Hayley and Kate Minter

Our sweet kitty of two-and-a-half years passed away yesterday.  Rod had a sudden onset of kidney failure and by the time we found out what was wrong, it was too late to save him.

Hayley has been most affected by this loss because it is her first real brush with death (that she can remember).  The death of a beloved pet is hard on anyone, but it is especially difficult for a child who cannot understand why it has happened, why she just can’t have her kitty back.  Hayley cried off and on all day in school, and she wrote this on the back of one of her coloring papers (this is verbatim, and spelled the way she wrote it):

“We loved Rod.  We liked Rod.  We cerd for Rod.  We fed Rod.  We peted Rod.  We loved Rod so muh.”

Poor Hayley.

Wow, I can’t believe it’s been three months since I blogged about the girls.  But it was a busy three months, I swear!  I spent most of November writing, but not here.  Then the holidays came around.  I don’t have as much of an excuse for January…so let’s catch up with as much as I can remember about what’s been going on:

Since Kate turned two on November 1st, she has continued to make progress with her speech and with potty training.  Wade and I have noticed that Kate doesn’t really stop talking from the moment she wakes up until the time she goes to sleep.  She pretty much has a constant running commentary going on about what she’s doing or what’s going on around her.  And she’s started the “repeating-thing” that we remember from Hayley’s younger days–she gets stuck on one thought and says it over and over again or asks for something about twenty times.  We say, “Okay, Kate, we heard you.”  The great thing is that she can communicate really well with us, so we usually know what she wants or how she feels because she can tell us.  But we also expect that that gives her less excuses to be “two” by throwing tantrums and whining.  If she doesn’t get her way, sometimes she starts the water-works and drops to the floor.  We immediately say, “You’re certainly not getting what you want if you do that.”  Overall, she’s pretty well-behaved and doesn’t have too many little fits.

She says quite a lot of things that crack us up.  When she’s excited she says, “Ip Ip Er-Yay!” (translation: Hip Hip Hooray).  And yesterday when Wade asked her to say it, she said, “I said that <i>earlier</i>.”  I always think it’s cute when she sees our President’s picture somewhere and says, “Barack Obama!”  She also talks to the t.v., especially when she watches Dora or Diego.  She gets very animated when Swiper the fox comes on, actually going up to the t.v. and putting her hand over him, trying to make him go away.  “I told Swiper don’t you dare do that!”

Kate’s getting a little pickier with her eating.  She would love to eat candy all day if I would let her.  But she’s still much better than Hayley’s ever been about eating fruit.  Kate loves any kind of berries, especially blueberries.  It’s often hard to get her to eat her dinner, though part of that is because she doesn’t stop talking long enough to chew.

Recently, Kate’s really been into puzzles.  We have a number of puzzles in a little cabinet in the hall and she will open the door and get one and want someone to sit on the office floor and complete it with her.  And as soon as it’s done, she picks up all the pieces, puts them back in the box, takes it back to the cabinet, and gets another one.  I think we did seven or eight puzzles this morning, some of them with 100 pieces.

Kate’s been peeing and sometimes pooping in her potty over the last few months, but for about the last week or so, I’ve been letting her go without a diaper at home (a lot of times she takes it off herself).  She does really well when she has a naked bottom–she runs right to the potty, pees or poops, wipes herself, and throws the toilet paper into the toilet.  But if I let her wear underwear–which she likes to do–she occasionally has accidents in them.  Thankfully, the weather’s warm enough here that she can run around half-dressed and it doesn’t matter.  Twice, first thing in the morning, we have found her completely stripped, standing up in her crib, waiting to use the potty.  She’s a funny kid.

Our Hayley is growing up so fast, getting taller and learning to read.  She does a great job sounding out words and even surprised Wade one night when she read the words on his t-shirt, even the word “computer.”  She loves school and was quite upset recently when she had to miss a few days due to an ear infection.  She never had an ear infection until last November and now she’s had two in three months.  Thank you, public school system.  And poor Kate has been sick a lot this school year, catching whatever germs Hayley brings home.

