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.

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).