St. Patrick's Day

I snapped a few cute pics of the kids on St. Patrick's Day. Notice how cool they are in their Chucks!

Quotable-Jackson!

Finally, Jackson gets a Quotable post! He is starting to talk more and more, and it's so fun! Of course, it can be frustrating when we don't know what he's trying to say. But he's doing great. It is still quite an effort for him at times, though, mostly when he's trying to say several words or a sentence. So, picture the following with adequate pauses in between each word.

At a friend's house last week we had hotdogs. Jackson had eaten a whole one, then another half of one. Then he leaned over to me and said: "Mama... Iwant......more.....dog......"

These Kids...

This girl:-is becoming quite the little mommy, keeping tabs on her little brother and letting me know what he's up to.
-is rhyming words all the time now.
-is continuing to learn to write her letters, and can now write her name all by herself.
-can count to 30 (or more), and to 10 in Spanish.
-tells me all the time how much she loves me.
-thanks me occasionally for doing things like cleaning the bathroom or folding the laundry.
-is very much into wearing dresses and skirts, and loves to accessorize her outfits as well.
-loves green olives stuffed with garlic.
-was in the 70-something percentile for height and 40-something percentile for weight at her 4-year old check-up last week...tall and skinny!



This boy:



-can count to 3, sometimes 4.
-is talking more and more.
-says "thank you" all the time.
-still loves his paci (he now calls it "poppy" or "poppies"), blanket, and lovey.
-sleeps in a big boy bed now (at night).
-has a great sense of humor.
-loves fruits and veggies.
-is working on his colors, but thinks everything is either blue or orange (wonder where he gets that color combo from...?)
-weighs 31 pounds.


These kids:-are sharing a bedroom.
-fight like crazy.
-love to play together too.
-love to wrestle and tickle each other.
-love to play outside.
-are the apple of my eye.

Kathryn's Kinderjam Program

Since the fall, Kathryn has been a part of the Kinderjam class at our church. She LOVES the music class, and was SO excited to get to perform a couple of weeks ago on the stage at church! She had seen other kids perform before, and was so excited to finally have a turn to be a part of it.

Here she is sitting with the other kids waiting for their big moment.Up on the stage...
Ringing her bell...
She made this same funny face almost the whole time. She was concentrating really hard!
What impeccable rest position!
One last concentrated ring!

Sick Days

This is what our house has looked like the past two months, on and off.

Sick days. Deep, dark, sick days. We made it through the month of December (the holidays!) with no major issues, and I kept reading on Facebook how many friends were dealing with sick kids in their homes, so it was no surprise to me when it started. But folks, it's not been stopping... It began Jan. 13th with me coming down with a stomach attack. Two days later Johnny started feeling achy, and came down with the flu. Four days after that I started with the flu. Johnny's family stepped in and took the kids that weekend so they wouldn't be exposed to me, and to help me recover. That Friday, Kathryn threw up at night. She continued to throw up, just at night, for the next several nights. The kids came back home the next Monday afternoon. She had thrown up on the way home, and the next day was pitiful. I took her to the doctor that Tuesday, but we never figured out what it was (we thought it was strep because we found out she had been exposed the previous weekend). By the next day, she was fine. I continued to recover slowly from the flu the rest of that week. That weekend, Kathryn started coughing again, and had a little cold virus that weekend (I assume something she picked up at the dr. office). I started with the cold the Monday following (my resistance was still way low due to the flu, I think). Her cold cleared up in just a couple of days. Mine turned into a sinus infection, and I was miserable for a week and a half, then had about a week afterwards till I was still feeling somewhat normal. Then we had about a week and a half of everyone feeling pretty normal. Whew! But that was all the break we had. Then Kathryn started with the flu. A few days later, Jackson started with it. And that brings us to the pictures above. The poor babies were miserable. Today Jackson's temperature was finally normal all day, so I am hopeful that by this weekend, we will all be over it all and back to being completely normal. And, I'm hoping that this will be the end of a long two-ish months for us. So I apologize for the lack of blogging lately, but I hope you understand why!

