Tate Wylee

Oh, Kate Rileigh ("Tate Wylee", as she calls herself).

How we absolutely adore you!

You are beautiful and sweet. You love to snuggle. You say, "Love too, Mama!" as you rub my hand. You hug for no reason, other than just to hug. I love that.

You are cautious with new people. It takes you awhile to open up. But, once you do, look out!

You are totally goofy. You talk in silly voices to make us laugh. You talk with your hands, acting so grown up.

You are going to be a fantastic big sister! We talk about how you can hold baby Jack and watch Mickey together. You tell me you will change his diapers and pat his belly when he cries. You are excited for him to sit in the backseat with you. You want to give him your Peter Rabbit piggy bank when he comes. Oh, I love you!

If I could freeze you in time right now, I would. But, that would be selfish of me. I know you need to grow up, you need to experience. And, I know we would miss out on too much if I kept you at two, but what a fun two year old you are, little lady!

Tate Wylee, your daddy and I are madly in love with you.

Merry Christmas!!

We didn't send out Christmas cards this year. It just didn't happen. And with every card that comes in the mail, I try to tell myself to NOT feel guilty! I thought it would be fitting, though, to at least put something on our blog.

Next year, we will have TWO kiddos to put on a Christmas card. I'm still trying to wrap my brain around that one!!

Hope you all have a joyous Christmas and a blessed 2010!!

More Christmas Fun

How did we go from this...

Christmas 2008

to this...

Christmas 2009

What a difference a year makes!!

Kate is all about Santa this year. She walked right up to him and sat in his lap. She just sat there and nodded her head everytime he talked to her. It was SO cute!!

Christmas has been so fun this year with her. After we visited Santa (last Thursday), we went to the Shrine Way of Lights and did all the fun stuff there. One night, we drove around looking at Christmas lights, which we all loved. We have watched The Polar Express at least twice. We have baked cookies, eaten candy canes, decorated a gingerbread house, and listened to Christmas music. Kate gets so excited about every little thing.

We can't wait to see her open her presents on Christmas morning!!

Kate's Birthday Video

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

Lazy Days

We had a fun day staying in today. Mark and Kate let me sleep in until 10:00... it was WONDERFUL!! Kate came in and woke me up saying, "Time eat, Mommy". She and Daddy had made breakfast and then, we just chilled around the house ALL DAY.

Kate did a lot of dancing to Christmas music (hilarious) and reading books to herself (even more hilarious).

She took a nap and we did too. Seriously, how much sleep do I need?? But, it was SO nice. It was rainy and cold, and the perfect day for it.

We ordered a pizza for dinner and made our gingerbread house. If that thing is still standing in the morning, it will be a miracle!

It's actually really cute, but the roof keeps creeping downward. It is held up with the help of four toothpicks right now. I kept asking Kate, "Isn't this cool?" and she would say in a sing songy voice, "No". Oh well. Such is life. She had fun, though.

Hope everyone is enjoying the holidays. The countdown is on... 12 more days!!

It's Beginning to Look A Lot Like Christmas

The Christmas festivities have begun!! We still haven't made the move to a fake tree, but I think we will soon! Getting a real tree every year is hard work.

We went last Sunday on a whim to get our tree (that's really early for us!). We were out in St. Louis anyway and since we haven't had the best of luck with tree lots out our way, we just decided to do it.

Mark and I had been out grocery shopping while my parents watched Kate for a little bit. It's rare that we are out by ourselves, so Mark called it a "date". Romantic, huh?? By the time we decided to grab a tree, it was already about 7 and freezing! Kate only had a little dressy jacket, so we had to improvise with what we could find around my parent's house to get her all bundled up.

She looked SO cute, but terribly mismatched!!! That's a black and white coat with brown pants, brown and pink gloves, and a navy blue headband.

I was pretty mismatched, too, though... remember, it was freezing and we hadn't dressed that way that morning. So, I was wearing a silly band and my mom's coat still dressed in clothes from church that morning.

When the three of us got in the car to head to the tree lot, Kate had her sweet little excited face on.

Mommy: "Kate, are you excited??"
Kate: (in her squealy voice) "Yeah!"
Mommy: "Do you know where we are going?"
Kate: (still in her squealy voice) "No!"

The girl gets excited about EVERYTHING and it's so fun!! She liked decorating the tree for about five minutes and then played with the glass figures from the nativity set for like thirty minutes after that. As of last night, the tree is done and all of the decorations are up, which means it took us no less than 5 days to actually get it all done. Welcome to life with a two year old, right??

