Our Dating Life

 We have some good friends here that we have started trading date nights with.  We are too cheap to pay for a babysitter, and Katelyn isn't quite old enough to watch herself :)  We trade off when we can with them and with summer plans it might be a bit more rare that we get out on dates with just the two of us.

David is always hesitant leaving Katelyn with someone/anyone mostly because he is gone all the time with work and hardly gets to see her.  The last two weeks have been TERRIBLE because the audit he is on was crammed into this two week time frame, so this team they have is working all day and all night.  With just the one car, I drive David to the metro station in the morning and he commutes that way, and then I pick him up when he's ready at the metro station again.  This is usually fine, but lately he goes in at 7 and comes home around 10...tonight its 11:30 :(  So Katelyn either goes to bed way too late, or gets woken up and then we have to get her back to sleep after I pick him up.  So David doesn't get to see much of Katelyn lately and he doesn't see much of me either...except for when we fall asleep talking about each other's days and when we roll around in our sleep and stop in the perfect position and breathe heavy sleeping bad-smelling breaths that we wake each other up and tell the other to stop breathing or roll over with a polite pat on the bum.

So I always look forward to these dates and am excited to drop Katelyn off with her friends and sneak out when she's having fun and hopefully doesn't notice I am gone.  I am with her all day every day and while I love that little girly, I also love some alone time with my boy!

David usually drags his feet and tries to convince me to take Katelyn on our date with us, but he puts up with it and tries harder and harder each time to not worry about Katelyn so much and to enjoy our dates.

We have had a lot of temple dates and it has been so refreshing to go!  It is farther away than we are used to, but close enough to go still.

Sorry...this is a picture from the winter!

The temple is really pretty and it isn't crooked in real life :)  I get to sit right next to David during the sessions witch is different, but a nice perk to this temple!  We are glad we have been able to go!

We went to a dance one night and David only went because I wanted to go.  There was ice cream so he thought he could dance to a song and then enjoy the ice cream the rest of the night.  I have seen him dance like nobody's watching even when people are watching.  He can be a fearless dancer, but he just wasn't feeling it that night :)  He said that working the last job he had has made him a less exciting person.  That job took a lot out of him!  He suffered through enough with that job and I am doing my part to get him back to his silly ol' self again.

Another super fun date we had was an Amazing Race.  There were nine different couples that competed for the glory of first place and we all had our own team color and shirts to make it official.  (Some people thought we were on the real show and we had to be sure to tell them that we weren't and that the real show probably would not be using itty bitty cheap cameras to film the show.)  David was convinced that the couple planning the race had too big of an advantage over the rest of us.  I was in it to win it, but David was just there to have fun and take it easy.  His competitiveness wasn't there, and some of you know that sometimes this is a good thing and sometimes it isn't.  David is becoming known as the Rule Nazi with some people and is trying to not be so passionate during games and things so he doesn't hurt people's feelings. He is getting better at not being the murderer of the games and went for the laid back strategy with this game.  We ended up in a tie with the couple that planned it for last and we were okay with that...mostly.  The competitive part of me still wishes we would have done better, but there were no hurt feelings so we were all happy.  We had tasks all around town from dancing with strangers and teaching them the Monkey's song/dance, Geo-caching, speed eating frozen yogurt, counting around 1500 mail boxes at the post office and trying to count while others are counting aloud, washing windows for strangers, chopping wood (we were terrible at this!), finding a book with an author with the same last name, making a pyramid of paint cans and putting them back where they go (why wouldn't Home Depot want 9 pyramids left in their store?), finding, memorizing, and reciting a high school's long mission statement (we did this one wrong), and at the end of all this we made some friends and still loved each other at the end of it!  There were a couple of times where we had different ideas of how to complete  the task and we were sure our idea was better than the others so we would roll our eyes and do it their way, but we made it through.  It took a TON of planning and we appreciated the effort that was put into the event to make it so fun for all of us.

We go out together as a family often when getting a babysitter doesn't work out.  Sometimes out to eat for someone's birthday celebration or we will go explore places we've heard of, but never been.  Sometimes we just head out to be out.  Most of the time we don't do much, but just wander about together. It is still nice.


