Fun with Friends this Summer

The Chattanooga Zoo with Junior and Sammy.




Since it's been a full summer of lots of fun with family and friends here some of the highlights of my fun with friends.


I love to go swimming at GG's pool. Especially when my friends can come along too!










Playing at GG's house with Samantha


































Playing in Samantha's Pool













Driving my school bus with David













Riding around my neighborhood with Samantha

Long Over Due

Hi everyone out there in cyberspace...I haven't written in a long time because my Mommy has been keeping me too busy these last few months. I thought I better say hello again since it's been so long since I last wrote anything. It's not that I don't have plenty to say, because believe me I do...in fact I'm usually jabbering on about something most of the time these days. At my 18 month appointment, earlier this summer, I had at least 50 words that Mommy counted in my vocabulary. Well, now we've lost count because my vocabulary is growing each day. I'm becoming a very skilled mimicker of everything Mommy and Daddy say and do too.

So what have I been up to lately? Well, there's been a few fun milestones this summer. Once was when I started using the potty! For one whole week in September, I used the potty 13 times! Earlier in the summer, on several occasions, I had started telling Mommy when I went potty. She thought oh, this is good - I'm becoming more aware of those things. Well, when I started telling her each time I needed to go for a couple days in a row, Mommy decided let's give this a shot. Well we did, and it only lasted a week, much to Mommy's frustration, and now I don't really want to have anything to do with the potty. Mommy hopes my interest returns again by the end of the year.

Speaking of the end of the year, it's almost November which means it will soon be my 2nd birthday! Mommy says I'm almost 2 going on 22! I'm sure that has nothing to do with my independent spirit which I have been exercising more and more these days. Have I mentioned before I love eating? One of my favorite things to eat is seaweed and fresh rice. I also love avocado sushi, salad, tomatoes & cucumbers (from our garden especially), apples, oatmeal, actually pretty much anything Mommy and Daddy eat.

Now before I start sounding too perfect, I must admit I've been giving Mommy & Daddy some challenges this summer as well. For example, I stopped sleeping through the night. Now, I wake up each night sometime between 2 a.m. - 5 a.m. and won't go back to sleep without Mommy's assistance. Mommy thought it was teething at first because I've been working on my 2 yr. molars on and off for months, but she doesn't know what to think now since we still haven't seen those teeth yet. Mommy is trying to help me work on the sharing issue too, but I'm all about me and my wants right now which usually means I don't want to share - especially not toys or my Mommy! Mommy has been discovering she doesn't have as much patience as she may have thought she had...and there's only one of me...not like most of her friends who have two or three children already.

I really love playing with my baby dolls these days. I've also gotten a new interest in trains and bears too. I do more pretending now when I play with my dolls. I'm learning to sing a lot of songs and say prayers on my own too. And this week, I started repeating my memory verse after Mommy. I love music and still go to Kindermusik once a week. I'm really trying to learn how to jump and run. I haven't mastered that yet, but I sure have fun trying. I've also learned how to hold a crayon better and can draw in a circular motion. Well that's all I can think of for now. Everyone keeps asking Mommy and Daddy when I'm going to have a little brother or sister...so in case you've been wondering too...they don't have any immediate plans for a new sibling that I'm aware of...they said let's wait and see what next year brings...but as soon as I hear something I'll let you know!

Nana and Poppy's Weekend

Kathryn had an exciting weekend visiting Nana, Poppy, and Gram-Gram this weekend. We told her earlier in the week that we were going to go see them Sabbath. She has been having fun talking to them on the phone regularly and I think everyone was feeling lonesome for each other. She was so excited Friday when I said it was time to go see Nana and Poppy that she picked up her diaper bag and said "bye-bye, bye-bye" and headed straight for the door. As the ride went on and she grew restless, I would ask her who are we going to go see and she would smile...then when I would say Nana and Poppy she would stop fussing about being in the car and get very excited.

She also got to husk and eat fresh sweet corn for the first time. I'm not sure which see enjoying more the husking or the eating...she ate three pieces!

