Magical Mackinac Island on Kate's 4th Birthday

When you move to Michigan you start to hear about Mackinac Island. It is this magical little place that transports you through time. You hop on a ferry boat to get there and once you arrive you won't find any vehicles. There are horses, carriage rides, bikes aplenty, but NO motor cars. The main street is lined with hotels, fudge shops, souvenirs, and the hustle and bustle of foot traffic. While Main Street was super cute, we much preferred the back half of the island.

We took a two hour bike ride around the entire island. The high lights were throwing rocks into the water near British Landing, Arch Rock, Kate peeing in the woods, and picking wildflowers. Vince got a real kick out of riding a tandem bike with me.

ON the Island we enjoyed playing and eating ice cream at the Grand Hotel. Kate also chose to get three flavors of fudge to celebrate her birthday: blueberry, mint, and caramel. Incredibly delicious but also incredibly painful. It only took a few bites to get a belly ache! We wanted to go on a carriage ride but it just never worked out. Instead we saw the Governor's Home, military buildings from the war of 1812, and a beautiful old church. After all the site seeing we let the kids be kids and concluded our time on the island by playing at the school playground.

Following the ferry ride back to the mainland, we found a restaurant that served pasties-- a traditional food that miners would eat. The kids stuck with Mac & Cheese but Paul and I liked trying something new. While at the restaurant we took time to open presents and sing to Kate. She is such a smart four year old. She is reading like champ, rides a bike like there's nothing to be afraid of, gives me all the cuddles, loves to "chat" while she takes ALL DAY eating her meals, cares for baby dolls while simultaneously destroying stuff with her big brother, hums so loud that she misses half of what we say, has the brightest eyes you've ever seen, and has a heart of gold. She loved her magical birthday on Mackinac Island.

Potty Training the Little Miss

There is one thing every parent dreads: Potty Training. It seems like a beautiful thing. You think that life will be wonderful without diapers. But then you realize the insane amount of time, energy and effort that comes before you get to that blissful state. Forevermore, I will be reminding (they'll think I'm pestering) my children to go to the bathroom.

Regardless of the commitment, there comes a time when you just need to bite the bullet and say "bye bye" to diapers. It happened for Kate this weekend. It was spurred by seeing her cousin using the bathroom. Kate kept taking off her diaper and talking about the bathroom. My mom swears by training kids at the magical age of 2 years and 3 months. I was going to wait but I knew I couldn't handle 3 months of fighting to keep her diaper on. Plus, Kate is all about being big like her older brother.

My experience with Kate has been the complete opposite of my experience potty training Vince though. He was so excited to earn candy and never fought me when I told him to go potty. Kate, on the other hand, is a stubborn and independent little lady. She is always demanding to "do it yourself". That's her way of saying she doesn't want me to help her. She screams if I put her on the potty instead of letting her use the stool and she hates to go when we tell her to.

Going into our potty training weekend, we knew that Kate totally had the know-how. She has been going potty before bath time for at least 6 months now. In the weeks prior to pulling the trigger we began making routines like "when we wake up in the morning we go potty". This weekend just happened to be when we said sayonara to the diaps and hola to the big girl undies.

Overall, things have been great. It's all time consuming and completely exhausting, but it's going well. She had 4 accidents on day one (two pee, two poop), 1 accident on day two (poop, ugh!), and 1 accident on day three (pee). Not too shabby if you ask me. We watch her like a hawk, remind her every 20-30 minutes to go, reward her for being dry, reward her for going potty, and cheer like crazy every time we have success.

This upcoming week Vince has swim lessons so we'll test out how we do with outings. Wish me luck, I'm going to need it!

Mutiny.

Kate has always been an amazing eater and a fairly good sleeper. She would scarf down anything you placed in front of her and, for the most part, didn't need help falling asleep. All of the sudden the forces have changed or something, because this little girl is jumping off the "be a perfect angel" bandwagon. She slops her food on the table instead of eating it, she tries to escape her booster chair, she crawled out of the crib so many times we had to move her to a toddler bed (resulting in a little girl who won't nap unless you hold her). What happened to my star child?

Oh wait, she's almost two.

She doesn't even know.

When Kate teethes, she shoves everything from her fingers, to her clothes, to her toys, into her mouth. Most recently, she has started pulling on her lips. She doesn't even know she's making a silly face and it kills me. The first time she did it we were eating at a restaurant. Paul and I looked at each other and bust up laughing uncontrollably. These little moments are some of my favorite parts about being a parent.

