One of the first of many photos taken of my girlie. When I look at this pic, she really didn't change that much at all. I recognize all her features, even though she looked a lot more like her dad back then.

Today is the two year anniversary of the last day that I wasn't someone's mommy. Two years ago I went in for a checkup and a stress test, because I was almost One week over due. The baby was fine, but I wasn't, my BP was super high. I was sent to the hospital to get induced.

It still took about 23 hours of labor before she was born, the next day. Having to wait 5 hours before I could see her wasn't fun, but oh well, I'd waited 14 years since I started trying to have a baby with my first husband. FOURTEEN years is a long time. It was long enough to make me think that it was never going to happen.

To date that long period of infertility is still the greatest sadness I ever experienced in my life. At times people would tell me about their friends who tried for over ten years, and then "boom". I'm one of those people now, who tried and tried and finally it did happen after all. It did take an other husband to get the job done. Even though there was technically nothing wrong with the first husband. I'm thinking it just wasn't meant to be, parenthood with him.

Tomorrow I'm going to take my little big girl to get her some balloons for her second birthday. Sunday she's going to get a cake with dolphins.

BTW, it is also the 1 year anniversary of the day Oma and Opa got to meet their youngest grandchild. Last year we traveled, Kate and I, to go see the land of Oma and Opa. That birthday cake was soooo yummie!

Don't laugh, I'm singing in the background. I'm trying to get Kate to sing for her Oma.

From the looks of me you'd never thing I like watching shows like "What Not To Wear" and the new "Tim Gunn's Guide To Style". I'm a total slob these days. I don't like how I look and it's so hard to find nice clothes in larger sizes, I just give up. I'm definitely part of the "slobbification" of America.

This summer I've been wearing cargo pants and jeans with just t-shirts. I have one (1) top that's a little fancier and I've worn it a few times going out. I like it, but it's lower cut than my other shirts, so I look like a complete doofus when I wear it, with the deeper part of the cut quite white, and the rest rather tan from being outside.

One thing that makes shopping for myself hard is that Katiecakes is with me 99.9% of the time I go out shopping. By the time I'm done looking for cute stuff for her, decent stuff for her daddy and sometimes stuff for her big brothers, she's ready for a meltdown, which makes visiting a fitting room a disaster. You wouldn't believe how many versions I have of the same thing in a different color!

• 2 pairs of the same jeans, different color
• 2 pairs of cargos that could be rolled up (but I never do) in tan and some kind of army green
• 3 pairs of cargos that are almost parachute fabric like in green, tan and dark brown
• bunches of plain crew neck tees with a few v-necks thrown in for good measure in different colors, same model
• long sleeve tees in either a v or crew neck, I have about 12 of them.

Add to that several pairs of Birkenstocks (I can't walk on anything else) and you're done. Isn't that just AWFUL?

Here's me, doing the "royal wave" at the Apenheul (Monkey Zoo) in Apeldoorn, while watching the gorilla feeding in the amphitheater at the gorilla island.

This is Kate's favorite thing to watch on "teevee". It's "Classical Baby" form HBO. She's watched it since she was really way too little and will most likely keep watching it a while longer. We have the DVD set and have a few episodes saved on our DVR players. As I'm writing this she's finishing her dinner and completely excited that "Baby" is on the computer screen. Daddy calls him "Diaper Boy".


She'll go through different favorites. Mambo, which features a bunch of babies in diapers doing the mambo, she loves loves loves. She now also loves The Rectangles, featuring music from West Side Story. She starts snapping her fingers (no sound of course) when that comes on. Now she's getting older she likes the slower pieces and gets excited about individual characters and animal


For me this is TV with a bit less guilt. If I was a "good" mommy she wouldn't be watching any television at all. This is my compromise. Left is a pic of while ago, where she's watching Sheep To Sheep. A black sheep lays on a hill and is dreaming. A white sheep floats in the clouds and comes down to dance with him. It's all very Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers.