Ketchup

Sorry about the lack of posting recently. I will attempt to play catch-up with my photos.

This would be very cute if it weren't for my lack of using a flash and resulting grainyness:

K. has recently discovered that she likes bubbles. I was unable to both blow bubbles and capture a cute photo of her with the bubbles in it, so here's a random photo of her reaching for the bubbles just out of my photo frame. Just imagine the area filled with bubbles: K's behavior has been quite puzzling:

She got some little My Little Ponies to play with on her long car trip, and plays with them at her table as well. K. discovered that she might be part cat, and chased this ball with a bell in it aroud her tent for several minutes. Currently, she's trying to figure out how the bell comes out. It doesn't.

I'm not sure if it's good or not that one of her favorite toys is her microphone. We have a pair of them, and she always shares one with me. Her current favorite song is "If You're Happy and You Know It" and when we start singing it, she claps her hands. At the "face will surely show it" part, she puts her fingers to her cheeks. Once that verse is done she will begin to stomp her feet. My next mission is to get that on video.This game involved "pouring" the yellow ball from one dish to the next. After she played it in the game room, she took the three pieces into the master bedroom and played it there.

"Hello, Kitty!"--upon spotting the cat in my bedroom, she waved.

We went in where the cat was resting and C. actually let K. pat her for a moment before she left.

K. was playing with her stroller and at one point...

K. helping Dad with a project. Holding on to a stuffed animal at the same time didn't slow her down, and I imagine she'll be an excellent multi-tasker."Hi!"

Pastoral Humor

I was at the church doing some work, and our pastor came in to say hello to K. He was hillarious, and K. could not stop laughing at his antics!

I just love to see her smile!

Play All Day

K. had a playdate with a good friend of mine. We attempted to sit them together for a photo (we took a photo with the moms, too during the last visit (see this former blog post), but neither of us had put on makeup before this playdate, so we sat the photo out). This is the best of the photos, with B. trying to escape and K. looking displeased.

But K. managed to smile for this next photo! Too bad I didn't keep my eyes open. Oh, well. It's still one of my favorite picture of the two of us.

Penance

K. has made many stray crayon marks on her table, so she had to clean them off.

Thank goodness for Mr. Clean Magic Eraser!

Four Scenes

K, pushing her baby in the stroller after church:

K, reading after church:

K, walking through the playroom to select a toy:

K, planning her outfits for the upcoming week:

Oh Baby

K. is lucky--she's at an age where she makes new friends by my friends having babies. Here is her newest friend. She was pretty interested in him. And carried her own baby around nearly the entire time we visited him.(And she wore pigtails again--someday I'll get a picture in which she's smiling.)
She played with some blocks. First she tried to spell words, but then when that didn't work, she pretended the block was a stamp and stamped her hands (and ours) like they do in her Sunday School every week!

Who Was that Man

Who put the bop in the bop-she-bop-she-bop?

Who put the dip in the dip-de-dip-de-dip? I'd like to shake his hand.

Updates Galore

So I haven't posted recently and have a lot of photos to share, so here they are, in one big post. Some funny things K. has done recently are not represented by photos, so I'll just tell you about them. Others have photographic evidence.

The first was this morning. K. is sometimes afraid of the vacuum and sometimes wants to help. We had a new kitchen floor put in yesterday, so some of the things from the pantry were in the living room. K. helped herself to a can of cherry Coke, then came to help me vacuum. She would vacuum a bit, then pretend to sip the Coke, then resume her vacuuming. Oh, and excuse her lack of pants--some of her breakfast yogurt adorned them, so I put them in the washing machine.

After she finished her chores, she did some coloring. She usually sits at her table to color, but today she brought her book and crayon down to the floor.I guess it was more comfy for her.

The other day, I went up to the church to get some work done. While K. wasn't napping, she and I played in the nursery. She loved sitting in the red beanbag chairs and reading to one of the nursery babies. (P.S. Thanks, Aunt J., for her cool shirt!)

Since she has been spending so much time feeding her babies, I got a high chair that she can put them in. She will fill the bowl with food (sure, this is a shampoo bottle she's using, but hey, she can't read the label), then mix it (like I do her yogurt--but it took me a while to figure out why she always mixed Baby's food) and feed Baby.

"I love baby!" ~K.

I didn't know if she would keep them in, but I just had to try her hair in pigtails. This is this past Saturday, and Dad makes breakfast on Saturdays (which means she gets eggs instead of cold cereal--lucky her!) She ate all of the eggs on her plate, then asked for some of mine. In a truly shocking display of how much being a mom has changed me, I gave her some!

Pigtails, again, and her jammies that match Baby's.

Other things:

*I was writing with a pen on a piece of paper, and she wanted to use it. I have her the paper and the pen, but had retracted the point so it didn't write. I figured she'd be content to pretend. It only took her a few seconds to realize the pen wasn't writing, figure out the mechanism, and click the end so the pen worked!

*I've been singing the song "If You're Happy and You Know It" to K. a lot, especially when she cries (I know, ironic). I do the motions, and she's started to pick them up too. We were listening to a CD of cool kids' music (kids' songs re-done by "real" bands) and that song came on--not me singing, but a different group. She not only recognized the song, but put her fingers in her cheeks (as during the "then your face will surely show it" portion). I was so proud!

*She will give Mom and Dad actual kisses now at our request, complete with the sound effect. One of the best moments of my life was yesterday when she gave me a kiss, completely unprompted!

*The last update is that we've put our house on the market. We plan to move about 20 minutes north of here to something a little larger and a little nearer to friends.

"Well, I'm bushed. Naptime, here I come."

Kissy Kissy

Here's proof that she has the skills, but when we ask for a kiss, all we get is a slobbery mouth on our cheek. Baby is just lucky, I guess.

Not Really Ready Yet

"I wonder if I can figure this out..."

Baby Blues

K, pausing for a moment of reflection during lunch.

Read It and Weep

K. continues to love reading. She reads "aloud" more often, and has added a lot of variety to her (nonsensical-to-us) words and changes in tone of voice. That is all.

Pack Mule

We were going over to a friend's house and wanted to bring her baby and backpack of accessories, so I put the backpack on K. while we were getting ready to leave.

I find this absolutely adorable.And she didn't mind wearing the backpack...or the headband.

K: "Well, I'm off to school."

Mom: {cries} At least I have a few more years to get used to the idea.

Snow Blower

On the warmest of the snowy days, K. and I went outside to play in the snow. Well, I played in the snow while she did some work: But once she finished her chores, she wandered around in the snow. I think she liked it, as she always likes to be outside.

And once inside, we warmed up quickly.

Sweet Sunday

"I will practice my sweet, innocent face so I can use it to my advantage when I get into something I shouldn't."

Ride 'em, Cowgirl

K. will sit on my knee or back and I'll 'sing' the William Tell Overture while bouncing her. On Sunday my guitar case was sitting on the floor, so she mounted it like a horse (with Baby in tow), started bouncing, and hummed.

Tech Baby

Disclaimer: this was a special circumstance and this is not the norm for her. She learns a lot by watching us: the headphones got pulled out so the show paused, and she tried pushing the button in order to get it to resume.

Half-Birthday

K. is one-and-a-half today! It's been an amazing 1.5 years--I can't believe all of the things she's learned to do since she was born. Here she is, at B's computer, working on our taxes:

And this is when I was short a vocalist on my team. She filled in (and even brought the requisite bottle of water):But she's still small enough to fit inside a large tote bag:

I think she's a beauty! A little mother/daughter self-photography for the blog (and it's on Facebook, too).