Showing posts with label teething. Show all posts
Showing posts with label teething. Show all posts

Wednesday, 25 September 2013

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.














Friday, 23 August 2013

The Fifteenth Month

It was a busy, busy summer for Kaitlin (not that it's over...we still have 2.5 months of heat left!) and she spent the first half of the month in California and the last half split between NY and TX. She's a traveling woman! As much fun as our vacations were, we are both glad to be home and sleeping in our own beds for longer than a week! Like last month, Kaitlin was a trooper with all of our traveling, flying and driving. For the most part she did a great job though we weren't without a few tantrums, breakdowns and sleep-deprived fits. At least she has an excuse ;)












She had her 15 month check up on Tuesday and got two thumbs up from the doctor. She went down in weight percentile slightly (from 13% to 11%) but the doctor didn't seem concerned. I was telling her about Kaitlin's recent food strikes and mega-teething (two more have broken through - that is 12 teeth total, including two molars and two canines) and she reassured me that it was a) completely normal and b) probably the cause of the weight slide. That and the fact that she never.stops.moving.EVER. She is on the tall end of the spectrum (around 60-70%) too which makes her long and lean!

Not only is she walking and running everywhere, she recently learned how to walk (very carefully) backwards. Oh, and how to "stand on her head". It's either that or it's her version of downward dog. She learned how to climb into her baby rocking chairs this month as well, and now all she wants to do is climb in them and then slide out. Climb in, slide out. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. She also added pulling toys to her bag of tricks, including an ancient Fisher Price school bus toy that my mom had and her beloved elephant. She mastered how to get on her play car and is FINALLY tall enough to push her little feet against the floor to move herself frontwards and backwards. Nascar here we come! And lastly another favorite activity is lining up toys (little people, rubber ducks, etc) so that they are all on their "feet" and next to each other, acknowledging her success by giving a little laugh and then knocking them all over. She's a weird one!















While she has been busy, busy, busy with all things physical her speech hasn't really advanced that much at all for the past couple of months. She only really says 3-4 words (dada, yes, ah-ah for monkey and vrm-vrm like noise for a car) and the last two are very, very recent and not completely reliable words (meaning she says them sometimes, but sometimes stares at you like she has no idea what you're talking about). The doctor said it was totally normal and that by 15 months most kids only know 3 words, so I didn't panic too much. For my pediatricians practice they go by "21 words by 21 months" as a marker, so if she isn't to that point in six months then we will step up our speech game. Meanwhile, even though she doesn't talk a lot of "real" words she is gibber-gabbering away like never before. If there is something that she wants to do or something she wants help with she will come over to you, pat your leg or arm and then grab ahold of your finger and lead you to wherever she wants to go. So she is pretty effective at getting her wants and needs across. 

When we visited my parents a couple of weeks ago she got to experience (seemingly) endless grass and yard space and now she is OBSESSED with running, walking and playing in the grass. We only have a little bit out front but at least twice a day she leads me to the front door, brings me her shoes and insists that we take a walk together outside. She loves holding your hand when going for a walk (or when she's on unsteady ground). She'll reach up and grab onto your finger and just walk quietly down the street with you. It just about makes my heart explode every single time she does it.