The Sixteenth Month

"Head, shoulders, knees and toes (knees and toes)"

That's right - Kaitlin can now find her head, toes, nose, ears, belly button and teeth. Well, most times she can. Sometimes she gets a little confused and keeps pointing to her nose when you ask her where other things are. She can also find your nose (and her bears nose, and monkeys nose, and dolls nose, and...) and she LOVES to find Mommy's belly button. Usually when we are out in public. That's cool.

(I swear I didn't know that she was wearing the same outfit in her fifteen month update. She does have more than one onesie, I promise.)

Kaitlin is turning into a very loving child and showers every stuffed animal, book and kid in sight with a million kisses and hugs. Where she used to give slobbery, open mouth kisses she now makes a kissing noise with her mouth and puckers her little lips up. She is in love with all of her stuffed animals and dolls and loves to have them all around her (either on the couch or in her crib or all over the floor). She'll go to each one, touch them on the head and give them a kiss before moving on to the next one. And dogs. Ohhh this girls love for dogs knows no boundaries. On the opposite end of the spectrum she has also turned into a shrieking, crying, screaming mess if she has to do something she doesn't want to or if you try and stop her from doing something she wants to do. Very Jekyll and Hyde over here.

Kaitlin started school this month and it has been a bit of a roller coaster. I wrote about her first day here and luckily things have drastically improved since then. The first few weeks were awful but by the fourth week she wasn't crying when I dropped her off, and was only a little upset once I came to pick her up. This past week was our best yet - she even got EXCITED as we were walking into school and I was telling her about all the fun things she was going to do (buggy ride, playing with balls - story time!!) and she didn't cry one tear when I picked her up. Success!! Hopefully it continues ;)

We are still on the teething road from hell (I say that but compared to other kids it probably isn't that bad). She has one new molar and I can see two more canines just below the gums. I am ready for teething to be over!

And can we talk about toddler eating habits please? I mean....what is the deal?! Loving a food one day, hating it the next. Acting like you are trying to give them rat poison when really it's some lovely strawberries. Kaitlin has even begun rejecting POUCHES which means she is getting barely any fruits and vegetables in her diet at all. I never thought that I would practically have to BEG my child to eat a pouch. But that is what it has come to folks. And most times she gives it a weary eye and then walks away. As of right now the only things she will eat are: quesadillas (with just cheese, or shredded yellow squash/zucchini if she can't tell it's in there), ravioli, pasta with tomato sauce, eggs (sometimes), oatmeal (sometimes), pancakes (sometimes), freeze dried strawberries (?!?!), dried apples, cheese and milk. I think that about covers it. She has not eaten a single, WHOLE piece of fruit since the beginning of August when we were up in NY. I think the most aggravating part of it is that JUST when you think you have a "safe" food that they will consistently eat they turn around and act like you are the worst person in the world to even think about offering it to them to eat. And you wonder why I drink ;)

Kaitlin has added a couple new "words" to her repertoire, which is an exciting development. She can now say - dada, yes, ah-ah (monkey noise), ar-ra-ra (dog noise), vrrmm (car noise), uh-oh, ow (for "wow"). All very exciting. She is also getting better at imitating words that you ask her to say. For instance I said to her, "Can you say 'UP'?" and she looked at me for a minute and said, "Uh". She is practically a genius ;)

We have quite the book worm on our hands too. She loves, LOVES her books. We read them morning, noon and night. She reads them on the floor, on the couch, on the chair. She would read them in the bathtub if we let her. She has about 20 favrotie books at the moment and we ready them all 49583459 times a day. We probably spend a solid 50% of our day reading books. Although it's gotten to the point where she has one or two favorite pages in each book. Often times she doesn't even want me to read the story, she just flips to the page that she likes and gives it a kiss or makes a happy face. If I try to read it she waves her arm and says, "SSHHHHH". Her teachers said that she loves to read books when she's in school too. I better get this kid to the library!

She is a running, walking, climbing (she has to climb into EVERY box she sees) ball full of energy. She's happy, emotional and energetic crazy head full of love, kisses and hugs. She can really drive me crazy but then manages to erase all of that craziness with one sweet look, one kiss out of the blue or one big, goofy smile.

Kaitlin's First Day of School

A lot of you have probably seen my photo about Kaitlin's first day at "school" on Facebook today, but I had to write a full post or else I will forget all the gritty details in the far future (like, next week). Today she started Day School, a program at our church for kids from birth to Pre-K. At her age it is pretty much a glorified Mother's Day Out program, but they do have a curriculum that they follow for each age group and they work on key developments and milestones, so I call it school. She is going twice a week for 5.5 hours a day. We decided to put her into "school" at this young age because a) mama needs a break and b) we wanted her to be around more kids her own age on a regular and consistent basis. We usually have a play date or two each week but often times its only for an hour or two and they are random, at best. And now that I am working more she is at home more with a sitter, and this will get her interacting with children her age. She is in the "Bears" class which is 12-17 month olds and pretty much the cutest thing ever.

 The day started off...rough. She didn't get a full twelve hours of sleep like she normally does and woke up with her cranky pants on. By the time she had breakfast I knew that today was not going to be a huge success. Maybe she could feel my stress - babies are sneaky like that. She was already tired by the time we left for school and she still had another 3-4 super stimulating hours ahead of her. Before we left the house I was able to snap a *few* "First Day" photos in front of the house. I was lucky to get her to sit still let alone look at the camera, and most times that she did she did not look pleased.

We visited her classroom last week and met the teachers. She clung to me the whole time but was ok about being there, she played with the toys and didn't cry too much. Today was a different story. I'm pretty sure she was the first one to start crying and probably the only one who was SCREAMING when I had to finally leave the class and let them get on with their day. She and I both had tears running down our face - no one wants to leave their child when they are screaming and crying, even when you know that they are in great hands. It was all I could do not to run back into the room and scoop her up in my arms. Instead I walked straight to my car and drove away. It was the best thing for the both of us.

If your child is inconsolable and cannot be calmed down then the office will call you to discuss how you want to proceed - a special soothing tactic, pick them up early, etc. I held my phone tightly in my hands for the next thirty minutes, checking the screen every ten seconds to make sure I hadn't missed their call. Miraculously they never called. I had an appointment that took up the rest of the school day and I was grateful for the distraction. I knew that she would have fun playing with the toys, the other kids and on the playground but it's hard to get a good feeling about the day when when you left them it was so bad. 

I raced to pick her up and when they let all the parents in the room to greet their children I looked around and Kaitlin was nowhere to be found! She wasn't by the books or the balls or at the kiddie table. I'm not going to lie, I got a little panicked. Where was she?! Well, wouldn't you know - the girl that doesn't sleep ANYWHERE except in her crib/PNP was laying on the floor sucking her thumb, trying to go to sleep. The classes are shortened this week to help with adjustment so a nap wasn't on the original schedule. Apparently all of the kids were tuckered out and they had to take a short nap. She slept for 30 minutes (On a mat! In a room with 7 other kids! With her SHOES ON!!!) and clearly that was not enough. 

She cried when she saw me (she does the same thing sometimes when I come home from work and she's been with a babysitter, it's almost like she forgot that she missed me and all of a sudden remembers when she sees me again) and I scooped her up and gave her the BIGGEST hug and a million kisses. We said goodbye to her classmates, thanked her teachers and headed out to the car. It wasn't picture perfect but it could have gone A LOT worse. 

Everyone tells me that this will get easier (for both of us) with time, and I do believe them. So, here's hoping that tomorrow goes a little smoother than today!