Cate's 2nd birthday

On Sunday we celebrated 2 years of Cate. We started the day with a baptism service at church and finished with a backyard party with family and lots of little friends.
Here are some of my thoughts about the day:
* Having the Peggs and McKays next to us in church made me relax and made it feel like home again
* It was great to have family members there too
* I loved hearing my husband singing "strongly" beside me
* I noticed that the band was almost the same as at Matthew's funeral(Tania and Andy, Tessa, Darren plus 2 others) and that made me cry
* I was glad to do something special for Cate and acknowledge her place in our family publicly/in front of our church family, as we had done previously in different ways for Anabelle and Matthew
* It felt good to declare our intentions to raise her as a follower of Jesus, which I had been feeling inadequate for recently. Thank God for the prayers of faithful friends
* We love having backyard birthday parties!

School girl Cate

Someone wants to be just like her big sister!

Celebrating Cate

On Saturday was Cate's 1st birthday. It was a beautiful sunny spring day, perfect for a Teddy Bear's Picnic! She behaved wonderfully, wasn't overawed by the number of people (big and small) in our backyard and enjoyed her cake! It was a fun day. I'll let the pictures tell the rest of the story. We love Cate! I have loved cuddling her (especially when she was little and would fall asleep on my shoulder), loved feeding her, loved watching her learn new things (like figuring out that crawling could be done on her knees not just her belly), listening to her "talking" and deciphering new words (like Ted-dee, Gar-de(n), Dad-dee and most recently "Cat-ee). She's so cute!

New milestones

For Cate: Top left tooth coming through!
For Anabelle: Learning to read!

Fun in the winter sun

We've just spent a lovely morning out at the park opposite the harbour in Newcastle. There's a lovely winding path that covers a large area, perfect for Anabelle to ride her bike and me to follow pushing Cate in the pram. We did one loop, then stopped at the playground to play (complete with twin swings perfect for my girls), then continued on by bike/pram to our picnic location, before completing a slightly shorter loop back to the car. It was great to get some exercise (2 of us did anyway!), have a fun swing (a different 2), and rug up in our winter coats, vests and hoodies (11 degrees when we arrived!) Maybe winter isn't so bad....

Another Milestone

At almost 9 months now, Cate reached another milestone today - CLAPPING!
Not making a lot of sound yet, but starting to co-ordinate those two hands together. Chris got a fun video, will hopefully edit a clip to up-load soon.

Cate makes it to Youtube

Cate's Milestones

Some days I wish I had started this blog when Cate was born, so that I could have kept track of her milestones better. I will have to go back through my note books to document the earlier ones, but for now the latest are:

Sitting up! (about 7.5 months)

"Crawling" (commando style - I call it the shuffle, about 8 months).

Yesterday she also waved very deliberately without help or suggestion for the first time, although she was likely copying me at the time. Very cute...

Today we also ventured into the world of finger food. Most of it ended up squished between her fingers, but some made it in!

Almost Sitting!

What Cate eats for dinner