Kate really got into playing with her Little People princess castle today, the first time she has seemed to want to do something with it other than tear it apart. Today the king and queen got to sit in their chairs, they walked over the drawbridge, and hopped up the stairs. It was interesting to watch her engage with a toy that way. She has done a few pretend things, like feed the baby doll its bottle and push it around in the stroller, but this is the first time she pretended that she wasn't an actor in the drama.

(more...)

Yesterday I had my 9/10 week visit at the OB, and got to see this lovely picture of Boysenberry. What you can't see in this picture is that, unlike last visit, Boysenberry jumps around like a jumping bean, kicking, rolling, swimming...it's amazing. This is a freeze frame, and boysenberry has a lot of energy.

(more...)

I think I'm destined to have difficult pregnancies. None of my friends seem to have the troubles I have when pregnant. I'm just barely pregnant, seven and a half weeks to be exact, and I've already had an episode that has pushed me to tears.

(more...)

Naturally most of Kate's words need pronunciation work, but she seems to consciously misspeak a couple for her own personal enjoyment.

She calls oranges, "bubbles." Since they're her current favor treat, we spend a lot of time portioning out slices to her. She has even enslaved her friend Jake into opening them for her, although he doesn't even like eating them, he does enjoy the challenge of opening them. The two of them sat on a bench, he pulled off little slivers of peel, handed them to Kate, and she dropped them into a bag. He eventually handed over the whole prize to her.

The other misspeak word is "dirty diaper" ... when she has one, she calls it an "Aggie." Given that her best friend Juliet's parents both went to Texas A&M, they thought we coached her, but apparently something about the word diaper sounds to her like "Aggie." When she's stewing in her own juices she hollers "Aggie!" and has even figured out that it's a way to trick us into letting her out of her stroller (the first time).

A pretty funny language affectation Kate has picked up is saying "huh?" after another word, presumably to indicate a question like Can I, Will you get me, etc. The most obvious is:

"Baba, huh?"

When she wakes up, she sits up in bed and says "Mama. Baba. Hhuh?" (You can almost hear her cocking her head to the side on the huh?).