Missing the Grandparents

Grandma and Grandpa left around lunch time today and the rest of the day Catherine was whiny and cranky and spent a lot of time throwing fits and shoes and toys and pacing around looking bored and therefore getting into everything she knows she's not supposed to get into - in Michael's words, a "bit of a drag to be around." I think she was starting to really like having ready playmates and outdoor chaperons on hand. Maybe if Grandma and Grandpa read this before they get too far they'll turn around...

Media Frenzy

I complained to Grandma today that she wasn't providing me with very much blog material with that fancy camera of hers, and the result was a plethora of pictures and videos showing up on my computer!

At the herring run to watch the birds

Catherine found some rocks to feed to the fish

Outside on one of the nice days earlier this week before it started raining

Blue Eyes

Daddy's spring time hat


Can't stop talking on the phone

Who doesn't love baby bath time?

Love my daddy

Catherine's favorite place to sit and perform lately: the fireplace hearth (makes a good stage)



Catherine still likes to help me vacuum - if only we could make this last...



I'm not sure whose team Catherine is on, but her head-fake totally worked on Grandpa.



I'm sure there are more videos but I'm too tired to wait for them to load - maybe another day...

Grandparents to the Rescue

Finally (FINALLY) Catherine has come to realize the value of grandparents! Catherine was napping when Grandma and Grandpa arrived on Thursday, so it took her a few minutes to get oriented when she woke up (with Daddy, of course) but I think she was holding Grandma's hand taking her for a walk outside before they even had the car completely unloaded. The last couple days have still been very nice, so Catherine has convinced Grandma and Grandpa to take her on dozens of walks and wagon rides around the neighborhood and a few rock raids on the neighbor's driveway. Honestly, she's pretty hard to resist when she goes and gets her shoes and hat and sunglasses and purse and stands there looking at you expectantly, with a quick glance towards the door now and then just in case you're really dense. Catherine has also assisted Grandpa on a few work calls, read them several books, and relayed hours of 15-month-old wisdom to them both.



Not even three vaccine shots at her 15-month checkup yesterday kept Catherine down for long. Daddy and Grandma went to the doctor with her and said she was none too excited about the whole outing, but some lunch and a nap when she got home and she forgot all about it. Catherine is still super tall with an acceptable amount of baby pudginess (she's about 26 pounds now) and she is still the smartest and cutest and most advanced 15-month-old the pediatrician has ever seen (at least, I assume that's what he said).

We have just enough done in the bedroom in the basement to give Grandma and Grandpa a place to sleep semi-comfortably (heat and a bed - I don't think you can realistically ask for much more). It at least means Catherine doesn't wake them up so early, although since I started covering her window completely at night she has gone back to getting up between 6 and 6:30 instead of 5:15, which was her habit for a couple weeks when the sun started coming up earlier. Anyway, from the number of tools that came out of Grandpa's car and the amount of noise I've heard down there in just two days, I'm thinking the basement could be done by the time they go home. :)

Here's a couple videos for you. Catherine mastering Grandpa's blackberry (he thinks she is going to be an engineer) and Catherine and Grandma barking at dogs.

Daddy's Little Girl

Catherine has pretty much been a mama's girl up to this point in her life - she'd cry when I left and only want me to do bath time and bed time and come to me when she was tired or hungry or didn't feel well and throw a fit when I try to work etc. Now however she is starting to spread the love more and more, especially with her Daddy. Daddy has always been good for story reading and playtime and fun outings, but this week Catherine has been very clingy with him. Usually when Catherine just wakes up from a nap it is one of the few times when she still has to see me or she'll have a meltdown, but the other day she woke up and I went over and sat next to her and she didn't want anything to do with me - she pushed away and hopped off the couch and went and cried at Michael's office door until he came out and picked her up, and then she was fine. He then had to have lunch with her and hang out for a while because every time he went back into his office Catherine would look very sad and cry until he came back. She has also started to cry pretty much any time Michael leaves the house without her (she gets over it pretty quickly, same as when I leave) and for the last couple days she has spent a lot of time and energy coming up with excuses to get into Daddy's office, or just standing at the door making faces at him until he comes out to play with her. Today I took Catherine outside for a few minutes at lunchtime and Michael stepped out for a minute and then went back in to fix some lunch, but Catherine threw a fit and convinced Daddy to play ball with her and pull her around in the wagon - she didn't notice at all when I went inside to get lunch. After 14 months of Catherine being superglued to me, I have to say I'm rather enjoying the turn of the tide.

