Photo drop

"Shoes" is a new acquisition to Kalia's vocabulary.   She says it anytime she sees them.  She also will go fetch shoes when asked to.  This was the result of such an occasion.  She has since learned to match them.  She's getting pretty good at matching.  Shoes are some of her favorite toys recently.

Kalia has graduated from watching to mimicking.  When Tristan plays his Mario game Kalia sits right with him with her OWN remote and pushes the buttons.  She giggles every time he picks a level.  She loves the noises it makes.

I've got molars!  Say aaaaa!

I don't know why she does this, but we didn't teach her.  Tristan calls it her Charlie Chaplin walk.

Starting to climb and starting small.

Family love!

New neighbors.

Learning to use the spoon is hard work!

Keep trying.  You'll get it... someday.

My big helper was carrying packages of diapers from the front room to her room.  She loved helping. 

Practicing the big sister hold on the cat.  Kalia loves Saphira.

"dat"

Announcing...

The voters speak!  If you guessed a little sister, you were right!

Kalia is 15 months

We visited the Dr. this morning for a quick check up.  Here are her current stats
Height 30"  37%ile
Weight 21lbs 25%ile
We are up to date on shots and won't need any until her kindergarten check.  YAY!

She's wearing mostly 12 months with a few 9 and 18 thrown in.  Though as the weather stabilizes we'll move into the 18 month summer stuff.  She's wearing 18 and 24 month dresses and size 3 and 4 for shoes.  She still fights having her hair styled and isn't fond of getting it shampooed.  She doesn't really like bath time itself, either.

Her molars are trying to come in.  She has one in completely with two more that have started to erupt.  The last one won't be far behind.  We love her toothy smile.  She has (almost) all 8 front teeth in completely.  The bottom laterals still have a bit to go.  Having her molars come in has been a little more sensitive than her other teeth.  She's been having a bit more trouble.  We'll be glad to have our sleeping schedule return to normal when all is said and done.  Kalia loves to have her teeth brushed and will show you her teeth if you ask.

We think our little girl is pretty smart.  She knows who mom and dad are.  She recognizes cats, dogs, tigers, fish, monkeys, ducks, balls, bananas, and milk from her books.  She knows where the picture of Jesus is and will fold her arms for prayer.  At home she echos the 'amen' at the end of prayer.  She can say mama, dada, (and variations), ball, bus, baby, cat, dog, quack, roars for various animals, ooh ooh for monkey, amen, me, nana, up, hi, bye bye, no and will shake her head for yes.  She will point to herself when you ask where Kalia is or say me.  She uses "me" to identify milk.  She signs cracker, please, more.  She doesn't sign milk anymore because she tries to say the word.  Kalia loves books!  She's always going into our room to the paper books and pulling them off the bookcases to look at them.  I have to watch pretty carefully as she still bends the pages and damages the books.  She has access to board books at all times though her interest has shifted more to walking and getting to the books she's not supposed to.

This kid wants to eat all day!  She's been burning a lot of energy practicing walking and asks for snacks often.  She's a good eater most of the time though will try to test her mother's patience by throwing stuff she doesn't want to eat on the ground.  ARG!!  It's a pretty good signal that she's all done, but I'm really hoping she'll start using the words instead.  Fruits and veggies are her favorites, with bananas most preferred.  No food allergies here, thank goodness!  We're done with bottles.  I've packed them all away. Though we haven't done much with the cup beyond the sippy.  Sometimes she uses the spoon I give her at meals but prefers to use her fingers.  Meal times can be adventurous.

VOTE now!

You will notice a question to the left.  Please participate.  It's fun!  The ultrasound is the 20th!

Pictures from May 5-9 2010

Discovering this little game with the cat brought so much joy to Kalia.  The cat usually tired of it before she did.  Of course that's not the case when Tristan or I entertain Saphira.  She'll never tire of chasing that ribbon.  Kalia still makes her nervous.

We love to go out for afternoon walks.  Kalia pushes her toy and discovers everything along the way.  This was a particularly windy day but she loved the wind in her face.  Later that night we found out about our first tornado watch.  Luckily, things stayed calm.

I love to get out the camera and catch her silly expressions.  Of courses she's doing a fair bit of chattering during the photo shoot.  Lately she's been entertained by us making a surprised face with a great big O mouth.  She just cracks up and does it back to us.  I don't think she'll grow out of that game for a while.

Management had landscapers come and re-mulch our flower beds.  The kids really got excited when they heard them out there.  Kalia ran (ok, I put her there) to the window to watch.  I was babysitting at the time.  The blond cutie is about 2 weeks older than Kalia.

Friday night at babysitting club Tristan had all three listening to a story.  We were getting ready to put Kalia down for the night and decided to share story time with our friends.