Can't wait for all the Christmas fun!! Hope you all are enjoying the season.

Slideshow

This was the slideshow that we played at Kate's birthday party. STILL can't believe she's two... have I mentioned that yet??

Kate at Two

*** This accidentally got posted while I was drafting it... so, if you got this the other day in your inbox, this one is the final version. If you have the energy to read a novel about Kate Rileigh, read on, baby.***

We are still trying to wrap our minds around the fact that Kate is two years old. Even though it's hard for us to believe, she just acts like a two year old now. She has grown up so much, it seems, just in the past few months.

So, what's Kate up to these days??

- She weighs 30 lbs. 14 oz. (90th percentile)

- She is 33 1/2 inches tall (95th percentile)

- She wears size 24 months or 2T clothes & size 4 diapers

- She is such a girly girl... LOVES her babies!! She dotes on them, rubs their heads, burps them, and puts them to bed. She calls them her "badees".

- Calls herself "Tate Wilee". At her birthday party, she would open a gift, and then say, "Ohhh, Tate Wilee!" just like we say to her.

- She loves to be tickled, which she calls "telay".

- She is SOOOO funny! She has the best sense of humor and keeps us laughing. We were waiting in the McDonald's line the other day because I told her I would stop and get her some apples while we were out running errands. There was a really long line and she kept saying, "Go!". I told her I couldn't go because there were cars in front of me and she yelled, "Moooove, Beep! Beep!" (Like, just honk at them, Mom!)

- She talks on the phone and begins every conversation with a huge, expressive, high pitched, "Hi!". Then, after about two minutes, she hangs up on the person.

- She can count to ten, but leaves out the number four most of the time.

- She loves to sing the alphabet.

- She sometimes calls us Mark and Jen... if I'm in the other room and I don't answer her right away, she'll yell, "Jennnn!"" (I tell her I'm not answering her unless she calls me Mommy! ha!)

- She loves to sleep in our bed. This happens about once a week because we are total suckers. The other day around five in the morning, she rolled over and said, "Mommy" in the cutest little voice. Then, she scooted over to share my pillow, put her arm around my neck, and started rubbing my face. And then drifted back off to sleep. That's why I don't mind being a sucker for letting her sleep in our bed.

- She loves being out and about. She likes going to Target with Mommy because she gets "lemade" and "pocorn".

- She has started using the potty, but not consistently. She is so proud of herself when she goes, though. And, if she sits there, but doesn't go, she says, "Omo" (almost). She can tell us when she already went potty in her diaper, but not before. The conversation usually goes like this:
Kate: "Mommy/Daddy, poooo".
Mommy/Daddy: "Kate, did you go poopy?"
Kate: "Yep."
(Then, she runs to the bathroom to put the potty seat on the toilet and we take
five minutes to convince her that it's too late for the potty. She finally
understands and lets us change her diaper.) And the conversation usually ends
like this:
Kate: "Big poooo?"
Mommy/Daddy: "Yes, Kate, big poop."

- She has a HUGE vocabulary. It blows us away sometimes. She told me the other day when I asked her what she did at Miss Mary's (her sitter two days a week), that she "hep pick up badees toys" (help pick up baby's toys). I was amazed that she put that phrase together!!

-Some of her favorite phrases are:
"Sorry Charlie" "No way" "Toooool" (cool) "Cheese!" (when taking a picture)
"Tu down" (touch down when watching football with Daddy or Papa) "Weed book" (read book) "Mommy, watch!" "Look!"

- She leaves off a lot of ending sounds and just adds, "eee" to the end. So, an apple is an "appeee". Jacket is "jackeee". Makeup is "makeee". Ryan is "Ryweee". Trevor is "Treveee". It's pretty funny!

- She is a little sponge. She is ALWAYS watching and then imitates... she said "Shut up" the other night because she heard one of our friends say it in conversation. She repeated it then and we told her not to, so the minute she said it this time, she burst out into tears.

- She loves to dance!! And we love to watch!

- She is a little lover. Loves to give hugs and kisses and squeeze REALLY tight!

- Her favorite food is probably grapes, or any fruit for that matter. She still loves her "mik" (milk) and loves to drink out of big girl cups with no lids.

- She loves "makeee" (makeup). She loves to put on lip gloss and chapstick.

