Miracle!!

It worked! Blogger let me post a picture! I can die happy now.


She's so excited she got to hold some bugs!

Now I need to try to add some more pics... wish me luck.

GRRRRR

I hate blogger right now. This is like the 5th time I've tried posting pictures here. It'll let me do it on my other blog, but not here! Hate, hate hate blogger.

I'll keep trying.

weirdo

At the moment, Amelie is snacking on tomato paste from the can.

Anybody still there??

Y'know how when it's been SO long since you've talked to a friend, that when you think of calling them, you hesitate because, "well, it's going to be a *really* long conversation, and do I really have the time for that now? Maybe I should just call later when I have more time..." Maybe I'm the only one who does that. Anyways, that's how I feel about this blog. So, I'll just jump in as if I never "left".

Amelie is amazing me every day. She is constantly absorbing things, saying "again" and making us repeat something over and over until she has it down. Recently, I figured out that she can recite the whole alphabet if I'm signing it to her. Also, she can say big chunks of the alphabet at a time, but of course, not all together at once. And usually when she sees signs or books or anything with print, she says "ABCs!"

She loves to be called silly names, like "Zen Zucchini" (from the book Fed Up!), or "Amelie Dumpty" (which of course, leads to reciting the whole rhyme with her name in it). My favorite is when she's doing something cautiously, and she says to herself, "be careful, zen zucchini".

Since turning 2, Amelie has been having pretend birthday parties. And she asks for cake. Lovely.

Speaking of pretending, Amelie regularly grabs a doll and say, a dinosaur, and has conversations with them. They usually start with, "Yes, OK", in a high pitched voice, followed by "hello mama". I look forward to hearing the more complex plays of the future.

Amelie is due for her first haircut (some would argue OVERdue; ahem, mullet). The plan is this week. No idea what to do there...

We've started casually Potty Learning around here. Mostly that means leaving a potty chair in the open for her to get used to seeing and sitting on. And we've also started talking about the difference between boys and girls. Fun stuff, let me tell you.

This summer we've done a lot of exploring of our neighborhood and grounds. Amelie made fast friends with the older kids we've met, and several dogs as well. When Chris takes Amelie out for walks, they hunt for mushrooms. Amelie learns quickly and LOVES to find them before daddy does. I believe the total is something like 20 different species/kinds or mushrooms? All in our neighborhood.

iPhoto is still not working on our computer, so I don't have pics available. Soon, I hope. Sorry.

Until later...

Quickie book review

CAT
Has about 5 words total. If I say any more, I'll ruin the ending.

Farm Animals in Art
Almost a chapter book by comparison, this book has a whopping 10 words in it. The pictures make up for it though.

March briefly

Rather than give you empty promises, once again, about how I will be avidly blogging from now on... I will just say sorry and leave it at that.

There's not much to say about the last month, except that Amelie has been sick for most of it. First she was sick for 2 weeks, and better for a couple days, then sick again for another week, then well for a week, and now SICK AGAIN. Every time it was the same thing. I'm beginning to think it's allergies that become a sinus infection. I hate it.






If you want to know what I've been up to this month, and why I haven't been blogging, check out the madness. The update will be up by midnight tonight, complete with "after" pictures.

17 months at a glance

Amelie turned 18 months today! Wow, time flies! I've been neglecting posting pics of Amelie in favor of blabbing on my blog recently, so here is a peek into Amelie's life this last month...



The kid loves to eat! And I love that her favorite foods are fruits and veggies. She makes me proud. :)















Being a poser for the camera... in some of these she's doing her animal impressions (monkey: waving arms, gorilla: beating chest) and showing how "strong" she is!

For your viewing pleasure

I just uploaded 200+ pics yesterday, so here's a sampling:


BULLET = baby + mullet




Finger puppets are a favorite...




Pretty girl with the sun in her eyes...




Being a ham while eating pumpkin...

So much to blog, so little time...

A lot has happened in the last month since I last wrote. Amelie has cut her third molar, which has been making life hellish for everyone. Since she has so many more teeth to grow, I have just come to accept that we will be living with a grumpy kid indefinitely. Unfortunately, we have resorted to using orajel. I hate it, but Amelie *hearts* it. When she's in pain (usually around bedtime), I swab up her gums, and she responds with a HUGE grin and crazy chuckles. Poor kiddo.



Amelie talks up a storm now. She attempts to repeat any word you ask her to. Her latest: elephant ("kah-kah"; she has a rocking elephant, so she calls it a rock-rock), umbrella ("ahlahlah"), gorilla ("uh-lila"), pillow ("lillo"), butterfly ("lyly"), go ("goooo")... that's all I can remember for now.

This week I taught A how to do eskimo kisses and butterfly kisses. When I do the eskimo kiss, she says "lyly!", asking for the butterfly kiss.



The kid loves, and I mean LOVES, tomatoes. She will stand at the fridge door yelling "GAAAHHH" until we give her one. (GAH is what she says when she doesn't know what the word is.) She also eats crackers (kah-kah) a lot (what kid doesn't?). Cucumbers still remain a favorite, but tomatoes have definitely become #1. Here she is eating sweet potato fries with ketchup. Yummm...






...I'm off to post pics on my blog now. :) mamakati.blogspot.com

Merry Christmas

I started writing about xmas in the last post, then decided to make a seperate post just for the xmas update... cut what I wrote with the intent to paste it here, and lost it all. So here's the short version of what I wrote. I don't have the patience to rewrite it...

Christmas was great. We were busy going everywhere, and still had a fantastic holiday. Lots (too much) of stuff, we're thankful and overwhelmed. Here are the pics:

A little update

I've had a specific request to blog more often. Hopefully that's all it takes to keep me going on this. For some reason it's getting harder and harder. (ETA: I was just reminded why it's such a pain to blog: getting the photos chosen and uploaded takes like a half hour!) Blah, blah, blah... same old story.

About Amelie: she talks so much, and learns something new everyday, I can't even begin to list everything here. What it comes down to is that she will try to say any word you tell her to say (elephant, dude, chiropractor, etc.), and that when you label something for her ("that's a trumpet" for example), she doesn't forget it. Granted, she won't blurt out "trumpet" when she sees one, but if you say, "where's the trumpet?" she'll point to it.

And she learns new signs in a day, too. Chris taught her the sign for "dance", so now when we're at church, and the music's playing, we just sign dance and she lets loose complete with the hip shakes and air guitar.

A couple days ago, Amelie's first molar came through. She was so crabby, of course, and I was thinking it was food allergies (she'd had about a dozen cherry tomatoes the day before the crabbiness). I think the hardest part about parenting (hardest to figure out, that is) is that it's imposible to tell the difference between illness, teething, and allergies.