Throwing Baby

Katherine is a extreme sports baby... she loves Being thrown, tossed, bounced, etc all over the place.

Oatmeal Oh Oatmeal, Where Are You?

June 29, 2008

Nathan and I were planning on waiting until we got back from Wisconsin to introduce her to solid (well semi solid) foods, but we just couldn't wait! This morning we ran to the store and bought rice cereal and oatmeal. We gave her oatmeal this morning and it was hilarious. I don't think very much actually went down, but she was interested in the process for sure. As you can tell from the river of oatmeal cascading down her bib, it'll take her awhile to get it figured out.

"Okay, I'm liking this spoon business...Let go Dad!"

"Okay so explain it to me again... I'm supposed to swallow this stuff, not spit it out?!?"

"Okay, I'll stop eating oatmeal off my bib if Daddy can get the spoon in my mouth instead of on my forehead!"

"Well I gave it a shot but I'm not so sure I like this stuff... where's my bottle?"

After "eating" I gave Katherine a much needed bath. Because of the colossal mess this seems to create, I think we're just going to give her food at night for awhile so we can give her a bath before bed. Two a day baths may be a bit much for her sensitive skin. Once she gets the hang of swallowing we'll increase the number of times a day we'll feed her as hopefully more will end up in her mouth than running down her chins.

Post Bath Bootie

June 29, 2008

I gave Katherine a bath the other night and then laid down a towel so she could have some nakie time. She loved it! We were all in the office hanging out. She did end up peeing on me later, but that's okay, it's just baby pee right :)

While enjoying nakie time I was working with her on her belly to back rolling.

Her newest thing is to refuse to roll over onto her back in her crib. We put her down on her back, she rolls on to her tummy, and then screams. The last two nights we've just let her scream until she's mad enough to roll back over onto her back. She knows how to roll, so I think this may be the beginning of power struggles during bed time! :) Poor thing though, by the time she rolls her self over she's so worked up she's all hot and sweaty. Hopefully this is a very temporary stage and she'll stop it soon.

Dog Run Make Over

June 24, 2008

So Nathan and I love projects. We like all different kinds of projects, especially ones that make our home and lives easier afterwards.

Sunday night I came home from work and told Nathan about a dog run idea I'd gotten from a home owner. We've been trying to figure out what to do since we moved in. In the morning we got up and decided we needed to re-vamp the dog run. Both the dogs are filthy every day from digging under the dog house - consequently so is our house. So, we took the dog house out, cleaned it really well, gathered the flagstone and made a great new pad for them to lay on, and returned the dog house.

We then decided to go for it. We decided we were going to lay a concrete path down the length of the side yard. We went to Home Depot to get the supplies. It took 5 trips in all.. two trips to haul 3,000 pounds of concrete, a trip for the cement mixer, a trip for the edging tool we thought we had, and finally a trip for a floodlight so we could finish all the prep work last night. We threw in the towel last night at 11:30pm having completed the prep. We were just shy of the right amount of wrought iron to stake the boards... please notice the 2 screwdrivers and bolt on the bottom left of the picture :) We took showers, Nathan moisturized his hands with triple antibiotic cream due to all the cuts and nicks, and we crashed.

Step three was enlist the help of a friend. We actually weren't planning on asking for help, but Casey found out what we were doing and offered to help. Only fools would turn the offer down, but we did give him an out if he decided he really didn't want to haul cement all morning on his day off. Thank God he still decided to help :) Casey and I manned the cement mixer while Nathan tended to the smoothing and edging on the actual path. We worked like dogs from about 6:30am - 11:00 to get the job done. Considering this included the clean up I think we made great time!

Casey and I got so efficient we had to quit for a while so Nathan could catch up....okay the truth is our batches of cement were so inconsistent Nathan had to wait for the soupy ones to tack up. Anyways, while waiting Casey was helping Nathan and I was cleaning as we went.

Here is the final product. We love it and are very pleased with ourselves. Hopefully this will keep the dogs happy, cool, and out of the dirt!

I decided I'd better get this blog up tonight as I don't think I'll be able to lift my arms tomorrow!

Rolling to Belly

June 23, 2008

Here is a clip of Katherine rolling from her back to her belly. This is actually the first time I've seen her do it, although Nathan says she's been rolling a lot in the last few days.

June 19, 2008

We are rolling fools here at the Whicker's...well Katherine is anyways. She's suddenly decided rolling is fun! Nathan's seen her roll from her back to her belly, but I haven't. I've only seen her get everything but one arm rolled over. The picture below is her sleeping last night...so cute! This also happens to be what she looks like when she's trying to roll from her back to her belly. She gets stuck right here.

She is very good at rolling from her belly to her back though. She does it quite regularly and seems quite happy with herself afterwards. Here's a little video clip of her rolling.

This morning Kate and I took a shower together. I got in first while Nathan got her stripped down and then she was being so funny looking at her butt in the mirror we had to take a picture. I guess all women care what they look like from the back...we must be hard wired from birth! :) On a side note "butt dimples" are only cute at this stage of life...not so cute when you get older.

Happy Father's Day!!

Happy 1st Father's Day Nathan!