Teeth Probs.

Everyone in my family needed braces (except one lucky sister who got away with retainers!). Going into motherhood, I was aware that my kids were going to need some orthodontic help. What I didn't realize was the myriad of other potential issues.

You see... Paul and I both have a baby tooth where an adult tooth never came in. Apparently, this is highly genetic. We braced ourselves for the possibility that our kids might be stuck with some baby teeth. We've been brushing really well and taking care of what they've got because it might need to last 30+ years. Today we got a little surprise though. It seems that Kate is missing a baby tooth (and thus will not get an adult tooth either). It didn't dawn on me that she could be entirely missing a tooth from birth!

We're giving it 6 more months. Then we'll do x-rays to confirm the tooth isn't there. After that, we'll leave it alone until she's about 7 or 8. At that point she'll get a "flipper" (a false tooth attached to a retainer) for her to wear until she is 14-15 years old. Hopefully her jaw will be solidified enough to get an implant at that time. Had it been missing from her upper palate, she'd have to wait until she was 18 or 19 years old! Looks like we're going to have to invest in some good dental insurance from here on out...


On a happier note, neither of the kids have cavities! Woo hoo!

Was she really napping?

Kate just meandered down the stairs after her nap. She looked like this:

This girl takes her clothes off any chance she gets. Basically, whenever she is alone I catch her trying to take off her pants or she's yanking at her shirt. I have no doubt that she's going to love running around in nothing but a diaper all Summer long.

Kate: 11 months old

Kate has one tooth! She's very close to cutting her second lower incisor.

Lets go of furniture and stands unsupported for long periods of time. This is such a relief! When she was younger she hardly ever put weight on her legs. Looks like she was just being stubborn!

Screams and yells for food whenever anyone else is eating. Especially at dinner. It's embarrassing when we are eating with guests! We can hardly talk because we're so busy trying to keep food in her mouth. She is most certainly a jealous little girl. She wants what everyone else has.

May have had an allergic reaction to eggs. Her face got red and splotchy. She didn't have any breathing issues so we're not too worried. It's possible the redness was from the enzymes in her saliva but we really have no clue. We'll keep an eye on it and find out in time.

Loves whacking her pacifier on the crib slats. It lets us know she's ready to get out of bed.

Down to 2-3 pacis at night, we wrap her body but her arms are unswaddled!! This is a huge triumph! Perhaps a bit ridiculous, but with the lack of stability we've had around here, swaddling has been a huge comfort for Kate.

Her eyes are still blue as can be-- but that could always change as Vince had blue eyes at this age too.

When she eats her finger occasionally gets caught up her nose and she just leaves it up there!

Learned how to use a big straw! She's been doing food pouches but we mostly just squeezed it into her mouth. With the temptation and reward of a smoothie, she learned to use a big straw. This helps her to eat soup and smoothies with the family.

This girl still spits up after nursing! She must gulp tons of air because she's guaranteed to spew 3 times a day. thankfully it's not all day long like it used to. We expect a little bit after milk and then we're usually in the clear.

She's got a love/hate relationship with Vincent. Really, she adores the boy. She wants to be close to him... but it almost always ends in tears. Vince thinks he's big enough to hold her so he's constantly trying to pick her up... aka putting her in a headlock and lifting. He also tries to help her stand and walk... you can guess how that story ends. Sharing is especially difficult for these 2. When Vince was a baby he didn't care what toy he played with. Set something in front of him and he's happy. Kate, on the other hand, is happy for a fraction of a second until she sees that Vince is playing with something else. She drops hers and tries to get whatever he has. Vince isn't a great sharer either. It's the big struggle of every single day.


She is still happy as a clam. I seriously don't know how she does it. She wakes up happy, goes to bed happy, and perks up within seconds after crying. I love her smile and the light that she brings into our lives.

Kate: 10 months old

With all of the moving around I don't have many high quality pictures from this month. I had to make do with my cell phone camera. While it makes me sad, it's better than no pictures at all, right? In the meantime, here are some small details that make us love our little girl so much:

Laughs on demand

We have a crawler! Slow, mechanical, choppy movements, but so cute!

Last month we dropped the dream feed and at the end of this month we also dropped from 4 nursing sessions to 3. Ohhhh how I love it! This has made preparing dinner and go places after her first nap so much easier. With the drop in milk intake we've decided to supplement with formula after her night feeding. This has been a happy transition for the entire family.

Loves kicking her legs during stroller rides.

