I forgot to post this photo of one of the cows that Katy loved from the hospital. This photo doesn't do her justice. She had ballet shoes and sparkling tights pulled up over her udders. She was fantastic!!
This is the week of play dates. After a bit of a drought, we will have three by the end of this week. On Tuesday we had my friend McKenzie over with her daughters, Lily & Maggie. Katy calls them "Little & Maggie" and she adores them. They played for almost three hours with no problems and McKenzie fussed over Mr. Allen until he finally drifted off to sleep. When the girls were getting into their car to go home, Katy climbed up into a car seat and screamed when I had to pull her from the car. I guess that's the sign of a successful play date.

Yesterday we went over to Joy's house and played with Ava, or as Katy calls her, Awa. The two girls played chase and Katy dropped Baby Jaguar long enough to adopt one of Ava's stuffed puppy dogs. Allen scoured the floor for their dropped Cheerios. Then Joy's hubby called (he works with Peter) and we all agreed to meet up at Casa Ole for lunch - yum! Katy and Ava shared 'tias that were fresh and steaming (tortillas) and Allen teethed on sugar packets. The girls held hands to and from the restaurant and it was SOOOO cute! Where was my camera? At home. They each picked a colored balloon and we tied Katy's green one to Baby Jaguar's neck to keep it from floating away.

I will try to post how the one tomorrow goes. We're having a friend from down the street over, and she has an almost two year old named Gracie. Allen is in hog heaven with all these people to fuss over him. And when the kids are playing with him, he just can't stop smiling and laughing! Maybe I will remember to snap some pics this time. I did take a photo of him sitting up from earlier in the week when he learned to go from laying down to sitting up. It was a huge moment for Mr. Allen!!

Today was a first for Katy in a couple of different ways. She wore her new glasses we just bought yesterday, and kept them on while she was in the church nursery…without our supervision. We are so proud of her! When I put them on her face she says, “Glasses help Kiki see better” because we’ve been drilling that into her pretty little head. I don’t think she knows how to use the bifocals in the bottom half of her lenses, but she does seem to use the upper part of the glasses. At 50% off we still paid over $200 for them, so let’s hope they last for a while. They are also going to be a pain for picture time because they definitely put off a glare. DANG!

The other “first” for Katy today is that she gave the blessing on the food during the nursery snack time. How proud are we?! Lately she’s been doing much better at prayers and still needs prompting, but she’s so excited to be doing it. Instead of repeating me when I close each prayer with “In the name of Jesus Christ” she just goes for the gusto and shouts, “AMEN!” After we finished up her bedtime prayer the other night, Katy added to it that she wanted to say thank you for riding the horse. We went on a huge carousel at the mall that day. This was her first spontaneous addition and it was great to know she understands what we’re doing, if not why we’re doing it. It must put her in a good mood because she put her head down on her pillow, touched my face and said, “Good Mommy.” Break out the Kleenex.

In honor of Katy’s accomplishments, here are some more vocabs:
*almost or not yet = means to Katy that she doesn’t have to stop doing what she’s doing
*Hey a minute! = derivative of hey, just a minute
*Lebra = zebra (all z’s are pronounced as l’s and she asks me to “lip up” her jacket now
*Allen too little = Allen is too little to do whatever it is that Katy is doing and she won’t let him
*Me free = after she learned to say, “Me, too!” she has since added “Me, free” as in the number three
*Horsen = plural for horse
*Dat’s cool, huh? = That’s cool, huh? And Mom is my witness that she points out cool things like this because we were in Target together when she said this.

The bad news is that potty training has ground to a halt. I decided not to push the issue, but now she doesn’t even want to try to potty in her chair before bath time. That used to be part of our routine. Katy would let me undress her and then she wanted to undo her diaper by herself. She would undo one side and then jump up and down until the soggy diaper fell to the floor. Then she carefully stepped out of it while I died laughing. To try to motivate Katy a bit more in this department, we picked out some pink panties from The Children’s Place in the mall. Both kids actually got a lot of cute stuff from there. I love that store!

Allen is doing so great with his crawling! He loves being able to go after the cats now, or chase down a wayward toy. Today was his first time to move from one room to another. He crawled from the living room to the computer room where Katy was. She just draws him to her like a pied piper. He is starting to try to pull up on things, too. I can’t believe what a happy baby boy he is. Katy pats his head and says, “Juicy Boy”. We left him at Mom’s house while we picked out glasses yesterday, and Katy asked for him the entire time. Allen definitely had more fun playing on the floor with Mookie, but he did miss out on the mini-safari that vendors were doing at the mall. Katy brought back a Baby Jaguar from the Build A Bear place. It’s just a small one with no clothing…nothing fancy, but she loves it! Since her j’s sound like d’s it’s fun to hear her say his name. Allen has been eyeing it lately so Katy better be on guard!

In “I Can’t Believe I’m Just Not Posting This” news, I finally am putting up some pics from Katy’s eye surgery and the trip to the zoo.