Quotable

Kathryn, while playing at Pump It Up (a play place with tons of inflatables to jump on), breathless: "Mama, I'm losing steam. I need to go get some more!"
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Kathryn, a few days after Christmas: "Mama, now how old is baby Jesus?"
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Kathryn: "Mama, when are you going to get dressed?"
Me: "After I work out a little bit."
Kathryn: "But you haven't showered yet?"
Me: "No..."
Kathryn: "So then you're still stinky?"
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Kathryn came downstairs during naptime: "Mama, I changed my clock, so now it's closer to 3:30, but I don't know what time it is, so can I just stay downstairs and naptime is over?"
Me: "Kathryn, you can change the time on your clock, but you can't change time..."

Christmas-Crabtree Edition

So, I've been sick the past couple weeks, and have gotten behind on some blogging that I've meant to do. So, first off is the last of the Christmas posts.

This is my attempt at a picture of the kids with their great-grandparents. As you can see, Kathryn was not in the mood to cooperate... (These are my dad's parents.)Four Crabtree siblings, plus my kids. The story behind this picture is that when David and I were little, my mom's dear friend Barb would send us all a Christmas package in the mail with all kinds of goodies and gifts. One of the things I most looked forward to was the package of chocolate covered animal crackers in that package. Every year at Christmas, I remember those cookies, remembering how good they were. This year, I finally thought to ask her if she remembered sending them, and where she got them. I figured it was a shot in the dark. How would she remember some random cookies she used to send us all those years ago?!? Well, much to my surprise, she knew exactly what I was talking about, and was going to get some the very next week! So, being the sweet Barbie that she is, she sent some to all of us! Here we are before opening them (only I knew what was inside...!).
Opening our special gifts!
How fun to share this special thing from my childhood now with my daughter!
Not a great picture, but here we are showing our cookies!
And then we opened the rest of the gifts.
Jackson was very excited about his book!
And another attempt at a picture with my grandparents. It turned out ok, I suppose. I sure do love them!

Kathryn's Tea Party

For Kathryn's birthday this year, we had a "friend party" for the first time. (Well, last year she kind of had a "friend party", but that was more just because we had lots of friends around and made cupcakes, and not so much because we planned a party just for her...). So, this year we asked her if she'd like to have a few friends over the weekend after her actual birthday for a tea party, and of course she said "Yes!!!"

So she invited three of her friends from church, got all dressed up, bugged me all week to clean the dining room (and rest of the house) for her party, and enjoyed her special morning with her friends. Here they all are at the table that Kathryn set up all by herself. Here's a picture of the sugar cubes that the girls put in their tea (or ate by the handful...).
Kathryn insisted on serving each guest herself. As you can tell from her face, it's a very serious job.

Kylah and Kathryn.
Serving Jordan's tea.
This is Princess Kathryn (as she deemed herself) with her cupcakes.


That pink icing was super potent. As in, if you got it on your hands, it stained them for hours...!
Kylah enjoying her cupcake.
Camille enjoying her cupcake.
Jordan having a good time!
Besides the actual food portion of the party where the girls enjoyed chocolate chip scones, pink dip with pretzels and apple slices, jelly beans, cupcakes, pink strawberry-kiwi drink, and of course tea, the girls had fun playing in Kathryn's room, decorating foam heart picture frames, and played pin the top on the tea pot.
The "finished" game. (Please don't pay attention to my horrible art work...!)
Then Kathryn opened some presents and enjoyed hanging out with the girls till they left.
Thanks, ladies, for a fun morning celebrating Kathryn's 4th birthday! What a fun tea party with some beautiful little ladies!

Happy 4th Birthday Kathryn!

