Fun videos

I do not have an ear infection. But the doctor said that I do have fluid in my ear, which is causing the pain and pressure. That was a relief. And Adam is still not sick, so I think he may have escaped this bout. Now I'm just looking forward to being able to taste things again. I don't think I've eaten a flavorful meal in a week.

I have my quilt finished except for the outside binding. I think I'll save pictures until that is done. Meanwhile, here are three cute videos of Katrina. The first is of her turning pages during storytime. The second shows her recent success with spoonfeeding (though I am afraid to try with anything other than applesauce because of the mess), and the third is our new game every naptime. See her teeth!

I hate this thread

I am so mad right now I actually had to keep myself from swearing. Seeing that I've never sworn in my life, you can understand that I really am mad. And it's for such a stupid reason. My cheap thread keeps getting caught in my sewing machine, and 3/4 of the way through my quilting project, my needle breaks. I then went through five needles in the next half an hour. I wasn't doing anything differently from the rest of the quilt! And now I have about five inches squared of fabric that needs to be quilted, and no more needles.

And I think I have an ear infection.




I promise to be happier in a few minutes, but for the next five minutes I'm going to let myself hate life.

Sunday Sweets

I read this blog called Cake Wrecks that shows a bunch of professional, awful cakes. On Sundays it features Sunday Sweets, or cakes done well. This is my Sunday Sweets post to make up for a whole weeks of sick posts.

I think I am finally over the hump. Katrina varies from day to day. She has been miserable since waking up from her nap an hour ago. I fed her dinner, tried desparately to entertain her, and just barely put her back in bed. So yesterday, when I checked on her before going to bed, she was asleep on her stomach. That's pretty unusual, but she also had her legs curled up under her so that her little rear end was sticking up in the air. It was pretty cute. She woke up briefly and rolled over to stare up at me, but then rolled right back and stuck her rump in the air again.

Today we made it to church! It was a little rough sometimes, since she has to go so long without a nap, but Adam and I made it through. He's happy too because he now has as many as six deacons when they all come, and the two new ones seem really enthusiastic. I made it through Primary, which was surprisingly difficult, actually. I've even been playing piano more at home lately, especially song #100, Baptism ("Jesus came to John the Baptist, In Judea long ago..."), but today I really struggled through it all. Oh well. I will just keep practicing. The chorister wants me to eventually play it incredibly fast, but I just don't think I'll be able to get those triplets up to the speed she wants.

For a Sunday drive we went out to look at a house we saw online. It's a foreclosure and definitely a fixer-upper, but one that is very liveable and has a whole acre of land. We definitely will keep it in mind if we ever decide to make the plunge and buy a house.

Well, I don't have much to do with Katrina in bed and Adam at a meeting, so I think I will work on my machine quilting technique so I can start on the actual quilt. Fun!

Oh, and Adam took some decongestant before he left. I think he might be sick after all. His mom suggested some medicine that she takes to shorten colds and I think we will definitely start him on it tomorrow, just so he doesn't have the horrible experience that I've had.

Anyone know how to conquer a cold?

Does anyone know how to conquer a stuffed nose? My sinuses have so much pressure on them sometimes that I feel like I'm being smothered. I've tried showers, head over a pot of boiling water, Afrin nasal spray, sudafed, breathing in cool outside air, and even altoids.

Last night Katrina had a hard time getting to sleep again, so we were a little slow to respond to her each time she cried in case she would stop soon and fall back asleep. But one time her cries were very sudden and seemed especially urgent. I walked in to see a kind of funny sight: her legs were both sticking out of the side of the crib up to her thighs and were obviously stuck there. I felt bad for her of course, but it was a little amusing too. I bet it hurt though; one of her legs was jammed in pretty tight and I had a hard time getting it unstuck. We have these breathable bumpers that are really nice for some peace of mind about SIDS (if she gets her face stuck in the side, she can still breathe through the bumpers), but the one on the side that drops slides down really easily. I'm just glad that I decided to respond right away instead of leaving her like I was tempted to do.

