KATYA

What can I say--my granddaughter, Katya, is just about the smartest baby ever. Now I know that at almost 15 months she only has three teeth but besides that she is developing very nicely. Her clothes certainly don't get worn out before she has grown out of them.

Her vocabulary is getting bigger and bigger and her understanding of words. She loves to read books and have them read to her. I bought her a new book about Cats--she loves it. She has a love of cats and dogs--actually almost any animal. I bought her a cassette player at a garage sale for one dollar and the lady threw in 16 children's music and story cassettes. It also has a microphone so you can sing along. Imagine all this for one dollar. Now we all sing along with the songs and the batteries are still working. Tonight we got to sing in the bathroom while Katya had her bath.

We also got her a swing at a garage sale. Rudy rigged it up on our deck and she gets a swing every time she comes over. Garage sales are great--I love them.

Tonight Rudy and I babysat Katya--so it was bath, read a book or two, a bite to eat and off to bed. We had to lower the mattress in her crib so she cannot crawl out.

She loves the computer. I have now found a site called Treehouse and it has some really good things for younger children to do . She even showed me where the 'standby' key was. I didn't even know we had a button for that. Maybe that was pure luck but you never know.

A few days ago one of Katya's expensive earrings was missing. We could not find it anywhere. We found out today that Jillian found it at home in Katya's crib. But what was she wearing for earrings today--Jillian's diamond earrings. It is not often that a 15 month old girl gets to wear diamond earrings.