Here's a little video of Catherine enjoying a wagon ride - she seems to like the bumpy yard better than riding down the street.



And here Catherine is attempting to converse with a couple dogs playing in the yard of the house behind us. I think she has given up on English; she would rather just growl at everything (and everybody) lately.

Saturday Morning at the Park

Catherine had some friends over last night so she didn't go to bed until nine, but that didn't stop her from waking up at six this morning like usual. So we had some breakfast and got dressed and then she lounged around in the rocking chair reading a book while I folded some laundry.



Then we went for our morning walk and, it being Saturday, we had time to stop at the park in the middle. For a while all Catherine did was intercept people and their dogs trying to walk on the path around the park, but then I showed her the slide and she thought that was really fun. She also had a very good time on the swings.





When we got home, even though we had been outside for almost two hours, Catherine jumped out of her stroller and took off on a walk around the neighborhood. Even though she doesn't like to wear my old sunglasses that I gave her or her own special sunglasses, she loves my current sunglasses that I actually want to wear.

More Sunny Weather

It has been sunny and into the 50s most of the days this week, so we have been spending a lot of time on the back porch and walking around the neighborhood in the afternoons. It doesn't matter how long we are outside, Catherine never wants to come back in - she even forgot about dinner the other night!

At least several times a day Catherine gets a purse or her Easter bucket, walks around the house collecting essentials into it (keys, bracelets, phone, cup, fork, calculator, etc), puts on a hat, picks up a stuffed animal and waves bye-bye and heads for the door. Heaven help us when she figures out how to open the door and go down the steps by herself!


Even though it's been delightful in the afternoons it is still pretty cold (in the thirties usually) when we take our early morning walks, so we devised this cold-but-sunny hat combo for Catherine. The sun is pretty low in the mornings still and shines right into her eyes, despite the sun shade on her stroller, and she will just stare into it until there are tears streaming down her face. So I started putting her baseball cap under her warm fuzzy - problem solved (and fashionably too).


I think Catherine is entering her weird toddler eating habits stage. She will still eat most things we give her (except mac-n-cheese) but her favorite thing ever is bread. Just a plain piece of wheat bread. She has also started eating by putting pieces of food into her cup or bowl and "drinking" the food rather than using her utensils, although she does still enjoy using the fork and spoon when she feels like it.



Here we are making some banana bread for Bible study. She ate a handful of flour before the sugar and other ingredients were mixed in, so I think she has a very strange idea of what banana bread tastes like.



We'll finish this post off with a concert:

Newest Members of the Family

Relax, the plural "members" is not a hint that we're having twins. The above-pictured belly (no more complaining Grandmas!) houses only one new family member, and since she hasn't told me much about herself, other than how much she enjoys exercising after midnight, I don't have a whole lot of news to relay.

The other new family member in the picture is my new violin (and bow), a surprise from Michael earlier this week. It is seriously an amazing instrument, crafted by a luthier in Chicago named Martin Brunkalla. He has made stringed instruments for my violin teacher and most of her band (so obviously when Michael asked her about a violin for me she really only had one recommendation) and there are some extraordinary Brunkalla pieces in existence, of which I like to think my violin is one (and I'm not the only person with that opinion). So if you're ever visiting us and meet our friends Monica and Demetrius, you can tell them that I asked you to thank them again for my fiddle, because it is largely through them that this violin came to live in our house. It is a delightful motivation because the violin is so nice that, not only do I feel guilty if it has to go a day without playing, but it would also be a terrible waste to have an instrument like this and not get any better than I am now. I was a tiny bit sad to pack up my starter violin (recently named "the Chopper") because she has been a lot of fun and I have even started to grow a bit fond of her "made in China" sticker, but it's pretty difficult to be sad when you pick up a Brunkalla. I just tell myself one of our kids will play her again someday.

I'm pretty sure Catherine would play today if she was allowed (she doesn't even get to play the Chopper by herself - I can absolutely guarantee delicate things are still in great peril in her hands, sometimes by intent, but always by carelessness, clumsiness, or general toddler-ness). She gets really excited when I let her help me move the bow and it makes a noise on the strings, and when she plays piano on Michael's lap she has started getting upset when he plays too - she takes his hands and moves them off the keys so she can have the whole thing to herself. She knows exactly which of her toys play songs and what buttons to hit to play or change the music, and she often starts swaying back and forth when music comes on. I honestly don't know if these things are things all kids do or if she really really likes music, but it's entertaining all the same.

