Easter, Graduation & Baptism Shoes!

Pullen Park

This past Saturday Kathleen and I headed to Pullen Park to meet our dear friend Margaret for a walk around the pond, couple carousel rides, a train ride, lunch and good quality catch up time. Here are a few of my favorite pictures from the carousel ride.

Kathleen loved to kick the sides of the horse and rock back and forth when we told her to giddy-up. And afterwards we pet the horse on the mane and nose to tell him he was a good horse and thank you for the ride! 

Asleep before we could even leave the park!

Kathleen's First Playdate

Today Kathleen had her first playdate with Merywin. Merywin is a few months older and for her first birthday she received the coolest red wagon in the world. So we loaded the girls up and took them to the park down the road from us. Below are some pictures of the fun time we had and a video of Kathleen learning to slide for the first time. Merywin was an old pro and could even climb up the slide all by herself! It was fun to watch the girls interact with each other. Calvin and I enjoyed reminiscing about what it was like to have your toys seem so much cooler when someone else is playing with them.

I love Daddy's face of encouragement here.

10 months & 5 years

This past Saturday, March 3rd, we celebrated Kathleen's 10 month birthday and our 5 year anniversary. We decided to have a quiet morning around the apartment since Calvin and I were still on the mend from being sick during the week. Luckily Kathleen stayed healthy and happy despite the two of us.

Saturday was meant to be a family day together before Calvin and I headed to Hot Springs, NC for our first night away since Kathleen was born. We spent the afternoon at Morehead Planetarium in Chapel Hill and had a late lunch at R&R Grill. Kathleen loved watching the show about black holes on the overhead dome until she fell asleep in her stroller. It was also the first time Calvin had seen a show in a planetarium and my first time at Morehead. Did you know 62 astronauts trained for flights in that exact location? I think we'll be back soon for another rainy Saturday. To enjoy the rest of our family day we returned home to watch the Duke UNC basketball game. My boys put an end to the blue devil's this time with a 20 pt lead for the entire game.

At 10 months old Kathleen is starting to get an opinion about things. She talks, tries to make us laugh, wrinkles her nose when she smiles real big, claps, waves and understands when we're telling her not to do something. She hates laying down to get her diaper changed. Loves to stand, cruise, and just started crawling on her knees this week. However she still reverts back to "swimming" across the floor when she has the need for speed. My favorite thing is to watch her stand on her tippy toes to see what's on our end table that she might be able to reach. And last night we spent 25 minutes taking each item out of her daycare bag one by one and examining the matching items. Kathleen's favorite foods are carrots and avocado. Although she really loves anything that comes from Mommy's plate.

My most recent favorite story is one about the lamp cord in our living room. Kathleen knows she is not allowed to touch this cord that hangs from the end table. The other night she was looking at it and I told her not to touch it because the lamp is attached and will fall down on her head. She looked back at me, looked at the cord again and tapped it with her open hand, then looked back at me again with big eyes. She literally said to me "look Mommy, I touched it and it didn't fall" all in one look. It was hilarious. I kept myself from laughing, reminded Kathleen that she was not to touch the lamp cord, and picked her up for a quick 1 min time out in the rocking chair. We'll see how this goes, but I loved getting my first glimpse of her seeing just what is a yes and what is a no. I'm sure this will drive me up the wall soon enough.

Date night

This year Calvin is working as an intern for the youth at Highland UMC in Raleigh. As a Christmas gift they gave him a gift card and a free night of baby sitting for us to go out on a date! So very nice. So we took advantage having 4 of the high school girls spend Friday night at our apartment (with one very generous mother) and Calvin and I took off for a few hours of alone time. The plan was originally to see the Tom Hanks "Incredibly Loud and Extremely Close" movie, but it was already out of the theaters. bummer. So instead we headed to a nice dinner at Gregoria's Kitchen where there was a live harpist hooked up to an amp who was amazing. Not the traditional type of harp music I expected when I saw the instrument sitting in the corner. The plan after dinner was to get a candy apple from Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory, but they've closed! So Mrs. Fields on a mall bench it was. Our night was complete with an in depth discussion on Build a Bear and a walk around the Croc store to see their new shoes that have canvas and actually look cute. It was so nice to relax and waste a little time together. We had not done that since I was pregnant. Upon our return home Kathleen greeted us with a wave, smile, squeal and a few snuggles then promptly put herself to bed. She has consistently gone to sleep between 9 and 9:30 this week and slept through the night. She has been feeling good and has been so much fun to play with during the day. Standing is her favorite activity right along with dancing and blowing raspberries. I'm looking forward to spending the next couple days with her full time.