Small leap for babykind

We had sort of a difficult night last night. When the doctor said Katrina's cough would get worse before it got better, I thought it would get worse right away, and so I assumed that Tuesday and Wednesday were the worst and now it would get better, right? Nope. She was coughing so much and stuffed up so badly that she couldn't stay asleep for longer than a few minutes. Our trusty pediatrician's website gave us a few tips that ended up working like gold. First, we had to clear her nose with a bulb syringe. Normally that would make her scream, but she seemed to realize quickly that it brought relief. Next we dribbled some drops of saline spray into her nose. Immediate relief! Then we headed to the store for a cool mist humidifier. The combination enable her to fall back asleep peacefully. She did wake up once in the middle of the night and I had to go pick her up and let her get off her back briefly for some relief. But then she went straight back to sleep.

I woke up with a cough. I guess I really am on the exact timeline that she is. At least it's not the worst cough that I've ever had, and it's mostly after I've been lying down, which I do less than the baby, so I'm affected less. I've already asked someone to sub for me in Primary on Sunday in case I have to miss church again.

But anyway, want to hear something that's not related to congested noses and whiny mommies, I mean babies? Katrina was so happy when I went to get her from her nap, like usual. She always rolls around a lot and squeals. I opened her blinds, found some clothes for her to wear, and turned around to see her sitting up in her crib! Now Katrina can already pull herself up to a sitting position with our hands, and if she's lying on a pillow or a boppy she can muscle her way to a sitting position. But going from full-out lying down to sitting up? I've never seen her do that. She seemed pretty proud of herself too, and relished the new perspective. Seeing that I have one of the most unmotivated babies of all time when it comes to gross motor progress, I was thrilled. Hopefully she develops this new skill further and it inspires her to try grander pursuits, like, hmm, walking? I fully believe that she could walk right now if she weren't so scared of standing without holding on to something.

I really wish I had the stroller today, because the weather is nice and I think the fresh air would do us both some good. I'll have to go tomorrow while Adam is off fundraising with the Scouts.

I think 6:00 is a good bedtime for adults and babies

Katrina is in bed by 6:30 pm. Are we cruel parents? Probably. She wanted to go to sleep at about 6:00 but we kept her up. She refused to take an afternoon nap, so she was pretty cranky.

Bleh. My life, two words: still sick.

Adam's mom came over today and helped me out. I'm so thankful. She also got me real Sudafed instead of the knock-off brand I had been using, and it seems to work a bit better. Adam took care of Katrina and cooked up dinner with the chicken that I optimistically put in the fridge last night thinking that I would cook it today. Pretty much all that I can do now is keep taking the Sudafed and maybe put my head over a pot of boiling potatoes (it's a Russia thing. Why potatoes? I don't know, but that's what they do.)

I think Katrina figured out that "nana" is the name of her, well, Nana. She said it several times today while cruising to her Nana today. And then after she left, I was laying on my bed with Katrina next to me. She started to get bored and started yelling out "Nananana!" I really think she was hoping her Nana would come and save her and make her life more interesting!

I'm off to go finish off the orange juice and attempt to get some quilting done. Adam is enjoying playing our new Harry Potter Wii game. It's the first actual game we've bought. The only danger is that I always try to watch what he's doing and then stab my finger with the needle.

Leaking ceilings.

I walked into the bathroom yesterday to grab some tp to blow my nose and got a gross shock when the toilet paper was soaking wet. So I turned on the light and it looked like our bathroom had been hosed down. The floor was super wet, the toilet was sprayed with water, and the mirror and walls on one side were all wet too. My slightly shocked mind could only think "Wow, I didn't realize we let so much water out when we were letting Katrina breathe shower steam this morning." Then I shook that thought out of my head, looked up, and saw that the ceiling tiles were dripping. This is the second time that our upstairs neighbors have flooded something and it leaked down into our apartment. Luckily maintenance came within minutes. He took away two of the ceiling tiles, which meant I had to shudder and look around compulsively for spiders every time I went in there and saw all of the cobwebs in the ceiling. He came back earlier today to replace them and our toilet seat too, which was all puckered. And now I realize why our mirror had weird streaks when we first moved in--apparently this has happened before. Moral of the story--we have awesome maintenance men and our neighbors seem to have issues with their water usage.

