Book Review

Kate loves books. In fact, she reads books more than she does anything else. So, I thought that for those of you who have little book-lovers of your own or know some, I would let you in on Kate's favorites. Here are two. Don't get excited. These didn't win any Newberry or Caldecott Medals. We're not quite there yet. I'm talking board books.


The Sesame Street set of 12 mini board books aren't so good for reading as much as they are for taking out, putting in, carrying, and chewing on. Kate has her favorites too. Hand her the box and she will go straight to "Grover's Opposites" or "Cookie Monster Shares." I think Don read Grover's Opposites (in character) about 10 times one night. He would try to hide it from her, but that little booger is smart. What a nice Daddy

Then, we have Peter Rabbit and Friends, a set of 4 board books that cover Animals, Colors, Shapes, and Counting. Again... I think that opening the velcro flap and taking the books out is 70% of the fun. The books are awfully cute too.

In other news, she now knows what a snake says, so there's a lot of hissing going on in our house.

And finally, I ran across a nice post today on MckMama's blog. She's the one who started Not Me! Monday and is the mother of 4 - soon to be 5. Its a great reminder to cherish every moment with our children. :) Click HERE and enjoy.

Lucky 13

Maybe you don't know. Thirteen is my lucky number! So, it makes perfect sense that I would blog about Kate's 13 month birthday! What better way to spend your birthday than a tea party with Mama and a bath with Da and the cat?

Kate continues to impress us more and more every day. Not to take away from all of her wonderful accomplishments, but we're pretty easy to impress. Here are some of the fun things Kate is doing now.

She can say: Ball, Mama, Kitty, Da, Cheese, Go Tigers, Ba Ba (bottle), tick tock (clock), Diaper, Hey (or Hi)

She can tell you what these animals say: Cat, Elephant, Duck, Monkey, and Santa, even though he isn't really an animal

She also knows:

Where a bracelet goes.. and a necklace and a hat

Body parts (hers and ours): eyes, ears, hair, nose, belly button, feet, toes (piggies), hand

To bring you a fresh diaper and tell you that she's stinky when she is (ok, taking my Mom's word for it... I've never seen this)

How to brush her hair (and mine, and Don's)

How to stir sugar into and sip tea from a teacup (right before she bites it)

She likes to:

read books

take a bath

stand/sit in the dog food/water bowl

put stuffed animals in the dog and cat food/water bowls

watch the cat eat

pet the cat

chase the cat

ride her tricycle

go to Nanna's every morning

eat cheese and bananas

meet new people

play peek-a-boo and hide-and-go-seek

swing and slide

take things out (much more so than putting them in)

did I say read books?

She's the best! And of course we aren't at all biased in our opinion. Happy Birthday sweet baby girl. You're more fun than we ever dreamed of.

Weekend

Fun times this weekend:

Kate enjoyed her first trip to the art museum to see an Ansel Adams exhibit. It was REALLY cold (not the museum... the walk).



We washed the dog toys.

And enjoyed coffee downtown.

Not Me! Monday

It has been a LONG time since I posted an official Not Me! Perhaps my New Year's resolution is to be better about blogging Not Me's on Monday? That would be neat, but no. Oddly enough my "resolution" is to concentrate. If I would just stop and THINK about what I was doing, I could be so much more productive and not make so many silly blunders and mistakes. Wow, if I could really keep up with that, then Not Me! Mondays would become obsolete! No worries. Its not possible. Below is proof.

Let me start out by saying that I am totally using this centered layout on purpose. Its not because I can't figure out how to turn off the centering function.

I did not get home today and throw on the spaghetti sauce only to forget the noodles altogether. I did not have to be reminded by my polite husband, who did not say "is there some reason that you haven't started the noodles?"

I do not let my 1 year old wreck havoc on my pantry while I cook because it keeps her happy and occupied. I do not distract her with a large box hot chocolate packets, boxes of cereal, or empty orange juice containers. I did not look over and find her sitting on the top of her little table this past weekend. She did not drive her tricycle into the Christmas tree, almost toppling it.

My Mom is the queen of supersititions. Rarely do I meet someone who has heard of most of them. In our house you never do laundry on January 1 because you might wash someone out of your family. I did not just put one of Kate's shirts in the sink to "soak" on Jan 1. That would mean that I acutally believed in that crazy stuff. She also believes that you don't leave your Christmas decorations up after December 31. I did not still have my tree "up" On the 1st. I consider no ornaments and just lights to be "down."

I am so, so tired. At least Miss Kate is sleeping through the night now (for the most part). Here she is being entertained by Da while I cooked dinner (with noodles of course!!) tonight. Happy Monday!

