The Big Move

Well, we got all moved in to the new house on Friday and are feeling somewhat settled in. I love playing outside in my new yard and the neighbor girl has been over to swing on my swingset.

Last week I visited my new school twice-- once with Dad and once with Mom and I enjoyed it a lot and have been asking when I could go to the new school. I am a little ahead of the rest of my new class, so the teachers think I will probably move up soon.

Mom spent all day Thursday packing and as soon as I came home from school I started pulling things back out. I like having my things in place! She also went to the doctor that day and I should tell you that everything is good with my baby sister.

The big truck arrived on Friday morning (an hour earlier than scheduled, much to Mom's dismay!) Luckily we were all up and dressed! I had my breakfast and went to school for the last day there. We took cupcakes so I could have a little goodbye party, but as much as I have loved my school I didn't seem to be upset about my last day. Several teachers were very sad to see us go, but I just said "Bubbye. I go to new school."

Then when Mom picked me up we drove to the new house and all of our things had moved there. I ran all over the place and then we ate pizza. After all that work I had to sit down and relax in the big red chair! Right now I am sleeping in what will be the baby's room (until I move to my big girl bed). Mom had it all set up like my old room with everything in the same places. When I went to bed I started noticing what wasn't excatly the same. My night light wasn't in the same place and I showed Mommy where it should go. I mean does it really matter that there isn't an outlet there? Then when we were reading I noticed that the basket of blankets next to my bed wasn't there. And when I was in my crib I saw that there was no basket on the dresser to hold the wipes and diapers. I battled through these adversities and am happy that things are more in order now.

Aunt Jen and Uncle Buddy came to visit on Saturday and helped us a lot (mostly playing with me so they could get other jobs done). We had a good visit around putting them to work! Lily came home from five nights at camp and got moved in. She is doing pretty well, too, but we don't have a fence up yet, so we have to take her out when she wants to go. It's a little annoying!

I have fallen twice in the driveway and have two skinned knees, but I didn't cry and Uncle Buddy got them cleaned up for me. You can probably see my Clifford band-aids in the last photo.

I am adjusting pretty well, but it is a lot for a little girl like me to process. I get a little clingy at nap time and bed time and ask for lots of "Daddy Big Hugs" and "Mommy Big Hugs" Yesterday I discovered one of my old pacifiers (which I never used as a baby) and wanted to have it with me for my nap. Fortunately, I lost it (seriously Mom & Dad did not hide it) so hopefully I will forget about it soon. We will post some photos of the new house once more boxes are out of the way.

"Happy Easters!"

That's what I said when I woke up today. I was very excited about the day and my Grampy and Grammy L. were here from Canada to celebrate the day with us.

On Saturday we dyed Easter eggs. Mom thought this would be a fun project, but in the end it only took about five minutes. I just kept plunking them in the cups then grabbing them out. No wire dippy thing for me. And my hands were green and yellow for a while afterwards. I really wanted to play with my eggs and rearrange them. When you're two it's hard to remember what fragile means!

Today we woke up and put on our Easter clothes and went to our new church. I was pretty well-behaved and loved the children's choir and wanted to clap for them. The only incident was when I dropped my sandal in an unreachable place under the pew in front fo us and the people next to us had to send their little boy under to retrieve it while I shouted "My shoe! My shoe!!!!"

When we got home from church Grammy and Grampy came over for brunch and the Easter bunny had arrived with my basket. I was very excited to look at everything and am a big fan of jelly beans. As usual, I unpacked the basket and then reloaded it a couple of times and carried it around a little. It was really wet out so I didn't get to do an Easter egg hunt, but we might do one next week.
After naps for everyone, we went to our friend's (Joy and Chris) house for Easter dinner and had a wonderful time. I got another Easter basket from Auntie Joy and was pretty good throughout dinner. My two favorite dishes were cucumber salad and butter. After I decided to try to pull the table cloth off, Grampy took me outside to walk around the yard and see the fish in the pond. We spent quite a bit of time together outside from that point on and I showed him how to blow bubbles.

It was a great Easter and a great visit with my grandparents. I have actually renamed them-- I call Grammy Grandma now and Grampy Baa Baa (as in Baa Baa Black Sheep, I guess).

We move this week and I will visit my new school twice before we move, so I will probably have a lot to report next time.


Happy Easters!

Last Week

Well Mom returned home Monday night, but the chaos continued. My Great Uncle Jim passed away so we drove up to South Bend for the services. I was sick with a fever and a cold during that time, but glad I went. It was nice to see the family and I even got to see GG (Great Grandma).