Katrina is about the same as yesterday, though with a better appetite. I took a nap yesterday after my last post, and then went to bed early too, but it wasn't enough to stave off the cold. So I'm sick now too. Adam was nice and went to the store to get me decongestant and orange juice before work.

I am having a hard time taking care of myself and Katrina. I'm hoping that she will be happier now, after her nap, than she was earlier. If not, this will be a miserable day. At least I can breathe out of half my nose, other wise I would feel even worse. What's killing me is the nausea that comes and goes too. Right now I'm good, but during her nap, I had to lay down because sitting up was too hard.

Well, she's throwing peas and cheerios now, so I need to go clean up and start playtime. I was planning on showing a pixture of my quilting attempt from last night, but I'll save it for later. I'm making coasters and practicing my machine and hand-quilting on them before tackling the real deal.

Doctor

Well, Katrina had a huge coughing fit at lunch that scared me badly enough that I called the doctor. The office was virtually empty because they are only taking sick patients this week (they said it's because of Spring Break), but we still had to wait awhile. The doctor checked her and thankfully her ears and throat look good, but the doctor was a little concerned that the fever was back. She thinks its a cold/bronchitis sort of thing and says the cough may get worse before it gets better, and if Katrina's appetite doesn't get better, then to bring her back tomorrow. Katrina was pretty unphased by the coughing. At the doctor's office she was wiggly and cruising around, which let me know that she was already feeling better.

But then I think I made things worse by not going home right away. I wanted to finish the errands that were the reason I drove Adam today. I got a church key copied, and then I could have gone right home, but I decided to do the other errand, which was to pick up an Eagle Scout award packet for Adam over in Valley Forge. Katrina fell asleep on the way, but stubborn me wanted to stop by JoAnns since it is right next to the BSA office, so after getting the Eagle packet I went to JoAnns. Katrina was making whining noises from the beginning but I tried to be quick. Then I had a massive internal debate about whether to get a rotary cutter/mat/ruler, which would make life so much easier. It would have been only $20 with my coupon, but in an effort to not use all our discretionary money up right after payday, I finally passed it up. Then foam-woman and special order-woman slowed things up while waiting for one yard of fabric to be cut, all the while Katrina had sprung out in full-out wails. As I started to go up, one woman asked "Aren't we supposed to have numbers?" and I said "I only have one yard and my baby is crying, so I'm going." I did not finish my thought, which was "And I was here first, and this was the second time I waited because of foam-woman, and you have a cart full of about ten bolts, so deal."

Katrina fell asleep on the way home. Luckily she fell asleep in her crib too, which sometimes doesn't work after she's napped in the car. I am ready for a nap too, especially because my own cold symptoms, which have been very mild versions of Katrina's, are starting to get stronger. Oh, and I rushed off to the doctor without eating lunch, so besides the apple and peanut butter I just ate, I've only eaten half a bowl of cereal and a little bit of homemade Butterfinger and cream ice cream (it's yummy, I don't care how unhealthy it is). I told Adam he gets dinner.

Why am I blogging instead of napping? I think it's because I'm afraid to lie down because then I'll fall asleep, wake up a moment later to find that an hour has passed, plus Katrina will be crying and Adam will be calling for me to pick him up. Bleh.

The good news is that this illness is pretty much what I though--a cold. But I'm still glad I went in and crossed off the possibilities of an ear infection and stuff in her lungs (she's also breathing funny). Our copayment is low (until May, when it will shoot up. Having coworkers with large medical bills affects our insurance, unfortunately).

Oh, and I bought fun metallic gold thread for the quilting part. So, that's cool.

Still sick

Well, I thought Katrina was over this cold, but it just keeps on lingering. Sunday was great, but yesterday she alternated between fine and super cranky, with a runny nose all day. Today she woke up coughing pretty badly. Once she was up, she still was having lots of problems breathing and didn't want to nurse. In fact, I just realized now that she hasn't eaten today. Oops. But when we got back from taking Adam to work I put her straight down for a nap and she fell asleep within minutes. We also tried the steam thing again while Adam showered, but that mostly just turned into her trying to play peekaboo with the curtain. I tried showering with her, but she refused to sit on the floor (would you want to sit on that cold tub either?) and I couldn't stand there holding her for very long before the hot water started to run out.

