CATCH UP!!!

As you've noticed, I haven't been the best at this blog for the past few months. They have been busy months, so I'll just do a quick recap.

HALLOWEEN
We didn't do much for Halloween, since we have party pooperish tendencies. Ian did have a work party that was a dress up party. We didn't get a picture of all of us, but here is Kate.
She is the cute one anyway. Ian dressed up as a nerd with his DI wranglers (that may be womans pants) from the early 90s. I dressed up as Hermione since I could put it together in 2 minutes. (We're not sure that anyone got that I was dressed up though. They might just think I dress a little weird.)

 Kate was a Kate-aroo for Halloween. I saw an adorable kangaroo costume online, but couldn't justify spending that much money for something she would wear twice and cares nothing about, so I kind of jerry-rigged this one with things that we had. (The little horse in her pocket is supposed to be her joey).

Kate also sat up for the first time completely on her own on Halloween. As you can see she is using her hands, and is not liking it very much, but she did it!

MEGAN'S WEDDING
Ian's youngest sister got married in the Idaho Falls Temple on 11.11.11. We were so excited to be there. We had a lot of fun with all of the family and got even more excited for the move to Royal City.

The whole Bergeson family.

Our little Bergeson family. Kate was sleeping the whole time
outside the temple,so she isn't visible in any pictures.

This is Kate's outfit from the wedding, minus the shoes. 

The hotel we stayed at had a pool, so Kate got her first swimming experience.
This swim diaper is borrowed from an older cousin and is a little large.

In her swim suit.

She's almost in.

Kate wasn't the biggest fan. She was okay as long as we held
her really close and none of the cousins splashed her.

Comparing feet size with her four month younger cousin.
Kate's are smaller.

This trip was Kate's first car trip longer than an hour. She did really good both ways.

Driving break. Kate loved all the buttons and dials,
though she was a little short to see by herself.

MOVING: PART 1
The week after Megan and Cole's Wedding, we were back on the road again, this time with our car packed full, and on the way to Washington. Because we wanted to be able to visit my parents in New Mexico at Christmas, and didn't want to pay a full months rent to live in the house for a week, we moved out of our house at the end of November. We packed up most things the Friday before Thanksgiving and fit what we could into the car and came on up. Kate was very helpful with packing, as you will see.

 

Saying goodbye to her ceiling. If you look closely in the top picture you can see all of the holes in it. She loved to look at it. Ian says she was counting them.

Kate made moving more fun. It was fun to show her the weird things we found. And then put them on her.

Glasses left over from Ian's multiple pupil dilations.

Showing her fire.

She fit perfectly in this box, and felt like a big kid, sitting all by herself.

 AND, Kate rolled over for the first time ever. We put her on her tummy in her crib so she could grab the watermelons on her sheet and we could pack. My sister was taking the tree off the wall and heard a noise and turned around and Kate was on her back.

You can see her drool spot from where she was before.

THANKSGIVING
We were at Ian's parents for Thanksgiving.

Kate's first bath at Grandma and Grandpa's and her second tub bath ever. Our basement
didn't have a tub. (It's not  super steamy in there, the camera just fogged up.)

She's figuring out that cousins have good fingers too.

With her great-grandma Erma. 

It took Kate a little while to get used to little people,
but now she LOVES them. Especially this one.

Grandma has lots of new toys. 

Showing off.

Thanksgiving Dinner. Kate was napping.

She got to join us for dessert though. Just watching though.

Kate got her Christmas Dress from Grandma while we were visiting. It must taste good.
In all the pictures we took there are only a couple where she wasn't eating it.

Kate got to swing for the first time. She was not so sure about it.

Kate also had her first piano lesson. She learned where middle C is. 

TWO YEARS!
The day after Thanksgiving was our second anniversary. We went to Lunch and bought a our first washer and dryer. (They are red.) It wasn't really for our anniversary, but since it happened to be on Black Friday, that's how it happened.

