Notes from Katie

Hi Everyone,
Kiki is busy helping me with my essays for UVA so I figured I would help her with her blog writing!
I have been her for almost 4 weeks and I have crazy stories to tell. All the kids have been great and really started to be themselves around me. I am so glad that Hudson shares my love for Harry Potter. Kiki is reading him the second Harry Potter every night and today we started watching the second movie. He keeps asking me questions that I really want to answer but I don’t want to ruin the story for him.
The other day Hudson was riding his scooter and kept running into the girls on their bikes on purpose. I asked me why and he gave me a simple answer- “because it’s fun”. He definitely loves to mess around with them, but he is very caring at the same time. I was at the park down the street with all 4 kids the other day and all of a sudden Larkin was missing. When I noticed, Hudson immediately ran into the street to look for her. It turns out that Larkin got tired and walked back home. She went inside and turned to Kiki and said, “Do I have to tell Katie that I came home?” Yes, Larkin, next time I would love it if you told me before I panic that I lost you.
I pulled the lacrosse sticks out of the garage the other day to play with Larkin and she is pretty good. I was really impressed and now every time we play outside she wants to throw the tennis ball with the lacrosse sticks. I don’t know what I would do without Larkin because she is always willing to play with Nellie and Brooke- aka she is the teacher and they are the students.
Brooke is nonstop energy. I don’t think she stops singing all day. When we pick her up from school, she is always singing new songs. The newest song is about the solar system. She signs it perfectly except she can’t seem to understand that Uranus does not have a “g” sound in the middle. We tried over and over to teacher her to say UR-ANUS… UR-ANUS… then we all just felt weird and stopped. Uraganus is fine, She is also really into Yoga right now. She loves being Ms. Kelly’s helper at yoga class and the chicken song is her favorite. I wish I had pictures of her walking awkwardly on her toes pretending to be a chicken because it is hilarious. Brooke also liked to remind everyone, every day that her dad is the tallest person in the world and that she can spell dad. She can also spell mom. Today I asked her to spell pig and I am pretty sure she spelled it p-o-i-k-j-e.
Nellie is the cutest little girl ever. She is finally at the point where she uses my name and asks me for things. It took me a while to realize that if she said “Nana” she wanted a yogurt. If she is ever upset I just give her a Squeezie to eat and she forgets why she was upset, unless I accidently pick a flavor she doesn’t like, which luckily only happened once or twice. She is asking about the potty more and more and is now at the point where she always wants to sit on the potty so I am thinking she will be potty trained early. The funniest moment I had with Nellie was when I went to get her from her crib in the morning. I opened the door and she had her feet hanging out of the crib and her arms grasping the bars. She was screaming and looked so upset. I finally realized that she was saying “BABY IS HURT, HELP, BABY IS HURT”. I picked up her doll baby and gave it back to her and asked “Is baby better?” and Nellie just looked at me and said, “Yep!”
Nellie is the best baby in the morning. She literally plays with her animals or sings songs in her crib until I come and get her. She will usually start with softly saying “mommy?” “daddy?” until she is forced to scream for them because she is still trapped in her crib. The other morning I actually heard her say “Katie” in her crib, which warmed my heart!
Brooke sings a muffin song that goes something like--- “two little muffins in the bakery shop, the kind with the sugar and nuts on top, along came NELLIE with a penny to pay…and she gets a blue muffin and she runs away” But at the end of the song, Brooke will say, “Sorry Nellie, no more muffins today!!!” and Nellie’s new response to this is “OHH MAN!” When she first did it, Kiki and I just looked at each other and started cracking up. It was too cute.
Sorry Gregor, I didn’t mention your name until now. Kiki thinks we are the same person… it’s a little strange, but comforting at the same time. It’s probably why I fit in so well here.
Love, Katie