Here is a picture of my first quilt top progress.

(Okay, brief explanation of why I use poor quality cell phone pictures so often when I have a perfectly good camera. We have a desktop and a laptop. The laptop has no battery and so always has to be plugged it--turning it into pretty much another desktop. We just don't have a desk for it. So if I want to use it, I have to find an empty power outlet--difficult--, put it on the floor or somewhere away from Katrina--also difficult--, and use it that way. And my camera has a memory stick that only works in the laptop. Explanation over.)

It's a little difficult to see, but you can kind of see where I patched different pieces of fabric together for each strip. All the pieces are sewn together except the light strip and medium strip on the far right. And it all needs to be sewn to the horizontal dark strip, which unfortunately, is 1" too short. That's all right. It'll work.

My biggest difficulties have been with the triangles. My first method ended up with a lot of funny angles and measurements. My improved method ended up with good angles and measurements, but the corners of all of the triangles are cut off in the seams. It still looks all right, but mostly because the quilt is so patchwork-y, and I will be embroidering over the whole thing. We'll see if I can improve my methods for the second quilt.

I'm really enjoying the project, and the experimenting is all very beneficial. So what if I have to learn by mistake? That makes it fun.

"Mama"

Katrina is sitting on the floor now, saying to herself: "Booooh-ba. Ooooo-ba. Maaaaa-ma." And other such syllables. Did you catch that? Yes, she is finally saying "Mama", and not just when she is upset! She first started saying it when she was really upset back in January, but it was sporadic. I guess this weekend, she was so upset so often that she finally got over her "mama" block.

It's only been, like four or five months since she first said "Dada." :]

Sunday morning

Well, I'm at home, and Adam's at church. Katrina is much better today. She only has a mild fever and her temperament is closer to normal. But she still is a bit cranky and I knew that taking her to church would be really hard, seeing that it's not even 10:00 and she's ready for her first nap. Going to church would mean no nap until 12:30, or later if I went to choir. I still feel a little bad, because I think she might have been able to make it. Plus, the sister that I called to sub for me in Primary was planning on going home after Sacrament meeting to take care of her own sick kids (and having me sub for her in choir!), but when I called she changed her mind. She's one of the sweetest people I know. Her kids are older, so I think they'll be fine. I still feel a little guilty though!

So I'm home and trying to figure out what to do to get some spiritual nourishment for the day. Speaking of that, you may have noticed the button on the side of my blog for The Bucket Filler. A friend of mine asked me to join her in a scripture-reading blog, along with another of our friends and three other women who, until now, I did not know. We are finishing up our second week and I am really enjoying it. Each of us takes a chapter a day (we're starting with the Book of Mormon), and we read it, analyze it a little, and write a post about it. It's like our own little Institute class. :] So if anyone wants to pop over there, you are very welcome to read along with us and certainly to comment with your own insights.

I cut out the pieces for three of my quilting strips last night. I think I will go start sewing them together. This will be when I know whether my measurements worked out or not. I'm slightly nervous about the triangles. I added a quarter inch for seams to the side measurements hoping that that works for the diagonal sides too. At least the colors all look nice together. That's a start!

For the first Saturday in awhile, we got to sleep in today! Katrina was making these little whimpers and occasionally crying, but then she would be quiet. At a little before 9, I couldn't really justify staying in bed any longer, and so even though it's usually Adam's job to get her in the morning, I got her. I'm not sure what's up with her, but she's been way cranky and sad all morning. She refused to nurse, and it seemed like she was stuffed up, so I took her into the bathroom and let her breathe some of the steam while Adam showered. She felt super hot, but when we took her temperature at breakfast, she was only at only 99.1 We just put her back to bed, so she was only up for an hour, but she was obviously tired. She only says "Mama" when she's really upset, and she has said it several times this morning.

Other than that, this should be a nice Saturday. I have a Primary Activity this afternoon and then Adam and Katrina will join me after that for Stake Heritage night. There will be food and displays, etc, from other countries.