On Thursday night after school we went to our new house. This was my first time to see it. I was very excited about the swingset and pretty much just wanted to go outside and play. We met one of the neighbors and they have a four-year-old girl who I played with for a little bit. We took dinner with us and had a picnic on the kitchen floor. Mom & Dad thought this would be fun for me, but I asked "where's the table?" I think it's silly that we have two houses right now, but seem to be understanding that we're moving.

Struggling this Week

As some of you might have known, Mom was away this week so Dad had to help me with this. He struggled with the pictures so when Mom comes home tomorrow night we will upload a couple. What did I do this week? It was a good week only one accident report but a couple close calls. Fell off the slide at school and hit my head. I got a little ice, passed the concussion test and didn't miss a shift. (Can you tell Dad is helping me?)

Mom thought it was funny this week when Dad and I were clowning around. He would say "Peace out, Katie." I would say "Peace out, Daddy." The next day I said it when Dad was going to work. Dad was changing me the other day and I made a funny noise and not from my mouth. I said "Katie's bum loud" and Dad just about died laughing. I was talking to Mom and I said I love you , Mom. I then said I love you, little sister.

Mom being away has also helped my eating in my opinion. Let's just say I love pizza. We also had steak, brauts and salad over the weekend and a few donuts from Tim Horton's.

I have also helped to pick my outfits with Mom gone. Yesterday morning I was playing in my Cow pajamas and my dog rubber boots. (See last week). Today I heard Dad ask Mom if overalls were okay with a black turtleneck and she said it was fine and then he asked if it was okay with sneakers and she said never. I wore sneakers. I played with my friend Kaitlyn today. She has her own slide and little sister. We are moving to their subdivision next week.

That is all for now. I would write more but I have to get back to cleaning to get this place looking livable for when Mom comes home tomorrow.

Peace out.

Katie

New Boots!

Yesterday while someone was looking at our house, Mom and I had a great girl's excursion- we went to buy shoes. One of my treasures was this pair of Dalmatian boots, which I wanted to wear as soon as I got up today. Of course I had to wear them all day long and I had to wear my black pants so that they would match.

The weather was beautiful today so we played outside a lot and I got to test my boots all over the place (but no rain puddles yet).

Last weekend Mommy was out of town for work, and Daddy and I were so busy that I didn't get to the computer to blog, so I will give you a quick update. Dad really had me working hard. I did laundry. I made grilled cheese sandwiches (with extra butter, of course) and then I was exhausted! And when Mommy came home she knew we had had Daddy time because now I sleep with two balls in my crib. I don't know if you can tell from the photo, but I am using one as a pillow and lovingly clutching my baseball with both hands.

Introducing My Baby . . .

SISTER! We just found out today that Mommy is having a girl. The ultrasound went well, but the baby had her legs crossed at the ankle the whole time so they had to work hard to find out if it was a girl or a boy.

Here are her first photos. The first one is her with her arm up by her head-- that's her big head in the middle and you can see her rib cage to the right. The second is her face. She stayed tucked up in a ball pretty tight, so we didn't see much of her face. Here she is kind of upside down with her forehead at 5 o'clock. Photo #3 with the arrow shows that this is a sister and not a brother. That view is looking up at the baby's bum.

The last photos is of a little foot from the bottom. She looks pretty cute- don't you think? Now Daddy gets to name her because he won the bet that it was a girl. Both Mom & Dad are very excited to have another girl and I am excited because I told Dad over the weekend that I wanted a sister.

On the Go

First, let me wish you a Happy St. Patrick's Day. I enjoyed the day and Mom made me green milk and green oatmeal for breakfast and I liked pointing out everyone who was wearing "mean" (as I still pronounce green).

We are getting ready to celebrate "Happy Mommy" tomorrow. I wonder if I will sing to her? We took her out to dinner last night and I was a big fan of spinach artichoke dip and dunking my bread/hand in the olive oil. When we were done eating we got a big surprise-- a fan of Daddy's had paid our bill.

Today we had an open house, so there was more cleaning and tidying this weekend and we had to evacuate the house for a while. It was complicated by the fact that someone wanted to see it from 12:30 to 1:30 and then the open house was from 2-4. So I pretty much missed my whole nap and had to eat my lunch in the car. The good news was that 15 groups came through our house, so hopefully something will come of it.

While we were on the go, we went to see my new school which I liked, but I did not understand why I could not go in and play on the playground. We saw our new house and played in the park just down the street. Then we went to visit our friends who live in that neigborhood and I played with their little girl and we met their new baby who is nine days old.

