What does a cow say?

This is the cutest thing you will ever see. Ever. Well, only if she refuses to do anything on camera for the rest of her life.

Before you watch: my dear father does this trick where he grabs his neck skin and shakes it so that he can make a rather realistic turkey noise. It's very impressive. Just so you don't get confused.

Misery and Despair, People Dying Everywhere!

Yes, I've reverted to my old ways of using song lyrics as titles, but just this once. And do you know why? Because . . .

TUM TA TA TUUUUUUM!

It was the Katie's birthday!

(Disclaimer: This picture is not actually from her actual birthday. It's just super cute.)

If you don't know what the title of my blog post has to do with her birthday, I will tell you: it is part of the death march birthday song. Maybe I'll sing it for you if you come to my house.

One year ago today, it was my first full day home from the hospital,Mike had gone back to work and class, and my mom was laughing at me because I kept breaking down in tears, thinking I had "broken" my little pink squishy thing because she wasn't pooping frequently enough. Oh, silly last year Brittany. What were you thinking?

Katie, Circa 1/2011

It has been quite a year. For one thing, I'm no longer a full-time student, which was my occupation for the last 17 years. That's like retirement for some careers. Holy cow. Now I'm a stay-at-home Mommy, which is the best thing in the world.

For another, I do a lot more laundry.

Papa Bear, Mama Bear, and Wee Little Baby Bear!

So this post will consist of Katie's antics for the last two months in tribute of our year together (and also a very convenient way to show you a synopsis of Christmas and her birthday).

Ignoring her loot for Christmas . . . typical.

With Auntie Nonny before she went off to college *sniff sniff*

Her favorite food is spaghetti. Girl after my own heart!

Her favorite pastime: taking off her pants.

Now that Mommy doesn't nurse anymore, the nursing cover has become stylish superhero-wear.

Dinner on her birthday

Anecdote: for Katie's birthday dinner, she got tortellini with spaghetti sauce, and peas and carrots, which are some of her favorite foods. We put a little plate on her tray for her to dig in, but she took us a little too literally. She kept cramming things into her mouth until there wasn't room for her jaw to move to chew it up and she started gagging. We had to swab her and ration her noodles from then on (much to her chagrin).

Action shot! Dancing to her singing puppy from Grandma Megan

Enjoying her loot, and also THE CUPCAKE HAT! Curtesy of Grandma Cindy.

Powdered sugar snowmen

Dipped chocolate penguins (the snowmen were a result of a lack of my patience with dipping)

Enjoying her loot some more!

Diggin' in! She may have re-dipped her donut in the icing after she licked all the chocolate off.

"But I'm done with the chocolate, Mommy! I wanna go play trains again!" Sigh . . .

The day after her birthday - going to church as a little fluffly flower girl!

The cupcake spacewoman in all her glory!

Well, didn't I promise you that I was going to put a bunch of pictures up? I am surely a woman of my word. Now I need to go stuff some more food into that kid's mouth. For all she eats so much it's amazing she's so skinny! She eats as much spaghetti as James! (Please note: James is to spaghetti as Mike is to pizza. He could eat an entire package of spaghetti in one sitting, three meals a day, seven days a week. And Katie has taken to eating like that.)

I might put up some videos next time. You never know.

I owe all of you an explanation.

Because it's quite unforgivable, what I've been doing. But there have been several rather large events relating to our state of having internet. Here goes.

First, we discovered that we were being swindled by CableOne. Yeah, I'm posting that on my blog, you company. I'm telling my friends how awful you are. Want to know why they're awful? Because we had absolutely no knowledge of our being only allowed 1GB of data a month until we received a notification that we were being charged extra for going over our data. RUDE. We cancelled their service immediately.

But first, we used the last day of service to research new internet. We discovered a new one, (and read ALL the fine print) but then, when we looked at our bank account, found out that My IDENTITY WAS STOLEN! HIDE YOUR DEBIT AND CREDIT CARDS! LOCK UP YOUR CHILDREN! DON'T LET THEM FIND YOU!

Yeah, I may have freaked out just a little. Anyhow, we reported it, and while we've been waiting for the bank to help us clear things up, we've been without internet. So I haven't blogged. Right now I'm using my parents' internet because I came up to their house to use their car to go to the dentist. My cheek is practically sagging off of my face with numbness. But not as much as Mike's did last fall, though. They even remembered him for the magnitude of dental work he had done in October. Wow.

I hereby declare that my next blog post will have LOTS of cute pictures on it. So you should probably check this thing once or twice a day starting next week, and definitely comment a couple of times. Just in case, you know?