Sisters

Let me just preface these pictures by saying that right now, the girls do not look like this. They are fever-dazed, red-eyed, runny-nosed little bundles, especially Mary (Catherine seems to be the heartier of the two when it comes to fighting off bugs). Mary has been sleeping for about the last 24 hours, so hopefully she will kick this thing soon. And they were kind enough to share the whole list of symptons with Christopher.

However, a couple days ago, before Mary was feeling the full force of this current cold, the girls were having a great time just hanging out together, and both decided at the same time (a bit of a miracle) that it would be fun for Mary to sit on Catherine's lap. Giggling ensued.





That was it. They just sat on laps for a while, and it was fun.

Yesterday when Mary was sleeping/coughing/fidgeting/crying all day, Catherine came up to me about 14 times saying "Mom, I just don't know what to do. That's what my problem is." That's her way of saying she's bored - I think she missed her sister.

We Mock Because We Care

Here, Catherine and Mary are making fun of Daddy for eating spoonfuls of goopey Chia gel. Mockery is just one of the many ways they tell you they love you.

"No, Daddy. No eat mine. Yucky Daddy." (Mary Translation: No Daddy. I don't want to eat that. It's yucky.)


"Why do you EAT that Daddy?"


"That's yucky. Yucky Daddy."


"Ha ha. You look defeated. We win again."

Cutest Chefs Ever

Catherine received a matching cooking set recently that included an apron, hat, hand towel, and a couple hot mits. Now she really really wants to put on her hot mits and help me take hot things out of the hot oven. This is a bit stressful.

However, she also puts on the chef's hat once in a while, and this relieves quite a bit of the stress caused by the hot mits.



And then Mary sees that Catherine is wearing the chef's hat and she wants a turn also, and all memory of hot-mit-induced stress is forgotten.




Unfortunately even though Chef Mary was feeling sparkly and spry this morning, she is now trying to sleep off a rather high fever. And she doesn't have much choice in the matter because her eyes are so goopey that she can't open them even when she wants to (insert sad face). I guess it's a good thing we passed on the vaccines on Monday - hopefully she kicks this thing before Grandma and Grandpa get here!

Cream of the Crop

The girls had checkups with their pediatrician again yesterday - 3 years for Catherine and 18 months for Mary.

Catherine is 40 pounds and 39 3/4 inches tall - a perfectly proportioned 95th percentile on the growth chart. Since she's three now she also got to do some new fun things like get her blood pressure taken, and she didn't have to get any shots!

Mary maintains her skinny-minny status at 33 inches tall and 22 pounds 13 ounces (85th percentile for height and 25th for weight). She is officially outweighed by Christopher at this point. Mary also escaped her shots this appointment, but it is because she currently has a slight fever, runny nose, and cough, so we'll have to go back and catch up on those in a couple weeks.

The girls of course surpassed all the standard expectations for development, and Catherine even interacted with the doctor a bit this time, so he actually believes me now that she is not in fact mute and actually talks quite well. : ) Mary also showed off some of her words and her ability to put a shapes puzzle together all by herself, although she absolutely positiviely refused to open her mouth so the doctor could look inside - he couldn't even pry it open with one of those wooden sticks.

She thought it was really funny to kick the back of my chair and say "Aaaahhhh" the whole drive home. Some might say she is her father's daughter. I refrain from comment.

Bowling

Well, we didn't have a party for Catherine's birthday yesterday, but we did get to go to Morgan's birthday party at the bowling alley, which meant Catherine got to try bowling for the first time.

I'm pretty sure from Catherine's point of view, it was a success (she might have been the only kid that stuck around to bowl all her frames), which is all that matters really.

The bowling alley has candlepin, which has much smaller balls than real bowling so the kids were all able to toss them down the lanes by themselves (assisted by bumpers of course). Catherine spent most of her bowling game doing this:


because she rolled the ball so slowly that it took at least a full minute, maybe even two, for each ball to get down to the end of the lane.


She knocked over a surprising amount of pins given that her ball was moving mere inches per second.

Eventually she got tired of standing around that much and changed her tactic a little bit.


This did not help the balls to roll any more quickly, but at least she was comfortable while she was waiting.


Mary helped encourage the pins to fall down by stomping and dancing around a lot.


Maybe by the time Catherine turns five like Morgan, her bowling style will have advanced as well.