A lot has happened in the last two years, but we wouldn't change a thing. (Except for the stretch marks)

MOVING: PART 2
After Thanksgiving, we drove back to Provo with Ian's dad and a truck and a trailer and packed up the rest of our house, and officially moved out. Since I still had a week of classes, but we didn't have a house, Ian's aunt and uncle let us stay with them. Ian made a new best friend while we were there--Sadie the dog. Kate also was friends with Sadie, but with a less dysfunctional relationship.

Ian had a hard time letting this happen. He was not so silently cringing.

Kate always wanted to get Sadie's eyes. But the dog was too smart
for Kate, she would roll over so Kate would scratch her belly. Win-win.

Ian spent a lot of time at the house with Kate, since I was at school and clinicals and finishing assignments. He might have gotten a little bored, as you can see from these pictures.

Take 1

Take 2. He had to try again, since the doll wasn't looking in the
first one. (Ian's words, not mine.)

Apparently, Kate is really good at helping with laundry.

She's laying on the back of the couch. The lights blinked different colors and Kate was enthralled.

GRADUATING (REALLY THIS TIME)
Biggest let down ever. I graduated, but all it really was going to class, and then not going to class. And since it was Christmas Break it just seemed like normal. I didn't even have the relief of not having assignments and things, since the NCLEX loomed.
Anyway, I had my last classes on December 8th, and we flew to New Mexico early in the morning. Kate did really good on her first flight. The flight wasn't full, so she got her own seat. She fell asleep while we were taxiing and slept for most of the flight. I was really worried about her ears and Ian thought I was silly. I thought he was kind of cavalier about it, but then we were talking about it, and apparently Ian has no problems with his ears and altitude, while I tend to have a lot. He was right about Kate, thankfully. It seems like she got his ears.

CHRISTMAS
We were at my parents house for almost 3 weeks. It was fun to be there for my home ward's Christmas Party and my nieces dance recitals. Ian got a little bored there too, since my parents don't have satellite. Fortunately, there are a lot of books, so he did just fine. This twist car was probably the best part for him. He would ride up and down the hall a few times a day at least. Kate loved it too.

Right before she played Tocatta and Fugue in D Minor by J.S. Bach.

Kate likes to make this face every so often. We don't really know what it means. She breathes really loud and heavy along with it. (Her eyes aren't normally closed, but I had to tickle her nose with my hair to get the picture.)

Jingle Bell ornaments were her favorite Christmas-y thing.

Since we left her box behind, we had to find a substitute. This was actually even better than the box, since she could scratch the zipper.

I cooked some carrot mush for Kate and let her chew on what was left. She was a big fan, which I thought was a good sign for the cooked carrot. (Kate also gave herself a few big scratches on her head and face like this one under her eye. I thought babies only did that when they were newborn and couldn't help it.)

It wasn't. She does not like carrots. She is the daughter, granddaughter, and niece of carrot farmers and doesn't like carrots.

We discovered Kate has a passion for newspaper.

And my sister's knee. (She was sucking on the newspaper and the knee for about an hour. Crazy kid.)

Kate loved her baby boy cousins. She kept trying to grab them, but for the most part they were oblivious. This one is 3 months older and was too busy checking everything out to care much about Kate.

Kate was a lamb and I was a shepherd for our family Christmas play on Christmas Eve.

FIRST CHRISTMAS PRESENT. Like most babies, she loved the paper. This paper was kind of plasticy, so it didn't dissolve and she could chew on it as long as she wanted.

She did pretty good at tearing off the paper. After that she had no idea what to do except eat it.

Boxes make great drums.

ROYAL CITIAN

So far we love being here. Kate LOVES having other little people around. She especially loves her 4 and 5 year old cousins. Any time she sees either of them she grins and/or starts to laugh. She also loves the other baby cousin. She is four months older, but is barely bigger than her cousin.

You can see Kate is chubbier, but they are pretty much the same length.

If babies are like puppies, and you can guess their end size by their hands and feet, Kate's cousin will be quite a bit taller.

