found Anna sound asleep on our bed. This kid still really needs her nap ... and we didn't make it to the grocery store.

We're learning even more lately about just how deep Anna's empathy goes, in case we didn't know already. Her newest way to express her sensitivity is to change fairy tales. For example, according to Anna, the goats in "The Three Billy Goats Gruff" invite the troll to eat some tasty grass with them in the meadow at the end of the story. I'll bet you didn't know that one :) Also, instead of running off because she is afraid of the bears, Goldilocks gets invited by Baby Bear to eat porridge with the family. My personal favorite is that the little pigs invite the Big "Good" Wolf in to have cookies instead of him blowing down the brick house. Big "Good" Wolf, you ask? Seriously, I didn't make that one up. Anna came up with it on her own this afternoon and insisted I call it the Big Good Wolf.

Kate, on the other hand, is one tough cookie. Of course she has her own sensitivity quirks, but she's a bit tougher than her big sister. I think you probably have to be tough if you're a little sister, right? Anyway, Kate is pretty bold when it comes to both her physical development as well as her socializing. (Yes, in this picture she is trying to climb the ladder ... both feet off of the ground ...)

She says hi and waves to just about anyone she meets and has no fear about making "friends" with babies her size. In fact, last week she and another 1 year old were playing a game in which she tried to take his pacifier out of his mouth. Both kids had never met before, but were laughing and smiling the whole time. She's also getting a lot more confident about walking, even initiating an independent 10 step journey on the driveway last week, although crawling is still her preferred method of movement.

I think in the past week we have visited about a half dozen parks in our neighborhood or in McFarland. We're such suckers for any good outdoor activity, and local parks are some of the best right now. Anna has to try just about every item at any new park we find while Kate is happy climbing up the stairs and sliding down the slides. How did we ever survive the winter?!

Finally, in the past week, I've been able to do a lot with the garden! I tilled things up last week, planted peas, potatoes, onions, lettuce, spinach, and radishes, and we've harvested asparagus and some rhubarb. I love spring!

"Mommy's vacation"

This past weekend I got a much needed break from being a mommy; I got to go with some friends from church on our semi-annual girls' getaway weeekend. We left Friday morning and didn't get back until Saturday evening, just in time for kids' bedtime. Our trip included a stop at an outlet mall, Chicago-style pizza for dinner, a Christian concert on Friday evening, my first night without kids in more than a year, and Navy Pier on Saturday. Needless to say, the whole experience was wonderful and refreshing. In addition to all of the great fellowship and activities, one thing I truly enjoyed was not having to deal with anyone else's digestive system, either the input or the output, for 36 hours :)


I think the experience gave all of us in the family a renewed appreciation for one another. Matt got a taste of stay-at-home-ness while I realized again how great a dad Matt really is. Matt even took the girls to Culver's for lunch, to a cookout Friday evening that another dad had organized, and to the zoo on Saturday morning. Whew!

The vacation continued on Sunday when Matt and I spent the afternoon driving to and from Iowa to look at, and then purchase, a new (to us) truck. I've come to think of it as a "truck upgrade" since the current one has more holes in the body than we can count and we're not quite sure of the safety of it's bed. Anyway, my mom was driving through and watched the girls from church until about 4, then Melissa came over to play and take care of dinner.

By Sunday night, I missed my babies! The whole experience reminded me again of how thankful I am that I can be home with Anna and Kate; only seeing them for about an hour in the evening on Saturday and Sunday was certainly different from normal.

The girls did great without me/us (*sigh*), but as Melissa reminded me, that's a good thing :) That's the goal of parenting ... to work yourself out of a job ... right, Mom?

Anyway, one noteworthy item about Kate is that she is trying really hard to talk and walk. She uses a handful of signs, points fairly effectively, and tries to imitate some words. She can also take a few steps at a time, but she usually doesn't initiate it. I give her a week, maybe two, before she makes the big transition to trying to walk on her own.



What to say about Anna? She's great. Loves "Super Why" on PBS, is really full of energy, sings all the time, tells jokes, helps me unload the dishwasher and vacuum up the floor with the dustbuster after meals, and can't get enough of her books. Let's hope this honeymoon period from me being gone over the weekend lasts all week :)

Sweet Kate

Kate is such a blessing. Even though diaper changes and clothes changes are getting more and more challenging, we just can't help smiling and laughing with her; she has such a fun personality. Here's a few of her favorites these days ...

We've already instituted this season's driveway play and often spend time out there after dinner. Kate loves to push a toy up and down the driveway, again and again, saying "go, go, go" whenever she goes fast. (Notice the black knees in this photo; I'm going to have to find some darker pants for this kid ... she has no issues with falling and getting right back up.)

One of Kate's favorite games right now is playing "beep" or "honk" with your nose. She either "beeps" it but putting her index finger on it or "honks" it by squeezing it with her hand, and then laughs, laughs, laughs. Anna loves to play, too, as either the "beeper" or the "beepie".

Kate also likes to play peek-a-boo with anyone and everyone, at home, at church, or wherever we might be; she's such a social kid ... and a chatty one, too. She really tries to talk to us, though not very intelligibly. Besides "go", she'll also say "ma, ma, ma, ma, ma" if she's following me around the kitchen and wants my attention. We're pretty sure she has a word for duck, although it comes out more like "guh", but it's always the same sound and always directed at a duck.


Also, Kate has figured out this past week or so that she likes table food, or at least some of it. She's usually pretty hesitant about trying something new, and right now most of it IS new to her, but when she finds something she likes, she devours it! Last week it was an enchilada bake and then a mashed potato bake. This week it's bread.

Besides the update on Kate, the only really notable event from last week was a "hiking" trip to a nearby state park with some friends from church. We spent the morning with them hiking, picnicing, and playing outside. Anna had her first experience flying a kite ... pretty successfully, too!


The girls napped (sort of) on the way home and then we all laid low for the rest of the day ... the girls were certainly wiped out by the end of the day and both were sound asleep by 7:30.

Easter was nice for us, too. Matt took Friday off to work on some projects around the house; the Easter bunny visited on Sunday; we had brunch on Sunday at church before the service, came home for naps, then headed over to have dinner and fellowship with some friends. All in all, a good weekend. (Here's the best shot I got of the girls in their dresses before they started melting down ... I should have tried to take it before church, instead of after ... still, it shows their personalities pretty well :)