18 Months and "Ah-sigh!"

I can't believe we are already to the half-birthday mark this year! We feel like Kate is learning at light speed at this point. She is understanding more and more and talking more and more every day. Her vocabulary is to the point that I can't possibly capture all of her new words since last month in one post. She is also beginning to string 2 or more words together at times. Kate is super sweet with her babies and toys. She will kiss them, cover them up with a blankie and tell them "nigh, nigh", take them for stroller rides, try to share her juice and snacks with them along with her paci. She's become quite the little momma all of a sudden. One of her favorite toys right now is her Little People farm. Kate LOVES all animals and loves taking them out, giving them kisses and carefully placing them in their stalls in the barn. She will also kiss the farmer, put him on the top floor of the barn and say "Geeeeee!" (for Wheee!) as she slides him off the top. We are also beginning to see more and more of her...personality I guess you could say...we often call it attitude :) She is a girl who generally knows what she wants and will let you know if things aren't going her way. Momma and Daddy are learning how to deal with our strong willed girl.

By far the most common word we hear on a daily basis is "ah-sigh" (outside). Kate would live outside if we would let her. She likes to walk around, ride in her wagon or stroller, swing, play in her water table, help Daddy water the plants and just be outside. We have also recently introduced a play kitchen that we inherited and a pool/splash pad, both of which she absolutely loved! I thought for her 18 month update I would share some pictures from her time "ah-sigh"

Cooking outside and offering Momma a bite

Busy in the kitchen

Relaxing and reading after her dip in the pool

Looking like queen of the pool surveying things from the top of the slide

Playing in the pool

Taking a walk with Daddy

Playing with her water table

Watering the plants at Nonna's house. Kate tries to water the plants at home with Daddy's big watering can so the Easter bunny brought Kate her own little watering can and she couldn't wait to put it to good use.

Happy Belated Easter!!

We spent Easter in Florence with the Johnson clan. Kate had a great time playing with all of her cousins and luckily the Easter bunny found her at Nonna and Poppa's house. We hope that all of you had a very happy Easter as well!

Kate Easter morning after mass

The family

Kate's goodies from the Easter Bunny

She went straight for the suckers

Hunting eggs

And here's a little video of Kate checking out her Easter basket and another clip on the end of her hopping like a bunny

Fun with Cousins

We've been on the road a good bit lately...hence the lack of blog posts...but luckily our travels have allowed us to spend a good bit of time with family and it has given Kate the chance to play with most of her cousins. While we are currently in the process of learning about sharing and playing nice, for the most part Kate has been sweet with all of her cousins and really loved getting the chance to play with all of them.

A couple of weekends ago we went to Anne Marie's second birthday party where there was a clown who painted faces and made balloon animals and lots to play with and see outside. Then last weekend we were in Florence for a long Easter weekend with all of Kate's Alabama cousins. They were so sweet to hide Easter eggs and help Kate find them, they took her for walks and just played...so much fun in fact it took Kate all week to catch up on her sleep!

We are extremely blessed to have such a big family with so many sweet cousins for Kate to play with!!

Kate and Claire. Kate has been very into checking out "the baby". I guess it's a good thing seeing as how she'll have a baby around all the time in a few months!

Kate and Karoline hopping on the trampoline at Anne Marie's birthday.

Daniel reading Old McDonald to Kate and Langley

Daniel getting some one on one reading time with Kate

Bath time with Langley and Harper. Kate wasn't quite sure what to think about all the activity at bath time but I think she had fun.

Camden reading to Kate

The bigger cousins put together an egg hunt for Harper and Kate. Harper caught on to the concept faster than Kate and was showing Kate all her goods here.

Mary Emma helping Kate hunt for eggs

Daniel and Owen helping out too

One more of Daniel helping Kate hunt eggs. I thought this one was cute!

