When You Aren't Having the Same Conversation

Padyn: "Mommy, I want the Dora Cara." (pronounced like the woman's name: CARE-uh.)

Mommy: "You want the Dora Cara?"

Padyn: "Noooo...the Dora Cara."

Mommy: "The Dora Cara."

Padyn: "NO Mommy! The Dora CARA. "

Mommy: "You mean the Dora Carriage?"

Padyn: "YESSSS, Mommy. The Dora CARA."

Oh, I see.

This is what I found in the hallway this morning...

At first I only saw this...then I looked into Kate's room and saw that the road of books continued all the way to Padyn's bed.
















She told me that not all of the books worked. Isn't she clever? She figured out that she couldn't use the soft-bound books.












Then I looked more closely into the room and saw that her bed was made...MADE! With all her animals nicely lined up. (Not all of those animals are hers. She stole the brown bear from Katelyn. Kate's been sleeping with it while her taggies are being washed.) Padyn making her own bed? That has NEVER happened before. This might prove to be a really great thing.













Kate seemed to like the road of books, too.

Night #1

Here are the stats from last night, the first night we had the girls in the same room at home:

Number of times Katelyn woke up in the night: 1
Time Kate woke up: 5:25am (VAST improvement over previous night)
Number of times Padyn called out/woke up in the night: 0
Number of giggles I heard from the girls at 7:30 this morning: 3,592,291

No calling, no waking, and happiness in the morning (while letting me sleep a bit longer!). What could be better than that?

Wait until I load the pictures documenting what I found upon walking into the hallway...

It will either be a long night or a REALLY long night.

We did it. We don't know how smart it is, but we did it anyway. We put Padyn and Katelyn in the same room tonight. It's more of a trial run than anything else. Padyn is sleeping on the floor in her Dora inflatable ready bed while her real bed sits ready and waiting in her room in case she needs to return to it in the middle of the night.

Considering I was up with both of them 5 times between 4 and 6am this morning, I'm not counting on it being much better tonight. But, hey, with the two of them in the same room, maybe I won't be up quite as much. They will wake each other up and instead of visiting their separate rooms an hour apart, I'll hit them both at the same time, thereby maximizing my sleep. And maybe that really was a pig I saw in the sky earlier today. Seriously, we are hoping being in the same room lessens the amount of times Padyn calls out for us at night. Lately she's been waking up scared of her dreams and not wanting to go back to sleep. For some reason she finds comfort in having her baby sister in the same room. Whatever works for her, I'm willing to try.

Kate has a tooth coming in that is bugging her and Padyn somehow managed to leak out her diaper and soak her bed last night. Thankfully Joel was patient enough for both of us. He got the sheets changed and Padyn resettled while I was pissy over being awake again after finally managing to return to sleep after attending to Katelyn. Katelyn, who, by the way, now stands herself up in her crib the second her eyes open then cries until you come get her. 3:45am, 5:45am, 7am...I know she can get down. I've seen her do it elsewhere. She apparently refuses to do it in her bed. The bed wetting shouldn't be an issue tonight, but that pesky tooth will probably make itself known again. And the standing.

I'll let you know how it goes. Wish us luck. As it's 9pm, we best be off to bed. Who knows when we'll be up.

Katelyn's New Favorite Activity

Today I pulled out the walker. It never even crossed my mind until a couple days ago that she was ready for it. I only thought of getting it out for her because we were at a friend's house whose son is a month older than Kate. He was using his walker, and he is not quite as physically inclined as Kate. So today, as soon as I cleaned it up and let her loose with it, she did laps up and down the living room. She'd run into the wall or the piano bench and get stuck, then proceed to yell at me until I turned her around. She would raced off again. She never stumbled, never went to her knees, never missed a beat. This girl was made for walkin'. Padyn was happy to be her cheerleader. She was very keen on walking next to her. Actually, I think she told me she was marching. March away, my darlings.

Not Quite Organized Enough Yet...

I know I still have a bunch of pictures to post from our week in Kauai. They are coming, I promise, but probably not until this weekend. Until then, here's one of the many vastly adorable ones I got of the girls.

This will have to be in place of Photo Friday since I will be teaching in Sacramento all day tomorrow and will be too exhausted when I finally get home to lift my fingers to click the mouse.

New Skills

Kate just clapped for the first time. Really clapped. And then laughed. And clapped some more.

I wonder if she thought she was doing the "more" sign. She was sitting in her highchair eating yogurt...her very favorite food...at the time.

Either way, it was highly adorable. Of course, now Padyn and I are clapping and Kate won't do it anymore. Isn't that always the way?

Oahu

I just posted pictures on Flickr of our week on Oahu. Go check them out. I wrote comments on a lot of them, so I won't repeat myself here. I apologize that I am writing this out of order. We actually spent a week on Kauai first, but because of how the pictures posted on Flickr, I only managed to get the second week's up. Hopefully the rest of the story will be told tomorrow.