After wanting one for years, Hayley finally had a birthday party at Chuck E. Cheese’s last month.  She invited all the kids from her class, a couple of kids from the soccer team, and a little girl on our street who rides the school bus with her.  Including a few younger siblings, we had a total of about twelve kids at the party.  And Hayley seemed to have a great time.  The kids played, ate pizza, were serenaded by Chuck E. himself, had cake and ice cream, and Hayley opened her presents.  Then they played some more.  Kate wasn’t really big enough to do much besides going up through the tunnels and down the slide, but she sure enjoyed that (that’s another cute thing she says: “I sure liked that” or “I sure want some of that”).

So, Hayley is six now, and she really loves to draw and color, she still LOVES t.v. and movies (“Kung Fu Panda” has been her current favorite for the last six months), and playing her Nintendo DS (mostly a Kung Fu Panda game).  She likes going with her Daddy when he has Comedy Sportz shows or practice.  She likes being read to and recognizing her “popcorn words” from school (short, simple words like “can” or “like” that she has learned to recognize by sight) in the books we read.

We had a nice, though brief, visit with family in Virginia over Christmas.  We flew into Raleigh on Christmas day, rented a car, and drove to Kenbridge that night.  We spent two nights with Aunt Beth, Uncle Tony, Ashley, and Blake.  The girls really liked seeing their cousins again.  Then we saw Aunt Jenny, Grandma and Granddaddy Estes, Great-Uncles Randy and Buddy, and cousin Tessa over the weekend.  We spent Monday with Grandma Queen and Bill, and Tuesday with Grandpa and Lele.  The only blemish on the trip was some sort of stomach bug that Kate got, causing her to vomit about five times on Saturday and once on Monday, and to have diarrhea off and on for several days.  It took nearly two weeks for her little digestive system to get back to normal.  She was pretty scared when she was throwing up because she didn’t remember that ever happening before and she didn’t understand what was going on.  Of course, she’s probably forgotten about it again by now…

Well, that’s all for now.  Again, I’m sorry about the long time between posts, and I will try to be better about updating here.  Thanks for reading!

Kate has been perpetually sick for the last month-plus.  It started out as a cold that both she and Hayley had, but Kate had a worse version of it.  We had to run the humidifier at night to help her breathe and during the day we were constantly wiping her nose.  Kate’s cold lasted about two weeks.  She was well for about one week, then got sick again.  The second time wasn’t quite as bad as the first but it was still unpleasant.  Hayley showed no cold symptoms this time around.

Last week, Hayley got the sniffles and this morning, Kate woke up with a runny nose again.  Argh.  Thank you public school system.

The only upside to Kate being sick so much now is that she probably won’t get sick as much when SHE goes to school.  For now, we’ll have to keep plenty of lotion tissues and chicken noodle soup on hand.

Hayley got a couple of free kids passes from school to the Alzafar Shrine Circus that is at the Freeman Coliseum in San Antonio this weekend.  So we decided to take the kids to their first circus.

It was a smaller-scale circus than, say, a Ringling Brothers circus but I think the girls enjoyed it just the same.  Before the actual circus commenced, they had pony and elephant rides, bounce houses, and other attractions, all available for a nominal fee of course.  We didn’t have time before the start of the circus to do any of the extra stuff, so we got the girls cotton candy and found our seats (Kate had been asking for cotton candy and popcorn for days, ever since we told her we were going to the circus).  We saw the standard circus acts–elephants, tigers, trapeeze artists, clowns, daredevils, etc.  I think we were all entertained.

Then during “half-time,” we went down to the floor to let the girls ride an elephant.  I had no idea I would have to ride it too!  Since Kate was so little, they made me sit behind her.  Um, I actually rode on an elephant probably twenty years ago but I didn’t remember how weird it feels.  There were about six or seven kids plus me on the back of this poor animal and I was on the very back, right above her hips, swaying from side to side as the elephant walked.  I’m not too keen on heights.  I’ve ridden a horse before too and I definitely prefer the horse.

We returned to our seats for the second half of the show.  Hayley covered her ears during the loud dirt-bikes-going-round-in-round-in-a-giant-metal-ball act, but she liked when “Cannonball” Smith was shot from his cannon.

When we were leaving after the show, Hayley said, “I’d never been to a circus before, but I think I’d like to go again.”