Has discovered how much fun it is to pull everything off the shelves, empty toy buckets and dump over containers.

She pulls to stand all the time now. She moves cautiously when walking with assistance. Can't do stairs yet but like to try anyway.

Waving! It is so darn cute. It's usually her palm facing in and her arm shaking back and forth. As the month progressed it turned to a palm-out wave like you would expect.

Prefers to sleep in daddy's arms. Dad has become the baby whisperer. She passes out in his arms every week at church. Go, Daddy!

Still no teeth! Vince got his first tooth at 9 months so we're becoming a little anxious for proof that she'll have chompers.

We found a great park by our house and found out that Kate is wild about swinging. She giggles and laughs with each push. We've assisted her with a few slides but she seems indifferent about it.

Kate: 9 months old

Nine months is a fun milestone because a baby has spent as much time growing inside of you as they have outside of you. Contemplating the amazing changes that happened from conception until this point is astounding. It bears witness to me that we have a loving Heavenly Father who has prepared a way for us to come to Earth and have physical bodies. I am eternally grateful to enjoy the responsibility of raising these children.

The best part of this month has been my decision to drop Kate's dream feed. It was becoming too exhausting and the disturbance was doing more harm than good at this point. Instead of ensuring a good nights sleep, it was waking her up for 1-2 hours. It took a few days for her to make it til morning, but now she sleeps from 8pm to 8:30-9am all by herself. The next step will be unswaddling her left arm. We've decreased from 6 to 4 pacifiers for her to wrestle with at night. Progress, right?

Her naps have improved as we've increased her awake time during the day (abt 3 hours, almost 4 hours at night). We're guaranteed one 1.5 hour nap and one 45 minute nap. Sometimes she graces us with two 2 hour naps and it's the best gift she could offer. At church, she has taken to sleeping in Daddy's arms. I think she loves how tight he holds her... and I think Paul secretly loves getting that special time with his daughter (even though he feels like his arms are going to fall off afterward).

This month was rough in the health department. Kate clocked a total of 3 weeks of sickness. She would work her way through a cold, be healthy for one day, and then acquire a cough, recover, and repeat. I would definitely say this made for an increase in fussiness. No doubt, she is still an extroverted, happy baby, but she isn't all smiles anymore. She's beginning to understand the correlation between fussiness and attention from parents. Obviously, she's smart. It even sounds like she's crying "ma ma" when she's most upset. Break my heart, okay?

Kate is serious about eating. She nurses lightening fast, enjoys oatmeal or eggs for breakfast, a banana and cheerios for lunch and occasionally tries bits of noodles and other finger food for dinner along with a puree. She has made leaps and bounds with self-feeding. It wasn't until the last week or so that we allowed her to try more finger foods. Whenever the family is eating and she isn't, she yells. It's this high pitched scream that continues until you let her eat too. Kate still hasn't cut any teeth, but she's proving to us that those gums can mash just about anything.

Kate's happy exhales have turned into little giggles. You make eye contact, say her name, anything, and tiny baby giggles escape her mouth. When she is in the car she laughs at Vince or tries to turn her head to see the driver. Red lights are becoming a favorite of mine so I can turn and chat with my sweet babe for a few precious moments. This social girl still smiles at strangers and loves attention from just about anyone who will give it to her. She's also taken to splashing in the bath. Paul has to hold one leg down the entire time to keep from getting completely saturated during bath time.

I'm trying to step up my parenting by doing something about Kate's locks. Her hair is odd. It's long in the front but short and rough in the back. Slowly, the back is coming in and will (hopefully) catch up with the front. It has made for some good pigtails and ponies, though! I had to start coiffing her hair, otherwise Nana threatened to cut it off!

This nine month old's biggest accomplishment is pulling up to stand. She gets this extreme look of accomplishment followed by smiles and a laugh. Her hips rock back and forward as she tries to steady herself. Although she just learned to stand, she is fearless. Twice, she has gotten steady enough that she has let go of my hands and stood by herself for a moment before plopping to the ground. She immediately reaches forward to pull up and try again.

Her current mode of transportation is tummy to sitting, tummy to sitting. She doesn't crawl, but her up and down movements take her in all sorts of directions. Nothing is safe anymore. All if fair game in this girl's eyes! Speaking of her eyes, they are still stunning in their blue clarity. Vincent also had blue eyes at this age. His have slowly turned green/gray with time. Paul and I both have green eyes, but have enjoyed the blue eyed stage of both our children. Who knows,  maybe hers will stick?