Being out in "nature" there are a lot of birds, insects, and animals around Nana and Poppy's place. Kathryn enjoys watching them all, even down to the ants crawling on the deck. We were even able to snap a few pictures of one of the flying squirrels that devours the bird feeders each night.

Gram-Gram hadn't seen her great-granddaughter in months so it was special for them to see each other finally. We took some more generation pictures now that Kathryn is a "toddler" not a baby anymore.

Kathryn has also been enjoying chasing our shadows when we go for walks. They are so entertaining to her right now.


I'm not sure who had more fun this weekend, the grandchild or the grandparents!?

Busy Week

Kathryn had fun playing at our house with Samantha this week. Unfortunately it rained so we had to limit our playing to inside. Samantha is about 1/2 a year older than Kathryn, so Kathryn has a blast watching and trying to mimic the "big girl" things Samantha can already do. They had a good time playing inside the school bus and wearing each others shoes.

Another highlight from our week, was a quick visit from Uncle Jon. He moved back to Atlanta this week. He is working for the same company as he was in Boston, but he was able to transfer to Atlanta. The company, Digitas, is growing their office there so he was able to move back down and fill their needed position for an Art Director on the Home Depot account. Kathryn was very excited to see him and was pouring on the "flirting". We are looking forward to going down soon to check out his new place once the moving truck arrives with his stuff.



Kathryn and I had fun making Zucchini bread this week. We have a small garden this summer that has been producing huge zucchini for us. We don't get out to pick our garden as often as we should, apparently, because the zucchini is huge each time we go out there! I tripled the recipe with just one zucchini. I'm going to try to be better about getting out there sooner to pick them before they get so huge! Our tomatoes aren't doing so well this year. We have cucumbers too, which seem to be doing well...since they'll grow in and survive just about any conditions. But as far as our baking went, Kathryn had fun playing with all the flour I spilled and the bread came out tasting good! Next week were are going to try making some zucchini cookies that Scott's coworker gave us the recipe for.

As you can see, last week was a full week for us. It was also the end of Kathryn's summer gym class.
Gigi came with us this week to watch all the fun Kathryn has and to see some of the things she does. The fall semester starts in a couple weeks and goes through January. We decided not to enroll her for the fall semester. That is such a long time (and a lot of money). We'll take a little break until next year and then maybe try it again when she is a little older. We are defintely going to keep going with the music class, Kindermusik, though which starts again in just a couple weeks.

Hot Georgia Summer

These are some of the things Kathryn's been doing around the house during the hot summer days down here in Georgia!


The cute thing about the Sonic drink is it's just ice water...Kathryn loves drinking out of a cup and straw so much that she thinks that's the treat even when it's just water.

Videos

Here is Kathryn enjoying her baby and a song from her music class. This summer the theme was the ocean. I also tried loading a video of Kathryn talking on the phone, but I guess it's too long so I'll have to try something else to get it to work. Check back in a day or two and maybe I'll have it figured out by then.

Pigeon Forge Trip

In July, Scott took a week off and we worked on some projects around the house and then took Kathryn up to Pigeon Forge. Gigi came with us too. We had gotten season passes to Dollywood in the spring when Scott's sister and family came to visit. We took all the kids then and they had a really good time. We took Kathryn back for Kid's Fest and she seemed to really enjoy herself. We did get a child "harness" this time for her to wear. When we went before, she was very reluctant to hold our hands and was always wanting to walk ahead or behind us. We figured it would be better to let her feel as if she had the "freedom" she wanted, but not get to far away or lost in the sea of people. She didn't mind wearing it and really likes the monkey attached to her back. She even wanted to play with him when she wasn't wearing him.

She had a great time playing in the water fountains and floating around the lazy river with Daddy at the hotel. And most of all she enjoyed the little kid rides. Anytime we would pass a ride she would get so excited and want to go on it. She also like the shows we saw. Particularly the animal show. It was fun to watch her reactions to all the animals and excitement.