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!
