Yes, we are alive

My mom, sister and nephew came to visit over Memorial Day weekend. The pic above is of them waving at Robert as he left. Memorial Day weekend my mom, Ashley and Thomas came down for the weekend and we all had a great time. Kathryn and Thomas were so sweet to each other and played really well together. They will be together again next weekend as the 3 of us are driving to Memphis for Rob to attend his best friends' bachelor party. Sure I will be the one driving home after that weekend ; )



I haven't blogged in forever but that isn't for lack of cute things that Kathryn has done! We have started taking art class at Gymboree instead of the gym class due to scheduling conflicts. Last week we were painting with the color yellow and all of a sudden Kathryn stuck her foot in the paint. She repeatedly wanted me to paint the paint on her foot and make footprints on her paper. I ended up with lots of paint on me- no other parent or child had paint on them (they put aprons on the children).

The pic on the right is Kathryn doing her new "pointing dance"!! She does it only to Black Sabbath which is the source of much joy to Daddy.








































Kathryn's new backpack. Every day after school she wants me to put it on her and she walks all the way home at a decent pace.









Kathryn loves to help me cook and bake. I put her on a chair so she can be up at counter height and today she tried dragging the chair over to me as I was fixing lunch!!!












Making brownies with my best buddy. . .

As you can see above all Kathryn did was eat the batter!

Kathryn has started grabbing whatever she wants off the shelves at the grocery store and throws it in the cart. It is sort of sad and I feel so bad that I wait till she's not looking to put them back!



These pics are from I Love Homewood Day. Kathryn had a great time. We bought her first snow cone but she refused to eat any and she just wanted to feed it to me.



We got Kathryn a new "big girl" pool and she loves it!! We got in it yesterday and splashed around and played with her bath toys. She was eating Ritz while playing and would throw them in the water then eat them.

At PDO Kathryn's teacher told me she "definitely runs this place". Now that's the Kathryn I know!! She also told me Kathryn is the "little caretaker" in the class. Another baby was crying and Kathryn went over and rubbed her arm. She is such a sweetheart but all of you already knew that!

We went to the zoo last week and Kathryn has decided (finally) that she loves the Lily Pad. I took her to the smaller section were there aren't as many children and she was running all over the place and got soaked. Finally I had to drag her away because Rob and I had had enough. Of course, we didn't miss the opportunity to pet her favorite, the pygmy goat!


Other new Kathryn things:

- She has stopped talking very much. She used to always be saying "uh-oh" and "nonnie" and "dye-dye" constantly and I hardly ever hear it now. She still says "da-da" all the time in reference to Rob and dogs.

- When she feels like talking she calls the neighbor's dog "daddy" for Abby. Close!

- She has become incredibly shy. If someone is on the sidewalk when we are walking she will refuse to move or if we are going in a store and someone inside talks to her she will freeze and I'll have to shove her in.

- For the last month we have begun having weekly Mommy-Baby dinner's at Jason's Deli. It is the only restaurant we have found that Kathryn will eat the food. She gets the cheese pizza with apple juice and we snuggle up on the booth together. Afterwards we get ice cream. One time she kept wanting us to trade ice creams every minute or so.

- When we eat out she no longer uses a highchair. Depending on the height of the table she will either use a booster seat or nothing.

- She loves being "mommy's big helper" and she helps me with all sorts of tasks from unloading the dishwasher to putting her laundry away. We push her shopping cart to the laundry room and I put all her laundry in and she pushes it to her room and we put it away. Granted, it all goes in the same drawer!

- We have had to have a good bit of work done on the exterior of our house. It all started with some rotten wood needing to be replaced and costing $400 and escalated to the house getting painted, gutters going on, a new concrete porch with a new foundation laid and new columns on the porch and costing an amount too painful to even disclose!! It looks great except we aren't 100% happy with the porch color so that is still in process. I'll post pics soon.