Home of Steve, Christine, Katherine, Ally, Rosebud, and Rex
Zone Defense. Lack of Sleep. Everything starting to come back from late night hallway walks to routine detective work to figure out why Allison is crying now. Katherine continues to evolve too. Katherine can now open the locked pantry and the refrigerator by herself.
My goal is to update Day 3 and 4 later this evening after Katherine goes to bed with news and pictures. Consider this a placeholder.
The doctor said we can go home from the hospital today. We’re looking forward to seeing Katherine and sleeping in our own beds. More later. Allison is crying.
Day 2 for Allison. Last night Allison slept well for a newborn, waking up every 2-3 hours for “check-ups” by the hospital staff. Steve and Christine got a decent night’s sleep, all things considered. We’re tired but not exhausted.
It’s all coming back to us. We experienced a lot of firsts for Allison today: wet and dirty diapers, breast feeding, yawns, sneezes, fake smiles, turns to the light, etc. The second child is just as rewarding as the first. We missed a lot of “firsts” with Katherine as we were exhausted. It also gives us the opportunity to relive Katherine’s birth and Allison’s own growth plan.
Christine is recovering well from C section delivery. She’s been detached from all of the cords tying her down and is able to move around the room pretty well. Christine and Allison are mastering the art of breast feeding, every child has their own eating preferences.
Steve is spending his time in support of Christine and Allison, posting pictures to the web site and trying to tie up loose ends at work. He’s looking forward to finishing the open items in his parental leave transition plan so he can enjoy spending quality time with Christine, Allison, and Katherine. The people at Pure Networks have been fabulous in picking up any unresolved tasks.
Katherine visited Allison at the hospital today. Grandma Chang and Patty have been taking care of Katherine at the house. Katherine has missed mom and dad dearly and was really excited to meet her new baby sister. Dad met Katherine in the lobby and spent some quality time with her before bringing her back with Patty and Grandma Chang to the room. At Toby school, Katherine stood up during circle time and declared to all that she was a big sister now. Patty and Grandma Chang gushed with pride.
Katherine literally gazed at Allison in awe. It was a beautiful sight. She’s truly a proud big sister and will nurture Allison through her growing years. As a parent, it’s truly amazing to see the sister bond start to form. Katherine will be a great big sister.
Grandma Chang couldn’t wait to hold Allison. She beamed with excitement for new new granddaughter. As a parent, it’s rewarding to see the joy a newborn brings to the lives of extended family.
Nanny Patty patiently waited her turn to hold Allison. We are truly blessed to have Patty as a caregiver. She’s shown great love and guidance for Katherine and helped Christine and I raise a well adjusted child. We’re looking forward to Patty’s help in raising Allison as well.
Mom and Allison are asleep as I write this. I’m publishing it now without Christine’s editorial approval so this entry may be improved later when she wakes up and reviews. ๐
I getting nursery ready for baby!
Katherine definitely knows that the baby is on her way! Here are some of her funny moments:
She’s actively investigated all of her old baby stuff. Lambey regularly gets her diaper changed in the Pack and Play changing area, gets buckled into the swing and has checked out all the bassinets in the house. For a couple weeks, Katherine would climb into her old crib (bumpers and all), turn on the mobiles and music and then tell us “Get Me Down!”
The Joy of a 2.5 Year Old
Katherine is challenging us a bit more these days, and it seems to have coincided with her hitting 2.5 years old. It now can take up to 15-20 minutes to get dressed in the morning because she has definite opinions as to what she wants to wear…not always matching of course. And, getting her out the door can be a exercise in negotiation and distraction. Although, when motivated, Katherine can move very quickly. This morning it only took 2 minutes to get dressed because she was so excited to go to gymnastics class and change into her little purple/pink heart leotard for class!
She’s learning that crying doesn’t always get her what she wants. Case in point, she cried for 5 minutes this morning demanding a juice box instead of her one daily cup of apple juice. Steve and I held firm and after 10 minutes she went back to her apple juice.
Katherine is also starting to demand that we play certain games like “me chase Daddy and Bisco upstairs” or “me want Daddy to throw ball outside” or “me play with sand box and shovel.” While she can entertain herself for small stretches without imminent disaster, she looks for caregivers to participate in her imaginary tea and birthday parties. Often this involves directing who sits where, who eats with which plates & utensils and what happens during the parties.
One of her latest quirks is an obsession with her “stuff.” Stuff includes her red vest, 2 pairs of blue Nemo underwear, 2 plastic spoons, an Easter purse, and a Minnie t-shirt. She carries all this stuff around in a little red Stanford backpack in the house and whenever we leave the house. We accidentally left the backpack at home last Saturday and had to go home to get it – she was so bent out of shape and kept saying “I want my stuff. Please go home and get backpack!” I’m hoping this phase doesn’t last too long!
