As a mom, I have been amazed by how much laundry there is to do. It just never ends. But at least now, I have someone to help me. Now if I can just get her to tell me when she's about to unload the laundry, then I can get a basket underneath her so it doesn't land on the floor.

My mom gave Kate a baby doll for Christmas, and lately, she's showing more and more interest in holding it, wrapping it in a blanket, and feeding the baby its little plastic bottle. But the interest is usually short-lived as you will see from this series of photos that I took in a span of about 1.5 minutes.

Feeding the baby, happy for about 30 seconds:

Now noticing the bottle -- wonder what's in there?

Better taste it to make sure.

And now, having determined that there is no actual milk in that bottle, we're done with the feeding, so it's time to throw the baby doll on the ground. It's probably a good thing that the baby doll is made of plastic and that Kate doesn't have access to any real babies on whom she could inflict her mothering skills. Please don't report her to child protective services.

It really is a wonderful thing to live in the digital age. For instance, I don't watch Ellen, but thanks to YouTube, I can still watch this hilarious clip of Ellen Degeneres talking to an 88-year-old fan named Gladys. It's making the Internet rounds under the title "I love Jesus, but I drink a little." I think that should be a bumper sticker. It probably will be soon. Aside from the title line, this clip makes me laugh because it is so much like dozens of conversations I had with elderly folks in small towns as a newspaper reporter. I guarantee you Gladys is on a first-name basis with everyone at that local station she's talking about. She probably calls them once a week. Enjoy.

Dear Kate,

You are 17 months old now and while I have gotten into a pattern of lumping a couple of months into one newsletter, I felt that this month merited its own letter because I have a major breaking news development to report: You have discovered the outdoors, Kate.

I can't say when exactly you suddenly went from being content to look through the sliding glass door at the world to needing more than anything to go out and touch it all, but at this point, going outside is basically the goal of your entire existence, based on how much time you spend talking or signing about it. Every day, at 7:30 a.m., we have our first conversation about going outside. You go to the door, get your shoes, bring them back to me and then gesture toward the back door. If I don't respond immediately, because I am, say, trying to get enough coffee in my system that I can remember my own name, you are pretty cool about it. You give me an additional 25 seconds to collect myself, and in the meantime, you go and try to find your heavy jacket. But once you're done giving me that little grace period, you pretty much expect to be suited up in your coat, have your shoes put on, and then hit the back yard. This would be fine except, Kate, did I mention that you have decided to embrace the great outdoors in FEBRUARY? I'm not claiming that Albuquerque is the frozen tundra, but we have our fair share of blustery, cold days -- even snow days -- and none of it phases you.

I am not going to lie to you, Kate; this is challenging for me. I am not an outdoorsy kind of girl. I never have been. I have lots of athletic, hiking, biking, skiing, snowboarding friends, and I love them, but I am intimidated by their hobbies. I don't think we need to discuss how I feel about camping, mainly because I am afraid that if you hear that it is possible to sleep outside, you will start trying to drag your crib out there.

But whether I am freezing or not, we spend a lot of time outside together, and really it's a lot of fun. It also makes me thankful for something that happened a few years ago, something that seemed like a bad thing at the time. Three years ago this month, Dan and I were packing up the apartment we'd lived in our entire married life until then and getting ready to move into our first house. The way we pictured it, this would be the house where we hoped to be raising small children, and with that in mind, we talked at the start of our house hunt about what kind of house we wanted. A few bedrooms, good closets and play space, and most of all, a back yard. Back yards aren't a big thing out in this part of the country. It doesn't rain a lot, so grass is hard to keep healthy, and as a result, a lot of landscaping out here involves rocks. You will grow up thinking this is completely normal, but you have to trust me when I say that there are parts of the country where that sounds like crazy talk, places where trees grow like, well, trees, and grass is not an endangered species. The good news is that xeriscpaing, as it is called, doesn't look as bad as it sounds. But it doesn't exactly welcome you to take your shoes off and run around. Still, in the desert, a big grassy plot is a waste of water, and thus a lot of newer homes are built with really, really tiny yards. Patios is more how I would describe them as. You could maybe put a grill and a lawn chair out there.

When we were looking for a home, the real estate market was much different than it is now. Which is to say that houses were actually selling, and in Albuquerque, they were selling fast. Our realtor gave us this big pep talk about how when we saw a property we liked, we'd probably have to be prepared to make an offer on it that day. We got ready for bidding wars. And then we looked for a good six months before we saw a house we really liked. It was a two-story with a nice kitchen and open downstairs floor plan in the neighborhood that fit our price range. It even had a big playroom upstairs and was just down the street from a park. It was perfect. Except that for all this house had going for it, it had a really tiny yard landscaped entirely in rocks. It wasn't even xeriscaping. Basically, somebody backed a giant truck of gravel back there, dumped it out, and called it a day. We talked about it and decided that we'd just have to accept doing some landscaping as part of the cost of owning the house. With that settled, we made an offer, and it was accepted.

And as I said at the start of this story, three years ago this very weekend, we had most of our stuff packed up in boxes and the final closing was just a few days away. Then, on Valentine's Day, while your dad was on a business trip, I got a very apologetic call from our realtor who said that he was very sorry, but the couple who was supposed to sell us their home in a few days had changed their mind and were backing out of the deal entirely. Our realtor was stunned, since that almost never happens, and we were really sad about it. Not to mention we had to start digging through all the boxes we'd just packed every time we needed to find the corkscrew or the tea kettle. We were so discouraged we didn't even look at another house for a couple of months.

Then one weekend in April, our realtor called again. A new house had gone on the market that day, just a couple of blocks from the one we tried to buy before. He thought we'd really like it, and asked if we could come and look at it that afternoon. So we drove on over, parked our car in front of the address he'd given us and walked through the front door of the house you now know as home. We loved the open floor plan, the office and the big kitchen and dining area. So we went to check out the back yard. It has grass, not a lot, but enough. And trees. Two of them. There was even a swing set with slides and a little playhouse that the owners were willing to leave behind, since their kids had outgrown it. It was perfect. We moved in May. Every time we showed the house to someone, they would laugh about the playset in the back yard, asking where in the world it came from. It did look kind of silly, sitting there all lonely, with no one to play on it. I would look at it sometimes and think about the future while I drank my coffee and got ready to go to work in the mornings.

Today, you really figured out the joy of the slide. You would get me to put you up on the top, and then you would giggle and build up your courage for a few minutes, shift your weight and fly down to the bottom into my arms. You laughed and laughed and then you'd say "Up! Up!" and I'd put you back up there again.

It was perfect.

Well, Monday morning finds me blogging from the couch, where I am listening to Round 2 of Kate's Signing Time DVD and hoping that it will keep her entertained a bit longer so that I won't have to exert the energy to get up and find something else for her to do. We've been leveled by a disgusting stomach bug ... I got sick yesterday after church, and this morning Dan, who was supposed to be leaving for a business trip today, woke up with the same non-airplane-friendly symptoms. So he's canceled the trip and gone back to bed, and we're all laying low and praying that Kate doesn't get this. Since I'm doing slightly better than Dan at this point, but I am still glued to the couch, I figured I would post some photos so the grandparents don't disown me.

Lately Kate loves to sit at the dining room table and eat with us, which is fun, but she sometimes insists on sitting in the adult-sized chairs and using the adult-sized flatware. Because she's a big girl, you know, and booster chairs are for babies.

I'm not sure how efficient it is to try to eat raisins with a knife.

Like I said, I don't think she's getting much nutrition, but as you can see, she's quite proud of herself.