Every Day with Kate

Today we had the best day (cozy, productive, snow, good food, laughter, and now I'm blogging).

Hopefully I will have the time to write about that shortly, but first, I have to give an update on life with Kate.

Kate loves to play games like her big brother:

She's pretty good at picking up the pieces, but Ethan can get frustrated when she doesn't follow the rules. And Kate can be pretty opinionated about doing things her way, so we mostly don't play the games together, but with each kid playing his or her own game and Mom trying to play both.

There are occasional days when Kate goes to bed mad and ends up taking her nap like this:

She also moves around a lot and some nights I come in to kiss her goodnight and she looks like this:

As I mentioned, Kate is quite opinionated, particularly about her clothes. For a few weeks, I dreaded having to get her dressed, because even when I gave her lots of options, she just wanted to get ready WHEN she was ready, and sometimes that didn't jive with our family schedule for getting out the door. Kate has about 4 outfits that she loves to wear and 4 other outfits that she hasn't even tried on because she refuses. But I assure you they are super cute.

I tell Kate to let me know when she is ready to do something (like get dressed, or fix her hair, or put her toys away, or talk nicely, etc.) and usually that means I just have to wait a few minutes. With her cute outfits, I have told her to let me know when she is ready to wear, for example, a cute blue shirt her grandma gave her, and I'm still waiting. It's been at least a month. I think the time is coming, though. I'll wait.

Here are Kate and I at our school fall carnival. Kate still loves to be held. She says "Hold you" instead of "hold me" when she's interested. Although I have to say, she has gotten more independent in the past week or two and will almost always go up or down our stairs by herself now.

I love this picture for several reasons.  First, it is Kate's first snowman (or, as like to call it, a snow princess).  When we got home from school one day, the snow had fallen and Kate was interested.  We threw snowballs and then started rolling up the snow.  Ethan wanted to be inside, until he saw we were making a snowman, but he didn't want to get his snow clothes on by himself, so he stayed inside. 

The second reason I love the above picture is that it is one of the only times I have seen her happily wearing her winter coat.  The theme of our time with Kate recently as been Fun Times, with Some Battles Over Clothes.  I am gearing up for 16 more years of fun. 

Kate has loved her bubble baths recently.  There were several frustrating months where she hated getting her hair washed, which is a contrast to her baby days, when she loooved it every time I dumped water over her head.  I wouldn't say she's terribly fond of it now, but she tries to stay calm and quiet and water is not getting all over her mom anymore, so I am totally happy about the progress.

We just love these pigtails.  Kate likes to ask for "5" pigtails when I fix her hair.  She just means more than one.  I have to say that Kate is pretty darn good at counting, and I mean that honestly.  Sometimes she says "1, 2, 5, 9," etc., but when I remind her, she can count all the way to 10!

Kate is a great mommy.  She loves to carry around a backpack (at the mall, to church, to her school) or a purse, and she has little treasures that she keeps inside (a pink bouncy ball, a cell phone, a ring, money, etc.)  She is very responsible for her things.  She also loves to put her babies to bed (she sings to them, does prayers, etc.), make me coffee in her pretend kitchen, and last weekend, Kate and Ethan and I marched all over our house pushing strollers and carrying babies and feeding them and singing in church.  It was a lovely memory that I want to remember forever.  

Kate loves pink, she loves her friends, her dolls, almost all food, she loves singing, getting dressed all by herself, she loves her babysitters, and she is a gift from God.  We are so happy that she is growing up.