Twenty-third and Twenty-fourth Months

I know I say this every month, but I absolutely cannot believe that it has been two years since Kaitlin was born and changed our lives forever. The last two months have been so, so incredibly fun - I can't believe that it ever gets better. Sure, there are challenging moments (and let's be real, challenging days) but they are all made up for with her infectious laugh and crazy cute smile.

I had no idea that the ago two was going to be so fun. All I ever heard about what was a nightmare it was, so much crying and fighting and time outs - it sounded horrible. And let's be honest, we are only at the tip of the "two" iceberg, so I'm sure all of those awesomely bad parts are just around the corner for us. In fact pretty much the day she turned two and for a week after she was a nightmare. I attribute it to all of the fun guests in town to celebrate and then having everyone leave a short time later (she's not a big fan of change). Luckily she's starting to get back to her normal self. But these last two months, as Kaitlin hurtled towards her second birthday we hands down the most fun months yet. She is still learning at such an incredible pace, some days I can't even believe it. 

She is learning her letters and numbers and one of her favorite things to do is count and/or read alphabet books or do alphabet puzzles. She loves counting, although at the moment all the counting she does is either "one, two" or "two, four" but I suppose you have to start somewhere! She knows almost all of the other numbers but really only says them when prompted. She is also learning her letters of the alphabet. She probably knows about 2/3s of the letters and she just loves opening up Dr. Seuss's ABC book and pointing to the letters and naming them. She's only right once every third letter but at least she's trying!

Kaitlin has also started saying short sentences. Most of the time they are just two word sentences ("Mama, no!" "Me, wead" "Dirt, wash" but sometimes we can get a three word sentence out of her. I have no idea if this is ahead, behind or right on track for development for her age but I, of course, think she's a genius! The first time she ever said to me "Wead peas" (that's "Read, please" for those of you who don't speak toddler) I damn near fell off my chair. She is full of small sentences and often strings them pretty close together, so she communication is just growing and growing every day. Some of my favorite words that she says are -

"Faffle" (waffles)
"No, mama - YOU!" (she means to say, No mama ME, as in, I'll do it!)
"WHY-O WHY-O WHY-O" (Wild! Wild! Wild!)

There are dozens more but it would be almost impossible for my to try and type them out and have them make any sense. It's much cuter in person :)

We go a scooter for Kaitlin for Easter but held off on giving it to her a couple of weeks ago. Man oh man, you would have thought that she won the lottery. Basically it was the best day of her life. The first time we took her out on it we mostly just pushed and pulled her around by the handle bars. We encouraged her to push with her foot but she didn't really get it. The next day I took her out for her second right and just as I was about to start pushing her she turns to me and says, "Mama, no! ME!" She turned around and started pushing herself and took off down the street. How does she learn things so quickly?!?! It's amazing! I was a bit sad about her wanting to go off on her own and not needing me help anymore, until about 10 feet down the sidewalk she ran into the grass and needed help again :) She's finally gotten a hang of the steering thing and can now fly down the sidewalk all by herself. She barely even needs help turning it around. She loves to ride it around the neighborhood and she even rode it all the way to the park one day. She was pretty tired on the way back and I had to carry her for a couple blocks, but I was pretty amazed!

We tried another cake smash this year and it went almost as bad as last year. Except this time I had giant cookies on hand as backup. Good idea, mom. Good idea.

Now that I have done a year of weekly updates and a year of monthly (well, almost monthly) updates I think my time on the mini traveling cupcake is about over. I love, love giving updates but as Kaitlin gets older I find I have less time and also want to keep more things a bit private. That's not to say that I won't be back from time to time for updates (First day of school! Holidays!) but you'll probably see me around here a bit less. Maybe for year three I will aim for quarterly updates :)

In the mean time, you can still catch an update of sorts over on my photography blog. I'm participating in a monthly blog circle called Letters to My Daughter. Check it out - I'd love to see you over there!

The Twenty-first and Twenty-second Months

Can someone please stop time from flying so fast? In less than two months we will be celebrating Kaitlin's second birthday and I know that it will be here in no time. While it is so fun to watch her grow and get bigger, I don't want to loose my baby!

Kaitlin has been learning at such a rapid pace over the last two months. She has easily doubled her vocabulary since the last update (now has around 40 words and is learning at least one or two new words each day), knows some colors and some shapes as well. Best of all she is developing quite the little sense of humor. If I ask her to find the red square while we are playing the shapes game, she will purposely run over to the blue circle and look up at me with a little smirky smile and start laughing! She also thinks that running away from me when I try to get her in the car is funny, which I certainly do not. She also loves to "joke" around with her stuffed animals and other toys, which is so fun to watch.

Kaitlin has some exciting visitors over the last two months. Grammie (who is now "Nana") and Pop-pop ("Papa") spent a week visiting and Kaitlin could not have been happier. She warmed up to them almost immediately and definitely went through withdrawal when they left. She started saying "nana" and "papa" while they were here along with a ton of other words. And while they were here, Brian and I got to go on our FIRST vacation by ourselves - woohoo!! Kaitlin was having such a good time with her grandparents that she barely noticed that we were gone for two days! And just recently we had her Aunt Maggie in town for a visit! Talk about best friends for life - Kaitlin was instantly enamored with Maggie and fell in love with her fiance, John! She made two awesome friends in a short period of time and I know she misses them both. It is really hard for Kaitlin to say "Aunt Maggie" and when she did try to say it, it came out as "Amy" So...Maggie is now known as Amy in this house!

The last couple of months have also included a bit of resistance and rebelling from Kaitlin. She learned how to say "no" (before she would say "uh-uh") and she quickly started saying it ALL the time. We are having trouble getting her to help clean up her toys and follow directions, although that is all to be expected at this age (and probably for a while to come). Needless to say, she doesn't really like "helping me" with chores like she did in the last update! She still likes to help me "fold" laundry, but mostly so she can hoard it, not to put it away. She also had her first really bad sickness. For a while she was waking up every two weeks or so with a high temperature. At the end of February (or was it beginning of March?? The days are running away from me) she woke up practically in a panic and she was burning hot - she had a fever of 104+. I immediately gave her some Advil to get the fever down and she finally calmed down after having some water and milk. She slept on my chest for a while and we got her fever down to 101. After two trips to the pediatrician and three days with a fever they finally determined that she had an ear infection. A round of antibiotics later and she was back to normal. Though I have noticed that since that time she is REALLY clingy to me and seems to need a lot more comfort (has been sucking her thumb A LOT and wants/needs her favorite stuffed animals all the time) than usual. Hopefully it is just a phase!

I am going to try really hard to post an update at 23 months and then again at 24, but I'm not making any promises. If you would still like to read a monthly update of sorts, please check out a new project I am working on over on my business blog (Tracy Lynn Photography) - "Letters to my Daughter". Letters are posted at the end of each month :)