A Visit from Friends, Reading and Dancing

Last week Mandi and her two little ones, John and Maggie, came over for the morning. Cate and John are only three weeks apart but really aren't quite ready to play together yet. They did, however, have an old fashioned eat-off. I set out a bowl of raisins and a bowl of pirate's booty and they both tried to eat as much as possible so that the other wouldn't get any. Mandi and I just sat and laughed. Here's a picture of Timmy, sitting on the floor in his nap nanny, while the big kids ate lunch. I didn't manage to get a picture of little Maggie though.

Here's John and Cate, not eating their lunches because they were too full!

Cate got this adorable tutu from Uncle Rusty and his girlfriend Katie. I think that she is kind of afraid of it, but this morning she agreed to put it on and dance to her favorite Taylor swift song.

Cate has gotten much more interested in reading lately. She will sit and empty her book baskets, she always reads upside down and in a loud voice.

Timmy has just started sitting in the bumbo chair, so Cate likes to squeeze herself in there to read.

Finally, whenever Cate comes across the book, "The Giving Tree" she turns it over to look at its author, Shel Silverstein....she then gleefully yells, "DADA!" Not quite!

A Warm Day in February

What do you do when the thermometer reads 40 degrees and it's sunny outside during the middle of a Chicago winter? You bundle up your two babies, load up your double stroller, get the dog and go for a walk in the park. So what if we had to dodge some icy patches on the path and people raised their eyebrows at me as we walked by. Cate was so excited to get outside and sat happily for the whole ride.

Timmy fell asleep and after we walked Zeke, we went to the playground. Cate had the place to herself and ran around, went down the slides and on the swings. It was a nice reminder that Spring will eventually arrive.

In other big news, Timmy officially rolled over, from back to front, today for the first time at five months and one day old!

Five Months Old

Our little Timmy will be five months old this week. He is getting SO big. He only wore six month clothes for a couple of weeks and has moved on to 9 month clothes now. He is such a sweet, happy little guy. He loves to coo and talk and snuggle. We thought that he was going to be one of those babies that we heard about who just knows how to sleep on his own...we were wrong about that. Although he does really well sleeping through the night and has for a long time, he has trouble putting himself to sleep on his own, so we are starting to really work on that and it is really hard but we are hoping for easier bedtimes in the near future!

When I was trying to take Timmy's picture, Cate kept trying to get in there and talk to him, tickle his feet, etc. so I finally let her "hold" him on her rocking chair. She is kind of a mess with peanut butter on her face and only one of her piggy tails in, but she loves her baby brother and thinks that if the camera is out, she should be holding him for the picture!

Cate at 5 months

First Pigtails!

Cate let me put her hair into two messy pigtails this morning. She looked at herself in the mirror and said, "oooohh". Very fancy.

Snowball Fight

Snow Storm

The snow has been falling all day here, so before dinner, I decided that since Grammy and Pop were here to watch Timmy, I would take Cate outside to play in the snow. Tim got home just in time and when he found out what we were doing, he changed his clothes right away to come out and entertain Cate in the snow. She laughed hysterically at the dog and loved watching us throw snowballs at each other. Tim would tell Cate to put her arms up in the air and then pelt her with a snowball...she thought that this was a riot.

Cooking with Mama

On Sunday I decided to make a cake with chocolate frosting. I have no interest in chocolate frosting from a can, but homemade frosting is worth the effort. I had Cate in her high chair and as I made the frosting, she played with spoons, spatulas and bowls. When I finally finished, I decided to give her one of the beaters because the frosting isn't very thick and so there wasn't much on the beater. I handed to it and she said, "ooooohhhh" and proceeded to find every last drop of chocolate. It was a yummy treat!

First Video

Uncle Dennis and Aunt Nadia sent us a Flip video camera for Christmas which was such a great gift. They are so easy to use. This is my first video upload because I tend to make the videos too long and then blogger won't let me upload them. I need to work on my editing skills but we have been using the camera a lot. I also need to work on remembering not to talk while I'm taking the video because it is really annoying to listen to your own voice!

Ok...after publishing this post, I can see that the video keeps stopping and it is really grainy. Any tips for uploading video from anyone out there?

Big Shoes to Fill

Cate is obsessed with shoes. She likes to open her closet and just say, "hi!!" to her shoes and she loves to wear our shoes as well. Here she is trying to walk around in her pajamas in Dada's huge gym shoes.

Chicken Noodle Soup

Grammy made her yummy chicken noodle soup last weekend and brought some over for us. Since dinnertime crept up on me as usual tonight, with Cate doing the sign for "eat" at 4:45, I decided to see if she would eat soup. I figured it's a good, easy choice for dinner for her because all of the food groups are right in one bowl. Usually when Cate eats, she likes to use at least one utensil, sometimes two just for the fun of it. Evidently, she likes to eat soup with her bare hands. She systematically ate the noodles, barley (not easy), carrots and chicken, in that order and then rejected all of the celery. She took one bite of each of the sweet potato fries that I made her then tossed the rest aside and when she was finished, she asked for a banana (or anana, as she calls them). She ate the whole thing. I would love to know what makes Cate decide to eat something on a given day and why she finds certain things so repulsive.

After dinner, I decided to give Timmy a bath and enlisted Cate's help since Daddy was not home yet. After I got his towel out, she emptied the whole drawer and brought all of his blankets into the bathroom with us.

I don't think that Timmy was the most relaxed during his bath with Cate hovering over him repeating his name over and over, but he didn't complain. He snuggled up afterwards in his froggy towel.

Luckily a few minutes after we finished with baths, Tim got home and whisked Cate downstairs so that Timmy could go to bed in peace!