17 Months and Daddy's Birthday

This past Saturday we celebrated Kate's 17 month birthday and Nick's 29th birthday with a family crawfish boil in Port Barre. It was great! All of Nick's brothers and most of the sister-in-laws and nieces and nephews were in attendance along with Pop Pop to celebrate the occasion and enjoy some of the best crawfish and veggies that I have ever tasted! All the little ones had a blast running around outside playing with each other and everyone else enjoyed the day spent with family and some great weather!

I can't believe how grown up Kate is becoming! She is a girl who knows what she wants/doesn't want and likes/dislikes. Kate loves to be outside and can now ask, or tell us "ah-sigh" for outside in kind of a whisper to let us know that she would much prefer to be outside. Her vocabulary is really at the point where it is taking off and she is beginning to try to repeat a lot of what we are saying. There are too many new words since the last post to list them all but some of the most frequently used these days are "bub-buh" for bubble (she's obsessed with them and knows everywhere she might see them--the bath, the sink, the washer, momma and daddy's shower...), "dye" or "dye-dye" for bye-bye, she greets with a "heey" or a "whoa" for hey or hello, "bop-bop" for Pop Pop and "bah-bah" for Papa, "nah-nuh" for banana, "day-dee" for baby and tonight I got a "thank you". I don't know exactly how she pronounced it since it was the first time she had really said it but it was very clearly a thank you, Nick even verified that I had heard correctly. I hope to be hearing more and more of it (and a few other manner words) in the future. She LOVES animals and added "dah-dah" for a sheep's baa-baa and "meew-meew" for a cat's meow-meow to her list of animal sounds she knows (cow, dog, tiger, lion and duck). Kate loves to smell the flowers outside and candles inside, color in her coloring books, play with her little farm and ride her babies and stuffed animals around in her little toy wagon. It keeps getting better and better and we continue to have more and more fun with our growing girl!

Kate checking out the crawfish. She wasn't scared of them at all and loved throwing them back into the bucket.

Kate with cousins Braxton and Amelia taking a look at the crawfish

The birthday boy and his little girl

Kate with her Parrain, Marcus

One more with Daddy. Check out those curls! As you can see she's still not getting a whole lot of hair. It's also a little deceiving since everything that is coming in is so curly it just keeps looking short.

IT'S A....

another GIRL!!! We are super excited!! But then again we would have been super excited no matter what we were having! Everything is looking great! The baby is measuring right on track and was pretty active during the ultrasound today. She gave the ultrasound tech a hard time trying to get her measurements both in movements and position. The baby was breech today, which isn't anything shocking. Kate was breech at this point too. I think it may just be the way my body is made. Maybe it's more comfy for my babies to hang out in there in the breech position. I know everyone will want to know if we've decided on a name and there have been no decisions yet. Had this little one been a boy we would be all set but we are tossing around several different girl names right now. I'll be sure to let you all know once we feel like we've made a decision.

Profile of our little lady

Her arm and hand

And her face. I know this one's a little hard to see. Image she's looking right at you.

Enjoying Spring

I feel like a slacker for not posting more over the last few weeks but we've been sick and busy around here so it just hasn't happened. We have been thoroughly enjoying the nice spring weather...or on some days it feels like the beginning of summer already! A couple of weekends ago we took Kate to her first parade, the Baton Rouge St. Patrick's Parade. She had a great time! We had really hoped to get her to a parade during Mardi Gras but it just never worked out. Kate loves beads so that in itself was fun for her to get a bunch of beads and goodies and see how many she could wear all at one time! Then this past week Nonna was here to hang out with us during the week and watch Kate while Nick and I went to a wedding in Houston over the weekend. Kate and Nonna spent a lot of time playing outside and one afternoon we met Nick downtown to walk around and enjoy the beautiful azaleas around the state capitol. We did this last year and decided then that it might be an annual tradition since you just can't beat walking around enjoying the scenery and also trying to snap some pictures with the beautiful surroundings. We laughed at how much easier it was to snap some pictures of Kate last year in comparison to this year. Last year we could just plop her down next to something pretty and she would just smile. We spent much of our time this year just chasing Kate and she was way too into checking things out to give us the time of day. We did still get a few good shots.

