Hand-me-downs

note: I give up! Blogger keeps rotating the photos. Imagine them rotated 90 degrees left!


I finally got a picture of Kate smiling. She has been smiling more and more often for a couple of weeks, but always seems to stop (or fall asleep, or need to eat, or we get distracted by Loren, etc) by the time we get the camera ready. I'm sure there will be more and more smiley pictures to come. She is a pretty happy baby.

As an oldest child I mainly got to wear "original" clothes, with the exception of some clothes handed down from my mom's youngest sister Janice, who is 4 years older than me. Kate, on the other hand, has worn almost nothing but hand-me-downs. We have so many 0-3 month clothes --from Loren, cousin Ellie, and a few even from cousin Ethan-- that I have joked she could wear a different onesie every day that she's in the size and never repeat. Once we get into the larger sizes we don't have quite as many, because Loren caught up to Ellie in size so we didn't get Ellie's hand-me-downs. But even so we have lots leftover from Loren and I will have to make sure Kate gets some of her own special things.

Having two girls wear the same clothes gives quite a sense of deja vu. I dressed Kate up in this outfit yesterday because we were making a stop by my office (she never woke up during the visit, so no one saw it anyway!). I remembered that we had pictures of Loren in the same outfit at her first Christmas.


And, to go back even further, the duckie sleeper in Steve's right hand is still in Kate's wardrobe. And somehow Blogger did not rotate this one. But I'm not going back to reimport the others.

Nana and Kracker visit

Curt's mom and Judy came up for a quick visit on Thursday evening and Friday. Loren stayed home from school and had a great time playing. And I enjoyed a day at home with two extra sets of hands to help with the girls.

Kate napped on Judy's lap.



Loren used the chalkboard on her kitchen to teach Nana and the animals.


In the afternoon, we took our new tandem stroller (Joovy Caboose Ultralight) out for its first run, to Choux Factory, a.k.a. the cream puff place.



Loren shows Judy her new favorite website (starfall.com)



Jane and Kate were worn out after an exciting day.

Kate at home

A few pictures from this week...

Chilling in the bouncy chair.



Getting ready for a bath...



and after the bath. No "during" picture -- I usually give her a bath during the day while Curt and Loren are gone so I don't have a photographer handy while I'm concentrating on the bath.



I almost fear to post this because I'll probably jinx it, but here she is napping in the crib...something Loren never did. The last few days she's taken a nice afternoon nap in here.

Stardate 63141.48 - Loren and Kate

Cheryl took this photo on President's Day while I was in the shower.

NYC

Stardate 63141.46 - Haircut and Lunch

Last weekend we got bundled up and took a family outing for Loren to get a haircut.


She did very well and really enjoyed it. We discovered that early on a Sunday was the time to go as the place was not crowded (and it is usually very, very crowded). Afterward we went to 879-TACO for lunch.



Kate slept for the entire trip, although Cheryl had to leave lunch a little early to get back home for Kate's feeding. Loren and I caught up soon after.

NYC

Photos from this week

Kate had her first smile this week! But she has only done it twice and not for the camera. So here are some other pictures from the week.

On Sunday, to give Curt some time to work on taxes, I took the girls for a little outing to Sutton Place Park, a nice small park on the river not far from us. It has a sandbox and some room to run around so it was an easy place to supervise Loren...I am not ready to take on a regular playground with both kids by myself yet. Loren loves to climb on the wild boar statue.




Someday we'll have interesting outdoor pictures of Kate. But so far this is mainly what she does outside.

My parents came over for a visit later that afternoon.


And a couple pictures of Kate at home this week. I realized we never put up any of her stats. At 1 week she was 21 inches and 8 lbs 2 oz. This puts her in the 95th percentile for height. I knew she seemed big compared to Loren at the same age. But I didn't realize just how big until I took her to the breastfeeding support group at NYU last week and she was as long as some babies who were several weeks older.


Chubby cheeks!


We're looking forward to the holiday weekend, and to Nana and Kracker's visit next week!

Stardate 63103.71 - Collin's Birthday Party

Loren's classmate Collin had his birthday party today at Chuck E. Cheese in Long Island City. It was a bit crowded and chaotic as you can imagine, as there were lots of simultaneous parties going on.


Loren seemed to have a great time. She liked the royal coach in particular, and wanted to ride it a lot. She also liked a bee game where you have to catch balls (painted like bees) in a net and dump them into a honey jar. We also played that one many times.



After about 90 minutes or so, we were both ready to head home. This is the second birthday party I've taken Loren to by myself, and I'm hoping that maybe by the next one Cheryl can go to - even if she can only watch the coats and diaper bag that would be a big help.

Once we got home Cheryl took Kate and Loren to the library while I continued to work on the taxes. It was their second sister outing together, the first being Costco last weekend.

Tomorrow is supposed to be very warm (51!) so we're going to try and get outside for part of the day, and Grandma and Grandpop are also stopping by for a visit in the afternoon.

NYC

More pictures

Yes, we are still here! After Curt's last post, things went downhill: I turned out to have full-blown strep throat and had to go to the doctor in the snow, with Kate in tow, to get a prescription for antibiotics. Loren got over the stomach virus in 24 hours, but then Curt got it. And by that Thursday, Kate was running a slight fever that kept spiking to about 100.3 -- we went to the doctor for her 2-week checkup on Friday and there was nothing specific wrong, but if it went up to 100.5, we would have had to take her to the hospital for tests. Luckily her temperature went back down Friday night and things have been looking up since then.

This week, Curt has been back to work full time and also doing the day care drop-off and pickup, so he is beat. I've been interviewing babysitters to cover the pickup and help me out a bit in the evenings, and we're hoping to have someone start next week.

Kate is doing great. She is a hearty eater and gaining weight quickly. She is pretty mellow, as long as she is fed as soon as she's hungry and burped when she needs it. Here are a few pictures taken since our last post.

Bobby (Great-Grandma) visited before the illnesses set in:



Loren's class had a big sister party for her. Unfortunately, Curt and I were too sick to attend! I sent a disposable camera and will put up some pictures once we finish up the roll.


Su Ming and Kathy stopped by last weekend.



Kate at home this week.


On Sunday, the weather warmed up into the 40s so we got Loren out to the playground for a bit. Kate and I came out for a few minutes.