Odds and Ends

Well, its the last day of vacation and tomorrow its back to the real world. Which, for me, isn't so bad. For now, Don and I are watching Clemson basketball under the warmth of our new electric blanket. Well, my side is toasty warm. The controller on Don's side doesn't work. Anyway, just a few fun pictures of Kate to end vacation. We had a great week and a half of family time.

Coffee time!

I'm not sure what this is all about, but one of her new favorite things to do is to stand/sit in the dog food/water bowl. This seems to work better if its empty. Its almost as if I speak from experience...

I believe its never too early to start. Don mumbled something about child labor laws. I don't think those appy to chores.


And finally... just being her cute little self.

Uh Oh

I have one of those babies. You know, one with a binkie on every finger.* She rotates them. Frequently.

*Really, this is rare. No, really, I promise, it is....

Funky Family Christmas

Maybe you don't know. My family can be kinda funky. Every year the Fraylicks get together for Christmas Eve and have a blast. We're mostly older now, and pictures of all of the girls with panties on their head have been replaced with themes (Cowboy, Camo, you name it) and ornament swaps. This year was a bit different - we did a gag gift swap. Rules were simple: buy a funny gift from the dollar store (or costing no more than a dollar). A gift can only be stolen once. Laurie didn't really like this rule, but I can tell you that there wasn't anything I would have stolen! Ah, but things did get stolen, and I haven't laughed so hard in quite some time.

So, I think Kristen picked 2nd. She went for the biggest gift. I can't blame her, I would have too. But she got this rooster* tail thing. She's not a rooster fan at all, so she was begging people to steal her gift all night. Funny. They beat Clemson, but no one really wanted the tail.

*known in some circles as a gamecock

Here she is.. showing how happy she is with her gift.


Somewhere along the lines, Laurie snagged this rockin Dale Jr. poster. Yeah, sorry Dale, no one stole that either.


Elizabeth managed to look excited about the FBI action play set.


She must have really wanted the golden cow that Jordan got. I noticed that he tucked it away so no one would remember.


Remember Foster's gator head? Well, know you know where it came from.


Kate admired Pop's rubber spider.


Alice models Drew's potty seat. What a practical gift! I should have stolen it.


Even my Grandmother got in on the fun. She got a package of Jim Beam coffee. If you know my Gramma, you'll know this was the perfect gift.


As for me? My first pick was a pack of crackers. Not the kind with cheese or PB filling either. Straight saltines. Mom was sweet and stole them from me. Then I picked an ovulation kit. Yup. I didn't even know they sold those at the dollar store. It was stolen from me and given to Kristen... remember the rooster tail? I ended up with a tube of Chapstick. I love Chapstick.

And in case you were worried that Kristen went home with that wretched tail thing, never fear - she really made out:

A bag of edible coal, a plunger, and an ovulation kit. Wow.

You know, one day we will all go our separate ways on Christmas Eve. I will miss it. A lot. As an only child, I've always loved our large gatherings. They are fun and exciting and loud and chaotic. And when everyone goes off with their own large families and have large Christmases with lots of chaos, we will go home to peace and quiet. And I will miss the loud, silly, funny, chaotic Christmases of my childhood.

You Gotta Start Somewhere

You would think that with all of the vacation time I've had over the past week, I would be blogging constantly. Wrong. I think vacation time makes me lazy. The real problem with this is that now I'm completely overwhelmed with photos and stories and such. But, you've gotta start somewhere, right? So we'll start right here in the middle. Christmas morning with Kate and her Santa toys.

Here we are Christmas Eve after we played Santa.


And the next morning before Kate was up (what's up with Foster making funny faces in these pics?)


You didn't think we'd leave our first-born out of the fun, did you?

Christmas toy (some sort of bird thing). It squeaks. Of course.


Gator head (Don's gag-gift from the night before - story to follow).


When you're 1, you don't know that sleeping in isn't as fun as getting up before the sun to see what Santa left. Here's the groggy girl FINALLY making it in.


Once she was awake, she was really starting to love this Santa thing.


The crayons were a big hit. I'm certain she will be drawing on my furniture/walls/floors in no time.


Little Tricycle Monster.


Patiently waiting on Daddy to put a toy together.


And that was only part of the fun. But the most exciting part for Kate, so that's where we started. Hope you all had a very Merry Christmas!

Beautiful Day!

Wow.. after what seems like a week of rain, today the sun was out and brilliant! Before we headed out the door to do some Christmas shopping, I subjected Kate to a little front yard photo shoot. The lighting was perfect and Kate was dressed in her pretty blue corduroy.