It's so nice to have family around and be here for events big and small. And the people here are wonderful. There is an amazing sense of community that I've never experienced before, and I really like.
And of course, being out in the country has its perks. In mid January we had a big snowstorm, so we took Kate out in it.

Getting bundled up.

Ready Freddy.

Ian was protecting her from the snow.

Trying out walking in this white stuff.

Someone loves her dad.

Kate even got to go on a snowmobile ride. You really can't beat walking out the door and having snowmobiles right there and lots of area to ride it.

KATE LATELY
She has finally taken to solid food. She snarfs down sweet potatoes, prunes, peaches, pears, mangos and tolerates banana and apples. She will suck on graham crackers, but can't stand the baby puff things. (Don't worry, they won't go to waste. Ian eats them.) Just in the last week she has started eating exponentially more. She was eating about a third of a baby food container once a day, and now she'll eat all of it at one sitting. And she is starting to want to eat baby food 2 or 3 times a day.

In a new jumper that my mom made for her. It's even cuter than it looks in the picture.

This is the real face. Not a nose-tickling induced one.

Kate is getting pretty good at walking and standing. She is almost there balance wise for standing, but doesn't think so. As long as she knows something is supporting her she does great, even if we are just touching her and not holding her up at all. But if she doesn't have it, she won't even try. She loves to walk all over (while holding our hands) and she laughs and laughs when she does it. We got her a walker toy, and she has gone a few feet with it, but then she always realizes that we aren't there and gets scared.

She can ride it too. As can her two year old cousins.
It's the new favorite toy at Grandma's house.

Another new thing is that Kate now loves Baths. She has a inflatable duck bath that fits inside the bathtub and it is great. She feels pretty secure in it, it has words (the warning label) that she gets to look at, and its not hard and cold. Plus, if you squeeze its beak, it quacks at you. And, she has figured out splashing.

This is a very typical Kate grin. A lot of times she scrunches up her eyes too.

Sine Kate was born, we have been swaddling her to get to sleep. For the past 3-4 weeks, she has been getting out every night, and then can't go back to sleep. Obviously the swaddling wasn't working optimally, but with the NCLEX coming up, I didn't want to deal with it. So after weeks of dreading this, we just started putting her down without swaddling her. Ian's sister told us to expect a lot of screaming for three days. So I put her down for her first nap on Monday morning. She cried for 10 minutes and was asleep for 2 hours. For her second nap she cried for 15 minutes and was asleep for 2 hours. At night she barely cried and did wake up a few extra times, but went back to sleep on her own after 5 minutes. Her naps today have had even less crying. Needless to say, this was way better than we were expecting. I really don't think we can have anymore kids. Kate is a really good sleeper, and I doubt any others kids will match up.

NCLEX
I took the NCLEX which is the nursing licensing exam on February 9th. It was horrible since it's designed so that everyone, whether they pass or not, only gets 50% of the questions right. And since you don't even know how may questions you'll get or how long it be(any where in between 75 and 265 and up to 6 hours) it makes it even worse. Anyway, I got 75 questions, it only took an hour, and I passed. Thank Goodness. That was something I never want to relive. So now I am officially an RN.

NEW CAR
I had to go to Yakima to take the NCLEX and Ian and Kate had to come along since Kate is still nursing. After my test, we stopped to look at some cars Ian had seen on the internet. And surprise! we bought one. (It only took 3 years). It is a 2007 Honda CR-V with 15K miles on it. And it'll fit at least another car seat, which our old car wouldn't, so it'll last us through at least one more kid.

It's broken it already too. The first time I drove it a pheasant
popped up out of the middle of nowhere. He didn't make it.

TO COME:
So now that I am an RN, I have to look for a job. If anyone has any connections at the Moses Lake or Othello hospitals and wants to help me get a job...

We have been told that the people who live in the house we will be moving into will be out between April 1 and April 15. So the end is in sight. It's been great living with Ian's parents, but we are excited to have our own place again.