17 May 2007

An addition to the family

20070504a CuddlesOur little family is soon to be joined by one more. And no, we're not getting a new cat (although Peter did try to kidnap a beautiful Burmese a couple of weeks ago). We are going to have another baby, a little brother or sister for Kathleen. He/she is due in mid November so the two of them will be around 22 months apart, almost two years. I'm sure she will love being a big sister. Already one of the few words in her small vocabulary is "bebe" and whenever she goes to playgroup she is always excited to see the other "bebes". I am a bit nervous about having two babies/toddlers in the house - one is definitely hard enough. But I'm sure we will find a way to cope. Hopefully Kathleen will be of an age where she will enjoy 'helping', but with the terrible two's looming, who knows...

We had our first midwife appointment this week, and got to hear bub's heartbeat for the first time. So that kinda made it official for me at last. I'm currently almost 15 weeks pregnant, past the first trimester now. There's nothing to see yet. Kathleen didn't pop out till well into the 20's so I don't expect this one to be much different. Once again we're not going to find out if it is a girl or a boy.

20070511a Kat cuddles her toysApart from that we are all doing well. Kathleen now happily toddles around everywhere, although I still carry her when we're out because she's just so darn slow. She is now working on expanding her vocabulary. Words she currently says are:

MAMA, DADA, MIMI and BEBE
NO (LOVES to say this one)
GO (especially when I say "let's go")
UH OH
OH KEEEY (OK)

And in the last couple of days she has added TEDDY and MICKEY to her vocab. Plus she loves to repeat words that I say, particularly CLICK, CLOCK, CHICKEN, SOCK, STUCK, TRUCK and anything else with a "K" sound.

She also says many, many, many other words that I'm too dense to understand.

20070512a Helping Lou move houseWe've all been pretty busy as of late. Last weekend Peter travelled to Nelson for a paintball tournament, while Kathleen and I went to Palmerston North to help a friend move house. This weekend we're all headed back to Palmy for another friend's baby shower. Heard on the news today that NZ is experiencing a baby boom. That comes as no surprise to me as I know lots of people having babies at the moment. That's good - lots of friends for Kathleen and number two to play with.

Cheers,
Megz

02 May 2007

Walking

20070408q Lindale FarmFinally, at the ripe old age of 14 months, Kathleen taken her first steps. Not that I was worried or anything. But she was the first in her group to sit up and the first to crawl, and then ... nothing. All the others have been walking for a while now, but not our Kathleen. Maybe when she started crawling at six months she thought that was it, she'd found a way to get around and she was going to stick with it. She finally took her very first independent steps at the end of March, but it took her until April 20th (a day shy of turning 15 months) for her to actually decide to try walking without mummy or daddy encouraging her. She is still very slow and still crawls a lot of the time, but at least she is giving it a go now. More often than not she'll reach for my finger and ask me to take her wherever it is that she's going. Walking holding on to someone's hand is definitely her preferred mode of transport now - a la the photo above of her with Poppa and Auntie Mardie.

20070425c Crazy KatNow I love this photo here. It perfectly captures Kathleen as she is most evenings lately - climbing onto the couch by herself and screaming her head off. Not screaming unhappy. Not screaming scared. But a combination of screaming "look at me" and "I like the sound of my own voice". Sometimes I worry about her falling off the couch, but I can't stop her and hey, a few bumps and bruises are all part of growing up. She's fallen a couple of times but it certainly hasn't stopped her. She's such a clown. No shrinking violet, this one.

We are all doing well. It has started getting a lot colder around here lately and we have the fire going every morning. Kathleen has settled into a good routine of waking up around 8-8.30am, having lunch around 12-12.30pm, a nap around 1.30pm until 3pm, dinner at 6.30pm, bath at 7.30pm and bed at 8.30pm. This is working out quite well for us. I know it's a bit of a late bedtime, but dinner and bath and getting dressed and reading a story take SOOO long. And if we started any earlier, Peter wouldn't be home from work yet. So it works.

-Megz