Happy Halloween!

Here are some recent pictures of Kate in her first Halloween costume (she's a skunk), dining at the Whalley Cafe, and participating in one of her favorite activities - bath time!

We hope everyone had a wonderful Halloween!

Love,
Scott, Heidi, and Kate

Pumpkins to go with the pumpkin teeth!

Yes, I know it has been months since my last post. This time I've learned. I'm not going to promise to write more often because it's just not going to happen. Finding time these days is difficult. I never realized how much time I had BEFORE Kate was born. The projects I could have accomplished! The garage could have easily been cleaned out in a weekend. I think it took Scott two days to setup the shelves in the garage that he got last Christmas. Between not being able to hammer the bolts into place because Kate is napping, to actually assembling everything and putting items ON the shelves (while Kate patiently sits in the garage in her exersaucer and watches), I figure we'll easily be parking a car in there by Summer 2008. Easily.

In some non-Kate news, Scott and I found some time to run in the UW Dawg Dash 5K this morning. It was my first "fun run" and Scott's umpteenth. I finished 88th in my age group (out of 145) and Scott finished an impressive 20th in his age group (out of 113). We ran into our neighbor (not literally) at the race. He claimed he hadn't run in a long time and was really out of shape, so he was running in the 5K instead of the 10K. He still managed to beat both Scott and I. Well, beating me isn't that impressive, but Scott is a good runner and he and Jonathan are in the same age group. Nothing like a smartie pants neighbor to bring you down a few notches. :)

On Saturday, Scott, Kate, and I went to a pumpkin patch with my brother Andrew, Tricia (his fiance), Desi (Tricia's daughter), and a majority (if not all) of Tricia's family. We had a great time. I am posting some pictures from that trip. I am also including a picture of Kate and her two "Pumpkin Teeth." So far she only has her two bottom teeth, but there is evidence (lots of drooling) that others are on the way. I can't believe Kate is already 9 months old. Her first birthday is just around the corner!

We hope you all are well!

Love,
Scott, Heidi, and Kate

Smartie Pants

Kate is now 7 1/2 months old. She has several projects in the works right now such as learning to feed herself and animal recognition. The first project has been quite involved and it is taking some time to master. Grabbing small items of food with your index finger and thumb is not as easy as it looks. Kate has not quite figured out how to bring her thumb around to join her index finger and grab food. She insists on tucking her thumb in toward her palm and trying to grab her food with a thumb stump and finger. Most of the time she does end up grabbing the food, but getting it into her mouth is a totally different story. After several attempts she eventually gives up and will just sit there with her mouth open waiting to be fed. If that doesn't work she goes to Plan B - circumvents the whole hand thing all together and eats directly with her mouth. I feel sorry for the poor kid. She has no idea how funny she looks trying to eat without her hands. :)

Now the animal recognition project is going quite well. Today we started going through the Animal Flash Cards I bought her a few months ago. At the start of the day all she was interested in was eating the cards, but by the end of the day things started to look up. I would pull out three cards from the pile and go over each one of them several times, "Cat. This is a picture of a cat. Cat. Kitty cat" etc. then on to the next card. I would then lay all three cards out in random order and ask her, "Where's the cat? Where's the kitty cat" and to my amazement she would select the correct card! Thinking this was just pure, random luck I would go over each of the cards again, place them in a different order, and again ask her where the cat was. Once again she picked out the correct card! As proud as I am right now that my child is a genius, I will admit that this only worked with the "Cat" card and not so much with the others. We're working on it though and soon enough she'll know all 26 cards in English, Spanish and French. :)

Well, I'm off to bed. MY projects include trying to get to bed by 9:30pm and get up by 6:30am to run on the treadmill. :)

I hope this blog post finds you well!

Love,
Heidi and Kate

6 Months and Growing

It has been over a month since my last post. When I first started this blog my intention was to update it every week. I guess I'm not doing so well am I?

