Katie Turned Two!

I'm 4 days late, but I still want to post about how Katie turned TWO YEARS OLD!
It feels so strange to have a two year old. She's not a baby anymore. She is a toddler. And I am an adult. And it's all so weird! I feel like time went by SO quickly and yet, at the same time, I feel like she's always been a part of my life.
Here are some recent pictures of my big girl, as well as some little facts about her. :)

She is obsessed with TV. I know, this is awful. You don't know how many times i've considered stashing the TV away in some closet and only bringing it out for special occasions. The problem is, I LOVE hearing her interact with her favorite shows. Haha! She tries to sing along to theme songs, she answers when Dora or Team Umizoomi ask her questions, and honestly, I feel like she's learned a lot because of it. I think the biggest problem is that she knows how to turn the TV on all by herself and gets upset when I tell her no.

We love to just hang out and go places, one if which is the Children's Discovery Museum. Our membership ends at the end of this month, so i've been trying to go more often. We went after my last pre-natal appointment and will go back, probably for the last time, on Monday.

I'm not sure why she does this, but when we ask her to say cheese for a picture, she scrunches her eyes closed. Lol!

Katie LOVES horses (well, all animals really) and loves to say "heeeeeeeeey" when we ask her what a horse says. Maybe someday she get the "n" sound in neigh?

Katie and swimming have a love/hate relationship. I think she got WAY too spoiled while swimming at the pool in Palm Springs because the water was always nice and warm. The water in our apartment pool is always really cold and she hates it. :(

However, we can usually get her to swim for a little while before she starts saying "cold" over and over again and starts quivering her lips.

I wish the water in the pool was warmer. Then maybe Katie would let us go swimming more often. The water feels HEAVENLY on my ever-growing-already-huge belly (although, in these pictures, the water is disguising my girth rather well).

 I think she was a little angry at us for making her endure the cold water. Hahaha!

Little Katie has had some bowel movement issues (poor girl!) for the past few months. It started right around the time I stopped nursing, which probably didn't coincide well with her new-found food pickiness. A couple of weeks ago, it got so bad that she hadn't had a real good poo in a week and a half. Prune juice, nothing but fruits, veggies and water, metamucil, an enema and a suppository weren't working. She ended up getting a fever one night that was around 103 and it didn't go away for a couple of days. We made an appt with the doctor for the following morning and of course, she let it all loose that night and woke up with her fever gone. Figures. Anyway, she was pretty miserable and spent most of her time cuddled up on the couch with a sad look on her face.

 She fights bedtime every night and sometimes, we just let her go until she passes out.

She is so curious about the world around her and I love it. She can count to ten and loves to count the stairs as we go up and down, or to count the products on the shelves at the grocery store, or just to count anything in general.
She knows all the basic colors (red, blue, white, black, green, pink, purple, brown, orange) but generally refuses to say "yellow." We're not sure why she doesn't seem to like that color. Haha! I think orange is her favorite because she LOVES to point out things that are orange, although she pronounces it "on-ee."
She can identity about 1/3 of the alphabet, but letters just aren't as fun as counting things and finding different colors!
We've been working on shapes for a little bit, and she knows circle, square, and "trungle" as she likes to call a triangle.
She also loves pointing out different animals and making all the corresponding sounds. Her favorites are horses, as I said before, and frogs. She will say "i'm fog!" and get on her hands and knees, pretend to bounce and say "ribbit. ribbit." It's quite adorable.
Opposites are her latest thing, working on hot/cold, big/little, heavy/light (although she gets confused on that one because the word 'light' is usually referred to when we turn the lights on and off), yum/yuck, clean/dirty, loud/quiet etc. . .

Here she is earlier in the day on her birthday, opening a present from "gramma" and "pa" (grandma and grandpa) Evenson.

The day before her birthday, which was on Monday by the way, we welcomed some new kitties to our little family! Our cat Ash had three little kittens and Katie is just smitten with them! They are currently housed in our guest/Katie's bathroom and Katie tries to sneak in whenever she can. She is always trying to share her bath toys with them.

 I'll try and get some better pictures of the kittens later.

 Cheese!

Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find my camera charger and my camera died after only taking one single picture at her birthday party! Sad day! Jenna took some pictures and video for me though, so when I get them, i'll share them with you all. Thanks Jenna!

Other things about Katie. . .

She can throw a pretty good tantrum. Someday I will make cookies for all the neighbors and apologize for her insanely loud cries and screams.
Besides that, she's still the happy girl she's always been! I still remember her smiling at everyone when she was only days old. That girl just enjoys life to it's fullest and is such a great example at finding the happiness in any situation.
Oh! She says the word "gross" and it's just about the cutest thing ever! She enunciates it so well that it's just hilarious. She generally says it in reference to her dirty diapers.
Speaking of which, potty training has been placed on the back burner for now. After her constipation issues, she is just not ready. My dream of never having two kids in diapers seems to be fading from view as my due dates draws ever closer.
Katie's favorite things:
Bubbles
Pacifiers (although I should mention we cut them up on her birthday. Poor girl still cries about how they are "broke")
Trains and Cars
Rocks
Stuffed Bears
Learning
Mommom (that's me)
Daddy
Tools
Crackers
Candy (which she incessantly begs for ALL DAY LONG. Don't you wish toddlers could understand cavities?)

I'm not sure what else to say about this little girl. We just love her so much! She is changing every day and it is SO FUN watching her learn new things and figure stuff out. With the birth of our kittens, I think she understands a little better that Ash's belly was big and then the baby kitties came out, and mommom's belly is also big and soon a baby will come out of it as well. I can't wait to see her interact with her baby brother, giving him kisses and hugs and trying to teach him new things. The next few months are going to bring so much more excitement as our family becomes four.
Hopefully she won't be too jealous. :)