Reading Books Before Bed
We’ve established a set routine before bedtime, which consists of reading on our bed and then reading 2 books in Katherine’s room. She gets to select the books. More and more, she insists that “I read book” and “I hold book” and she will take a crack at reading her books. For some, like her Fire Engine, Biscuit and Little Critter books (say about 8-10 that we more frequently), Katherine has memorized almost complete sentences. She tries to imitate us by licking her finger to help turn the pages so that she doesn’t miss any pages. For a couple choice Audrey Wood books like Sweet Dream Pie and Napping House, she’s memorized the entire books and even knows where she may have ripped and taped the pages together. Napping House is a current favorite with its repetition and amusing story line. As part of the routine, she will say “me help read napping house” and then ask “why is everyone not sleeping?” at the end of the book. Sometimes, if we miss or slip up on any key words, she will correct us. ๐
Burgeoning Vocabulary
When Katherine was 18 months or so, I started tracking her vocabulary using Excel. I gave up several months later when the spreadsheet exceeded 300 words. We figure she’s got a full-blown vocabulary now – where non-primary caregivers understand her ~60% of the time, her sentence structure is more grammatical and she pronounces words more accurately.
We are also starting to teach her about words that start with certain letters. “What words start with B?” or “What letter does Bisco start with?” For some words that we ask a lot, she’ll answer correctly over half the time. Other times, it’s a guessing game, but she’s trying hard and having a fun time with the alphabet.
New Experiences & More Developments
Katherine’s other skills are progressing at various paces. We started taking her to a nearby gym for Mighty Mites classes in February. This was an activity that I would take her to, but it became increasingly difficult for me to help her with some physically demanding activities. One of her favorite activities is jumping into a pit filled with foam blocks – used to provide a soft landing for gymnasts learning rings.
After 4 weeks of back breaking work, I moved her to another weekly class that Patty takes her to every Friday. This is perhaps her favorite class now, largely because they bought a little leotard at Target that Katherine thinks is really cool. In pre-leotard classes, she would participate in some activities. Post-leotard she tried everything the coach suggested and can’t wait to march off to class in the morning. This class has also highlighted how one set of skills can develop more quickly than others. Her gross motor skills are not nearly as developed as her verbal skills as evidenced by the fact that she is the only child in her class who can’t jump yet! We’ve all tried to coach her but to no avail. So for now, she rolls around the family room carpet doing somersaults and tries to do a crab walk.
Our last several weekends have been jam packed. Katherine has hosted and attended several parties for her friends. As well, we prepared for the annual carnival for her toddler school. Unlike last year, this year’s carnival presented an opportunity for me to learn how to make cupcakes. After asking around for favorite recipes and making practice cupcakes (see picture), we enlisted friends to come over and help make fish cupcakes – yummy chocolate scratch cupcakes with candy/frosting resembling a fish. Katherine and Audrey had a great time observing, and while the cupcakes didn’t win any prizes, they tasted great!
Carnival fun didn’t end with the fish cupcakes though. The next day, Steve, Katherine and I headed to a local school to participate in the fun – cake walk, fishing, basketball, bean bag toss, etc. We whipped thru the carnival in 45 minutes. The highlight was clearly the cake walk where we won a homemade cake on the first try! The local firemen also stopped by with their firetruck and Katherine and Audrey went inside to check it out.
Learning about Consequences
Now that Katherine is 2.5 years old, we believe that it’s time to learn about consequences. One hard lesson occurred the weekend of the carnival. Katherine was determined to scoot underneath every restaurant table at which we sat. Despite constant reminders, she seemed to think that it was acceptable to go under the table to go from one side of the table to the other. Finally at Red Robin, I warned her “if you go under the table, no racetrack cake tonight!” She looked straight at me and dived under the table. On the way home she tried to convince me that “no more under table, me get cake tonight!” We held firm and no cake. The following evening we took her to a local pizza parlor. As she said “me no go under the table. me get cake. dogs go under table.” I think we’ve effectively nipped this behavior in the bud.
Katherine’s empathy is becoming more and more pronounced. It started with Madeleine and questioning why she had to go to the hospital. It then extended to Sylvester and the Magic Pebble. The premise of this book is that Sylvester turns into a big rock thanks to a magic pebble that grants his wish. I had purchased this book for Katherine’s little library months ago, and she started to flip thru the book recently. Patty also checked out the Spanish version of this book from the library and began to read the book to Katherine before naptime. Well, during a recent reading right as Sylvester turned into a pebble and his parents started to look for him, Katherine began to ask “where’s Sylvester” “why his parents sad?” She almost began to cry, which prompted Patty to finish the book quickly and more cheerfully than the author intended.
We’ve also noticed that Katherine doesn’t understand and has difficulty watching conflict. For instance, we took Katherine and my mom down to NW Trek a couple weekends ago. Along the way we popped Shrek 2 in the minivan DVD player. All was well and good until the main characters started to argue – at that point we had to change DVDs…
Potty & Rocks
Katherine is now about 95% potty trained when she isn’t sleeping. We started this process intermittently several months ago and focused hard on it starting 2-3 weeks ago. The incentive process goes like this: #1 gets 2 rocks, #2 gets 1 rock. When the Starbucks shot glass is full with colored rocks, she goes to the toy store and gets to pick out one small toy. The first week she earned a wood birthday cake with candles and toppings. The second week she earned a plastic place setting for her kitchen. She’s now filled up her little glass for the third time – earning her a much deserved third trip. She’s been talking about getting an oven mitt for her kitchen, but we’ll see what she picks!