Speaking of babies, you probably know that we are going to have one. I finally started talking about it this week and I tell Mommy that I am going to be a sister. I also say I can see the baby if I put my eye up to Mommy's belly button-- apparently it is like a peep hole. I told Mom & Dad that I could see blue eyes. We will (hopefully) find out whether it is a boy or girl on March 30!

I have done a couple of other funny things this week. I still love "Baa baa blacksheep" and insisted that Dad sing it at the grocery yesterday. When we checked out Dad, the checker and the bagger all sang it! Yesterday I was making a funny face and Mom said "where did that face come from?" and I thought for a minute and said "my neck." This morning Dad was shaving and he asked what the razor was called and I said "chop chop" --which Mom says is pretty accurate the way Dad has to shave around all his hockey scars!

Cleaning Up

Can you see I was busy at school this week? I love to play with "mark marks" (markers), but at home mine are special invisible markers that only color on special paper. The ones at school are a little different!

We had a busy weekend getting our house ready to go on the market, wo we've been cleaning and tidying and stashing away clutter. The house looks great, but I don't like it when things move out of their right places.

This week I have fallen in love with Tim Bits donut holes from Tim Hortons. Daddy and I ran an errand to the hardware store the other night and we stopped and bought five of them. Two were supposed to be for me, two for Mommy and one for Daddy. I ate my two in the car, but when I got home, I was so excited that I ate one of Mommy's, too. Then yesterday Daddy and I picked up Lily from the groomer and I said "Lily pretty. Lily wants Tim Bits." And since Daddy loves to make me (oh, I mean Lily)happy, I got more Tim Bits. And in a repeat of the previous excursion, Mommy only got one.

In addition to Happy Birthday, which continues to be sung to everyone and everything (our Realtor, Curious George, Curious George's mouth, Curious George's red mouth, Katie's wall, etc.) I started singing "Baa Baa Black Sheep" and I can sing a lot of the words. I especially like the "yes sir, yes sir" part. I also counted to eleven this week. Sometimes I get stuck on two three, two three (and on and on), but if I get past three I can count to eleven with little prompting.

New House!

We bought our new house! We have a few details to work out, but we are now busy planing our move. When Mom & Dad told me that we had a new house, I said "No, my house!" and pointed at my tree house/tent that I got for Christmas-luckily that will go with us. We all looked at pictures of the house today and I was pretty excited about my new room, the sun room that will be my playroom and the swingset that was left in the backyard.

Boppy and Poppy were here visiting/working this weekend. They came to help get our house ready to put on the market, so they were busy with a number of odd jobs. We had a nice visit around all the chores. On Saturday I put on my overalls and was ready to help Poppy, but then I got scared by the sandpaper noise and that was the end of the help.

Aside from the house news this week, I have been busy being funny. I say more words every day and Happy Birthday is still my favorite song. This weekend I asked Poppy to sing "Happy" to Mommy's purse. I have been playing funny games with Daddy like "Jump, Roll, Roar" (or something like that) where I follow him doing silly things all over the house.

Have a good week!

New Home?

Hi everyone. This may be a record for the fewest photos in a Sunday blog posting. We were too busy this weekend to take many photos, I guess. We made an offer on a house today and we are waiting to hear back, so we will keep you posted on that. And then, look out because Mom will probably have 17 lists, 3 binders and a clipboard going on the move and all the accompanying logistics!

We celebrated Daddy's birthday this week and now I love hearing the Happy Birthday song. Mommy has sung it about 60 times this week. She sings and I keep naming people or things that I want her to sing it to. Tonight she sang "Happy Birthday to You" to my purple blanket five times. Last night she had to sing to each and every Care Bear in my Care Bear book.

This weekend, we had a bunch of little things to do that kept us busy. Today we met with our Realtor and I was very good during the meeting. Then after my nap we had a nice visit with Mom's ND friend, Meg (a frequent blog reader), who was in town visiting her parents.

I started a funny new game with Dad. I pretend to eat his nose and I think I am hilarious as I pretend to chew. I am also being really sweet with Lily and I hug her goodbye every morning on the way out the door to school. My new favorite food is M&Ms, which I call "num nums." I got some for Valentine's Day and Mom and Dad found they work in a pinch. The trick is to include them with pretzels and raisins and then I have to work for them.

The two pictures are from today. The first one was of me on the computer getting ready to talk to Jamma. The second one was this morning I took my doll into my room and read to her from my bible. Aren't I a good girl?

Daddy Day times 2.

