Here is Kate's contraption she made for herself to watch a movie. Kate always makes sure that the grocery store is an adventure by waving and "winking" (a whole face scrunch/eye twitch thing) at other people at the store. She also yells "mom" so loud if I move more than a foot away from the cart to grab something until one time I heard a kid in another aisle echoing Kate's yells. She's extremely territorial though. There was this cute little one year old saying "mama" in another cart and Kate yelled at him, "Hey! That's my mom!"Kate has also got a temper. One day I had left with the car for about 15 minutes. While I was gone Kate got mad at Chris, put on her socks and shoes, and said she was going to go find her mom. She was standing in the doorway to the garage when I pulled in. We'll need to get a tree house at our next place for her to run away to when she's mad at us.
Kate continues to believe that she totally runs our family and that we would all be lost without her. She will tell Chris to say something, and when he does, she'll say, "there you go!" like she just helped him make some huge accomplishment. When we sat up to dinner tonight she said, "Don't worry guys, I'll say the prayer." She was telling me that her food was yucky and I was like, "then why did you ask for more?" Her reply, "because I'm Kate." And that about sums up just about everything she does. She is ultra independent (when she wants to be) and will get herself dressed in the morning and can peel her own clementines. We've decided that we should put her on the show, Survivor, and she would be a great team leader. (Is that show even on anymore?) Last Sunday Chris stayed home from church with Kate because she was sick. As we were driving, Aly says, "Man, the world sure is a quiet place without Kate!" (A very true statement.) Lise replied, "Kate's still in the world. She at our house!" You just can't get away with anything with our crew.
And for the grand finale for Kate . . . she was supposed to be in bed the other night when Chris and I heard a lot of thumping upstairs. When we went up to investigate we found her naked from the waist down doing middle splits in the tub. When we asked her what she was doing she replied, "I needed to go poop." Apparently she had already taken care of businees and gone to the bathroom, although why doing the splits in the tub was the logical thing to do afterwards in her mind is beyond me.
Shifting gears to Lise, she is super-uper-duper excited for me to have a baby. She has told all her friends and her teachers and is just so bummed that the baby isn't coming for so long. She had Kate and herself stuffing balloons under their shirts and pretending that they had babies in their tummies. I know I'm popping out a lot quicker with number four, but I'm not that big - yet. Lise also said, "If we give your tummy a hug, then we're hugging the baby." She wants a baby brother (maybe she's been traumatized by Kate?) and I think she is going to be a HUGE help when the baby comes. This baby is going to get a lot of mothering.
On a pregnancy note, I just have to say to anyone who hates cooking during those first few nauseous months of pregnancy that freezer meals are the way to go. I always get nauseous at night, and dinnertime is the worst. So this time, once I knew we were going to try for another baby, I started doubling meals when I'd prepare them and freezing them. I had about 15 meals frozen when the nausea hit and they have been a life saver. I still feel nauseous and lots of the food looks gross and I can't really eat it, but at least my family gets fed and I didn't have to get grossed out while preparing it, I just have to heat them up or bake them. I think I'll do the same thing for when the baby comes - those first few weeks are just so hectic and you're so tired!
And finally, there's Aly-goo. (When Lise was little, she couldn't say "girl", she'd always say "goo" and it's stuck.) She is just not a little kid anymore and it has caught me totally unawares. She had a friend at school get roller skates for Christmas and so she has been roller skating for the past 3 Saturdays. One day as we were driving, I popped in a CD and said, "oh yeah, Elvis!" Aly was like, "who's Elvis" then listened to the song for a few minutes and said, "Oh yeah, like in Lilo and Stitch." Am I sensing a generation gap? Not like Elvis was from my generation or anything, I got that from my mom, so maybe I can pass it on to her. I also found out today that Aly and her friends have formed the "P" club at school (Aly's the Vice President) and so she therefore needs to wear Pink and Purple to school. She came downstairs with purple pants and a purple shirt - two very different purples I might add. Yikes. Apparently it all started when they were playing "Penguins" on the playground and all happpened to be wearing pink and purple. Hmm. I remember being in a jelly bracelet club when I was in elementary school. Maybe times haven't changed that much.