My newest project (since I always have to have one these days!) will be a quilting one. I read the blog SewMamaSew and a few weeks back they had a tutorial for a doll quilt. I thought that might be a fun way to try out quilting. But quilts really aren't my style, if that makes sense. Other than my 16th birthday quilt that my grandma made, and which I love to death, I don't really like them. So what would I do with a quilt? I thought about making a small one to hang on the wall in Katrina's room, and make it all pastel-y green and yellow. But then Adam's grandmother showed me a quilt she has been working on for awhile. It's done in an Impressionist style. She used 2 inch squares for the whole thing and created a picture with them. It's so cool to see these little squares, which are all of different fabrics, blend into each other to create garden, sky, and the occasional little cat peeking out. It's amazing.

That inspired me to see what other kinds of quilts are out there. I searched "watercolor quilts," which is what she made. I also searched "art quilts," and I loved what I found. I found the website of Carol Taylor, an award-winning quilter. One of her styles especially struck me. Look at this quilt! Isn't that amazing?

Here is the detail:

And here is a smaller quilt made the same way, and then put on stretchers and up on the wall.

Now look at my couch pillows:

Hmm. Similar, huh?. I have been wanting to have some sort of art or something in our living room that brought out that design from the pillows. Our living room is brown and a little blah, and these pillows are the only interesting design element. So now I have my newest project! I will be making two small quilts that will hang on the wall. I still haven't decided whether to hang them or put them on stretchers, but either way, I think they will look cool, especially with the embroidered circles. My mother-in-law came over yesterday and while she was here I used her sewing and design expertise to advise me on how to make this work. I had already bought some fat quarters (pieces of fabric) in different shades of brown. Together we figured out how I could make it work, and then last night I spent drawing out what it will look like and figuring out measurements. My process was very mathematical, since I really do have a very concrete-sequential brain sometimes. Every piece is planned beforehand.

The nice thing about this project is that it should take awhile! Adam is hesitant about having quilts hanging on the wall (he's even less into quilts than me), but I'm confident it will look sufficiently "cool" afterwards that he won't have a problem with them. And if he doesn't like them, it will probably be like my mom's kitchen painting project that ended up with the dining room being painted bright pink (as a Father's Day surprise)--my dad didn't necessarily love the color, but he was very appreciative of all the effort my mom put into it!

Post #3-Pictures

Look at that mass of hair. Today she had a full-on mohawk going on, and this was my attempt to try to tame it with a clip. Tomorrow it will lay a little more flat, but since she had a bath last night, it's crazy today.

Post #2--Attack the cheerios, "crawling" and other videos

(Sorry that some of the videos go on longer than necessary. I used to try to make all of my videos short so that I could easily blog them, but these days I video more so that Adam can see what she did all day. I could edit them shorter, but, well, I'd have to figure out how, and I am squishing this into her naps and meals)

Witness Katrina's first attempts at crawling--really crawling. Well, scooting. It's lucky for us that she wants the camera so badly.

Here's another angle the next night. About halfway through she gives up, but this gives a better view of how she sticks her head in the ground, extends her arm and leg on one side, and then switches.

We brought home some balloons from Jordan's party. Katrina really liked them. This one is long and I should have shortened it. Skip to the end for a cute moment.

Playing with her bowl. For some reason Katrina often puts objects like this on her face and breathes into them. She sounds a little Darth Vaderish sometimes.

And lastly, a game she plays that I call Attack the Cheerios.

Post #1-Bedroom pillows

My mounted plates that I painted. I like how the silver shines through the paint in the sunlight.

The pillowcase covers that I made. Adam's mom had an extra long pillow that she didn't need anymore, so I didn't have to buy a bunch of batting, I just had to cover the existing pillow. Nice!

Oops. Yeah, I calculated that I had the perfect amount of fabric, but then I decided to make the front side 2 inches longer than I originally planned...leaving me about three inches short on the back. I decided, who cares? and finished it like planned.

The whole effect. What's nice is that every pillow except the long one was already on our bed. Adam and I aren't really a fan of excessive pillows. But we each already had two pillows, and the small blue one goes between my knees to help my back alignment at night. You can't really see the long blue one from this angle, but it's in the back.

Entire room. Someday I hope to have a place for my keyboard and sewing machine other than in my room, but I still am fairly fond of my sewing nook and music nook. Oh, and I hope to get curtains up on those windows for my birthday next month.