Hi everyone its me Katie. My writing might not be as good this week. Mom was in Detroit visiting her friend Sarah (I swore she said Santa) and Kristen. Dad and I had a great time. Saturday morning we went to Dad's work. I got a Snoopy doll. He sleeps in my bed now with white bear. Last week we had a downsizing and the other 8 animals moved out of my bed. Curious George is taking it hard. We then went to the grocery store. I got to drive the blue car. I had a couple of cookies. I had so much fun I threw up all over the garage floor when we got home. After my nap I was a lot better. Dad and I watched the Olympics. It is hard when you have to cheer for two countries and I was 0-2 in hockey. Rough day. It would have been better to be from Switzerland yesterday. This moring I went to the grocery store to get a couple of things we forgot yesterday. As you can see here, I liked wearing my pajamas. This outfit is a lot cuter than the one I wore to the store. I had my one piece pajamas with feet with brown shoes over them and my pink coat. You might catch me on "What not to wear". I got to push a little grocery cart around and wouldn't let Dad help. I only ran into a few things at the store but if you ain't rubbing you ain't racing. (This is a NASCAR reference for you Canadians) Grampy, I didn't know how to put it in curling terms so you would understand. I then went and looked at the neighborhood where Mom and Dad are looking for a new house. I loved it. There were swingsets everywhere.
Mom got home this afternoon and we were all tired. We went and picked up pizza and a Coldstone Creamery cake because Dad's birthday is this week. We were too tired to do candles tonight but we will on Wednesday if there is any cake left by then. As you can tell by my licking the plate, it was good. Thanks for the eating tip, Lily. Otherwise I hope Dad likes candles on his pasta. Everyone have a good week talk to you next week after Dad says Canada wins the hockey gold.

Funny Valentine

I really like all the sweets associated with Valentines Day! We had big yummy heart cupcakes that Mom surprised us with on Valetnine's Eve and then when I woke up Valentine's morning I got a present of candy hearts that came in a tube with a balloon on top. I loved it and waved it around like a magic wand. I did my Wiggles-themed valentines for all my classmates and came home with a bag full of Valentines. Mom helped me open them all and we read who each one was from and went through the stack a few times. Today when we went through them I remembered who gave me which one. I would pull out the card and say Aubrey or Colin and I was right about 90% of the cards. Mom & Dad think that I either have a good memory or maybe I can secretly read?

That night Dad and I surprised Mom with roses and I got to carry them in and give them to her and say "Happy Mommy." The other fun thing that happened that day was that I got my very own pillow. I was so excited about my "pinkt" (how I say pink) toddler pillow that I asked to go to sleep.

This weekend Mommy is going to Detroit to visit her friends Sarah and Kristin, so Daddy will help me with the next report.

Happy Valentine's Day

Hi everyone. Not much new this week. School was good. We've been talking about where people live. On Monday we talked about houses and the teacher asked each of us what you needed to build a house. Fresh off the Super Bowl party, my answer was pizza, which makes perfect sense because when you're building a house you get hungry. Someone else answered purple (which is just silly)!

I am very into closing my door and telling people to come in or go out. I like to tell Lily to go out.

Yesterday we went to a Curious George party at a book store. It was fun! I got to color a George mask and I got a brown felt tail to pin to my pants. They read two George stories and decorated the space like jungle. I got a medal with my name on it like the medal George gets in one of the stories.

Tonight we went to look at a house and then Daddy took me and Mommy out to dinner for Valentine's Day. We went back to Champps because I was so good there last time. I wasn't as good this time, but I ate at least as much of the ice cream cookie dessert. In fact when there was only a little left, I ate the whole last scoop of ice cream and then snatched the big piece of cookie. When the waitress asked who ate it all, I answered "Daddy!" with my mouth stuffed with cookie.

Happy Super Bowl Day

Hi! We're celebrating the Super Bowl today. We're not big fans of either team, but we had a tailgate party in front of the TV. We ordered pizza early because we thought it would take awhile, but it arrived at 4:45, so we had a LONG time to snack at our Super Bowl party before the game even started. I ate two whole pieces of pizza in addition to lots of veggies and dip.

Aside from the football festivities, we made valentines this weekend. I love to glue things! We also played in the snow. We didn't have very much on the ground, but I enjoyed getting out for some fresh air and throwing the snow around. I didn't want to go inside, but Mom & Dad were cold and my cheeks were getting rosy.

Of course I did lots of playing inside this weekend, too. Tonight I got some of Mom's purses and told Mom & Dad. "Bye. I go work." By the time I was ready to leave I had two purses, my play stroller and a bag of animals for my toy zoo. It's not easy being a working lady!