MKC update Feb 2012

Here is the news on Mary Katherine. Let's see....she is nine and a half months old. She weighs 14.3 pounds. She can crawl and just recently started to pull up. Mostly she crawls "commando style," with her belly on the floor, but she can crawl on all fours. She can go from sitting to lying on her stomach and back again. She can't yet get up from lying on her back (and that makes her really mad).
She loves to sit in the floor and play with toys near her brother. She likes cars, trains, balls, little people, her wooden rattle, and a little pooh knob puzzle. She hasn't gotten interested in stuffed animals yet, but neither did Daniel until much later. She LOVES to watch Daniel play and laugh at him. He "keeps care of her" while I walk on the treadmill, put up laundry, and make food. MKC and Daniel like taking a bath together, too, which is a fairly new thing we are doing. She likes to be in the water, and Daniel shares his Thomas tub toy with her because it is her favorite. He also likes to "smooth out her curls" with a wet wash cloth.
As for food, MKC's favorite is definitely bananas. She can eat four bananas a day, in addition to her other food, if she feels like it. She also likes applesauce, tofu, seaweed, sweet potatoes, green peas, raw apples, avocado, carrots, and sunbutter. Probably some others that I'm leaving out. Oh, cooked celery, too.
She had her first day in the garden on Saturday. It was sunny and gorgeous, and she sat in the garden while I pulled weeds. She got her first mouthful of dirt. She didn't like it too much, so that's a good thing.
She is still crazy for Joseph and demands his attention as soon as he walks through the door. If he doesn't come and get her immediately, she screams until he gets there. This week, she and Daniel have been going through the puzzle box (it's been in the closet for awhile because D lost interest in puzzles). They work through the puzzles one by one, with D putting them together and MKC chewing on the knobby pieces. Daniel builds spaceships with chairs and blankets for her to ride in. ("Ma'am, would your baby like to ride in this spaceship to Mars?")
When I'm getting her down for a nap, D stays in the family room and reads or pretends until I come out for "Mama-Daniel time." Then we read, read, read until she wakes up.
Our days at home usually go like this- wake up, get laundry going, eat breakfast, work on dishes and picking up, play, finish laundry, walk on the treadmill (me while children play), put MKC down for a nap, read with Daniel, go outside for a bit or let D play in backyard while we watch him through the window, eat lunch, play, pick up, put MKC down for a nap, read, go outside (long afternoon...............), make dinner, then JOSEPH COMES HOME. Eat dinner, play, and it's bathtime/bedtime. That's us, in a nutshell. Some days we go to kidzu or the museum or to a friend's house to play. But if we are home, that's how it goes. When D goes to school (Tues, Weds, Thurs from 9-1), MKC and I sleep while he's gone. Usually after school, we play outside until dinner time.