Laying down the law...

We ventured back to the river walk/duck pond again today - this time with Josh.  It was another lovely winter day, though, Kate was not as peaceful as the last time we went on the walk by the river.  Instead of just quietly watching the world go by and saying "hi" to the many dogs, Kate decided to spend a good part of the walk twisting and turning in her stroller restraints and screaming/screeching very loudly. 

Kate is intelligent, curious, generous, beautiful, funny, fearless, musical - all sorts of great things.  One thing she is not is quiet.  I'm not sure where she got her loud, booming voice from - neither Josh nor I have particularly loud voices - but, she surely does have a loud voice.  I've reached the point where I've kind of decided that I can't keep coddling her and trying to figure out what she wants when she screeches.  I usually respond to her when she complains/screams by offering her water, snacks, cuddles, singing, etc. - and it never really helps.    Everyone says you can't spoil a baby and I've tried to keep that in mind when dealing with the girls.  However, I'm pretty sure you can spoil a toddler and I'm starting to think that maybe my responding to her everytime she shrieks is actually encouraging her to shriek.  She still doesn't speak a lot, but she knows a lot of baby sign language and understands almost everything we're saying - so, it's not like she has to screech to get her point across.  So, I'm trying to ignore the shrieking and pay lots of attention to her when she is being quiet (er) and nice.  We'll see how it goes! 

Kate hanging out with the ducks

I love stores that have "double" carts.  The double carts are a big reason I do most of my grocery shopping at Costco.  Today I discovered that not only does Home Depot have double carts, but they have double carts with steering wheels.  How cool is that?  Kate and Maya loved it and made "vrooming" noises as we wheeled around Home Depot today.