Mar 15

We are lucky enough to have a really nice park area in our development, just a short walk down the street, with a nice playground and plenty of room to run crazy.  We headed there after naps and met up with our neighbor and her kids, and her sister with her kids.
Katherine loves to run and says she's practicing for her "kids half-marathon".

 

Ring around the rosey with Fiona, Phoebe, and their mommies Clare and Ellen.

 

Weeeeee!

 

Daniel and Fiona having a little toddler date on the swings

 

Happy boy!

Mar 14

Naptime was pretty funny today.    Katherine was singing and having a very enthusiastic, lively dialog between a few of her stuffed animals.  I didn't think she would fall asleep.  She was pretty loud, and then all of a sudden - silent.  I think she fell asleep mid-sentence, all sprawled out.

Marching on . . .

After this post, I'll be all caught up with posts for this year!  Hopefully I can do better at keeping up-to-date from this point.  Picture talking total so far- January: 1172, February 620.

Mar 1, 2011  Daniel just loves to play trains!  He's getting good at making longer chains of cars and pushing them around.

 

Mar 2, 2011  Katherine and Callum, the boy next door.  We are so fortunate to have great neighbors, at least on one side of us.

 

Daniel and Fiona

Mar 3, 2011  Today was Jonah's first birthday!  Our friend Sarah invited me and the kids over in the morning for a playdate, and everyone had a great time.  Happy Birthday, Jonah Bologna.  :)

Mar 5, 2011  Because he was already pretty good at being one-year-old, having had two days of experience under his belt and all, Jonah wanted us to come over again to celebrate!  Sarah did a fabulous job with organizing the party, making enough food for an army or two, fun treat bags for the kids, and yummy "J" and "1" cookies for everyone to take home.  It was a great party.

It was pretty warm (by early March standards), so the kids had fun running around the backyard when we got there.

 

Jonah did a nice job of digging into the icing on his smash cake.  Yum!

 

 

Our college friends Denise and Mike came with their three kids.  Katherine and Kaleigh are just a few weeks apart in age.  They bonded right away and played together for most of the party.

 

Daniel thought all the balloons were fun to play with.

 

And he did his share to help clean up when the party was over.

 

Katherine declared Sarah to be the queen, gave her this tiara to wear, and said everyone had to obey her the rest of the day.  She really loves Sarah.  :)

 Mar 6, 2011  Katherine had a fun afternoon with Grandpa at Lehigh Country Club.  They had a special kids event with characters, games, magic tricks, balloon animals, and then dinner.  She got to meet Captain Jack Sparrow (from Pirates of the Caribbean), Batman, and Cinderella.

 

They had a "chicken dance" contest, and Katherine was the champion!

 

She may need to work on her limbo technique.

 

Cinderella did Katherine's face painting.

 

Jack Sparrow made her a balloon flower.

 

And then she pretended to be Spiderman . . .

 

And Grandpa.

Mar 7, 2011  Sometimes being the little brother means you're stuck wearing a tiara.

Mar 8, 2011  Daniel has just started to become interested in Elmo.  He won't watch Sesame Street but he loves the Elmo books we have, and thinks Dancing Elmo is pretty funny.

 

He really loves to color now.  The hard part is keeping the crayons out of his mouth!

Mar 9, 2011  Silly Kat!

Mar 10, 2011  Gym class fun!

 

Kids night at Perkins was face painting.  Katherine chose the "pink princess" design.

Mar 11, 2011  Kim, Emily, and Andrew came up this weekend from MD to visit.  Katherine and Daniel had a great time playing with their cousins.  Daniel and Andrew formed a band . . .

 

While Katherine and Emily showed off their vocal abilities.

 

Gram and Grandpa with all four of the grandkids!

Mar 12, 2011  Katherine modeled her new swimsuit for us before heading over to Gram and Grandpa's house to swim in their hot tub.

Mar 13, 2011  All snuggly in the morning.  This bear was sent to her for Valentines Day 2010 by Uncle and Joanie.  It's so soft and is easily her favorite of her stuffed animals!

Moving on to February . . .

Feb 1, 2011  Basement day!  The kids had fun pretending to be bears in the "cave" I made them and sliding down the slide too.

Feb 2, 2011  Katherine treated us to a fashion show this night using her dress-up clothes.  I laid down an old comforter and she pretended it was her runway.  What style she's got!

Feb 3, 2011  One of the things that makes Daniel laugh the most is this squirt bottle.  He points it at himself, gives his face a good spray, and cracks up!

 

Apparently feeding himself puffs is also hilarious to Daniel.

 

More lollipop sharing!  If you ignore the germ factor, it's pretty nice of her to give some to her little brudder.  We'll ignore that part and focus on her sharing.  ;)

Feb 4, 2011  Partners in crime!   Any time Daniel tries to get snacks from the pantry, Inky is right there to cheer him on and help clean up anything that hits the floor.

Feb 5, 2011  Katherine stuck this glob of Play-Doh to her forehead and told me she got a big owie!  Silly girl.

Feb 6, 2011  Daniel loves big hats and I love this funny face.  I dare you to try not to laugh when looking at it.

Feb 7, 2011  A boy and his dog.

