The Thirteenth Month

Hello out there!! It's been a while, huh? See - this is what happens when I don't have self-imposed deadlines - I go AWOL! It has been a busy, busy month and I can't wait to fill you in on the details. Now that Kaitlin's first year is over I am going to give monthly updates rather than weekly, but hopefully I'll be popping in more often than once a month! So...onto our new monthly update!

*ps - I've had this in my draft folder for well over a week - can I still use the "baby brain" excuse??*

I'm pretty sure this statement is going to sound familiar, but it has never been truer. The amount that I have seen Kaitlin grow in the last month is astounding! She's not physically any bigger (although her feet have finally grown a bit) but developmentally she has made so much progress. Around her first birthday I had mentioned to a couple people that I thought she was a little behind in her speech development. In reality she definitely was not - our pediatrician said she was absolutely fine and it was me just being an overly concerned parent (as usual) - but she really only said variations of "Dada" on a consistent basis. She hardly ever said sounds like ba, gah, ma, etc. And she only said one word ("Dada", which is completely normal at her age). In the last month I have noticed her speech develop at a rapid pace. She still pretty much only says "Dada" but she has lots of her own versions of words. She says "yes" ("yish"), "this" ("dis"), "bubbles" ("bah" then blows), "skootch" to go down the stairs ("shhh shhh") are the most common ones that come to mind. She has also learned to "sign" that she is all done eating, which Brian and I have been working on with her over the last week or so.

Just because she doesn't say much (she is only a year old, after all) doesn't mean that she doesn't understand what you're saying to her. Ohhhhh no - she knows exactly what you are saying to her - she's a smart one! She continues to listen to and (sometimes) follow instructions and she is learning how to put things away (which helps with the hundreds of toys and books that she continuously throw around the house all day every day). Last week she had terrible diaper rash, the worst she has ever had. We even had to take her to the doctors to get prescription medicine to help clear it up (I'm blaming teething but in reality I still haven't figured out the culprit). It got so bad that it hurt her whenever she went to the bathroom, which is often. One afternoon we were in her room "organizing" her books when she suddenly looked at me and pulled on her diaper. I asked her if she had a pee-pee diaper and she immediately said "yish".  I went to change her and sure enough she had a wet diaper! I was sure she was the smartest kid on the planet ;)  Since that day whenever we ask about her diaper we get mixed answers, not always correct but not always wrong either.  She is learning more and more concepts about her toys and ways to play with them that she previously didn't recognize or understand. Just the other day we discovered that she knows how to stack her wood blocks on top of each other! I think she was as amazed as I was. Now, they aren't that centered or stable, but I hold onto them while she builds them "higher" (which is our key word for the activity). And her favorite part - knocking the block tower down!! It is truly fascinating to watch her literally learn a new thing (or two!) every day.

Physically she's getting stronger and stronger. She learned how to "skootch" down the stairs on her bottom (since trying to teach her to go backwards was a nightmare), can now reach into the top of her water table to drop the toys down the slide, and practically runs around the house and yard. Her balance  is improving every day, even though she still falls a lot (mostly because she  doesn't look where she's going).