Birthday present

I forgot to take a picture of the cover when I finished it, but it was blue and said "My Church Book." Oh, and I'm really proud of these pockets.

Noah's ark. (I wrote in all of the captions and illustrations with fabric markers after I took the pictures. For instance, I drew in water and rain on this page.)

I also forgot to take a picture of the little animals on the other side of the blue foam tiles. It's a memory game--two of each animal.

Plan of Salvation.

"Help Adam name the animals."

"Help us get dressed for church."

"We can be sealed in the temple for time and for all eternity." It's a velcro puzzle. If most of these look familiar, it's because I copied the ideas from the quiet book I made for Katrina. Most of them ended up a little better from experience.

"Joseph Smith translated the Book of Mormon from the Gold Plates."

"The Lord commands us to pay our tithing."

"I can save my money to go on a mission." I found some coins with shamrocks on them in the St. Patricks day decorations.

Word of Wisdom--the ones on top have good things to eat:fruit, grains, vegetables. The bottom ones have X's over coffee and tea, cigarettes, and alcohol.

Cute, right? I really enjoyed making this quiet book. I hope my nephew likes playing with it!

So excited

I just completed a present for my nephew. He turned 2 yesterday and we're celebrating his birthday on Sunday. So I won't post pictures until then, but I'm so excited!!!! It's really cool. :] And even though it didn't turn out perfectly all the time, I really enjoyed making it. I also experimented a little, which often turns out poorly for me, but this time turned out all right.

Okay, now I have to share something else awesome. I recently started reading a blog called The Pioneer Woman. She has posts about her life, homeschooling, photography, and cooking. This week she got together with another blogger, Bakerella, and they are putting up tutorials for fondant-covered cupcakes and for candied cake-pops. I am in awe of their talent. Just look at these pictures and you'll agree that these would be super fun to make sometime.

There were a bunch more varieties, but these were especially fun. I so want to make Mii cupcakes now.

In "mourning"

Yes, that is right. I am in "mourning." Katrina is now only nursing once a day, first thing after she wakes up. The past month or so, evenings have been a struggle, so that was the most obvious choice for the first feeding to go. But her two daytime feedings are also sometimes a struggle and she usually ends up crying afterwards, which really upsets me because I don't know why. So yesterday I tried something. When she woke up from her nap, I just didn't nurse her. And then an hour later she ate lunch, like normal. And then after her second nap, I didn't nurse her either. She snacked like normal, and then ate dinner with us. At bedtime I tried, but she refused. And guess what? She was happy all day yesterday.

So I'm really sad because Katrina doesn't want to nurse anymore, except in the morning. And I know that if I offer it during the day, she's likely to take me up on it sometimes. But it really is stressful to fight to get her to pay attention. So I think I just need to let it go. I've always wanted to do baby-led weaning, and I kind of feel like this is more mommy-getting-sick-of-nursing-weaning, but at the same time--she didn't notice a difference yesterday. So I think that that indicates it's alright to stop nursing her during the day. (Though to be honest, I'm having enough of a hard time with this that I might keep trying during the day, at least until she's closer to a year, when she can drink cow's milk.)

However, it does leave me with a desire to call my mom and mope to her. But she's on her mission, so I'll have to wait until the weekend or just email her.

On a happier note, I just posted a bunch of pictures and videos. I tried to narrow it down to the cutest, but it was sure difficult!

No explanation needed

New things and a recipe

Here are some new things Katrina has learned:

Magnetism- she has some magnetic blocks and hemispheres that I got her last month. She finally figured out not only how to take them apart, but how to put them back together. Yesterday I caught her trying to get one to stick to a non-magnetic ball.

Balls- she is getting really good at rolling balls. She also really likes it when I bounce them.

Sharing- I gave her something yesterday and she smiled and gave it right back. I said, "Oh thank you!" and returned it. We proceeded to pass it back and forth for awhile. I found out when we were playing the same game with my cell phone that she definitely expects it to be returned to her, but hey--it's progress. Oh, and when she takes it back, if she gets too grabby and violent I just tell her to be more gentle and she takes the object more carefully.