We have been to two movies this year...at the theater in the last two months.  We went to Hunger Games and we went and saw Avengers.  I think we go to the theater maybe once a year.  We are a Redbox type of family and we almost always wait for them to be super cheap, but we did enjoy these movies.  

We have been enjoying our dating life and are glad we can swap with friends so we don't have to pay.  Katelyn can be a handful with her separation issues and tears, but luckily she goes to sleep for them ok and then they get a break!  Poor little girl just likes us too much!  We like her too, but I need my time with just David sometimes.  It takes a lot to make us all happy!

All grown up...

We always think our own kids are cute, but Katelyn has been putting in some extra effort lately and we just can't get enough of her.  She is talking more and more and her little voice is so sweet.  She has a few phrases that she says now that make us smile like, "I dot (got) it." and "I'm ready." and "Dis (this) is funny." or "silly" or "towt (cold)" and "see (she/he) saa (sad)"

We are enjoying her talking and she likes to keep our attention.  She enjoys reading and lately her favorites have been Duck on a Bike and Alice the Fairy.  She likes to read those with us, but the rest she likes to "read" on her own.  I have been trying to catch this on video for a while and she would always stop once she realized I had the camera out, but she cooperated this time and it was perfect.



Isn't her voice cute?!  She is very expressive when she talks and tells stories and laughs and uses her hands to help me understand her story or whatever she is talking about. 

She is getting very independent and I am trying to learn how to give up some of my control so she can learn how to do things.  This power struggle has been such a learning game for David and I with eating, getting dressed, opening doors, checking the mail, buckling up, and nearly everything else.  Some things aren't negotiable (like her seat belt) and have to be done right for safety's sake, but most things just take patience and we enjoy watching her try things when we aren't in rushed situations.

Here's how she puts her shirts on when she does it on her own.  Sometimes she gets her arms in the arm holes, but hasn't figured out how to get her head in there so this is good enough for her.

She accomplished something pretty big this week and got BOTH feet off the ground when she jumped.  It is one of those things that I never thought of as being hard, but jumping really is a talent!  She usually just flung her arms up and only got to her tip toes, then she learned to get one foot up, and with a lot of demonstration from David and I, she finally got both feet.  Big accomplishments going on around here...watch out for us!

Speaking of big accomplishments...I mentioned how David is very eager to get Katelyn reading and writing and doing geometry and calculus and he has been going at it!  He got the Leap Frog videos that teach the letters and sounds and they aren't bad.  They are entertaining compared to most kids learning videos I have seen, and Katelyn likes them too.  In the last month she has learned about half of her letter sounds, and the other half are close but still need work.  She watches the video here and there, but she likes the flash cards with the letters on them and brings them to me to do them with her every other day or so.  She usually lasts for 5 minutes and then is done and loses interest and goes off to do something else.  I am excited she likes them and is enjoying the learning, but David is about to wet his pants and already has the sight words DVDs because he is so proud and excited for her.  I am trying to hold him down a little and keep his eagerness under control so he doesn't over-do it.  I am excited for her to learn and I don't want her to be behind and I feel like I am on track for most "parents with their first born" excitement but David is ready to blow everyone out of the water and would start prepping her for the SAT and ACT's if I would let him :)

Katelyn pronounces her "C" and "K" with the "T" sound and I love that she says her name as "tay-ta" as she hasn't figured out how to get her mouth to say her "L" and "N" either.

Katelyn loves to wrestle us and anytime we are down on her level she can't resist and pounces on us.  I can never get it on video because I can't video myself, and David is never dressed appropriately for everyone else to see when he's home :)  But she loves to tickle, jump, steamroll, sit on, and nuzzle in for hugs and kisses while she wrestles.  She faked me out yesterday when I thought she was going for a hug or kiss and then she head-butted me in the eyebrow for a nice feeling bruise.  She loves having our full attention and puts on a show with her singing, dancing, jabbering, reading, peek-a-boo-ing, and playing tag.  She is our sweet little girl!