- Likes to do EVERYTHING herself, and if you try to help, she screams, "Tate!!!!" (Kate). It takes us about 10 minutes to get in the car because she has to crawl in all by herself.

- If Mark and I hug or kiss, she yells "Tate!" and holds her arms up because she has to be in on it. So, we pick her up and she gives us a big group hug and kiss. This happened the other day as we were both waiting for her to get in the car. We were standing outside her side of the car watching her make her way in, I laid my head on Mark and put my arm around him. So, she screams at us, and climbs OUT of her carseat that she had just worked for like 5 minutes to get into so that she could hug both of us! Then, the process started all over again. And, ten minutes later, we were ready to go. :)

- If she accidentally hurts us with her crazy jumping or throwing (she's crazy, remember?) , she'll say "Sar Mommy" "Sar Daddy". Then, she'll kiss that spot she hurt.

- Calls the new baby, "Bay Jack". When asked where he is, her response varies. Sometimes he's in my boobs, sometimes he's at Wal-mart... very rarely is he actually in my belly.

- When we tell her we love her, she says "Oh tay".

And, oh, how we love her!!! She is absolutely our world. She keeps us on our toes, wears us out, makes us laugh, makes us cry, makes our hearts burst with joy, and causes us to thank God every day for the amazing blessing that she is.

Our Baby is TWO!

She's not such a baby anymore...

We celebrated Kate's 2nd birthday almost a week ago. We still can't believe she's TWO! This past year absolutely flew by!!

We had such a blast planning for and having her birthday party. We celebrated with a ladybug themed party. In true "Jen fashion", I agonized over decorations, her outfit, food, and all the little details. I think we got about 8 hours of sleep (total) over the course of her birthday weekend. It was exhausting, but TOTALLY worth it!! (*** And, by the way, these are all pictures from Mark's iphone. I'll post some better pictures when they are ready. ***)

I decided about a week before her party that I would make her dress. Me?!?! I mean, I've sewed some curtains and sewed a few straight lines before, but a dress??? My mom and I went out and got everything I needed based on what we had read on the Internet (I am clueless when it comes to sewing, but I do have a sewing machine).

So, when do you think I decided to whip that little number up? Well, I waited until Friday night (her party was on Sunday) to even begin it. Basically, there was no Plan B. This dress had to work.

So, I cut some of the fabric, stared at Mark and said, "Uh, what next??" I was in way over my head, but three hours later, it was finished and it was super cute!!!!

This picture was taken around 1:30 in the morning with the dress hanging on our refrigerator!

Phew... that was done!! Mark and I crashed around 2 a.m. and then got up early the next morning (sleeping in is unheard of around here anymore), did a few things around the house, packed up all of our party supplies, and headed to my parent's to get ready for the party the next day. We spent most of the evening decorating, making goodies, including these cute ladybug candies...

... and a little ladybug cake for Kate.

It seems silly that everything took so long, but it did! We were exhausted!!

Mark had to get up early to play in the band at church, but Kate and I stayed home since I didn't get much sleep the night before.

She woke up Sunday morning and knew it was her special day. I sang Happy Birthday to her and she just grinned the whole time.

Then, we made her a Toaster Streudel with a "2" on it and put two candles on it. My mom, dad, and I sung Happy Birthday to her and she got to blow out her candles. I videotaped it so Mark could see what he missed, but after he watched it (and got all teary eyed because she was so cute), he accidentally deleted it. He was so mad at himself! :(

Kate opened a couple of presents early and took a good nap while we finished everything.

Her party started at 2 and we had such a good time with family and friends. Everyone was so generous and Kate got so many nice things!!

She spent most of her party fussing over "Baby Allie". She is IN LOVE with babies! Baby Jack is going to be in big trouble when he gets here. She won't be able to keep her hands off of him!!

We had cupcakes and cake...

... and we played with all of her new stuff.

As usual, I forgot to have a picture taken of all three of us before the party, so here we are after it was over when I had already changed into a t-shirt and yoga pants and Kate's dress was off.

All three of us look pretty beat, don't we?? :)

Kate had such a good time on her special day!! I love how all day she just KNEW she was the birthday girl. When Mark and I put her in bed that night, we walked by her room about five minutes later and heard her singing to herself, "Happp Birday toooo meee" as she laid in her crib. Oh so cute!!

And that made it all worth it.

Halloween 2009

Here are some fun pictures from Halloween.

We spent Friday night at our church's Family Fall Fest with our friends, the Starlings and their kids.