This morning was filled with fun. We woke up at 6:30 as Miss Snuggle Pants was ready to socialize. I brought her in, along with Daddy's cards. Katherine gave him hers all by herself. She's very into grabbing anything and everything within reach - almost dumped a full soda on me at dinner as she snagged my straw going by- so was a bit reluctant to let him actually have it. We manged to pry her tiny hand open, and give it to Daddy. She has definitely inherited her Dad's vice-like grip!

After Nathan opened cards I sent him on a treasure hunt or sorts to go find his gifts. The first clue led him to his garage fridge where an Ipod hard case was waiting. Then he was off to the diaper bin (clean diapers, I'm not that mean) to get a car charger, then off to the dog food container where plastic covers waited, then off to the kitchen cabinets where a gift card to Itunes awaited, and finally into the paper shredder where he found his new Ipod Nano! He loved the game and I thought it was fun too. He'd really been wanting an Ipod, so he was super excited. After he played with it for awhile we all headed out to breakfast. Katherine absolutely insisted upon wearing her Daddy's Girl tank top, so we let her :)

This next picture is just funny. For those of you who know my husband well this may not come as any surprise, but for those of you who don't know him well, he does this stuff all the time!

Nathan's phone charger died a few weeks ago so we went to the Verizon store to get him a new phone as his current one sucks anyways. The salesman told us if we could hang on until July we would be eligible for a new free phone. We said well okay then, we'll use the car charger for the next few weeks. Well the car charger broke yesterday and his phone was dead, so Nathan got creative. He took the battery out of the boat, hooked up jumper cable to it, took his phone apart and hooked up the cables to his battery and charged his phone! I don't even know how he thought of it, but it worked!

My Favorite Sound in the Whole World!

June 13, 2008
We all probably have a favorite color, maybe a favorite smell, but a favorite sound? I didn't have one until last night!

Nathan called me at work yesterday. Unfortunately I was working with people and couldn't take his call. He was calling because Katherine was laughing! When he told me this later I was so bummed to have missed it, but then he told me he got it on video! Yea Nathan!

As soon as I got home we watch it and it was hilarious! Nathan was playing Peek A Boo with her and she was LOVING it! I video taped the TV, so my copy sucks, but I didn't know how else to get it on here for you to see too.

Her laugh is my favorite sound! You MUST have sound for this video clip :)

While Nathan went for a bike ride last night I was playing with Kate and got her to laugh for me a bit too. Not as hearty as this video, but I'm hooked. It's like crack, I gotta have more laughing! We tried to get her to laugh this morning so I could make a better video, but she wasn't in the mood. We think she has an eye infection (all goopy with brown gunk) so she's going to the doctor's today although she is acting fine. As you can see, she was bright eyed and happy this morning :)

Hair... And all that it Entails

June 12, 2008

While at the store I was looking for hair-ties that just might be able to hold onto Kate's baby fine hair. Her crazy hair, for which she is known for, is finally starting to lay down. Although it is a bit sad, it begins a new era. Because her hair is getting longer it's almost in her eyes now. We are not ready to give her a haircut yet, so we're trying various ways to keep it out of her eyes. I was able to find some tiny rubber bands, and they do hold her hair. It was buy 1 get 1 1/2 off, so I also bought some tiny clips.

When I got home I was super excited to try them out. I had to do something first, so Nathan tried putting them in. He didn't have much luck, it will take him a while to figure out how to get his big man hands to work as efficiently as my much smaller hands.

I gave it a shot and was successful...she looked so darn cute! She didn't mind them once I had them in, but she didn't really like me pulling on her hair very much while getting them in. I had to make sure they were in tight or they'd fall right out as her hair is so fine.

Katherine already has quite the collection of hair accessories from friends and her Grandmother's. I asked Nathan if he had a spare tackle box I could use to store them in. He consolidated two and so began Kate's collection of bows, hair-ties and clips. The only reason it looks so organized is there were so many spaces available. Otherwise it'd be a huge jumble all mixed together - for those of you thinking I am beyond anal. :)

We went to the lake Tuesday as well, just thought I'd throw some of those pic's in here too. We already had to buy Kate a new swim suit as she out grew her first one. This one has adjustable straps so as she grows we can make them longer. We'll see if it makes this one last longer or not. We all had a great time, Kate was super easy going. We all wake boarded, our friend Casey was with us, and Kate "waded" in the water by the shore.

Random Tid Bits and Pictures

June 4, 2008

I don't have a cohesive entry this time, the follow are some random pictures and thoughts from the last week or so...

This is Katherine and her friend Asher. We went to our Bradley classes with Asher's parents, Cortney and Nate. Asher is a few weeks younger than Kate but much bigger. Kate weighed 13.7 pounds on Monday when we took her to the doctors. Asher is about 18 pounds.

Okay, so either Katherine has a healthy sense or curiosity or else this gives us a glimpse into the future struggles we'll have with this little party girl!

Katherine got her 2nd set of shots on Monday and felt like crap for a few hours. She was super upset and DID NOT want to be put down. Even being held she was almost inconsolable. Nathan could get her to calm down my holding her to his belly, skin to skin and humming Johnny Cash songs. That's the only thing that would make it slightly better so that she wasn't screaming. After the worst of it she still just needed to be held, and I needed to vacuum, so she helped.

Wouldn't it be funny if adults ate with their eyes closed? Imagine walking into a restaurant and everyone sitting at the tables were talking and laughing and eating...with their eyes closed!

This is hilarious, it's like she's thinking, "Holy Crap! I actually caught the little buggers! (My toes)"