I can hardly believe it as I sit and type this post! Our little girl is 4 years old today!!! It's been far too long since I've updated on her, so be prepared for a long post! First off, here is a picture from the day she was born. She was breathtakingly beautiful then, and continues to be to this day. We have been so blessed by this sweet girl. This past year has been such a fun one for me as her mom. I so enjoy her and this stage of her life. Mostly gone are the temper tantrums and constant training in obedience, and now we have entered into such a fun stage of constant learning and growth. Don't get me wrong, she still presents daily challenges, but it's just different now! She still enjoys dressing up, and will sometimes surprise us with her fun get-ups:

But mostly when she's dressed up, it's as a princess. She has funny sleeping habits these days. She no longer will sleep in her bed, but instead sleeps in this chair in her room. Occasionally we'll find her asleep on the floor, but the chair is her first choice. Last night I tried to move her into her bed, and she woke up immediately and moved back into her chair. We will be switching her from the toddler bed to a twin bed soon, so I'm hoping that she'll decide she likes the twin bed better (especially since we'll also be moving the chair out of her room at that time!).
She also loves to make silly faces for the camera. Sometimes it's hard to get a good, serious picture out of her for the silliness!

But she will still pose for a cute pic here and there.
I'm not sure if you can see the gum in her mouth in this picture, but that is something with which she is often found. The girl loves to chew gum, and is known to go through several pieces a day (or an hour), if she's allowed to!
She also loves her treats. Her favorite treats include chocolate, chocolate chip scones, and ice cream. For regular food, some of her favorites are salad, apples, spaghetti, almonds, granola bars, and cheese. She also loves to go out to eat at Chick Fil A and Bojangles. She especially loves going on daddy-daughter dates to Chick Fil A to get breakfast, where she eats Chicken Minis.

She loves to be helpful around the house. In this picture she was getting a stool to help me in the kitchen. She will often ask for chores to do, but of course prefers the fun ones like wiping things down, vacuuming, cooking, dusting, doing the dishes, etc. (as opposed to cleaning up her toys). But she is actually quite helpful most of the time. Today she saw me unloading the dishwasher and just started putting the silverwear away and getting the dishes out to hand to me to put away!
Another silly face...!
I thought she looked really cute in her new outfit, so we snapped a few pictures. These are from the day before her birthday.
Siblings!



Kathryn is also really into playing mommy, and has lots of babies that she pretends with. I often find myself caring for not only her and her brother (and the one year old that I watch twice a week), but also for one or more of her babies as well. She will feed them, change them, bathe them, rock them, etc. It's not uncommon for me to find them "sleeping" all over the house (in her bed, in our bed, etc.). She also can take her animals very seriously (see the picture above with her doggy and kitty). In keeping with the mommy theme, she will also often take it upon herself to be the boss of anyone who's around. Sometimes it can be helpful (like when she tells Jackson not to do something he shouldn't), but oftentimes it's a source of conflict! I have even heard her telling other kids what to do (or not do). I know it is just a normal thing for her, being the firstborn, at this age though.

She has also started asking us some really deep questions, like, "When will we see Jesus?" and, "How old is baby Jesus now?" (asked a few days after Christmas). She loves to sing, and will sing along to more songs than I realized she even knew!

Since my brain is starting to get scattered with all that our little girl is, here are a few more random tidbits about her:
-She wears mostly size 4T clothes, but can fit into some size 5 and even a few size 6!
-Her shoe size is 11.
-She is very social, and loves to go places and see people.
-She has a few made-up words and common phrases: "up in the mornin'" = tomorrow morning; "formiss" = forget; "formember" = remember
-She goes to bed around 8:00 (sometimes later) and sleep till 7:00ish.
-She has rest time during the afternoon, but doesn't always nap. If she does fall asleep, we have to wake her up, or she has a hard time getting to sleep.
-She is totally a daddy's girl right now.
-She is convinced that her newest sibling is a girl.
-She loves to do arts and crafts, and works really hard to color inside the lines.
-She is learning how to write her letters, and can write the first 4 letters of her name without help. The rest she asks me to do dotted lines, and then she will trace them.
-She knows more Bible verses than we can count, thanks to her Bible memory songs and Awana.
-She strives to do the right thing and be obedient (even though it doesn't always happen!).
-She loves the fact that she's getting older!

As always, there is a ton more that I could add, but for now this will do. Kathryn, we love you so very much, and are so proud of the sweet girl that you've become. We can't wait for all that this next year will hold for you as you live your life as a 4 year old! We love you!!!