Four Months, Eighteen and a Half Months

Timmy will be four months old on Monday; he is getting so big so fast! He is such a sweet baby, as I type, he is cooing away at his blue light mobile in his crib. He loves to have someone to sit and just talk to him, he is a really good sleeper (most of the time) and is generally very good natured. He is rolling from front to back, doing little baby crunches in a futile effort to sit up and has almost gotten his thumb into his mouth. In the last few weeks, he has gotten very interested in Cate. He loves to sit and look at her, but she is usually on the move, taking care of her baby, so he doesn't get to look for long!

Cate, at 18.5 months has a lot to say...all the time. She babbles at us constantly and throws quite a few real words in too. Her favorite words, the ones you can always get her to say even if she doesn't feel like performing, are, "dada, TT (timmy) and mama" in that order. If you get her going, she will move on to others like, "guh (dog) meow, hi, bye-bye, car (said with a boston accent), sit, come, mimi (grammy), pop, and night night. She does a few signs as well, most importantly, please. It's her own variation, but it is much better than the grunting that she used to do when she wanted something. When we walk through Timmy's room to get to the playroom, she holds her finger to her lips and says, "SHHHH" just like I do. Then she proceeds to yell, "Hi Teeeee, Hi Teeee Teee!" as we pass by him sleeping in his crib. She likes nothing better than the chance to hold her baby brother, as you can see below!

Counting

Cate has so many new toys to play with, but after leaving her for a second to put Timmy in his crib, I found her playing her favorite game...counting barrettes. She loves to dump them all on the floor and then imitate the intonation of counting while she puts them all back in the bag. This can keep her occupied for 15 minutes.

C

A new look, a new name

I have finally started working on the much needed changes to this blog. I mean really, Timmy is 3 months old; he is sick of living in Cate's pink world. I'm not sure that I'm really happy with this new layout but it will have to do for the moment. I decided to keep the web address the same for the sake of simplicity, but change the title of the blog to include Timmy.

When I started this blog when Cate was born, I wondered whether or not I would keep it updated. I have found though that this is the easiest way for me to keep track of milestones and now that I have two babies, I really do not have time to keep up with a baby book...or two. I am hoping to periodically have this blog printed into some sort of book (on my long list of things to do) so that Cate and Timmy can look through it someday and not only see all of the pictures we took of them, but be able to read our thoughts on the events pictured. Thanks for reading with us!

Christmas and Sledding

It is really hard to take care of two babies and get great pictures at the same time. I'm kind of disappointed with our Christmas pictures this year, but oh well. We had a great day and tried to take some video of Cate and Timmy too.

My smiley little guy. He loves to sit and look at people. He just talks and coos until he's hungry or tired.

Cate in her adorable pink hooded vest from Aunt Mary. It is so warm and cozy and she didn't mind modeling it for us. Of course she was trying to let the two dogs in who were a nuisance while we were opening gifts.

Opening gifts with Daddy

Not a great shot, but she really loved this slide that we got for her. It's a good size for Cate. She loves slides and when we showed it to her after her nap, she went down a million times yelling, "Pie, pie pie pie" I guess that's sort of like slide...

Last night our friends, Tom and Allison, came over with little Elizabeth who is 2 1/2. We have a huge sledding hill right behind our house so the guys took the girls out. They came back with really chapped cheeks but had a good time anyway.

Cate's new snowsuit...it's a bit big... but ever since last night, every time I go to the closet to put her coat on, she wants the snow pants on too.

Breakfast with Santa

This past Saturday we took Cate and Timmy to see Santa and Mrs. Claus. We sat with our neighbors and their 2 year old daughter, Haley, and everyone had a good time, ate pancakes and colored pictures. Then it was time to take pictures with Santa.

Here's a picture of Cate on Santa's lap last year:

and here's a picture from this year:

I guess it would be scary to sit on some strange man's lap. She would have nothing to do with it. After Santa left, we got her to sit in the chair and hold Timmy for a few shots, but she was already mad.

The last Few Weeks

We had a great, relaxing Thanksgiving last week. It was so nice to have Tim home for four days and to be able to do a few fun things with the babies. Cate got to see the Christmas tree at my parents' house after her Thanksgiving nap. She just kept saying oooohh, ahhhh. We told her that it was hot and not to touch it....so far it's working. We decided not to put our tree up this year because Cate is just into everything and we have enough going on with the construction in the house.

Grammy bought Cate and Timmy the cute, matching Christmas pajamas in the picture, but getting a good picture of them is next to impossible. I thought of trying to use one for a Christmas card, but I've now moved on to a new plan.

Cate was very excited to hold Timmy, but Timmy never really feels the same way, so the expression on his face is not as adorable as it could be!

Christmas card photo attempt

Watching football with Pop

Attempt #2...doesn't Timmy look thrilled?

Admiring the tree

A visit from boyfriend Casey...I think that this was the only moment that Cate smiled during his entire visit...not one of her better mornings!

Morning Smiles

Timmy gave us his first smile about a week and a half ago at 7.5 weeks, but this is the first time I have been able to capture it. He slept well last night, about 7 hrs in a row, so he was in a great mood this morning. Cate thought that he was hilarious and kept "asking" to hold him. We let her hold him in her rocking chair and she just kissed him over and over and kept saying "Teeee Teeeee" which is her nickname for him and any other baby or doll that she sees.

At first, I didn't think that Cate and Timmy looked alike at all, but now that he is more expressive and a bit more filled out, I see glimpses of Cate in him every now and then. The last picture is of Cate at about 2 months. I can see similarities in their profiles although hers is still a lot chubbier than Timmy's!