Category Archives: Katie
Katie’s new hat
Happy eating waffles
Puddle stomping at the bus stop
Katie: Mom, can I stick my tongue out to catch rain?
Me: Sure.
Katie sticks her tongue out: I GOT TWO!
Throwback Thursday—in Owen’s clothes!
Backseat dance party
Potty training update!
It’s been mostly good… She’s always dry in the morning and pees first thing (she even takes off her own diaper to do so). She very good about getting to the potty at home or asking when we’re out (though we haven’t been out that much). She did have a few issues with poop—it seems if we’re at home it’s better than if we’re out (which means we’ve had poopy undies twice). And today she pooped in the potty all by herself (without me prompting her) so this was her reward:
And then justlikethat she peed on the leather chair! After she had just sat down (so it’s not like she was engrossed in anything). What?! So that was her first pee accident since the first day. Frustrating.
But overall she’s doing very well.
Katie’s learning to swim!
Her first attempt had wild kicking that got parents on the sidelines wet. 🙂 Her second attempt, here, is calmer…but we have a long ways to go.
I hope it’s worth the money. 🙂
Two princesses
We went to a friend’s house today for a few hours. Katie loved the dress up princess dresses.
Rapunzel
Elsa
To the bus stop!
This outfit was too tight for him at the end of last year. It’s perfect now!
In my shoes…again.
I have a growth.
Katie blather
I get Katie dialogue like this all the time. I recorded it for your amusement. 🙂
Learning to ride a bike is hard.
So you all know how much I hate potty training, right? Well, I hate teaching the kids to ride their bikes tenfold. It always ends up with whining and pouting and refusal to try because it’s too hard. Breathe. Breathe. Breathe. But I keep trying.
So Katie finally got her reward for pooping in the potty!
Unfortunately, as usual, she forgot that it’s hard to ride a bike and it wasn’t any fun when I stopped helping her. So there was whining and pouting…and she had to drag her bike home. (Well, part way home down the sidewalk—I’m not a monster.)
Her first pout of the day. Then bubbles.
She wanted to do chalk. Fine, we went out to do chalk. Within two minutes she wanted to do bubbles. But not the bubble machine—she wanted to blow actual bubbles. Well, she just had a bath this morning and I really didn’t want to deal with the mess that is blowing bubbles so I said no. So she stomped off.
She got over it within a few minutes after I told her it was either go inside or do the bubble machine. She picked the bubble machine…and all was well with the world.
And some great action shots!
The kids learned about static!
Best buds!
Workhouse Art Festival
There was lots of gorgeous stuff, but it was all very expensive. We saw some glass birch tree pieces we liked—but at $2400 for the set, it was just a bit out of our price range.
So we had lunch from the food trucks instead. This one caught my eye.
I posted the pic on Facebook and a local friend said he’s seen that truck in DC with lines 30-40 long! Woohoo! We had no line!
Everything on the menu sounded appealing but as soon as I saw Lobster BLT I knew that was it. YUM.
Tom had meatloaf/mac and cheese sliders from another food truck…which were really good, too.
Then the kids did an art project—coloring luminaries for an upcoming art installation in Richmond.
Black text: Bownis = Bonus
Dark pink text: Go away
Silver text: 150 poites = points
Owen finally likes jeans!
I can’t get over how long he looks!
Headed out to an art festival!
Our new turtle is official!
She finally got her new cap today!
Playing before class:
Since there’s no convenient Turtle class (i.e. adjacent to Owen’s Shark class), Katie is staying in her Minnow class and the instructor just teaches her swimming vs. floating. So today was attempting to get her face in the water, kicking, with arms above her head. She did pretty well. She had fun “swimming like a mermaid.” 🙂
Playing after class:
It was cute. Katie had been on the raft by herself with the instructor. Owen’s classmates all jumped in and were a bit aggressive getting up on the raft and Owen kept shouting “Be careful! That’s my sister!” 🙂
Submings Gavin Gun
That was supposed to be Siblings having fun but apparently autocorrect wasn’t working. I thought it was funny so I just left it. 🙂
The beginning stages of daddy roughhousing with the kids…
Potty Training, Day 3
Katie woke up dry again this morning! And again she didn’t want to use the big potty—well, she actually said she didn’t have to go. But I sat her on the toilet and whaddya know? She peed. 🙂 She got a bath then put on a pretty dress!
She wanted to go to the bus stop with Owen but I simply said we weren’t going today. About 10 minutes later she says “I peed in the potty! Now can we go to the bus stop?” Yes, yes we can you little smarty pants. 🙂
The rest of the day was her peeing mostly on her own in the big potty (“I can do it by myself!”) because I promised her two stars on her chart for every time she used the big potty vs. one star for using the little potty. She was still SO excited to put her stickers on the chart…but she didn’t seem overly concerned with actually collecting a prize when a row was completed.
We went out for dinner and a few errands tonight and she peed before we left—and we took her potty chair with us just in case. We never needed it, though we had two false alarms (one in Marshalls and one in Costco) and one successful potty at Noodles & Company.
So now we just keep on keeping on. She’s supposed to go commando for a month, at which point she should (hopefully) be pretty good at pottying and not having accidents—and then she can graduate to wearing all her cute undies she’s excited about (Frozen, minions, princesses, Doc McStuffins).
FINGERS CROSSED!
Potty Training, Day 2
Tom got Katie up this morning and her diaper was dry! He said she really didn’t want to pee in the big potty, but once she sat down she peed and peed! Yay!
8:35 I told Katie she had to pee if she wanted to go to the bus stop with Owen. And she did! She had to take her lunchbox. 🙂
When we got home, she wanted to play outside and do chalk.