We got to Oahu on Saturday afternoon after a week on Kauai with friends of mine from college (more on that next time). Heather and Greg picked us up at the airport and we headed to our little shack on the beach. Literally. Shack on the beach. We stayed at Barber's Point which is a former Navy base. The Coast Guard still has a presence there, so we were entertained by planes and helicopters taking off and landing daily behind our house. But it was fine. We could hardly hear them and it was entertaining. The best part was you walk out the front door and you are on the beach. It was perfect. And even though I love my friends and we had a great time with them, it was nice to have some space to ourselves for a week.

We spent most of the time hanging out on the beach or in the cabin. Or eating at "The Hapa Grill." I'm not a big pancake fan, but you can't beat $3.99 all-you-can-eat pancake breakfasts. Mimi and Grandpa came over almost everyday. Heather and Greg stayed in the cabin behind us. It was a pretty sweet deal.

We didn't spend the entire time just hanging out around the shack. We did venture out a few times. Monday night we went to Joel's cousin's house for dinner. He is also in the Air Force and is stationed on Oahu. Tuesday we visited the man-made lagoons at the Marriot Resort with Ben, Susan and Ella. They just happen to be on Oahu for a month for work. (They were also in Kauai with us.) The lagoons are great because there are no waves. Padyn can sit at the water's edge without worrying about a wave taking her out. (We were blessed with a similar beach on Kauai.) It was also a beautiful resort. Much more like Maui than Oahu. Although, apparently, you are not allowed to put up any type of shade on the beach or grass. Ben and Susan had a cabana that they borrowed from some of our other friends to shade the babies. We were told that it was not allowed. What? You can't provide shade for your baby? That's pretty ridiculous. I convinced them to let us keep it up since we weren't going to be there very long. After the rough day at the lagoons, we had some friends who live on the island over for a BBQ. We somehow seem to have friends everywhere we vacation. Kinda nice.

Wednesday, Joel and I got a real date. Mimi, Grandpa, Heather and Greg tackled the kids while we hit the town. One of our favorite restaurants in Hawaii is Hula Grill. On our honeymoon to Maui we ate there twice because it was so good. Fortunately, there's also one in Honolulu now, so we went there Wednesday night. And then we bought me some T-shirts. I really wanted to buy a new bathing suit while I was in Hawaii, but it just didn't happen. The T-shirts were the next best thing.

Thursday we headed to Ben and Susan's super secret beach. It was a natural lagoon-type bay with very small waves. And there were sea turtles! Lots of them. I never actually pulled my camera out this day, but trust me. It was an awesome beach. You had to park on the side of the road, then walk through the jungle to get there. Very secluded. We saw a few other people briefly, but no one else hung around like we did. We had the whole place to ourselves. When the waves started getting too close to our mat and it was too close to nap time to expect Padyn to behave herself anymore, we headed to Mimi and Grandpa's for one last dinner before we had to get back to the shack and pack everything up.

Friday we had to head home. The week was over too quickly and don't even get me started on the plane ride home. We were an hour late taking off, Kate wouldn't sleep AT ALL the entire flight, and American Airlines makes you buy meals now instead of providing them. At least Joel did manage to score us the bulkhead and Padyn was pacified the whole time by watching TV. She didn't care that it was "The Queen" instead of a cartoon (the flight over they showed "Open Season.") And she did sleep. Needless to say, when we got to SFO, we were beat. Especially Kate. She immediately fell asleep in the stroller. After we waited for 30 minutes for our luggage (Kate's carseat was one of the last items off), we finally got to get into our own car. Tired, hungry and depressed that our tropical vacation was over, we headed home.

Just Hoping to Make it Through the Night

I was going to post the pictures from Hawaii and write a little about it tonight once I got the girls to bed, but it isn’t going to happen. Besides the fact that I have 488 pictures to sort through and decide which ones I really want on Flickr (those ones with my boobs hanging unattractively out of my bikini top? Not for public consumption, thank you very much), I’m having trouble getting Padyn to go to bed. I’m not trying to make excuses. Really I’m not. I’m actually totally beside myself about Padyn. She’s never been the child that doesn’t want to go to bed. She’s the sick kid who asks to go to bed. No complaining. No tears. No tantrums.

But not tonight. Tonight we have tears galore and terrible sobbing. She claims to be scared and she wants her daddy. Hard to do when Daddy is working this weekend on base. I finally just put her in my bed. She’s probably still awake and it’s past 9pm. I don’t know what to do. Last night she was up for an hour between 3 and 4 am crying about being scared. The same thing was happening before we went to Hawaii and during our first week there. She seems to be having nightmares. She told me tonight she didn’t want to go to sleep because she didn’t want to dream. It doesn’t feel like an act. She seems genuinely afraid. Any ideas out there?

