Things Loved in December

1.  Remember when (back when I watched TV...and had free time) I used to put my 2 cents in about what the stars wore to award shows like the Golden Globes and Oscars?  Well that's when I first confessed that I was becoming an Anne Hathaway lover.  After seeing her in the movie "Love & Other Drugs" (or as my coworker Erin more accurately dubbed it:  "Sex & Other Drugs") you can consider me a card carrying member of the I'm Obsessed with Anne Hathaway Fan Club.  I thought the movie was good, but I thought Anne Hathaway was phenomenal!  I loved her performance.  I love her.  And I want her hair for Christmas. 

2.  My new camera!  I am super-duper excited (and I never say "super-duper" so that's got to tell you something) to be the proud owner of my first dSLR camera!  I've been wanting one for...oh, forever...and after Kate was born decided that this "want" was quickly edging over into the "need" column.  I saved up all year and now she's mine.  I chose the Canon EOS Rebel T2i and I love it!  But don't be expecting stellar pictures from me quite yet.  As I discovered over Christmas, I have quite a lot of learning and practice to do! 

3.  I know I wrote about this last year, but it bears repeating--I just love getting holiday cards in the mail!  It is so much fun to receive greetings from family and friends throughout the month.  Even Kate enjoyed it this year!  She insisted on personally inspecting each card that came in the mail and liked the photo cards best--especially the ones with other children on them.  One of the photo cards we received even had their dog in their family picture and that was by far her favorite--thanks Mel!

These are plantable cards made out of seed paper from Botanical Paperworks.  How neat is that?

4.  I've always been a sucker for mint and chocolate flavor combos, and I got sucked back into that addiction this holiday season when my "Secret Santa" at work gave me a delicious plate of peppermint chocolate bark...which lasted about 30 seconds before it was digesting in my belly.  Mmmm...so good!

Photo Credit:  Annmarie Kostyk, the "Chocolate Goddess." 
Check our her site for this easy-to-make recipe!

5.  Christmas tree ornaments.  While decorating our Christmas tree this year, I was struck by how many ornaments I have that were gifts from loved ones.  Little silver ornaments in the shapes of a martini shaker and cocktail glasses from my friend Allison, mercury glass ornaments strung with matching ribbons from my friend Lisa, a mailbox ornament that G gave me the year we bought our first house, another with "Thank You" written all over it which he gave me the year I said 'yes' to his marriage proposal, and most recently from G--a tiny snowglobe snowman with "Katherine" written across the bottom, given to me last Christmas when I was 9 months pregnant with Kate (looking rather snowman-like myself) and eagerly anticipating her arrival.  Unwrapping each of these little treasures and reflecting on the thought and care that was put into selecting them for me nearly brought me to tears.  I'm not quite sure how it happened, but my Christmas tree ornaments went from a carefully selected, perfectly color-coordinated (yet meaningless) collection, to something mismatched, hodgepodged, and nothing short of magical that I get to enjoy at this most magical time of year.

Happy Holidays

Happy Holidays from our family to yours!

Kate: 10 Months

Personalized onesie made by Amber from The Cotton Cupcake Shoppe!

It's hard to believe Kate turned 11 months old last week, although I'm pretty sure she was more than happy to say goodbye to being a 10 month old!  Life over the past month was pretty rough for Kate considering the bulk of it was spent recovering from her surgery.  I plan to write more about this in a future post, so for her 10 month recap we'll focus more on the fun stuff! 

For starters, one of Kate's favorite activities is taking things out of containers.  It hardly matters what the objects are or what kind of container they're in--if she can empty it, she's happy.  She could be across the room but if she hears me fill up her bucket with plastic shapes and balls she comes racing over to dump them out.  I filled up a large lower drawer in our kitchen with plastic food storage containers and lids, large plastic spoons, some measuring cups and funnels, and when I'm washing dishes she goes to work emptying her big drawer of plastic.  When she tires of that I open our pantry door and she empties a box filled with K-Cups and rolls them around the floor, and then she might move on to the baskets at the end of our island where we store a variety of paperwork that Kate happily "re-files" for us. 

We bought her some Playskool Busy Balls and bouncy sensory balls, and another favorite game of hers is rolling them across our hardwood floors.  They have a variety of textures so they make different sounds as they roll which she loves.  She'll sit in the entryway, and G and I will sit in the kitchen and we'll roll the balls down the hallway toward her.  She tries to throw the balls back to us but isn't quite ready to go pro yet.  She loves to swat and kick them around the floor and chase after them with her new crazy crawl that allows her to sit up quicker.  It buys us hours minutes of entertainment, which at this age is no small feat!




Other favorite activities include playing with tissue paper which she discovered as she helped me unwrap Christmas ornaments (video here), playing peek-a-boo (she crouches down to hide behind the coffee table and then pops up to surprise you!), playing with (and sometimes eating) dirt from the large plant on the floor (…and so the discipline starts), and crawling up the stairs which she mastered in a matter of minutes.  We now let her climb up the stairs every night on her way to bed and she's always so proud of her accomplishment once she reaches the top!

Kate's crazy hair continues to get lots of attention, although as it gets longer it’s beginning to lay down a bit more (which makes me sad).  Her top two teeth are just starting to come in (which gives her 4 teeth total), she lifts her arms up when she wants to be picked up, and she has perfected the most glorious "pouter lip" I have ever seen!  One thing she doesn't like is wearing socks.  She pulls them off seconds after we put them on and then waves them around--one in each hand with a huge smile on her face--like an overzealous cheerleader.