Until about 2 weeks ago, we would put Katherine in a diaper to leave the house. Then we started carrying around a little plastic toilet foldable seat (that she loves!) for her to use. Now she only wears diapers when she naps and sleeps at night – 2 diapers a day. We’ve stopped buying diapers at Costco and are looking forward to being down to 1 diaper at night within the next month or so if we can swing it.
We’re hoping that the potty training sticks thru baby #2 and that we’ll be home free for preschool in September! One other benefit of underwear is that Katherine fits much more nicely in her clothes – except for her jeans which fall down on her. You can see how she looks different without diapers in the last picture at the lake.
Just our Luck
We seem to have nasty luck when it comes to things that Katherine loves and wants more of – case in point, Lambey. Katherine now expresses very strong preferences as to what she wants to wear. Her latest attachments include a pair of green 2T, too small Nemo PJs that the Grandparents purchased at Disneyland and a red 2T Zutano vest that she received a while ago from Audrey. Both are no longer being manufactured and are not available anymore!
On a lucky note, her older cousin Kevin outgrew his size 6 matching Nemo PJs and handed them down to Katherine (whew!). Her attachment to these PJs and this vest is so strong that she tracks the laundry carefully and will run to her dresser to see if they are available to wear.
The theme for this weekend was animals…lots and lots of animals. Steve, Katherine and I have been exploring a lot of the local animal parks and discovering lots of unusual, endangered, threatened animals locally. This past Saturday we visited the Cougar Mountain Zoo with Grandma Bush. It’s a rather eclectic park that houses not only cougars, but over a dozen macaws, lemurs, reindeer and other rather interesting animals. While not large, the park is very friendly to younger children and big enough to capture their interest for a couple hours. You’ll see in the pictures that Katherine had a great time on their metal animals – pointing out the roo in the kangaroo’s pocket. She also fed some Formosa deer (extinct outside of captivity) apples and played peek-a-boo with macaws.
We decided to put our new minivan (see below) to the test and took it for an inaugural road trip to Northwest Trek. Per our previous trip, we saw lots of NW animals up close and personal – from peering into beaver, sea otter and other caves to seeing animals roam their very natural surroundings. One of the biggest surprises, picture to be loaded soon, was the family of beavers that we saw with mom, dad and 2-year old child cuddling in their cave. Unlike our other trip, we didn’t get to see many moose on the tram ride, but Katherine used the ride to wolf down her PB&J sandwich and crackers. It was a fairly long trip which warranted “Buzz and Woody” and we got a host of questions each way like “Where’s Woody’s dog?” “What happened to Woody’s arm?” “Where’s Buzz?”
Why is Madeleine in Hospital?
For those of you familiar with “Madeleine,” you know that she has appendicitis and has to have it removed. We’ve been reading this book for a couple months now. Katherine, by and large, sits with Lambey and sucks her thumb. Tonight I got a barrage of questions. They ranged from “Why is Madeleine sick?” “Why aren’t other girls in bed?” “Where is Madeleine’s mama?” and I must have spent several minutes explaining that Madeleine would get well, come home and sleep in her junior bed. ๐
Exploring Museum of Flight
One of my goals has been to take Katherine to new places and have lots of adventures before the baby is born. Two Fridays ago, Steve took the day off and we took the Bushes to the Museum of Flight in Seattle. It definitely exceeded our expectations. Unlike other museums it has hands on exhibits for kids and even a cool area for kids to play in real, small sized planes. Katherine was fearless – marching into a Blue Angels small model plane, grabbing the joystick and moving the plane around. We loved the cafeteria which was affordable and accessible from the main airplane hangar area. And, we even ran into Sid, who is a museum regular.
Biting the Bullet
Steve and I did something we swore we’d never do, which is buy a minivan. After maintaining our Volvo station wagon for 7 years, we caved and bought the next family automobile – a Honda Odyssey minivan. Aside from the ridicule from friends, it drives like a Honda (big plus) and has an amazing range of amenities. Our hope is that it lives up to its brand and has low maintenance cost and high resale value! The other benefit is that Katherine thinks the minivan is really cool. Not only does it have the entertainment option, which allows for movies on long trips, but she has her own captains chair that she climbs in and out of. She’s identified where she wants to put the baby “when Mama goes to hospital and baby comes out of tummy” and loves to strap any stuffed friend into her seat. It now takes an extra 5 minutes to leave the house just to get Katherine into her seat. To be frank though, the biggest downside is perception among other drivers. Other drivers figure that minivans are slow and conservative drivers and that they should cut us off – hmmm.