Kate is growing so much everyday. She has been sitting up unsupported for a little over a month now and compared to the rest of her baby friends she is ahead of schedule. Although she is a great sitter, she has yet to rollover. Kate is not a big fan of lying down on her back or her tummy. This makes it hard when you are trying to teach her to rollover. We took an infant massage class a few weeks ago and the entire time I was massaging her she was doing "baby crunches" and lifting her head indicating she wanted to sit up. No matter how relaxing it was she was not interested in lying down. I have managed a workaround to "tummy time" and have been placing her on all fours and letting her support herself for a minute or so. She is pretty good at it and will tolerate it for a lot longer than "tummy time." I am hoping this will help to make her stronger in that area and encourage her to crawl someday.

Kate has been eating solid food pretty consistently for several weeks now. Lately, I have been replacing her "lunch" meal with a solid meal. So far I have not found anything Kate does not like. When we try a new food she may make a face or two until she gets used to the flavor, but she has not refused anything I've given her so far. She's had carrots, squash, sweet potatoes, peas, brown rice, peaches, strawberries, cherries, pears, mango, banana, and applesauce.

The last few weeks we have been very busy taking classes. Kate and I had our last Baby Sign Language class on Monday and I was very sad to see it end. I really enjoyed learning sign language and spending time with the moms and babies in the group. Also, the instructor Pearl was awesome. I highly recommend her if anyone is interested in taking a series of classes. We also participated in two infant massage classes last week. I think Kate enjoyed it, but not as much as I thought she would. She would relax for periods of time, but instead of "zoning out" she would lie there and talk and "blow raspberries." I guess that means she is enjoying herself. :) I am hoping to sign up for a Water Babies class soon since most of our current classes have ended or will end soon. Kate LOVES the water (that's her to the right with Grandma at the Sand Point Country Club). My PEPS group is ending next week and most of the moms are going back to work. Also, Kate has graduated from the weekly "Next Months" class run by Ann Keppler to the once a month class "Sitters and Rollers." My weekly activites are starting to dwindle so I need to figure out some new things to do. I don't want to cram our schedule too full, but I think having a couple of outtings a week is good for both her and I.

Well, I am off to bed. My alarm clock goes off at 6:30am. I will do my best to write less, but more often.

Love,
Heidi and Kate

5 Months Old!

Kate turned 5 months old on June 4th - she is growing so fast! Some of her latest milestones are laughing hysterically and sitting up with little support. The laughing just melts my heart. It is so wonderful to hear that little laugh! She laughs when Dad makes a face at her or when I pretend to look away and then look back at her quickly. She sits well while playing with her toys on the floor, however someone always needs to be there to balance her when she starts to fall over. She is getting better at it and can sit unsupported for longer and longer periods each day.

Kate is still 100% on breast milk. We are going to start introducing solids at 6 months. We will start with a sweet potato/breast milk mixture and see how that goes. We've decided not to do rice cereal since it's been shown to not have much nutritional value. I have to admit I am really excited about introducing solids to Kate. It's going to be so much fun to watch her learn about eating and the different tastes of food.

Scott, Kate, and I just returned from a trip to New Mexico. The trip was partially inspired by my grandmother's 90th birthday. My grandmother Elizabeth Knee turned 90 on June 8th. My Dad and uncles threw a birthday party for her to help celebrate. The party was filled with good friends and family, authentic New Mexico cuisine, and plenty of prune cake to go around.

Prune cake is a traditional birthday cake on my Dad's side of the family. My uncle announced at the party that he has had a prune cake (made by my grandmother) every year for his birthday - he is now 62 years old. He even got a cake from her while he was in Vietnam. Those crazy Knee's and their prune cake. Scott just commented that I wrote too much about the damn prune cake - "It's Kate's Crib not the Prune Cake Diaries." I don't care. I thought I would mention it because it was an interesting story and even more interesting that prune cake is considered such a birthday treat. :) Either way it was nice spending time with friends and family and introducing Kate to everyone. Most of the people there had never met Kate or seen Scott and I since our wedding in 2000.

I hope this blog finds you well and everyone is having a terrific summer!

Love,
Heidi and Kate

Go prune cake!

First Post

This is the first entry in Kate's blog!