So Kate’s birthday is still 2 months away. I know that, because that means I have less than 2 months to get her friggin scrapbook done and I am busting ass. Kate is helpfully taking 1 1/2 hour naps twice a day, which is letting me on it. I have… 2 months semi-done. Of 10. And some of the pregnancy stuff done, but not all. Aaagghhhh. I really really want to have it done to put on display at her birthday party! So I’m working feverishly on scrapping. Some of the local moms also scrap so we’ve been getting together one evening a week for a couple of hours. Which is helpful and yet more chatting than working on my end. I work best when I get all focused and silent in the middle of the night.

I’ve also been keeping my eye open for the toy I wanted to get her for her birthday. Kate has a lot of toys, and yet it’s still hard not to keep buying cute fun things. For the bigger items, however, I try very hard to find them second-hand. The Leap Frog music table she has and loves (her “big Christmas present”) was bought off a local mom for cheap. The exersaucer that gave us many months of hands-free time was given to me by a coworker. For her birthday I had it in mind to get her the Fisher Price Learning Home. My best friend Kel had one for her boys and I remember watching her youngest play with it for a very long time in terms of child attention spans. She, and several other friends, swear by that house. When I saw it on Craig’s List I snapped it up. And you know, she’s so young she doesn’t have any idea about birthdays… not to mention that she’ll be getting a ton of new toys and I’m all about spreading them out. Plus she was getting bored with the music table and really needed something to crawl on/around and play with.

And that is why Kate has been playing with her “birthday present” for the past week. The good news is that it lives up to expectations, she loves it! She very quickly figured out the different things on it. It’s now a common sight to see her toddle over to it and flick the light switch a few times, or ring the doorbell, or open and close the mailbox. Her favorite, however, is the radio. It’s really quite hysterical because she crouches down to push one of the four buttons to start a song (usually pressing it four or five times in a row just for good measure), then turns to play with something else. When the song ends she leans over to press another button (four or five times). The funniest is when she starts the song then opens or closes the door, because the sound effect for the door cuts off the song. She’ll sit there for a quite a while, starting the song and inadvertently stopping it, over and over again. You can see the frown on her face, like she just doesn’t understand why the radio is doing that. (I actually think that’s the reason she pushes the button so many times!)

… I just realized that the 3 pages I wrote in Kate’s baby journal document for her 10 month has magically disappeared. Son of a bitch, now I have to re-write it all. Ugh.