Before Katie was born, I promised myself that I would be diligent about writing down and recording her milestones and the cute things she would do. I kept a "baby diary" for a while, in which I wrote little notes to her while she was in the womb. It was mostly stuff about decorating her room and complaining about work. Then about 10 weeks postpartum, I started an ongoing email to myself called "Katie Notes," which was mostly complaining about lack of sleep.
Yesterday I resorted to writing "Katie stacked 6 blocks, 10/25/12" on a scrap of paper and sticking it in my baby book. That's right, MY baby book - I haven't actually started one for Katie. It's funny to see my mom's progress in my baby book. The first half is mostly filled out and the second half is entirely blank. The first half is also written in the same ink, and it's suspiciously neat. She says she consolidated a bunch of hastily written notes and that's why it's all done in one day, but I suspect she also threw some inventions in there. Such as, "Kimberly sleeps through the night, 8 weeks." My dad begs to differ - apparently he was responsible for the 2am feeding! So I guess it would be more accurate to say that my *mom* slept through the night when I was 8 weeks old. LOL.
Anyway, I thought I'd jot down some cute things that Katie has been doing and saying lately. She surprises us every single day with the stuff she comes up with. This morning she sang a song, or part of one, with an unusual amount of accuracy: "Cookie Cookie C!!!" Apparently while I was at my parenting class Tuesday night, Anthony showed her a Youtube video of "C is for Cookie" and she's been thinking about it ever since. She's heard Cookie Monster sing it on the radio a million times, but somehow seeing it in person is 1000 times better. She cracks up when the chorus of other monsters appears behind Cookie Monster, I have no idea why.
One of Katie's new favorite pastimes (aside from playing with water, which is her main obsession) is a game she invented called "Coop-Dump." (aka Scoop-Dump.) She asks to get in her crib, then says "Cooooooop!" which is my cue to scoop up as large an armful of stuffed animals as I possibly can, and then "DUMP!" them over her head while she peals with laughter. It usually takes 2-3 scoops to get them all. (Wish our relatives would quit giving her stuffed animals!) Then she throws each animal out of the crib and we start again. Or, she asks to get out of her crib and says "Keen up, keen up!" and puts some of the animals away in their cabinet. Don't get excited, though - she's only cleaning them up for another round of "Coop!" This delightful (ahem) game is not only very tiring for Mama but completely open-ended. It's very hard to get the animals to stay in their cupboard when it's time for bed.
What surprised me about Coop-Dump is that Katie started referring to herself in the third person while playing it. She had already been saying things like "Lambie in" and putting Lambie in the crib, or "An-i-muzhh in" and putting animals in. But when she said "Katie in" it really blew my mind. That means a) she knows her name and b) she knows how to tell Mama about it! Pretty amazing.
The first instance of "Katie in" was about 2 weeks ago, and ever since she's been amusing me with the cute things she says about herself. She's had 2 colds back-to-back (maybe 3, since it still hasn't gone away and seems to be worse these past couple of days). She now has a pretty yucky-sounding cough, which probably freaks the crap out of people when I take her out in the world. Anthony and I have taken to saying "Poor Katie!" when she coughs like that. One night, she woke herself up coughing, and we heard her cry for a second, then say "Pooh Kay-dee!" and go back to sleep. AWWW!
Another relatively new game is to call people and objects with "Where are you?" Although for Katie it sounds more like "Yaa-youu?" I think the roots of this came from Gymboree - there's a part at the end where all the kids are asked to call, "Gymbo!!!" and after they call him enough times, the teacher gets out a Gymbo puppet. One day, in an attempt to lure Katie upstairs for her nap, I suggested we go find Lambie. She immediately called, "Maaaaaaaammie!" I started calling "Lambie, where are you?" Not only did Katie pick up on the "where are you," but she also started imitating the way I cupped my hand around my mouth to magnify the sound. Except she does it with her palm against her cheek. Last weekend Anthony and I were watching football, and the referee called a penalty for illegal hands to the face. I said, "Look! He's calling Mammie Yaa-youu!"
Let's see, what else? We dug ourselves into a hole recently when we discovered that Katie likes to pick her nose. The parenting books say to ignore it, that trying to make her stop only makes her more determined. That sounds like Katie to a T, so that's what we're doing. But Dada couldn't resist teasing her a little, and one night as we were putting her down, she was really going to town on her nose. Dada said, "Goodnight, Princess Pick!" and the name stuck instantly. Now "Princess" and "Pick" are inextricably linked. If you say "Princess", she starts to pick her nose. OMG. And of course, what did we decide she'd be for Halloween? A princess, of course! Double OMG. If I manage to get a picture of her picking in her princess dress, I'll definitely post it. Sigh!
That's all for now; Princess Pick has finally stopped playing and decided to nap. TGIF!
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