I never thought I’d be a grandma at 30, especially when my oldest daughter is only five.

But after more than two years of promising, we finally got Hayley the chihuahua she wanted yesterday and she wants to be its “Mama.”

The new member of our family is an 8-week-old male chihuahua, mostly white with brown markings.  He’s tiny and cute, and Hayley has named him Darwin (just like Aunt Jenny’s chihuahua).  Today was our first full day with him, and we spent a lot of it trying to make sure he peed and pooped on his potty pad and not on our carpet.  Darwin spent the majority of his day napping.  Rod-kitty seems as indifferent to Darwin as he is with everything else, which is better than Rod trying to eat him.  The girls have fought over Darwin a few times–”Kate, I’m holding him!” “No, me hold him!”–but mostly they’ve been good about sharing.

Check out pictures of our little guy on our Flickr page!

Hayley’s first week of school has passed and she seemed to adjust really well.  Daddy took her into school each morning (except the first day when we all went with her) and she rode the bus home each afternoon.  Before school, she seemed excited about riding the bus, but once she actually rode it, she realized it’s not all it’s cracked up to be.  It’s hot and noisy, and Hayley said she kept getting thrown into the seat in front of her (good thing they’re padded!).  “They don’t have any seatbelts!  Well, they have ONE seatbelt for the driver, but that’s it!”  She took her lunch each day and every day brought home at least one picture she had colored in class.  She’s already talking about some of the kids in her class, especially the ones who misbehave.  She is proud of the fact that she hasn’t gotten into trouble yet but some of the other kids (usually boys) get in trouble, even having to sit outside the classroom on occasion.  Hayley has been good, but she DOES talk about acting silly sometimes to make the other kids laugh.  Hmmm…that one sounds a lot like her father.

School is closed this Monday for Labor Day but it’s back to normal on Tuesday.  Kate and I are going to try to eat lunch with Hayley about once a month and Tuesday will be our first time.  Daddy is also going to start letting Hayley enter the school by herself after Tuesday.  Fortunately, they have a lot of fifth graders and some adults who serve as crossing guards every morning so Hayley should be safe if she has to cross the parking lot.  Still, it’s hard to think of her as big enough to walk into school all by herself…

First of all, Kate pooped in her potty for the first time today!  I didn’t even know anything about it until she came running to me and said, “I poo-poo in potty!”  I thought she meant she had peed because sometimes she says poo for pee.  (I let her run around without a diaper at some point most days because she likes being naked and because it allows her to practice with the potty.)  When I followed her into the bathroom, sure enough, there was Number 2 in her potty.  I quickly checked the place she had been playing and didn’t see any signs of early release, so I assume she felt the urge to go and just went.  What a big girl!

And then, there’s Hayley.  Hayley always has to pee first thing when she comes home from school, which is understandable and perfectly fine.  Unfortunately, I accidentally locked us out of the house yesterday when I went to meet her at the bus stop.  The poor child had to go and didn’t have a toilet to go in.  I told her that we’d go into our (fenced-in) backyard and she could just pee on the ground (hey, when you gotta go, you gotta go).  She headed toward the front yard–and, I thought, toward the gate to the backyard–while I unbuckled Kate from her stroller in the garage.  However, as I carried Kate toward the front yard, I got a shock.  There, standing bare-butt naked with her pants around her ankles, was Hayley, squatting in front of the big tree in our FRONT yard.  “Hayley!  What are you doing?!  I said the BACKyard!”  Fortunately, she hadn’t actually started peeing yet, so I urgently told her to pull her pants up and run to the backyard.  I just really hope none of the senior citizens who live around us was looking out their windows at the moment Hayley’s butt was exposed…

After struggling with Kate to take a nap this afternoon–and failing–I was a bit worn out myself.  I lay down on the sofa for a minute to take a break and Hayley didn’t even bother to beg me to get her something to eat.  She went into the kitchen and I heard her rattling around in the pantry, Kate close at her heels.