Yes, that's right! Mr. Juicy is now officially mobile! Watch out! He's been doing push-ups on his toes, which is pretty amazing considering how heavy he is. And he's also been rocking back and forth on his hands and knees. Well, last night Peter called me into the living room and we caught some video of Allen actually getting around. Katy's toys are no longer safe! He seemed quite pleased with himself, too.

Allen is also getting a bunch more teeth. The one on top is off to the side like a little snaggle tooth, but all the ones in the top middle are about to break through. Poor Juice. We may need to start adding Tylenol to his baby food at every meal.

Katy is doing great with her patching and drops. She's still not messing with her recovering left eye so I've been letting her go patch-free during the day and she's just wearing it at night.
Mom has today off work (thank you, Martin Luther King, Jr.) and she's joining us for a Target store run and a Chinese lunch. Yum! I know my sisters are jealous!
Meg

There are at least 500 things I should be doing right now that are more important and time-sensitive than updating my blog, but I am a procrastinator at heart. Plus the kiddos are at Gammy & Poppa's house and Mom just called to tell me that she made some chicken noodle soup for us. I'm feeling pretty spoiled right now. I think I'll ignore the groceries in the car and my church phone calls for a little longer...not to mention that mountain of laundry that keeps looking at me.

Katy is doing great after her surgery! She hasn't been rubbing or touching her eye so I haven't been making her wear the patch during her awake hours. She keeps talking about her zoo experience so I guess it was pretty fantastic for her. Last night she made Mom re-create it on the drawing board from Marie. She insisted on a puma for each drawing, but the rest Mom changed up a bit each time. It was pretty funny.Here are some recent vocab stuff that makes me laugh:
*I can't feel good = I don't feel good
*I don't find it = I can't find it
*I know dat = of course, don't be silly, I am smarter than you think I am
*cuckers = covers, as in pull the covers up to her chin for bed time
*pupaste = toothpaste
*hair brush = paint brush OR hair brush
*baby daguar = baby jaguar
*was is name-0 = BINGO Was His Name song request
*tinkle tinkle lidl staw = Twinkle Twinkle song request
*Kiki's teetee = Katy's tv, the red portable one
*I gotta full tummy = I don't want to do whatever you just said I have to do

OK, that's all I can think of for now. I know there are lots more but she is correcting herself so quickly that I barely catch the baby talk versions anymore. She used to say, "What hap-my?" for what happened, but she doesn't anymore. And "noke" instead of "nope".

Allen is still happy most of the time, even though he has a bad cold with snotty nose and congestion. His top right side tooth is now all the way in, with the top middle ones about to burst through the gums. Poor little Juicy! And Katy has been trying to lay on him lately. I don't think she believes he's a baby anymore and she's ready to wrestle him. In a few months he'll be able to win that match-up!

Lately Allen has been scooting backwards and he gets stuck up to his shoulders under the sofa. I know when I hear cries of distress that I'll see him propped up on his elbows with the rest of him under the sofa. Sometimes Katy tries to pull him out but she never even budges him. It's funny to see her try!

OK, I guess I better stop for now. These kids sure keep me laughing.
Meg

We just barely got home tonight and I'm happy to report that everything went great! Katy's surgery went exactly as her doctor wanted. They removed her lens from her eye (including the cataract) and replaced it with a synthetic lens. They gassed her before they put the IV in, and they gave her some "happy meds" before they took her back for surgery. So basically she doesn't even know she had surgery! We stayed overnight in a hotel and then brought her back for a check-up today. They said it all looks good. She has to wear a metal cover over her eye for one week. Then they're going to remove that and get her fitted for some glasses. I know she'll be adorable, but I hope she doesn't hate them.

We capped off the day with a trip to the Houston zoo and she just loved it! Katy's favorite animals there were the new baby elephant and giraffe, and the jaguar...probably because Go Diego Go has a pet jaguar. My Dad met us at the zoo and we had such a great time. You would never guess Katy just had surgery. Allen was just grinning the entire time. He was so good for the entire trip, even though he's getting some more teeth up top.

The best part about everything was that Katy's anesthesiologist looked a lot like Marie. We told the doc that and she was so excited! I didn't point it out to Katy b/c I didn't want her to associate Marie with the surgery in case it hurt her. But I felt so comforted from it...like Marie was there with her while I couldn't be. Peter agreed with me.

Right now the only bad part is eye drops every two hours. But considering how bad it could have been, I guess we're getting off really easy. Pretty much everyone else there waiting for surgery was in much worse shape than Katy...really disfigured or burned or deformed. We really were counting our blessings.

Katy's eye surgery is tomorrow early in the morning. I feel like we've been dreading it forever. I can't believe it's only been six months since we discovered that she has a cataract in her left eye. Hopefully all will go well. I will spoil her into oblivion if I keep thinking about it.

Here is Allen from this Christmas.

And here is a stroll down memory lane. Katy was just a couple months younger at this time than Allen is right now. She was a July baby and he was a May baby. Size-wise he is SOOO much bigger than she was. It's hilarious when people see Mr. Juicy for the first time and throw out their backs trying to pick him up!

Well, I finally cleared all the Christmas photo shoots off my camera disk. Here is a "best of" collage. I already love it! Some of these really cracked me up!

Meg