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.

Ho Ho Ho. & PSA

Look what I did Mommy!!

Katie is very much enjoying helping with the Christmas preparations.
We're heading south within the week. Andrew will be off a few days before we thought he would, so we're not sure now where we'll end up when. I believe that we're still planning a few days in Idaho before we head on down to Portland, but I'm not sure where that puts us.

The nieces and nephew have a school program on Wednesday, so I think we're planning to attend that, then leave sometime after. Not sure now if after means nighttime or morning. Then we'll drive as far as Katie allows each day until we get where we're going.

In the meantime, I'm cleaning up the house for Kristy, who will be Baileys temporary roommate and the official feeder of the critters. Biggest item, make sure that there is food in the fridge and make sure that all the food in the fridge is edible food. Hope to tackle most of that tomorrow.

Katie's 1st Christmas

I got Katie's 1st Christmas ornament at the Butterdome Craft Fair on Saturday. I love it.

Miss Morgan

I just realized that I've never really spoken about poor Morgan except to say that she's fat. So here's Morgan's story.

Andrew decided one day that Bailey just wasn't keeping up with the mouse population, so we needed to get a cat. So we called the people who'd put up the "free to a good home" poster and they had one kitten left. She was approximately 4 months old. When we got there, they couldn't find her, so we told them to call us when they caught her and we'd come pick her up. Then, just as I was getting into the car, she peeked around from behind a bush and then she was ours.

She's a sweetie, and an excellent mouser. She loves Bailey and Bailey loves her. So happiness abounds with the two of them. Except when Morgan catches a mouse, then they fight over who gets to eat it. I'm not sure who wins that arguement.

She's pretty too. Here she is the day we brought her home.The second day, she'd already claimed Bailey's bed and toys.
And the girls cuddling.

Here are the pictures.

Bailey!

Charlie Horse!

And, the Christmas tree.