I have kind of failed to take pictures these last few days, so I don't have many illustrations for you. We've had a couple different families with young kids over lately, and it still surprises me how timid Catherine is with kids around her age. It takes her quite a bit of time to start playing and talking like normal when a toddler enters her space, and when another kid takes a toy away from her, she won't resist at all, even if it is something she really wants; she'll just duck her head a little and look sad. A family with a 10-month-old little boy was over last night and, despite the fact that he couldn't walk and Catherine had about 6 pounds and several month's life experience on him, he was in control pretty much the whole night. However, Michael says Catherine has made a lot of progress interacting with the other kids at playgroup, and she's very good with all of the adults regularly in her life at this point. She just likes to take her time before making up her mind about someone new, and you can't blame her for that at all.

Heating gets installed in the basement this coming Thursday, but we also just found out about how much it's going to cost to put carpet down there (yikes) - we may have to start charging a nightly fee for the guest room!

Breakfast Fun

Catherine super loves breakfast, because it largely consists of foods she can feed herself like oatmeal and cereal and fruit. Today, after second breakfast (she usually eats at 6:30 or so and then has a snack with me when I eat breakfast around 8:30) she was having a very good time dipping her cheerios into the quarter-inch of milk left in the bottom of my cereal bowl when she decided it would be more fun to drink the milk. I did not teach her this, I swear.




Yesterday was a delightful day - sunny and 60 and just perfect. Catherine had a play date with her friend Tanner, who happens to have a very nice fenced-in back yard, so they played outside a lot. Here they are enjoying some lunch.


When they came home I had the back door to the porch open and it took Catherine all of 1.5 seconds to figure out how to slide the screen door. She spent most of the afternoon going out the door, closing it behind her, waving, opening the door, coming back in, closing the door behind her, waving bye-bye, going outside, closing the door behind her and laughing, etc. She also likes to pull the cushions off the chairs and move them around to different spots on the porch and sit or lie on them.

Today wasn't as nice as yesterday, but still warm enough for Catherine and I to get out on a walk before work this morning. After that she pretty much wanted to be outside the whole day, but we can't take her out unless one of us has nothing better to do than follow her around - I think she would walk to St. Louis if we turned our backs for more than a couple seconds. So there's no possibility to do yard work or for me to work on the front porch while Catherine plays in the front yard, because she thinks Cape Cod is her front yard and has to be corralled constantly.

Catherine also decided that drinking out of a big-girl cup is so much fun that I should learn how to do it too. Or maybe she thinks I'm not drinking enough water, I don't know.

Behind Schedule

Well, our plumber, who is also a local fireman, was injured in a fire the night before he was scheduled to come install the heat in our basement earlier this week. Don't worry, he is just fine, but he is not going to be able to get back to us until maybe next week some time. So, we can't put up the trim until the heat is in, and we can't have the carpet laid until the trim is up, so we're a bit stalled this week on basement progress. I did get everything painted except for the stairwell which Michael will work on this weekend. He may also bum a truck from our neighbor and pick up the trim and doors so they can be painted and ready.

The basement may be behind schedule, but Catherine is ahead of it like always. She is super determined to talk lately. She is working on a lot of "b" words right now, including bird, ball, and book. It's really funny to watch her thinking about the word and trying to repeat what you say, because it's totally different from her normal babbling, lecturing, and general spouting off. You can really see her concentrating and trying to determine exactly what it is she needs to do in order to make the sound she is thinking of making. She is doing very well, but hasn't made her way to the final consonant sound in any of her words yet, so dog is still "da" and bird is "bir" and ball is "ba" and book is "boo". The exception is "shoes" - she is very good at the final s/z sound. Here is a video of "bird" - you can see what I'm talking about:



Yesterday baby Robert came over to visit again and Catherine had a good time petting his head, rocking him in his car seat, and poking his eyes (she's just trying to point them out to us, but we have to remind her a lot to be gentle). When I took Robert out of his car seat Catherine immediately started playing in it. At first she just stood in it and rocked back and forth a bit, then she really settled in. She looked very proud of herself.


Into hats as always, here are a couple of Catherine's favorites (as of yesterday, although she discovered her pink Cardinal's baseball cap in her drawer this morning - very good timing).




This movie is Catherine in super-concentrating mode. She has been trying to figure out for the last couple days how the beads in her bumble bee rattle toy disappear. Mostly the video is funny because of how she is wearing her hat - she put in on herself.



It is supposed to be sunny and 60 here today, so I'm off to work work work while Daddy and Catherine are at play group and hopefully I will get everything done so we can take a nice walk later this afternoon. Finally a real Spring day!!