I wasn’t in there to see what was going on, but I could tell by the noises and conversation pretty much what was going on:

Hayley got a bowl out of her cabinet and began to pour herself some cereal.  Hayley asked Kate if she wanted cereal but Kate was merely thirsty.  Kate grabbed a cup out of the cabinet and held it out to Hayley.  Hayley said, “No, Kate.”  Kate put that cup back and got another one, again handing it to Hayley.  In a resigned voice Hayley said, “It’s not the cup Kate, it’s the liquid.  I can’t pour it by myself!”

I nearly fell off the sofa when I heard her say that.  I’m still laughing about it…”it’s the liquid.”

After wiggling around in her mouth for nearly a month, Hayley lost her first tooth this morning!

I asked her at breakfast to see her tooth, and she let me wiggle it around. I saw that the back of the tooth had completely detached, so I pushed her tooth backward with a mild amount of force, and out it popped!

Hayley looked a little shocked for a second, and seemed like she might cry, but after Holly and I started gushing over what a big girl she was and how neat this was, she started grinning. She spent quite a bit of time playing with the new hole in her smile.

I took her downtown for a celebratory lunch at Casa Rio, then with her to improv practice, and she wasn’t shy about telling everyone in either place about how she’d lost her first tooth. Then, at bedtime, we tucked her tooth into the pocket of the special Tooth Fairy Pillow that Holly made for her while in Virginia. So we’ll see what the Tooth Fairy brings our big girl tonight.

Now, we’ll see if it takes a month for her second loose tooth to pop out as well.

So, we’re back from our nearly 3-week vacation in Virginia.  We tried to see all of our immediate family at some point during the trip.  Things didn’t go exactly as planned, but few things in life ever do.  The girls had fun seeing grandparents and cousins, aunts and uncles, swimming, playing with animals, fishing, catching bugs, going to a county fair, and just hanging out and coloring or watching tv.  Both girls were good while traveling–I really feel fortunate that my kids travel so well, especially when I see other parents struggling with screaming kids.  Kate even slept for about 40 minutes on the last leg of our journey from Atlanta to San Antonio.

Speaking of Kate–that girl is a trip herself.  Not only can she say hundreds of words (she can pretty much repeat, or try her best to repeat, anything we say), but she can “sing” now too.  She knows “Hey, Diddle Diddle,” “One, Two, Buckle My Shoe,” and “Rock-A-Bye Baby,” and parts of some other songs.  It’s funny to hear the pitch of her voice change as she sings.  And today when we were in the car, a song came on the radio that had a lyric that ended in the word “good-bye” being drawn out to four syllables.  The song ended, and I heard Kate in the back singing “Good-bye-eye-eye.”  She was repeating what she had just heard!

Kate is also fearless and VERY independent.  Her most popular phrases are “Me do!” and “Do by mine self!”  If she wants to do something and you do it for her, she gets very upset.  She likes to brush her own teeth (and actually does a pretty good job), climb up into the van by herself, walk almost everywhere herself (she doesn’t like to be carried for long), wipe herself when her diaper is being changed, buckle her own belt in her booster seat, take off her shoes, socks, clothes, diaper, and pretty much anything else she is capable of doing on her own.  She wants to be just like Hayley and doesn’t always understand why she can’t do everything that Hayley does.

For example, when we went to the Powhatan, Virginia, county fair on Sunday, there was a “ride” that was like a small obstacle course.  Hayley went through it with no problem, but Kate was really too small to go through it.  That didn’t stop her, though.  She pushed her way through the hanging punching bags, dove into the ball pit (at one point, she was so deep in it, all you could see were her little red pigtails sticking up over the top of the balls), climbed up the rope ladder (she struggled a bit here, but she didn’t give up!), crossed the bridge, and slid down the tube slide.  She had so much fun, she wanted to do it again and again.  She went through it three times in all and would have gone more if we had let her.  Grandma Estes said she might be a future Olympian, the way she was pushing herself.

Hayley’s tooth hasn’t come out yet, but she has a second one loose now.  She’s having a little trouble eating now–tonight we had pizza and I had to cut it up for her, poor baby.  I don’t know how long it will take for the tooth to come out, but she will probably lose it before she starts school on Aug. 25.  Aaahhh!  I can’t believe my baby will be in Kindergarten!  We registered her today but the reality of her going hasn’t set in yet.  I’m sure I’ll be a blubbering mess on that first day.