Interestingly enough, one solution might be the one that seems the most illogical-put her in the same room as Kate. Really, during our stay on Oahu we were in a little two bedroom cabin and we had the girls stay in the same room. It worked out beautifully. Padyn only woke up one of the 6 nights, and even then she went immediately back to sleep when I went in. She seemed to find comfort being in the same room as Kate. She told Grandma yesterday that she wouldn’t be scared if she slept in the same room as Kate. Plus there was the bonus that she entertained Katelyn in the morning for like 40 minutes before we had to go in there. Of course, she woke Kate up, but I’ll allow that if it gives me another 30 minutes in bed every morning.

We’re still thinking that one over. I’ll keep you posted. Wish me luck tonight sleeping with my squirmy 3 year old. I’m already exhausted so I best to go bed now in order to maximize the actual sleeping time.

Picture To Prove It

Remember when I wrote about Padyn setting up a picnic instead of taking a nap? Well, here's a picture of what I walked in on.

We're Back

It's been quiet around here for two weeks. That's because we've been on vacation. In Hawaii. Where computers don't exist. Well, ok, wireless connections don't exist. Ok, ok...they do. They even did in one of the condos we stayed in, but general laziness abounds when I'm on vacation and I can hardly pick up the phone to check my messages at home, let alone fire up the computer and think of something witty to write.

No witty. Not tonight. It's midnight. But that's only 10pm Hawaii time. Wait, that's still my bedtime. Since I still have things to do (get sleeping baby out of carseat, into pjs and into bed...she didn't sleep AT ALL on the plane) I guess I'll tell you all about our fabulous vacation tomorrow.

I will leave with the list of things Katelyn did for the first time while we were on vacation. I should say, the things Katelyn now does regularly...

• eats whole Cheerios without gagging, choking or vomiting (PHEW!)
• "cruises" along the furniture
• gets down by herself from standing and only occasionally lands too hard
• says "Momma"
• lifts her arms up when you say "How big is Katelyn? SOOO BIG!"
• waves "Hi" unprompted

It's amazing how quickly she is growing.

Caught in the Act

This afternoon after I put Padyn down for her nap, I could hear her on the monitor doing something in her room. She wasn't talking, singing, or calling out, so I decided to let her be, figuring she was reading and would soon fall asleep.

When I still heard noises after about 30 minutes, I decided to go back in and remind her that she was supposed to be sleeping. The noises were very quiet, so I figured she was still sitting on her bed turning pages or something. I opened the door, looked at her bed and found it to be empty. She was standing in the middle of the room looking at me with the "I-know-I've-been-caught-disobeying" look. What was she doing? Having a picnic. A very very quiet picnic.

She had laid out a blanket on the floor and set out all her plates, cups, and food in true picnic style. She even had her bunny and Baby Doll sitting on the edge of the blanket in front of plates. It was so hard not to laugh. Where did this child come from?

She immediately started crying because she knew she was in trouble. (Every time we leave her for sleeping we remind her that there is no playing. She SO knows the rules.) I told her what she had done wrong, gave her a consequence, and put her back in bed with a stern warning about what was going to happen if she got out of bed again before napping. But I had to leave the room real quick before she could see me giggle.

I'm not sure what impressed me most...her hosting and table setting skills or the knowledge she already has about being sneaky and defiant. Honestly, both make me just a bit proud.

Peas! and Barley! and Chicken with Wild Rice!

My lament a few days ago concerning Katelyn's eating habits may no longer be valid. Just last night, she ate peas. Yes, real live actual whole peas. She had a bit of trouble keeping them in her mouth at first, but she persevered and managed to swallow a few. Eagerly. With no gagging. After that, I decided to try to hide some baby food that she wasn't eating in an oatmeal and banana mixture like I give her in the mornings. Mixed with the oatmeal and banana, she chowed down on the chicken with wild rice. Yes! Protein! Tonight I'm going to try it with the mixed vegetables she keeps spitting out.

And finally, right now she is eating barley from Padyn's chicken soup. They are slippery little buggers and she can't pick them up herself, so I put them in her mouth and she is happily chewing them up and swallowing them. In fact, she is getting mad at me as I stop to type because she wants MORE. And again...no gagging.

Hallelujah!Praise Be! We might just have an eater on our hands.

Photo Friday

I've been trying to get more pictures of the girls together which is proving mostly impossible. I do have some cute ones from the bath tonight, but I just don't like putting revealing nude photos of my children online. So, here's some from playing together on Wednesday. Padyn was jealous that I was taking pictures of Kate, so she decided that she, too, must take pictures of her sister. Who knows. Maybe hers came out better.

