Tulip Time 2010

Tim and Cate travelled to Pella this past weekend to celebrate Tulip Time. Timmy and I stayed home because I have missed a lot of work lately and needed to be there for a full week. Also, Auntie Jenn is graduating next weekend, so we will all be taking a road trip to Iowa City for that!

Grandma bought Cate her first pair of wooden shoes; I think that they are called, "Klompen" Grandma and Cate participated in a Dutch dance on Sat. morning on the town square. The weather wasn't very nice but they had a good time anyway!

A close up of Cate's hand painted shoes...so pretty!

Cate and Diane during the dance

Cate and Claire, Tim's cousin's daughter.

All of the girls ready for the dance to begin. Diane, Cate, Claire, Marla, Julie and Susan.

A picture with Great-Grandma Zee

Seven Months Old

Our handsome little Timmy is seven months old. Well, he was a few weeks ago, but this is the best I could do. Timmy is loving his vegetables and is starting on fruits. He is much less picky that Cate was and pretty much always finishes everything we offer him. He is very close to crawling, but so far just goes backwards and does a strange one armed push up type move. He has a really great disposition and only fusses when he's tired or hungry. He thinks that Cate is hilarious and it has been so much fun to start to see them interact!

Saturday Mornings

Saturday mornings are the best, aren't they? Of course it used to mean lying around, doing whatever we wanted. Now it means getting up at 6:30 with Cate and Timmy and just hanging out, not having to rush out of the house. Cate loves to go to the playground so here she is waiting for Tim to finish getting ready so that she can go down the slide a million times. She was so impatient to go that she found his shoes for him and ran them over to Tim yelling, "Shoe dada shoe!" Then off they went so that I could finish getting ready while Timmy sleeps. Our big project for today is finding a little picnic table with an umbrella.

Go Cubs Go!!!!

Cate is all ready for the Cubs game tonight! She loves to wear her baseball cap just like her Daddy. She's a cute little cubs fan, isn't she?

Easter Portraits and Easter Sunday

We don't have portraits done of Cate and Timmy very often, but I really wanted to get one done of them together now that Timmy is 6 months old. Although we got great shots of each of them, I am not thrilled with the one of both of them together because by the time Cate decided to cooperate, Timmy had had enough of smiling. He was hungry and ready to be done. Oh well. It is very hard to find a time of day when a 21 month old and a 6 month old are both awake, in a good mood and fed.

This is the best of both of them.

My handsome little T. Timmy wears pajamas most of the time, so it was so much fun to see him all dressed up in his little man clothes.

Doesn't she look angelic? If I told you what was going on behind the scenes, you wouldn't think so.

Cate did not want to sit in this nice, white chair. She kept trying to drag over a red velvet chair. Not very festive for Easter!

We had a nice Easter weekend. I was off on Good Friday, so Cate, Timmy and I hung out at the playground in the morning and out in the back yard in the afternoon since the weather was so nice. We got to go to the Stettner's house on Sat. night for dinner and bunny cake decorating with the little girls and then on Sunday we just relaxed after church and a big meal at Mimi and Pop's house.

After Cate got up from her nap, she followed a trail of plastic eggs to find her Easter basket. The picture below is blurry, but she loved picking up all of the eggs and finding her basket which was full of crayons, coloring/sticker books and paint with water books.

Trouble

Cate is getting older and wiser now so this morning, while Timmy slept, I thought that I could get away with taking a quick (really quick) shower. I set her up at the bathroom sink to brush her teeth and play with the water. She stood there happily brushing, saying "choo choo" because of her Thomas the Train toothpaste for just about the whole time. I had just about rinsed all of the conditioner out of my hair when I heard, "Buh Byeee" and the door opened. So, conditioner or not, my shower was over, but I was too late. This is what I found...

She looked up at me and said, "Hi mama hi. Cookies?" Anything that she deems a treat is a cookie and because she never eats Rice Krispies, they must seem interesting to her. Oh well, at least they are easy to clean up.

Spring Break 2010!

We have had pretty nice weather this week for my Spring Break. We've been able to go for walks and go to the playground every day. We got out a little stroller for Cate's baby and she now insists on pushing it around the block instead of riding in the double stroller herself. She actually makes it really far...all the way around the block...but it makes it hard for me to take the dog, Timmy and walk along with Cate and her baby, so I have to wait until someone can go with me. The upside is that with all of that fresh air and exercise, she's been going to bed right after Timmy at about 6:45!

Timmy got to take his first ride on the swings. He sat and enjoyed the scenery but wasn't quite sure what to think. He was a little bit worn out from his dr. appt. the day before where he got his 6mo shots. He is still in the 95% for height! Clearly, he is taking after Tim!

This morning, my mom went with me to have their picture taken for Easter. I really haven't done many professional pictures at all but every once in a while it is nice. I will post some of those soon...they came out so cute and I bought WAY too many but it was worth it. I don't know how people do that every few months. I had my mom with me and I'm still ready for a nap after all of the baby wrangling, changing and smiling like a fool to get them to cooperate!

Cookies

Cate's latest word is "cookies". One of her favorite books is about Cookie Monster making cookies, so I think that's where she learned it. We've probably given her a few too many cookies in the last few days just so that she would say the word because it sounds so cute. I tried to capture it here while she had a special afternoon snack of a girl scout thin mint.

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!