One and a half!

Happy Half Birthday Katie Sue!

Kate at 18 months is one feisty girl. We are in the land of 'no!' And 'mine!'. She's a girl with a purpose and she will not be deterred. She's learned to go after what she wants and defend herself quite well against her stronger, faster big sister. Kate has become less cuddly these days and more if a climber. But she will still lay your head on your shoulder when she's tired.

I'm amazed by her word explosion over the past few months. She seems to pick up new words daily and she can repeat a new word well even if she doesn't know what it means.  Here's a word list I've been working on to keep track of what she can say now.  I'm sure I've left off a few, but these will help us remember the sounds of sweet Kate!

ba-ul - bottle
aw-done - all done
a-ble - apple
mine
mommy - mommy/give it to me/pick me up
Baba- papa
daddy
em-mi - help me
da- that
aben- advent
nana - banana
mo - more , milk
gagi - doggy
baby
del - Adele
ey- eggs
ba- ball
eye
no- no, nose
mou- mouth
nani - nariz
gaguh - cracker
e-ah - ear
bonk - bonk / head
yeah
nigh nigh - night night
boo - book
niño - ninos
unees - undies
bye bye
pa-ee - potty
wawa - water
pees - please
towel
pee ta boo - peekaboo
pita - pizza
eme/ema/em-ine - Emeline
noonool - noodle
ca- car
ba- ball
bou - bounce
uh oh
yay 

Kate loves animals. She loves to watch them, chase them, and read about them. One of my favorite moments lately was when she wanted me to read her stories before bed, she grabbed my hand, led me to her room, chose her animal book, and patted the chair for me to sit down. I loved that she chose me to read, as she's been more attached to daddy in recent months, but I also loved getting to spend some one on one time with her hearing her words and excitement about all the animals.

Her favorite books are her animal books, the potty book (she loves the last page with all the undies), Oso Pardo/Brown Bear (she loves the niños at the end), Jesus loves me (and other singing books), and Donde esta el ombligo.  As for food favorites, she loves bananas and oatmeal squares for breakfast, crackers are her favorite snack, and she's really into dipping her good right now. She even liked some spicy salsa!

Other favorite pastimes for Kate are being naked...she hates to get dressed and will take any opportunity to go pant-less, shirtless or both.  Ironically, she also loves to dress up.  Her favorites are still hats and accessories and shoes, but now she likes to put on the princess dresses too.  She loves ride on toys, cars, and babies.

Here are some pictures of our little mover and shaker at one and a half!  We love her to pieces!

 

 

 

 

 

Adele meets more family

It's been nice to have a baby over the holidays because we've been getting lots of family visitors.  Unfortunately, I keep forgetting to take pictures, but here are some when she met Great Grandma Diane, Grandpa David, and Great Uncle Daniel.

 

 

 

 

 

Adele's first bath

Adele had her first bath!  

She wasn't too excited about being woken up and put in some water.  

But a warm wash cloth calmed her down for a while.

 

 

 

 

 

Then she was a clean little froggy!

 

 

 

Christmas

Our Christmas celebrations started out with going to church on Christmas Eve.  This was our first time to church with Adele, so it was fun to introduce her to our community.

Then we came home, and my Aunt Diane and my dad had graciously made dinner and brought it to our house.  We all enjoyed delicious lasagna, salad, and veggies, and then celebrated by singing Happy Birthday to Jesus and blowing out the candles.

Then we opened presents.  

 

 

 

 

 

Since Christmas Eve made for a very late bedime, we saved the big present from us for Christmas morning.  A dress up trunk!  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Then we headed over to Aunt Diane and Uncle Miles' house for more presents, good food, and family!

Christmas Traditions

I knew we would not have a lot of bandwidth this year for lots of Christmas traditions, but two that were important for us to keep this year were our advent boxes and making a birthday cake for Jesus.  

For our advent boxes, I changed it up this year, and instead of reading a Bible verse, we read a story from the Jesus Storybook Bible.  The stories are very approachable for kids, and I found an advent reading plan online that uses 24 stories that wrap up the story with a few sentences tying it together with the expectation of Jesus' arrival.  Emeline was of course all on board this year, as it was her 3rd year doing it.  She loved the stories and passing out the chocolate coins afterward.  She even did a little dance called 'I love chocolate' every night as she ate her coins.  Kate understood the tradition very quickly, and even started saying 'aben' for 'advent' and would get very excited about the chocolates.  

I didn't know if I'd be able to pull of much of a Christmas Eve celebration, with a newborn and all, but my one goal was to make the birthday cake for Jesus with the girls.  I chose a simple recipe, called a one bowl chocolate cake, it turned out delicious and was relatively easy to let the girls help mix it up.

 

Their favorite part is licking of course.

 

It was a little chaotic with both girls helping, so I decided to let Emeline have some special mommy time to help me decorate.  Here's her version of helping with the frosting.

 

 

I made a chocolate whipped cream frosting and layered it up.

 

 

Then Emeline helped put on some snowflakes.

 

 

 

I'm glad we got to keep up these fun Christmas traditions this year.