Things left undone.

Today I was going to:
- Return the rental truck to the dealership and pick up my car.
- Bring in the bag of dog food from my trunk.
- Bring in the bag of potting soil from the garage.
- Start seeds for the garden.

I got the truck returned and my car is now in the driveway. The dog is eating dog cookies for supper because it's cold and dark and I don't want to go outside. And the seeds are waiting until tomorrow. Again.

We did also go to Costco and pick up some nice vittles. Some things that will be very useful for someone who is the only person eating cooked food in this house half the month. It's hard to justify cooking for one person. Especially when that person isn't allowed to eat said cooked meal while it is still warm. Might as well have cold cereal. On that note, I'm also in the market for a microwave. Just need to find a really small one. And maybe an electric kettle, so that when I have to boil water 3 times for my cup of tea, it doesn't take all day to do so.

In Katie news, she started pulling up to stand today. Without my help. And she is mighty pleased with herself until she falls down. Luckily, that has been just as slow as the standing, so it isn't actually painful, just infuriating. Still no teeth on top, but I'm hoping by morning. I can feel ridges, so it shouldn't be too much longer. But I've said that before. She also likes to stand up with the steering wheel in the car, makes for some cute pictures. Today I stood her up there and said, "vroom, vroom." And was rewarded with hysterical laughter. So naturally, we repeated it for about 10 minutes. There is nothing sweeter than baby laughter.

And the obligatory photos.
a mighty-pleased-with-herself Katie.

The Mighty Shrew Hunter (I won't subject you to a photo of the actual shrew)

and Charlie. I've decided that he is horribly non-photogenic in the winter. He really looks good except when I take his picture.

No pictures of Bailey right now, she's on the dirt list. She ate my nice work gloves again, and she was only alone with them for about 10 seconds. Stupid dog won't touch Andrew's gloves, maybe I should soak mine in drilling mud too. And, she doesn't go out with us to feed the horse anymore because she thinks she needs to eat all his grain, which of course makes her sick.

No pictures of Jose because he's a fish and he's not very exciting.

Happy Valentines Day!

For Valentine's Day, I got you all some nice rosy cheeks.

It warmed up to -10C/17F today, so I took Katie out to feed the horse with me again. Bundled her first though. She has a hard time sitting up in this suit, it's very thick.

After we came in. She's still sitting in the carrier. She was nice & toasty warm except for her cheeks. She loves going out to visit the horse.

Oh! Get me from my good side.
Cutie.

And my sweetie sent me some very pretty flowers.

And a new vote

After discussion with Andrew (and a tie with the last vote), we now have 4 pictures. I need to turn it in tomorrow, and I can't decide. If you want to vote, please do so before 1pm MST. Thanks!!

#1
#2

#3

#4

A new update.

Katie is feeling much better, has been for a couple days. Now we're dealing with the teeth again. They are STILL not through. She's getting so big and learning more and more every day. It is amazing to watch.


Almost time for bed, with rosy cheeks from a nice warm bath. She LOVES the bath. Loves to splash and play with her toys. We're working on floating (what do you expect from a former swimming teacher), and kicking, and she loves that too. She also holds her breath when she puts her face in the water, but I'm not sure if that's intentional or a reflex. Either way, we're going to encourage it. She has no fear of the water, so the earlier she learns to swim, the better.
She's been trying more solid foods. She still nurses for her meals, but we are attempting to try some "big people food" every day. So far, she loves bananas, avocados, blueberries and chicken with veggies. Will tolerate pears and sweet potatoes, and does not like regular potatoes. Won't even attempt carrots. Picks them up and throws them straight on the floor. That's my girl. She seemed to like the pea I gave her the other day, but I only had one that I could pick out of my supper. I also found some wheat-free maple flavour teething biscuits today and she was very excited about those. By the time she was done with one, she smelled like pancakes. Yum. We're waiting on wheat because of Mom's allergy. I very much don't want to deal with that later.

She wasn't sure what she was supposed to do with these noodles. Bailey, however, was very pleased with the outcome. She got to eat them all. And the asparagus stick that Katie didn't want. This is one of the major reasons Bailey likes babies. She does not, however, appreciate her lips being pulled. That makes her cry.
Chicken & veggies are a big hit.