Happy Weekend!

just so you aren't disappointed, it will be quiet around here for a while...they'll be TONS of pictures in a couple weeks...sooner if Joel lets me use his laptop...

Yo Soy Loco

Yesterday I was turning left into traffic. When a fast opening came up, I floored it since I had been waiting a few minutes already. It wasn't a close call or anything, but I wanted to be sure to get out long before the Mercedes coming my way bore down on my butt.

From the backseat Padyn says, "Mommy, you're driving me CRAZY!"

Do you think she confused driving crazy and making her nervous? She gave no explanation.

More Nine Month Updates

That last post was a comparison, but this one is contains the hard facts concerning Katelyn. I realized I haven't really done one about Padyn in a while, and I completely forgot to do one for her birthday, so I'll have to make up for that soon. They did both have a doctor's appointment today, so I have stats for Padyn now. Tomorrow I'll post her 3 year update or something.

Here's Kate's current stats, faves, quirks and achievements...

weight: 19 lbs (55th percentile)

length: 27 1/4 inches (45th percentile...we actually think this is not accurate and she must have been squirming because she was in the 75th percentile at her 6 month appointment. Oh well.)

Eating: 5 liquids and 3 solids a day

Sleeping: 1-2 naps and 10-13 hours at night with one feed between 5 and 7am

Milestones: (look here, here, and here for other milestones and activities during previous months)
At 9 months, Kate continues to crawl (rather quickly), put everything in her mouth (except actual food) and babble (Dada is still the favorite word...no Momma yet). She can now pull herself up on tables, her crib and her older sister, though she's quickly learning that that's not the best object due to the fact that it moves. She is starting to wave without prompting and clap in response to someone else doing it. It's hard to tell if she's copying the sign for "more" or if she thinks you are clapping. They look the same when she does it. She responds to her name, holds her bottle, feeds herself small pieces of Cheerios and smiles almost all the time.
Favorites: As always, she still adores Padyn, but now her love has spilled over to all children under 5 feet tall. We were at the park today for playgroup and 3 of the other preschoolers were making her giggle like no one's business. She will stay happy for hours, way past her nap or bedtime, if she gets to watch larger children run around and have fun.

Katelyn also seems to have a new fondness for harassing her older sister. She's been doing this new thing where she tries to steal Padyn's paci from her. Before naptime for Padyn, all 3 of us get on Padyn's bed and read a book. Kate constantly crawls up Padyn (who is lying down) and laughs as she reaches for the pacifier in Padyn's mouth. Then she usually goes after Padyn's stuffed animals. She buries her face in them. I'm not sure if she is trying to eat them or scratch an itch on her nose. Either case, it bugs Padyn to no end who gathers up all her animals and holds them during the remainder of the story.

Her other favorite activities include bathing, helping Mommy unload the dishwasher, pulling all the magnets off the fridge, crawling into the bathroom every chance she gets, and pulling her sisters toys off the coffee table. She also enjoys joining in the noise. When Padyn is crying, whining or generally making a lot of noise with her mouth, Kate will start yelling. She doesn't want to be left out, I guess.

Eating is still not a particular favorite unless it's yogurt, banana or sweet potatoes. I figure eventually she'll eat other things if I just keep offering them to her. Today, the doctor suggested trying to give her larger table food (like an entire Cheerio) once a week to see how she does. All in her own time.

I'm assuming that this month she will start "cruising:" walking around while holding onto something like a table edge. I'm hoping that we hear "Momma" sometime soon, but I won't be surprised if she tries to say her sister's name first. I know we'll see more self-inflicted injuries. She pulls drawers open, which also means she shuts them on her hand. She hasn't figured out not to do that yet. And, as she learns how to get back to the ground after pulling herself to standing, I'm sure we'll have some bruising from just letting go and hoping for a soft landing.

Also new this month...she was diagnosed with her first ear infection today. Hopefully that will be cleared by her 10 month update.

Comparison at Nine Months

Here it is again. That time of the month were I pull out old pictures of Padyn and look for any resemblance between my two daughters. They are getting more different everyday; not just in how they look, but what they eat, what they enjoy doing, and their personalities.

By nine months, both girls were able to stand up holding onto something, though Padyn had to be placed there and Kate has been able pull herself up for a couple weeks now.
(In the following pictures, Kate will be on the top and Padyn will be on the bottom, just in case you don't see them often enough to know which is which.)

Both girls were figuring out how to drink out of a bottle themselves.

Both loved to play with toys, but Padyn loved sitting with them and Kate loves crawling to them, pulling herself up on them, or lying on her back then rolling over onto her side to play with the object of her desire.

And, of course, Kate still has no hair. Good thing she's so outrageously adorable.

Happy Nine Months, Kiddo.