As for me, the preggo, and baby #2 we are doing great! I started feeling the baby move over the last couple of weeks and it has gotten much more frequent over the last few days. Of course that is my favorite part of pregnancy. It is the most awesome feeling to feel that little baby fluttering around in there! I'm beginning to think that what the ultrasound tech said at our 12 week ultrasound may be true--that we've got a busy body on our hands. This little one is moving a lot! We go tomorrow morning to take another look and hopefully get to see what we are having. I can't wait!! I think I am more anxious to know the sex of this baby than I was with Kate. The bets around the Speyrer house are changing daily. Friday night at the rehearsal dinner for the wedding Nick was rubbing my belly telling everyone his boy was in there. Then Saturday at the wedding he told anyone that asked that daughter #2 was definitely in there. As for me, I'm pretty unsure. I've had girl vibes since the beginning and I guess deep down I'm still thinking girl but I'm not overwhelmed with girl thoughts. I guess we'll see tomorrow!

Kate and Daddy watching the St. Patty's parade

Kate riding in the wagon as we made our way to where we watched the parade. Notice how Kate is waving to anyone and everyone that she passes by. I think she thought she was the parade.

Kate checking out her little teddy bear that was the first of what ended up being many little stuffed animals that she caught. She immediately gave this one a hug and a kiss.

Kate and Daddy and all Kate's beads. She insisted on wearing all of them and was mad when we made her take some of them off

Our haul. No room for Kate to ride after the parade with all the beads and stuffed animals that we got.

Kate and the azaleas in front of the state capitol building

Cheese

Happy to see Daddy when he came to meet us.

Kate was all about the lake. I think she would have run right in if we had let her.

Our little family

Kissing Daddy

Daddy started this game and Kate wouldn't let him stop. Not an easy game to play with our 30 lb girl.

16 Months Old

Kate is 16 months old today! We are having fun and staying very busy around here. Now that it is consistently nice outside, we are spending a lot of time with Kate outside. She loves to go for a wagon ride, walk or stroller ride around the neighborhood. She's also happy to swing or just play around and explore outside. She usually cries whenever it's time to go in.

Kate is also starting to try out more words and is doing better at trying to repeat things we are saying. She finally added "ball" which is usually one of the first words for most kids but Kate decided she'd do things a little differently and wait. But now everything that's round is a ball...apples, grapes, you name it. Some other new words are, "cuh-key", with a big emphasis on the hard c sounds, for cookie. She uses this for actual cookies as well as Cookie Monster on Sesame Street. It's either "chi-chin" or "kick-kin" for chicken. "Ddddss" for beads, as in Mardi Gras beads, which she loves to sport around the house. "Ock" for socks, "book" for all her books that she loves, "nigh, nigh" for night, night.

A few funny facts about Kate...first, she LOVES shoes!! Typical girl, I know. We bought her some new shoes fairly recently and after trying them on in the store (which she was happy to do) she insisted on wearing them out of the store. Her old ones were definitely NOT going back on her feet! I also ordered her some flip flops from Old Navy that have been in my office as I try to decide whether or not to keep them or get a bigger size. She brings them to me all the time wanting to put them on. Kate also LOVES Wheel of Fortune. She has for a very long time now. When she first learned to clap, she loved to clap when the audience clapped, and she still does that every now and then. Her big thing recently is that she knows when the show is about to go off, before Pat and Vanna even say good-bye, Kate starts waving to tell them bye-bye. She also has to know and be in the middle of whatever is going on. If I am working on dinner, she wants to be up to see (and have her hands in) what I am working on, if I am doing the laundry, she wants to be up on the counter so she can watch as I throw clothes in the washer. In her role as sous chef, she likes to sample whatever I am cutting/chopping. Some recent favorites are yellow peppers, sweet potatoes and zucchini, all raw of course.

Cheeeese

Ready for a wagon ride around the neighborhood

Swinging at the playground

Notice the pink flip flops. These are the ones I talked about above. She brought them to me one morning while she still had her pj's on and insisted on putting them on. Since the pj's had feet in them, I had to strip her down to let her sport her shoes.