And, I'm learning to knit. This project will be a bib. And the yarn is handwash only. Not sure what I was thinking. Pretty though.

Poor sick baby.

Long time since the last post, Katie's been fighting off a cold. She seems to be over it now, but she had a couple rough nights.

We have forward movement!

It's not pretty, but it definitely gets her where she's going. Took her 2 days to figure out once she started shuffling forward. Still only 2 teeth through, but I'm desperately hoping the third will be through when we wake up in the morning. It's so close, and it's bothering her a lot. In the meantime, she looks absolutely adorable with just 2 teeth.

Also, the newspaper is doing a photospread of the babies born in 2006, and since Katie qualifies, we're putting in her picture. I hear from some possibly reliable sources that it is a contest, but I don't recall reading that in the first announcement and it wasn't in this week's paper. So, if you read our blog, please reply to this post and vote for your favorite picture. I've narrowed it down to three that I think display her personality very well.

Thanks!

#1 Rawr!

#2 Shredder.

#3 Aren't I adorable?

Just pictures.

just pictures today, we're teething and tired.

Coming in from a walk.

Not much cuter than a baby in overalls. Can you see my teeth?
There they are!
Time for bed, goodnight!

I'm gonna get you!

Rawr!!

Slideshow

I made a slideshow for Katie.

Teeth.

Can't see them very well, she so wasn't impressed with my taking this picture, but there's two little teeth by my fingernail.

Katie loves going to feed the horse. And since it's above freezing this week, she doesn't need bundled so much and it's a lot easier on both of us. She's so funny, just spends the whole time yelling at Bailey.

That's it for now, one more picture quick, Katie's waking up.

Squirrel bread

I made bread. Squirrelly-type bread with lots of grainy goodness. It's actually called Mashed potato flax bread. The recipe says "the potatoes give this bread a light, smooth texture". Eh. It's pretty good, but I think I need more practice. For the flour, I ground some wheat in the blender. The recipe calls for fresh ground wheat, but they use a mill and I don't have one. I think the blender worked nicely, but I used the coffee grinder first and some of the grains didn't get ground very fine. It's a nice bread, heavier and grainier than I'm used to, but very tasty. I think I'll try sticky buns next. Maybe for our crafting group next Thursday.
The recipe actually makes 4 loaves, but I turned one into buns and the other was in the oven when I took this picture.



And Katie was busy getting herself stuck on the table leg. I moved her to different places in the kitchen not less than 5 times. Every time she wound up stuck on this single table leg. I guess it's more magnetic than the others.

She has decided, now that Daddy has gone back to work, that she simply can not sleep anywhere but his spot on our bed. How sweet. She misses him a lot.

More excitement, I strapped her on my back with our new bug carrier this morning when I went to feed the horse. She was in her snowsuit and it was fairly warm today. We were outside for about an hour (no reason to go in if there's no baby inside waiting for me), and she spent the entire time laughing at Bailey. She just loves that dog. Charlie wasn't sure what to think of us.

Katie & a haircut

So apparently, someone pretending to chew on your cheeks and tummy is most funny. It brings peals of laughter and attempted retaliatory chewing. Which, of course, is funnier than the initial chewing was.

Katie is not quite crawling, but she's definitely mobile. She can scoot across the room faster than anything. She does it backward, but she makes it there. It's really pretty entertaining. Then she gets hung up on a wall or a chair and screams for someone to fix it. She can also scoot considerably well sitting on her bum. Not sure how she manages that, it's some sort of thing with her legs pulling her, I think. When I put her in the crib, or a laundry basket, she now pulls herself to standing. Which is very exciting if you're a baby. But it just reminds Mom & Dad that we need to get on that babyproofing.

Also, I got my hair cut & dyed. It was time for a change, and I'm very happy with how it turned out.

New pictures again:
Not sure what she's doing here, but she's doing it a lot lately. Maybe it's just too easy to push up onto her knees.
Haircut

More

I made another bug carrier, this one is called a mei tai.Katie loves it, and it really makes her feel lighter than she is so I love it too.