She ran in a few times to pee but they were all false alarms. She wanted to ride her bike, so I told her she could after she peed again. So she came in about 20 minutes later saying she had to pee, didn’t pee, but tells me she peed in the grass. Yay…but no. I didn’t see it so no sticker…and no bike ride.
11:40 She’s very good about sitting on the potty without any direction. This trip earned her a new book!
1:00 Katie just peed in the potty and I said I was proud of her. She looked at me, did a curtsy, and said a drawn out thank you. Where do they get this stuff?
She continued to pee in the potty all afternoon—assuming each time she’d get to ride her bike. She finally gave up on asking for her bike but still kept peeing in the potty! She even earned another book!
I had treats set up for every five pees…and she filled the sheet and just kept sticking them on.
And then when we were outside eating dinner, she had to go in and pee. She even emptied it into the toilet herself. 🙂 Then she said she had to pee again and went inside. Owen happened to be inside at the same time and came out singing “Katie’s pooping in the potty!”
Wait. What?
I’d been reminding/asking randomly all day and she just kept saying she didn’t have to go yet. I believed her, but I also kind of thought she’d try to hide. But now she just went on her own? I raced inside and…yep! She pooped in her potty!! WOOHOO!
So daddy took her to get a special treat (a milkshake from Burger King).
Day two is in the books and she did amazing! Let’s hope it continues!
Katie is Anna today!
She gets to wear a dress for potty training so she picked Anna. Then she wanted Anna hair. 🙂
Potty Training, Day 1
Tom was going into work late so he was up first with the kids. He took Katie around and they threw away all her diapers and put her diaper changing pads in the garage! She was already eating breakfast naked when I came downstairs. 🙂
Then I got her salty snack stash ready for the day…anything and everything to make her thirsty!
Checking it out…
Super giddy to see all the treats she can eat…all. day. long. Complete with a magically replenishing juice box. Three days only! 🙂
Settling in for a movie…on a waterproof pad, of course!
8:00 And whaddya know? She peed on the little potty all by herself! Surprised the heck out of us…but she just said “I have to go potty!” and went right to the potty chair and peed like she’s been doing it her whole life. I had a brief moment where I thought “It can’t possibly be this easy, can it?”
Popsicle!
11:00 Fast forward through three hours of me saying I was proud of her for being a big girl and using the potty and reminding her to use the potty…and she went to get another juice box from the fridge—so she was out of my sight for about eight seconds—and she came right back and told me she peed on the floor.
😐
This is the maddening part. She obviously knows when she has to go since she did it perfectly this morning. So why not this time? Interestingly, even though I wasn’t mad at all and just had her help me clean it up, she asked if I was mad at her. I assured her I wasn’t.
So then she wanted to paint so we did that…for all of two minutes. Then I was watching her closely because I suspected she had to poop, and I was just about to comment when she said I HAVE TO GO POOP and went right to the potty and pooped a huge poop! And she was TERRIBLY excited to go dump it in the potty! WOOHOO!
Of course, knowing what happened with the peeing this morning…I honestly don’t anticipate a duplicate recurrence…though I will keep my fingers crossed.
1:15 She peed a tiny dribble in the potty without any reminder. We went upstairs to tell daddy the good news (he’s home early but studying) and then…
1:20 She peed again—this time a full amount! I was walking down the stairs (she had run ahead of me) and she was already carrying the potty insert to the bathroom! She dumped it out the was off to put another sticker on the chart!
2:30 We Skyped with Gramma Jean so we could tell her how awesome Katie has been doing…and she peed in the potty while we were skyping! She took Gramma to put her sticker on!
3:40 She got tired of snacky stuff and asked for fruit. 🙂
4:45 She peed in her potty while I was getting dinner ready. That was #5 for the day so she for her reward—her choice between two new books! She picked There’s A Mouse About the House.
Daddy read it to them:
We ate dinner outside and she left the table once for a false alarm and once to pee for real! Then she peed again once we got back inside! YAY KATIE!
For bedtime we put her in a nighttime diaper—explaining that nighttime and naps are the ONLY times she gets to wear a diaper because her body is asleep a LOOOONG time and doesn’t yet know how to wake up to pee. And the diaper comes off first thing in the morning.
So overall it went MUCH better than I anticipated…and I hope that tomorrow goes just as well.
Katie’s daily Charlie love
T-ball Tuesday
New socks and shoes! (I wasn’t planning on getting him shoes, but I found them on clearance at Marshall’s!)
This is what Katie does during the games.
This might be the kids’ favorite part: snack time! (I seriously wish we could do away with it—it’s not like these are serious athletes who played a rigorous game and need sustenance.)
She’s apparently ready for winter!
My boy is growing up. Sniff.
Owen decided that he wanted to walk to the bus stop by himself. I’m perfectly fine with that as he’s a good kid, he needs the responsibility, and there are lots of other parents down there. 🙂
Katie wasn’t happy—she wanted to go so she could play with the kids. (We’ll go sometimes but not every day.)
She watched for him from the back steps. When all the leaves are gone she should be able to see them, if barely. We can hear them now because they run around playing and screeching.
This is what she kept saying. Poor kid.
Welcome to Minotaur Forest!
We were all on our Sunday morning walk and Owen, as usual, talks about his video games the entire way. Stuff about zombies and poison shields and earning gems and potions for magic sticks…and when we got to this point on the trail, it was “WELCOME TO MINOTAUR FOREST!” 🙂
Then as usual we stopped at the bridge to throw over some sticks and stones.
And then we told them this was a zombie house and they should go check for zombies (it’s an old prison building).
We have fun on our walks. 🙂