Feb 8, 2011  Our friend Emma owns a great little store in Emmaus called Cottage.  They have lovely things for your home, fun toys for kids, and some unique and adorable clothing for kids too.  Emma also offers craft times, and this day we got to go and make Valentines with some of Katherine's friends.  Some glue, lots of glitter - seriously, LOTS! - and a happy girl who loves to make crafts.

Feb 9, 2011  These moments when they play nicely together are the best.  :)

Feb 10, 2011  Katherine used her foam letter mats to spell out the name of her "husband".  Fred (from Scooby Doo) is the original husband on her "list of husbands", but she says when she's done with him, she will marry Prince Charming.  At least she picks cute boys!

 

One of Katherine's favorite things to do is go to Perkins for dinner on kids night.  Usually they have one character dressed up visiting during dinner, but sometimes they have face painting.  Both are hits with her!

All done!  Katherine as a kitty cat.

Feb 11, 2011  Katherine has been taking a gym class called Tumble Bears at the East Penn Childrens Fitness Academy and she loves it!  Sometimes after her class they offer an "open tumble" time where anyone who is 1-5 years old can some and play.  Daniel was so happy to be able to run around in the gym and play in the ballpit.

Feb 12, 2011  I think when you can get yourself into the highchair, ya might just be a smidge too big to use it!

 

Chef Katherine loved making some sugar cookies for Valentines Day.  Much like her use of glitter during craft time, her use of sprinkles was quite generous.  That's baking 3-year-old style for you!

Feb 13, 2011  Daniel has some pretty good soccer skills inherited from his daddy and can dribble the ball nicely already.  Too bad he'd be out of the game with a red card since he also likes to pick up the ball!

 

Katherine is a pretty quick little runner!  She's excited to be doing a series of kids races organized by a local running club this summer.  She sometimes runs laps around the house and tells us she is "practicing for the kids half-marathon".

 

Daniel loves his Grandpa.  He gets so excited when we say we will see him and yells "Pa!  Pa!".

 

Katherine and Gram had a fun time playing My Little Ponies together.

Feb 14, 2011  Happy Valentines Day!  Daniel tried feeding himself with a fork at breakfast and did a great job.  We were amazed at how quickly he picked that up.

 

Katherine exchanged Valentines Day cards with the other children in her preschool class this morning.  She loved coming home, dumping out her bag of cards, seeing the characters on them, and finding treats attached to many of them.  She told me, "I really like the sugary things!".  It was a nice day of love with my favorite little people, and Brendan surprised both me and Katherine with our own flowers when he came home from work at night.

Feb 15, 2011  Open Tumble time at the kids gym is always a great way to burn off some energy!  Katherine and Daniel both enjoyed running around and climbing on everything.

 

We met up with our friend Sarah and her two boys for dinner at Five Guys.  Katherine and Riley had just bumped into each other and knocked heads a bit, so they had about a hundred hugs afterward to make things better.

Feb 16, 2011  This is Katherine "puhtending to be Mommy"!  I guess she has noticed me flipping my sunglasses back on my head when we come inside.  She's a sharp kid!

Feb 17, 2011  We thought we were buying a giant package of diapers from BJs, but as it turns out, we also got a good two days of entertainment value out of them!  Both kids loved climbing on the packages and running off, and pretending that they were sleds.

Feb 18, 2011  We had one of those glorious warm days where we just had to play outside as much as we could.  With weather in the mid-60's in February, it was such a treat to be outside playing with sidewalk chalk and running around.

Feb 21, 2011  Eight years ago this day, I had no idea these precious little kiddos would come of that fateful night at Callahan's.  Happy Guinness Toast Day!  :)

Daniel is holding a train,which blends into the kitchen in back of him.  He's not actually angry at me for taking the picture.

 

Open tumble time was extra fun because our neighbors Callum and Fiona came to play also.

 

Daniel was too tired to finish lunch after we came home from the gym and he fell asleep right in his highchair.

Feb 22, 2011  The goofy chin-in-the-air smile that Katherine would give to the camera all fall and winter has been replaced!  Thank goodness.  This sweet smile is a much nicer pose.

Feb 23, 2011  Nice goal, D!

Too bad you got the red card afterward.  That's unquestionably a hand ball, little dude.

Feb 24, 2011  Katherine made a crayon "ladder".  I think she would be happy to sit and color all.day.long if I let her!

Feb 25, 2011  Date night for us!  Katherine had a great time helping Sarah assemble this adorable balloon wreath for her little guy Jonah's first birthday party while we were out to dinner.  Again, the Christmas dress.  That really might be the best $11 I've ever spent, she loves to wear it! 

Feb 26, 2011  Katherine attended a birthday party this morning for her good friend, Brooke.  It was a princess-themed party, so she was really in her element!  What's better than princesses, cake, and friends.

 

Katherine rocked at the "stick the tiara on Cinderella" game!  Check out that precision, pretty amazing for being blindfolded.

 

Brooke's dad had four kids on him for a piggyback (slash piggyside and piggyfront?) ride.  They all thought it was hilarious!

 Daniel turned 1 1/2, so we took that as an excuse to eat ice cream cake.

 

This is a face of a happy boy who approved of our idea.

 

If you're familiar at all with sign language, this is the sign for "more"!  He was signing as fast as he could and saying "more, more, more" after he tasted the first bite.  That's my boy!

Feb 27, 2011  Another day of beautiful, unseasonably warm weather, so we took a wagon ride over to the neighborhood playground for some fun before naps.