Pattycake- she loved it when I tried to pat her hands during the game. Of course, it was right before bedtime, and she's the most giggly then

Hi- she's been doing this for awhile, but when we tell her hi she waves her hand and says "huuuuuuuuhhh," which I interpret as "hi." Adam says it doesn't count as her first word. (By the way, she still doesn't say "mama", just "dadadadada" and other syllables. She sometimes says "Nuhnuh," which should make her Nana happy!

Shrieking- okay, this isn't new, but it has reached epic proportions. I can sometimes get her to quiet down, but rarely. She likes to make little fast, loud shrieks on her changing pad and that echoes in her room. It's an awful habit, and possibly dangerous, since she screamed next to Adam's ear on Saturday or Sunday and he still can't hear properly out of that ear. That worries me a lot.

Walking around the table- she can cruise around our entire dinner table, going from chair to table leg and so forth. She gets there from her lion by way of the high chair, and when she gets all the way around, she cruises back to her lion and is off!

I think that's all that's new. Here's the recipe, which is what she and I are currently eating.

Enchiladas (adapted from my mom's Chicken Enchilada recipe)
1-2 packages of corn tortillas (flour works too), ripped in half or quarters
Ground meat, cooked (I used turkey)
Onions
Family size can of cream of chicken soup
Can of chicken rice
Lots of grated cheddar cheese (just don't grate your knuckles, like I did. Ouch, and yuck)
A package of taco seasoning

Cook up the meat. Throw in half of the taco seasoning. Mix together meat, cream of chicken soup, a little water, chicken rice, onions, and the remaining taco seasoning.

In a 9x13 dish, layer tortillas, mixture, and cheese. Cook at 350 for 45 min. Optional--turn oven off and leave in for another 30 min.

My mom usually uses chunks of chicken and puts in green chile instead of taco seasoning, but Adam doesn't like them, so I use this variation. Also, I wanted ground turkey last night and not chicken, so that's why I made that choice. I used the chicken rice mostly because I had it and will never use it, and I wanted to have enough liquid. I ended up only putting the rice part in and next time I think I will just add rice separately, since the chicken rice has a funny, strong flavor that added a little bit of an undertaste to the dish. Other than that, it's delicious. Katrina loves it too, which is impressive, since new food these days goes in her mouth, then somehow happens to fall off of her tongue into her bib. Every time.

My parents are on their mission in Salt Lake City! They are working in the Translation Department. My mom sent me an email last night telling me about their first couple of days and it sounds pretty awesome. General Conference for them should be intense, since they are overseeing 16 languages, including a bunch from Micronesia. We all wondered why they ended up there, since they only speak English, but apparently my dad's IT skills and my mom's willingness to use computers and learn a new language were helpful deciding factors. Now that I think about it, I bet a lot of senior missionaries wouldn't be able to use computers the same way my parents can.

Shrieking and babbling baby alert--"Ayayayayayaya!" Better go get her, she's done eating.

Bully baby

So I discovered, to my horror, that my baby is a bully. Yesterday we visited my good friend Elise and her family while in D.C. and it was a wonderful evening. Yummy dinner, fun times watching the kids, and just really nice to connect with old friends face to face. But back to the bullying part--I was a little shocked to see Katrina repeatedly shove the other baby three months younger than her, pull out her pacifier over and over, and even pull her hair! It was all right, the other baby is used to getting roughly handled by her older brother, but still! Katrina doesn't spend much time around other children, so she was fascinated by the two kids, but she is also obviously used to getting her own way. Today at church another little girl came up to her and Katrina tried to take her toy and then shove her face when the other little girl was in her personal space for too long.

Obvious solution? Have another baby, STAT. Don't want to let this little girl get too spoiled, right?