 There's nothing cuter than a dressed up daddy and his little princess.

She found her pacifier in a box of toys.  She never was too attached to it but had fun chewing on it.  I thought I'd show a comparison of how much she's grown.

15 months (in 3 days)

5 weeks old

Big beautiful brown eyes.  Gotta love that face!  She's a joy.  Then again. . . 

We tried all afternoon to get a shot of her standing or walking.  Yesterday afternoon she was walking all over the place.  She'd also stand in the middle of the floor when she'd fall over.  We're so proud and so is she.  She was grinning all night and didn't want to go to bed and stop practicing her new skills. 

I leave her alone with her daddy for five minutes and he's got her all tied up.  He claims she's practicing for the part of Marly in this year's Christmas pageant.  I think he's just torturing the poor girl.  It was rather funny to watch her try to make sense of the mess.  Then she came crawling to mommy to be saved.  Though she still loves playing with daddy.

And there's Tristan...

You're the best honey, though I think we need to get you in to the optometrist.

Kalia walking

Photo and video editing at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Picture Update

Friday nights mean date night most of the month.  Every third week we get a turn to watch the kiddos while the other two couples take a night out.  I'd recently found this kid's potty for a good price at a yard sale.  I'd cleaned it up and left it sitting out.  I'm hoping all the suggestions of introducing the potty early may peak some interest.  I know Ryan also has a potty hanging around at his house.  Neither kid has started training and they came up with an alternative use for the potty.

Kalia was convinced they could both fit in the small hole and kept trying to push her way in.

We'll have to work out the confusion later.  I told Kalia she's off the hook.  It's kinda difficult to potty train if you're not walking yet.  I am trying to be proactive.  I'm researching it and getting all the proper gear together.  But I know it'll be a ways off.

This picture is proof of my attempt to style Kalia's hair.  It's quite the struggle to do anything with her hair.  She thrashes about which pulls her hair and makes her angry.  I guess we could just douse her head each morning and take the curly look.  It's working really well right now.  Though I'm not sure how much time I have until her hair is too long to stay out of her eyes when curly.  It certainly gets in her eyes when it's straight. 

Kalia loves packages and finding out what's inside them.

Can you see what's in the box?

She was so sure she could get to Saphira.

Here's the post box trauma bonding with kid and cat.  Kalia loves to give hugs by leaning her head.  She tries to give Saphira hugs all the time.  Especially when I tell her to be nice.  I'm glad she's made the association of hugs and being nice.  Now to figure out how to stop her hitting...

Bonding with dad playing Mario.  The other day he gave her the controller and she would not give it back and got so upset if you touched the thing.  The crazy thing is how much she enjoyed pushing the buttons and even managed to stay alive longer than I do!  (Plus pick up a few coins)

I'm sure you're curious what was really inside the big box before the cat crawled in.  It was a mattress for the new baby's bed.  

The crib came a little bit later.  We set it up on Sunday.  I'm pretty pleased about the color, though Kalia's crib is heavier and better built.  Had we not got such a good deal on it I would have been disappointed to pay full price.  Both our cribs retail close to the same price, but Kalia's feels sturdier.  Her's was also part of the recent recall.  We're still working out what we're going to do about that.  She's going to be in that crib (as a toddler bed) until we move at least.

Sunday afternoon we went in to wake Kalia up from her nap and found her like this.  Too cute!

She could hardly keep her eyes open as we made dinner Monday night.  We gave her her milk early (in a bottle since her one sippy was dirty, we're buying more and hopefully giving up bottles entirely) to keep her happy during the wait for fajitas.  She did wake up in time to eat.  My favorite was when the bottle dropped and she ghost sipped in her sleep.  Missing the bottle woke her up and she was not happy.

Kalia's spent a lot of time looking out the window at the "quack quacks" (any winged thing is a quack quack) since the weather has gotten warmer.  We have quiet the variety of birds to watch.  Ducks, geese, and robins being the most common.  This week new excitement has come to our little pond.

This little family was discovered a few days ago.  And last night we saw another, smaller family of only 4 babies.  The daddy duck of this brood chased off the parents of the other family and was quite territorial.  He wouldn't let the other family near his.  This got us (our neighbors were also duck watching) wondering if maybe some of this brood had been adopted.  11 is an unusually high number for a nest.  Anybody know anything about ducks adopting?  Just curious.

That brings our picture update to a close.  I hope you enjoyed it!

baby?

This morning Kalia was sitting on the floor in her room.  Upon seeing a box recently filled with excess stuffed animals she pulled out her doll and said, "baby, baby."  This is a new word for her.  I'm so excited to see her use it in context, too!  Then sticking her finger in the open/shut eye "I, I, I."

By Jove I think she's got it!