It was a lot of fun! There were games, a bounce house, face painting, pumpkin painting, and Halloween snacks (like nachos with green "slime").

On Saturday, we spent the day making some Halloween treats like a really cute pumpkin cake that I forgot to take a picture of, but this will give you the idea.



Kate took a nice nap and then, we got her up to get ready to go Trick or Treating.

The Starlings brought little Trevor over and all of us went around the neighborhood. Kate and Trevor took to trick or treating pretty well! We stopped her on some people's front porches for pictures because that was the only place we could get some good light for Mark's iphone camera.

Check out that cheesy grin!!

All in all, there was lots of candy and good times had by all!

Our Future Rockstar

Kate got a pink electric guitar with princesses on it from her Gran for Halloween.

What can I say? We have a rockstar on our hands!

Oh, and One More...

Here's yet another video of Kate painting her pumpkin. Skip it if you want (trust me, I KNOW this is overkill), but I want to remember her little voice and cute baby hands forever. I'm putting it on here just for that reason.

Painting Pumpkins, In Action!

Here's the pumpkin painting live in action!!

Have I mentioned before how much we love this girl??

Painting Pumpkins

Kate had her first pumpkin painting experience on the Thursday before Halloween. She had so much fun!

We started the night by going out to dinner and then went to the store to pick out two pumpkins for Mommy and Daddy to carve. They have little kid shopping carts at our grocery store, so Kate felt super cool pushing our big pumpkins around.

She had been so excited about painting and carving ALL DAY! We let Kate paint the pumpkin that she picked out at the pumpkin patch the weekend before.

Check out that concentration!!

Here's the finished project!

She got to try her hand at cleaning out all the "gook" from our pumpkins.

It was so fun carving pumpkins with her! Mark would just cut out one piece of his pumpkin and Kate would say, "See!" He turned it around and she would get so excited, putting her little hands over her mouth. It was TOO CUTE!!

I had told her earlier about how you can put a candle in the pumpkin and it will light up. So, as soon as we were done, she said, "Light!" Mark put a candle in them and we let Kate turn off the lights. Her little face was priceless! She thought it was the neatest thing!!

You can just see the creativity in the Roskowske household, can't you?? I think these were the lamest pumpkins we ever carved, but we wanted quick and easy... how things change, right?

Besides, this cute girl didn't even know the difference!

Halloween pictures to come...

Somewhere Over the Rainbow

This is blurry, but we took a quick picture the other night when we were trying to make sure everything was ready for Kate's Halloween costume.

I still need to pick up some white tights and some white bows for her hair, but other than that, she is ready to go! She has been practicing "Trick or Treat" which sounds more like "Ti Te", but she knows the end result is candy, so she gladly says it. She also yells out "Hap Ween!" (Happy Halloween)

She has been getting a piece of candy corn when she goes on the potty, which she calls "Tan Tor". Poor girl, all of her C's and K's are T's. She calls herself "Tate". She just learned how to say "cup" (it used to be "tup" or sometimes she would reverse it completely and say "put"), so we are working on other "C" and "K" words.

Back to Halloween, Mark and I are going to try to pull together some Wizard of Oz themed costumes for ourselves, but we'll see how that goes! I want to go all out with the Wicked Witch costume, but I don't want to scare my poor daughter to death!

Oh, I LOVE this time of year!!

Pumpkin Patch

We spent Sunday afternoon at Rombach's Pumpkin Patch. It was such a BEAUTIFUL day!! It had been so cold and dreary for about two weeks here, so we were waiting for just the right time to go.

We went last year, but mainly just walked around and let Kate play in all the pumpkins. This year, since she could enjoy it more, we did a lot more of the "fun stuff".

She went through a little fort...

Posed for LOTS of pictures...

Rode a pony...

She was not impressed. We waited in line for awhile to ride a pony, and I kept asking her over and over if she was sure she wanted to do it. She tends to chicken out of stuff like that. She kept saying yes, so I plopped her on that pony, and she boo-hooed the whole way. She kept saying "Off!" Then, after it was over she proudly told us that she liked it and was a brave girl (yeah, right!).

She got to pick out her very own little pumpkin, which we will paint next week...

She got her face painted...

And, I think her favorite part of all was this big sucker we bought for her as we were leaving...

It was a great trip to the pumpkin patch. We kept saying how next year we will have an almost three year old and an eight month old. Doesn't quite seem possible!!