She helped make it.

We now have 2 teeth. They have broken through her gums but no pictures yet because they're still barely visible.
More later. There has been much not sleeping here and we're tired.

A New Hat for Bug

I made this for her yesterday. Haven't had a chance yet to put together the matching jacket, but soon, I hope. I'll post pictures of the whole ensemble when it's finished. The upper brown part of this hat is made from the same fleece I used for our new pouch. I posted a picture of that fleece a bit further down the page.

lots of pictures

I'll probably post more later.

Katie and her Great-Grandma Lake.Katie and Great-Grandpa Lake.
(I think she likes him, what about you?)

Great-Great-Uncle Bob
Katie Elizabeth and Katie Alizabeth. Me & Aubrey. I can't believe she's 11 already.
Plans are in place for her to come visit us this coming summer. Yay!

Me & Brynn.
She's almost 7. Wow!
Grandpa Lake made this horse for me when I was a little girl.
With a bit of modification to the mane & tail, it is new again for my little girl. Just because she's cute.

And, I finally had a chance to finish Katie's stocking, so here it is.

Catching up.

This is going to be a big jumble, because I've got 3 weeks to update. Bear with me.

First things first, dear sister... It's been exactly 2 weeks since the last picture, not three. So there.

We have had a whirlwind few weeks. We left here on Dec. 20 and headed south. Spent the first night with Andrew's sister and her family. Left there the next morning, late because there are kids there to play with, but we made it to Grandma & Grandpa's (the Greats) house in N. Idaho that night. The border crossing was super easy. We think that we got the same guard as we had when we went down in September but he wasn't so friendly this time. I imagine that the holidays are stressful for them too. We did Christmas with Grandma & Grandpa, and also Gary, Joy & Rob on the 23rd, then headed south once again Christmas Eve to surprise my parents with an early arrival. Stayed there until the morning of the 5th when we headed back north to Idaho for 2 days, then back to Olds for a night and homeward. Katie did amazingly well travelling. We've decided that she doesn't mind long trips but she hates short ones. She doesn't like the in & out, I think. She wants to be in & stay there then out & stay there. There was really very little crying in over 20 hours of driving time, and the little crying there was could be solved by some food, a clean diaper or just turning on the light so she could see.

We arrived back in Northern Alberta just in time for "the biggest blizzard since 1968" which over the next 24 hours became the biggest since 1980 and the biggest since 1978. We're not sure what the deal is there. Didn't seem like much of a blizzard to me, but what do I know, I grew up in the Willamette Valley where it doesn't snow. There was a bunch of wind and about 7 inches of snow, but it didn't seem much like any blizzard in any book I've read. Needless to say, though, Andrew had to plow the driveway the next afternoon when we decided to venture out of the house again. Or rather, he ventured out because one of his mom's friends needed a tow out of a ditch.

We've been home for almost a week, and it is so nice to be home. Bailey was most excited to see us. Andrew's cousin stayed here for her, but that's not the same as having her family home. Although, she obviously got away with more when Aunty Kristy was here than she usually does. Charlie is happy to see us, especially since we decided to start feeding him 2 meals a day. Morgan is Morgan. She acts the same now as she did when we left. And Jose is a fish, what do you expect from him?

And, we have a tooth! You can't really see it yet, it's barely broken through, but it is out.

I think that's all for now, except maybe one parting note:
Some of you have seen our dining room chairs. For those of you who haven't, you can peek at them here. People tell me I'm crazy to have white dining room chairs. "But," I say, "they have slipcovers. All you have to do is take them off and wash them." And they say ok, but secretly still believe I'm crazy. I can see it in their eyes. Well, they were looking dingy, so yesterday I took the covers off and washed them. And they are bright, shiny white again. Not so crazy after all.

Pictures to come next.

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year!

We've been visiting my parents and a whole lot of people we haven't seen since we were last here 2 years ago. We've had a great visit, Katie has been loving the attention.

For Christmas, Katie received, among other things, a new amber necklace to help with teething,
A cozy new sweaterdress
and some crinkly wrapping paper.


I also made us a new baby pouch out of this fun, pretty fleece.