Judt kidding. But still, it makes you feel awful when you realize your wonderful perfect baby is becoming a normal, imperfect toddler, and you are responsible for teaching her better behavior. And she really is seeming older all the time. This weekend we discovered we can hand her an entire sandwich or cheesestick and she will happily eat the entire thing, so no need to rip them up into small pieces anymore. I fed her peas from a bowl today and the bowl did not end up on the floor until after she had eaten all of the peas. She chases me around the coffee table with maniacal laughter and no hesitation. She gives us kisses when we ask and often kisses us without us even having to ask. She seems to respond more when we ask her to do things. (Though one of my baby newsletters this week said that she's at a stage now where she may pretend not to hear you if she doesn't want to do what you say--I believe that!). She also did amazingly well with babysitters yesterday for about two hours while we were at the temple. We were the only couple to use the ward-provided babysitting, so she had a sister from the ward and two young women to watch her. Two of them were probably familiar, but I still was a little nervous. Turned out she loved it and did great.

Yesterday was a horrible/really nice day. The temple was great, as well as visiting Elise, but all the driving and the awful traffic sure made things miserable sometimes. We were happy to be home. We relaxed today, went on a walk, went on a nice drive, and then weren't able to get Katrina to bed until after 9. We'll see what Daylight Savings Time does to our schedules. I just hope to be able to sleep in tomorrow! Oh, and I loved the spring-like weather. It's shortlived, since snow is in the forecast this week, but I loved loved loved how nice it was this weekend.

Friday Eve

I guess it's been a few days, hasn't it? Well it's been a slow week. Mostly I've been working on a fun sewing project. It's almost completed. Just one more trip to Jo-Ann's! I'm so glad that we live near one.

It's also been a tiring week because Katrina is going to bed later and waking up early. Every night she goes to sleep at 7 or 7:30, but she's cranky for a good hour before that. And then she wakes up at 6:00 every day, 6:30 if we're fortunate. Getting one less hour of sleep has really made my energy and motivation lag during the day. I can't even get up the motivation to exercise most days, which means that along with my poor eating habits, my body is suffering from my abuse of it. It's been a tough week. And I'm doing my best to not call Adam and ask when he's coming home because I don't want to hear the inevitable answer of "not for awhile." I might get lucky and he might pull in any minute, but when I talked to him earlier he was having a really busy day, so I doubt it. He's making dinner tonight, so I don't really get a break from the baby, but at least I don't have to cook!

Katrina has made huge progress with her assisted walking. She went from walking in straight lines to being able to turn around at obstacles to now being able to easily circumnavigate her lion and change directions at any point. In fact, today I watched her walk in circles around the lion for over five minutes. She never actually walked anywhere. She also doesn't run into things anymore, that she can see, at least. If she's approaching a wall or couch or shelf, she automatically circles around to the other end and switches direction. On the other hand, she figured out that if she sits down any time I try to put her on the floor, she can avoid my efforts to make her stand by herself. This is frustrating when I just want to walk somewhere with her, or even put her next to her lion. I have to persuade her every time that I'm not going to let go. My own zeal on Sunday has backfired on me! She never cries, she just sits down, or she lifts her legs up and refuses to put them on the ground. Smart baby. We still hope that she'll be walking on her own within the month. Oh, and I swear I walked in on her trying to crawl in her crib today. Practicing so she can surprise us, maybe? :]

Oh, and she has two more top teeth that just appeared, with the other two teeth approaching soon. She took three naps yesterday, was cranky, and had a low fever. I think it was directly related to the teeth.

Little milestones

Adam will be sorry he had to go to BYC/Break the Fast tonight. Katrina is excelling at all sorts of things. First of all, she was cruising all along the smal couch, back and forth, back and forth. She was drinking from her sippy like a pro, and when she dropped it, I watched with bated breath as she leaned down, still holding onto the couch with one hand, and picked it up! Then, I decided to see if she would stand on her own again. Wow, she fights that. I couldn't get any standing out of her, but a few times when I let go she walked a few steps before/at the same time as falling. I tried to make her walk to me, but she just fell forward for me to catch her. I also tried to make her walk to lion and she took a couple steps! Then she did it again! When I tried to catch it on camera it didn't work very well. I then took pity on her (she wasn't crying, but she was not too happy still), and let her cruise again. I decided to broaden her range by moving the coffee table away from the long couch and let her go. Immediately she moved from the couch to the small side table and has been scooting back and forth ever since. I love seeing her learn and do new things! She also has some teeth on top poking through. I really hope they make it all the way soon.

Well, that's all. She's getting bored and it's getting close to bedtime.