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!