Outside!

My knight in shining armor finished priming the basement yesterday and I went to bed at 9 - much needed. Today I painted the play room and the ceiling of the bedroom, and I'm off in a few minutes to put a coat on the bedroom walls and the sitting area.

It's been raining off and on here the last couple days, but it's a little warmer (consistently in the 40s) so we've been getting outside on lots of short little walks around the yard and neighborhood. Catherine loves this. She will very often bring her shoes and coat to us and just stand there holding them out with sad expectant eyes. I think if we put a tent on the porch she would live out there, although she would have to share the space with the squirrels that keep busting through our screens.





Catherine got another box in the mail the other day, this one from Grandma and filled with dresses, on hangars! She loves carrying her clothes around on the hangars (it takes us about an hour to put away a basket of her clothes). After she took all the outfits out of the box she picked up the two big dresses and walked away to her room with them.


This morning for the first time in her life Catherine did not want to get out of her crib when she woke up. She did her normal whining upon waking so I went in to get her, but she wouldn't let me pick her up. Instead she kept turning her lights and sounds aquarium on and off and dancing around in her crib. Whenever I tried to leave the room she got upset, but she didn't want to come out for about half an hour, and then I think she realized it was breakfast time. Maybe if she'll start liking to play in there eventually she'll just entertain herself when she wakes up instead of waking me up right away (wishful thinking, I know, but one can hope).

Ta-Da! (Almost)

I officially put away the joint compound and putty knife last night. If I had a couple more days, there are several joints that would benefit from a final coat, but everything has to be primed, painted and thoroughly dry by the end of the weekend because the plumber comes back Tuesday morning to finish installing the heat. Here are some pictures of the current state of things:

The stairwell down to the basement (these walls were partially and poorly finished and primed already, but I think fixing them was harder than if we had been starting from scratch).

The nondescript sitting area at the bottom of the stairs. Stairs are behind you, through the door on the left of the picture is an area that will remain unfinished (water heater, etc are back there) and through the door on the right is the play room/TV room.

Nondescript sitting area from the other side. You are standing in the doorway to the play room looking back at the stairwell.

Play Room and eventually TV room. You are standing in the hallway to the bedroom, the door to outside is on the right, and the door at the far end of the room leads to another part that will remain unfinished for storage (those are bicycle reflectors in the doorway, not some crazy basement monster).

Play room from the other end. You are standing in the doorway to the unfinished storage, nondescript sitting area is through the door on the right, the big square at the end of the room will be built-in bookshelves, and the door at the end of the room on the right leads into the guest room.

Guest room. You are standing in the doorway, play room is behind you.
Guest room from inside, looking into the closet. Hallway to play room is through the door on the left.


It's kind of difficult to get an idea of the layout unless you've been down there, but that's my best effort. I'll find some older pictures of the basement and post before/afters when we're closer to being done. Tonight: Primer!

Some of you are wondering why I have been working until the wee hours of the morning every night for the last two weeks, especially considering I am six months pregnant and I get up with Catherine between 5 and 6 every morning. Rest assured, this is not an indication that I have a lazy brute of a husband; I do it to myself. There are two areas of home remodeling/repair in which Michael is not expected to participate: drywall joint finishing and painting. These things take extra time and effort to do them well, and I think they greatly effect the finished product and therefore the extra time taken to do them correctly is time well spent. Michael does not share my opinion on this (he is highly against "spending 90% more time to do a 10% better job"), and since I have to live in the house too, he is now banned from picking up a putty knife or a paint roller. I am making an exception for the stairwell: a couple friends mentioned last night that perhaps I shouldn't be perched atop an 18 foot ladder at this point in my pregnancy, and I see their point, so Michael will be painting the stairwell walls (at least the parts way up high that no one can really see). And, to further dispel the "lazy brute" thoughts, Michael has been taking care of all the meals and kitchen cleaning and occupying Catherine and grocery shopping and doing lots of other house stuff while I have been mudding drywall. Plus I think I'll let him vacuum the dusty basement before I start to paint. :)

OK, back to the star of this blog. Catherine received a fun surprise in the mail from Great Grandma this week: her very own purse with lots of fun toys to put in it (brush, makeup, phone, keys, mirror, etc). She likes to put pretend lipstick on us. She is still making up her mind about the feather boa - she really likes the look of it and playing with the feathers, but it tickles her face when she puts it around her neck.



We haven't shown off Catherine's prowess with a spoon lately - she loves using spoons and forks. You can tell she was super hungry in this video - no talking.



You asked for a belly picture :)