Kate has unfortunately lost a lot of her speech over this past month due to her surgery and recovery.  It's been sad to see, but not unexpected.  She still says "Mama" and "GaGa" (Grandma) but not nearly as often as she used to.  She also babbles significantly less, which we've missed hearing.  It was painful for her to talk while she was recovering, and on top of that she needs to learn how to use her palate muscle all over again now that it's been closed, so that will take some time.  Luckily she is now fully recovered and should be back to chatting up a storm in no time!

Kate's 10 Month Stats
Bedtime: 6:45/7:00pm

Wake Up Time:  We've been struggling with Kate’s wake-up time since her surgery.  She’s been waking up around 5/5:30am but we're hoping to eventually get back to her usual 6:30am wake-up time. 

Naps: The timing of Kate's naps have been all over the place while she was recovering, but for the most part she is still averaging two naps per day for a total of 3-4 hours/day.

Bottles: It took a couple of weeks before Kate was able to drink from her bottles without pain, and once she passed that hurdle we went back to offering her 7.5 oz bottles 4x/day (when she wakes up in the morning, wakes from her first nap, wakes from her second nap, and before bedtime). 

Meals/Solids: Breakfast at 8/8:15am, lunch at 12/12:15pm, and dinner at 5:30pm.  Kate was originally on an all-liquid diet following her surgery but drinking from her bottle was very painful for her (she kept trying to suck the bottle which put painful pressure on her yet-to-be-healed palate).  After a couple of days we were able to start spoon-feeding her very runny pureed foods and luckily she ate that.  As she healed we slowly introduced very soft finger foods, and around four weeks post-surgery Kate was finally off all restrictions and back to eating all her regular foods. 

New Foods: Eggs, turkey, asparagus, mango, blueberries, persimmon, beef 

Developmental Milestones & "Firsts":  First Thanksgiving and first Christmas tree (she's been great with it).  She is "accidentally" standing on her own for a few seconds (until she realizes she's actually standing and then clutches the closest thing to her), and her top two front teeth are coming in.

Favorite Toys:  Her "This Little Piggy" finger puppet book, her Dora the Explorer Busy Carnival Activity Ride (she has no idea who Dora is but she loves the music and movements of the little "carnival" on the front), Playskool Activity Balls, Fisher-Price Stride-To-Ride Lion, plastic food storage containers/kitchen utensils, and books, books, books!

 

Things Loved in November

November was an incredibly difficult month in the G&D household, no doubt about it.  Kate’s recovery was more challenging than anyone could have anticipated—“the worst I’ve seen,” her surgeon confessed during a follow-up visit.  And just when our little girl was finally turning a corner and getting back to her usual self…she got the stomach flu. 

Yeah. 

Last month pretty much sucked. 

I couldn’t have been happier to turn the calendar page and start getting back to life as usual, but I can’t say goodbye to November without first sharing my love and gratitude for those who helped us through it.  This month’s “Things Loved” post is dedicated to them:

1.  Kate’s surgeon (Dr. Delora Mount), her nurses (Sarah, Carly, and Natasha), and all the staff at the American Family Children's Hospital who did everything they could to ensure that Kate had the support and care she needed.  I’m brought to tears thinking about their kindness, compassion, and patience.  We are so blessed to have such an amazing resource just minutes from our home, and I am forever indebted to the staff at the Children’s Hospital for the care our daughter received while she was there. 

2.  Our families for their concern and support, and most especially G’s mom “Grandma Pam” (or “GaGa” as Kate calls her) who cleared her schedule to help us care for Kate (and brought me wine).  I say all the time that I don’t know what we’d do without her, and I especially don’t know how we would have gotten through November without her!

3.  I have the most incredible friends.  I really do.  This appreciation goes out to all my “in real life” friends, my “online friends” *cough*Whores*cough*, and to my blog readers.  Thank you so much for all your messages of support, cards, emails, toys for Kate, dinners brought to our home and gift certificates for carry-out meals from our favorite restaurants.  Thank you also to those of you who shared your own similar stories with me.  My inbox is overflowing and I have many replies still to write, but I want you to know that I am so touched by everyone who took the time to drop me a line; thank you so much.  More than anything else, I want to thank you all for your positive thoughts and prayers which impacted me so strongly and profoundly that I will never again in my life question the power of prayer.  Thank you from the bottom of my heart for praying for Kate’s health, and for loaning me your strength when I didn’t have any of my own left. 

4.  My job.  That I surprisingly still have.  Even though I needed to take off twice as much time than I had originally planned.  You remember that I told you that I no longer work Mondays, right?  Well now my coworkers and I joke that I no longer work Mondays and Novembers.  Looking at my timesheet for last month I’d say that’s about right.  I feel so blessed to work for an organization that values the family needs of its employees and graciously provided me with the flexibility I needed during this time.

5.  My wonderful husband Greg, who deserves more backrubs than my pudgy little fingers could ever sufficiently give.  I told Kate when she was born that I picked the very best Daddy I could find for her, and nothing proved that more than what we went through together during this time. 

6.  Kate.  Our amazingly strong and incredibly resilient daughter, who experienced a life’s worth of pain over this past month, and yet still managed to smile despite her swollen face.  Greg and I could not possibly be more proud of our precious baby girl!