Some favorite summer pics

June-August 2010

Our summer road trip to New England and back again...!

June 28th thru July 16th, 2010 - COMING SOON...

Catherine and "Aunt Heidi"

September 2nd - Catherine just loves her "Aunt Heidi" (and her Blackberry!) "Aunt Heidi" came to visit us yesterday afternoon and we had a really fun time visiting with her during a quick stop at Mardel's for some teaching supplies and then dinner at Jason's Deli. Catherine was so silly during dinner - making a huge mess of her free ice cream and her crazy laughing and in general cracking us up. She was really on a roll. : ) When "Aunt Heidi" is around Catherine wants little to do with Mommy. She only wants "Aunt Heidi" to sit with, carry her, or hold her hand. : ) We love our "Aunt Heidi!"

Catherine - 1 and counting...

September 2010 (pics from August and September) - My little Catherine is hardly "Baby Catherine" anymore, although I still call her that often or just plain "Kit Kat" most of the time. : ) It has been such a delight to have a girl as well as a boy as they are so very different!

Miss Catherine LOVES her big brother Jacob. When he is still napping and she has already awoken she will try to head up the stairs to find him and she searches the house for him while he is away at preschool. "Jacob - are you?" she says... She also really likes to have him push her around the cul-de-sac in the Little Tykes Coupes. She is his little side kick Greg says. : )

She is also so very much a girl! She loves her babies and will lovingly tuck them in with blankets or bottle feed them for whole minutes at a time. She is usually toting one of her babies and/or a stuffed kitty. She also likes pushing her babies around in the strollers we have. She likes the pretend food and store and my hope is to purchase her a kitchen for her birthday/Christmas as she loves playing with her cousin Lily's when we visit them. Another innately female quality she has is that she LOVES purses which makes me laugh (and will make her grandpa "Bumpa" (my dad) happy as he loves to give fancy purses as gifts to the ladies in his life. She will carefully place her keys, phone, debit card!, etc. into the purse and then tuck it over her shoulder and be on her way. She also grumbles at Dad if he tries to rustle her up too much in terms of rough-housing which Greg finds amusing. Although I must say she does have a particular fondness for a few of Jacob's toys: she loves the train table and her favorite trains are: Hiro (he's her favorite), Thomas, Percy, and Lady. She also really likes "Sally" from the CARS Pixar series.

She is particularly fond of and interested in animals in general and loves a neighborhood cat that comes by occasionally that Jacob named "Pilchard" (after the cat in Bob the Builder.) We are working on being a little gentler in our enthusiasm in patting however!

She LOVES Sesame Street and that is most decidedly her show. Cookie Monster ("Cookie") and Elmo are her favorites and she is quite good at demonstrating at how Cookie eats a cookie and also singing the "Elmo's World" song - loudly. : ) She thinks Barney and Ice Age are pretty good too and like Jacob has perfected Curious George's signature sound. Sesame Street books are her favorite too, although both she and Jacob are loving a library book we have right now and read regularly entitled "The Doghouse."

She is adorable with pigtails, so sweet in dresses, has blue, blue eyes that strangers are always commenting on, and is very much still a Mama's girl -crying copiously when I leave her at church in her classroom on Sunday mornings. She also still wakes up in the middle of the night wanting to snuggle (and usually succeeding) with Mom. Although I think it is time for the transitional toddler bed (her crib conveniently converts) very soon as she somehow got out of (climbed!) her crib a few nights ago which scared me half to death! And her pacifier continues to be the LOVE of her mouth : ) and I have no idea how we are going to get rid of it. She calls it her "taci" and we have a pink basket by the sink full of them. She is perfectly content to push the stool in the kitchen over, climb up, and carry the basket full of them around. In fact, she is happiest when she has her hands full of them and is always delighted when we buy more at the store. She can also do a pretty neat trick with it in her mouth using only her tongue to spin it to right side up if it is put in upside down. Alas, I am hoping to have a "pacifier detox" plan in place by the time she is two years old (November.) : )

While Jacob is away at preschool she and I typically go to music/story time at the library, grocery shop for the week, go to Bible Study (this she doesn't like as much since it involves childcare), and/or go shopping or run errands. She is an excellent shopper already and usually by the time we have finished our circuit through whatever store we are in her arms are laden with items she has deemed essential. : ) And then the extraction process begins... She is actually very good about staying near me and/or walking by the cart. She is miserable, however, in anything that buckles her in and confines her.

She is a sweet little love bug and overall such an easy-going personality. I love to nuzzle her fuzzy head and have her snuggle in my lap after nap time. We love our "Kit Kat."

Jacob - 3 and counting...

September 2010 (pics from August) - I cannot believe that Jacob will be going to "big-boy" school in just two years. I guess that sounds like a long time from now, however, after being a parent for even just a little while I know it is not. And he is looking so grown-up! So I just thought I'd do a little "post" dedicated to being Jacob and being 3. : )

In terms of behavior Greg said wisely at some point that we thought having a two-year-old was challenging, until we had a three-year-old. : ) I'll leave it at that. I do believe in terms of building life-long-character everyone should serve as a waiter or waitress and have a little boy. There is nothing quite like it. ; )

Right now Jacob loves watching or reading Curious George. He also loves the Toy Story characters, especially Buzz Lightyear. He likes to jump off of furniture and say "To infinity and beyond!" He still plays with his Thomas the Train trains and also his Lightening McQueen cars as well. He continues to be a bookworm, although he also loves television and is very displeased when I turn it off (cue weeping, rendering of garments, and gnashing of teeth.) One evening during dinner he kept begging for it even though I had said "no" already several times. While Greg was sitting next to me at the table he turned to me and said "Dad said I could" even though Greg most certainly had not! Later that evening when they were sleeping Greg rated him "poor on execution," but "well-done on manipulation." : ) Another cute story: we were playing with Play Doh (why do they always want to eat it?!) and I had included some cookie cutters in our play. Taking the Noah's Ark mini-set he turned to me and said: "Mom, these are God's animals - aren't they beautiful?"

He also loves Old Testament stories (we found some books with CDs so we listen to them in the car too), especially "David and Goliath and Jonah and the Whale." Greg and I find that especially endearing. And he is particularly cute to watch when he is re-creating/re-enacting a scene or situation from a book or TV program he watched recently. He does this fairly often and he is pretty good at it too. : )

He took to potty-training like a duck to water the week following his 3rd birthday. It was the easiest parenting "chore" I have done yet and we are so proud of how well he has done with it. He seemed to slowly get into baseball this summer and is signed up for soccer beginning early in October. He will have his former baseball coach as his soccer coach: "Coach Paul" who he really liked. He began preschool this week at Happy Harbour and has done wonderfully of which I am so relieved and thankful. No crying at all, unlike last year in which he cried until Thanksgiving it seemed! He goes three days a week now for four hours each day. His new teachers names' are: Ms. Nancy and Ms. Roni and there are fourteen children in his class. He has been gobbling the lunch I pack so I know he is learning and playing hard.

He and Catherine are the best of friends and play for the most part really well together. She continues to take his drinks from him and sit in his chair while he is sitting in it and is very tolerant of it all. He is a sweet little boy - very affectionate and loving, rambunctious and giggly, loves to get physical (sometimes even the adults sustain injury) and play outside as always.

And PS he loves to help me in the kitchen!

He is a blessing, a joy, and sometimes a bit of a Godly challenge. : )