But....

She also had a red puppy-dog Wubby hanging off the front of her face.


So of course I took Wubby away in order to capture the perfect photo!

She didn't take it well.


I gave up.


And, she finally did too.


I cannot believe its already 10:00. I have a new work hours strategy, which means I actually have to get my behind out of bed in the morning. I'm enjoying some "Friendship Tea" that a very nice friend gave me on Friday. I guess an enemy would never give you Friendship Tea, now would they?. Oddly enough, this tea contains no actual tea. So it can't keep me awake tonight! If you haven't seen Kate show off her newest talents, please scroll down and watch the video. She's too much fun!

Kate Knows What Santa Says

We've been working with Kate on the sounds that animals make. Like all smart little girls around Christmas time she's showing particular interest in all trivia related to Santa Claus as well. Afterall, you have to know Santa's language to tell him that you want a Lynskey tricycle for Christmas! Here's a short video clip of her running through her repertoire...

We. Are. Back.

Its so nice to be back. Back from tree decorating. Back from party planning and partying. Back from our internet being kaput. Its so nice to be blogging again. In my soft fleece pants (that I'm pretty sure Don loathes), my "Go Tigers" sweatshirt (uber soft and warm) and my miss-matched socks (that are warm but I'm quite sure they aren't even from the same decade). Having been gone for an entire week, I have so much to share. This will be a photographically intense post, and since it is Monday, I'll be sure to throw a few little Not Me! jewels your way.

We have a tree! It was touch and go there for a bit. And by touch and go I mean screaming baby, 30 degree weather, shopping for a 9 ft Charlie Brown Christmas tree in the dark at Lowes on a Sunday night. Here is Don putting a star on top. We did not break down and pay a premium for this tree so that someone else would trim it and put it in the tree stand for us. I did not stop by and choose this tree and then let Don go by and pick it up after work. Nope! Totally a family affair.


Don and I got Kate a swing and slide for her birthday! She LOVES it (see below). We did not give it to her a week before her birthday. She goes down the slide by herself now... well, Ok, we are always there to make sure she doesn't whap her head on the way down.


Saturday was the big Party! Kate turned 1!! I guess the year has gone by quickly. I have to say that I've been pretty ready/excited about each new stage. It seems like she's been with us for much longer than one year. It was a fun time. Kate is a sweet girl. She looked at every card and oohed and ahhed over every toy. I can tell you that she has enjoyed EVERYTHING that she got for her birthday already. She's read the books multiple times, hugged the baby and stuffed animal, bounced on the horse, taken puzzles apart, answered her cell phone, had a tea party and played in the bathtub until she started to wrinkle. And, she's still carrying all of those cards around. Bet no one has ever enjoyed birthday cards quite as much. Here are some pics from the big day. And if you want to see a fun video montage Don put together, you can do so by clicking right HERE.

Table set and ready to go! Every time we walk into the breakfast room, its like she's never seen those balloons before.


Really not too crazy about the cupcake, but did like everyone singing Happy Birthday.


Sitting with Grandma.

Riding her new Pony.


Hanging out with Aunt Cheryl. She really enjoyed meeting new people at her party.


Looking at the Tree with Aunt Susie.


What's a party without your wings? They matched the party colors so well!


Cousin Laurie was nice enough to knit her a hat with hair. You know, since she doesn't have any of her own. Here she is showing off her braids.


Sunday Don and I celebrated our 6th Anniversary in a low-key way: brunch at Motor Supply and coffee at Starbucks. It was nice and quite and fun to just be us again. Six years doesn't sound like much. We've almost known each other for half of our lives.

Here we are 6 years ago! What a happy day!


Ah, yes. And our escape from the cold. Never fear! We have already found a swank, all-inclusive Jamaican resort that Kate can visit with us!

Ok, so today I recuperated. Mom had to go to the dentist and Kate had her 1 year checkup today, so I spent the day at home. It was nice. Oh, Kate weighed just over 20 lbs and is 30 inches tall. So, while she only gained a pound over the last 3 months, she gained 2 inches - whoa! Still hoping she'll be tall like Da. Poor thing had her finger pricked and got 5 (yes, you read that correctly) shots! She cried a lot and was clingy for the rest of the day. I'm not complaining. I love the snuggles!

Kate walked around with a balloon.


And let the cat that she found sleeping in her toy box borrow her wings.


And she practiced her newest rendition of the pteradactyl. Yes folks, its back. I know you're excited! I was going to post a video here.. but its late and I'm blogged out. Maybe another time.