How can she be old enough for tea parties!!!

Robb Field - mom's old stomping ground

Tea party with the girls

I realize that it should make perfect sense that Kayla is a 2 and a half year old little girl - but I have been trying to figure out what happened to my little baby girl!!! Life has gotten a bit more relaxed over the last few weeks and we have gotten the chance to relax and enjoy things a little. I thought it would also be a good time to summarize where Kayla is developmentally.
She is close to having the tricycle peddling down and is great at climbing and pulling herself up. Every time she is at the playground, she tries a new piece of equipment. In the pool, she loves her water wings and loves kicking. She can jump but more often hops or skips. You will often see her on her tippy-toes. She can undress herself (including her diaper), can pull pants on and off (but not over the feet), and can get her arms in sleeves. She counts to 10 easily, can recite the alphabet, knows her basic colors, and most basic shapes. I'm really impressed that she knows 90% of the alphabet if you point to a letter and ask her what letter it is. More than anything, the WHYS have been in full force for a few months. One day I should count how often I hear the word "why" from her mouth. Sometimes it is a fun conversation but I get to "I don't know pretty quickly." Daddy likes the why game and keeps answering in more details. One day we were reading a bath book and we got to the page where it talked about the boat floating and she get a coy grin on her face and says "dis-place-ment". I had no idea what she was saying until I talked to Jose and found out that that had been the conclusion of a "why" discussion. She likes to line things up and sort and when something has a place, she wants it there. She is a talking machine these days and it is easy to forget that there was a time where we worried about when she was going to say her first word. Here are some of the cute speaking stories about her:

She had a day where she had skipped her nap and hadn't slept great the night before. I was drying her off in front of the mirror and said, "Kayla, you look sooo tired" (due to the dark circles under her eyes); she sighed and said "lil' bit, Mommy"

I had washed her bath toys in the kitchen and one of her bath books was on the floor. She comes over to me with it laughing and said "silly mommy, this book for the bath!"

The concept of "friends" is something she is focusing a bit on lately. One morning she said "Jack make me feel better, Jack my friend". When we go to see Brooke and Blake or KC and KD she always says "they my friends, I going to see my friends." We went to a toddler class and she was playing with a girl her age. When we walked back to the car, she was holding hands with her and when we said goodbye, she said - "she my friend!"

In addition to friends being important, she is also big on saying "it my favorite". Whatever she wants to do or watch or eat in the moment is her "favorite". This extend to a story on potty training (more on that later).... but she is essentially back in diapers for now. Yesterday was her first day back in diapers and she was coming up to me to tell me every time she peed... so I asked her, "you can still pee in the potty, do you want to pee in the potty or your diaper" and she replied, "I pee in my diaper, it my favorite."

I mentioned in a previous post that she adds her own sayings to the bed time routine. Well, now it has evolved into "you come check on me ... and cuddle me." In addition to being really cute, it also cuts the bedtime routine down and she gets to bed really quickly. Often she doesn't even want a song :(.. we finish the books, she gets in bed and sends me away with this quote.

One day when I was folding laundry, she started taking the clothes out of the basket and throwing them all over the room. I said, "kayla, why do you keep throwing the clothes everywhere? do you think that is helping mommy?" She says "no" and I ask her to stop and she says, with wide eyes, "but, mommy, it sooooo fun"

I love watching her compassion grow. If someone is crying, or appears her, her response is always "you/she/he okay"?? She will keep asking and looking concerned until she thinks everything is fine. On the other side of things, if she falls or runs into something and isn't hurt, she is quick to say "I fine, I fine."

One thing she is doing right now that only a toddler can get away with is that if she is trying to get your attention, she will put your face in her two hand and look you straight in the eye with noses touching. Also, when she is in the middle of an adult conversation and the attention drifts away from her, she'll sometimes say, "stop talking!!" and if you ask her what she would like to talk about, she responds with a "ba-la, ba-la, ba-la"

While the Dias cousins where here, she did a great job sharing her room and bed with the cousins while she slept in mom and dad's room. When we came back home from dropping her Dias cousins at the airport and we talked about her cousins going home, she said, "I get my big girl bed back.. I share my bed .. I share with blake and brooke(wheeler cousins) too!

The positive reinforcement is starting to be demonstrated as well. She will often tell HERSELF, "great job" or "I did it" when she does something she is proud of. The other day, she was helping mom get the dogs in the car and was saying "come on buffy, up" as she pulled on the leash. When buffy finally got in the car, Kayla said "great job buffy"

Kayla LOVES music, singing and dancing. I can always tell if she like a song that is on the radio or in a store because she starts dancing to the beat. She LOVES singing to songs. Even if she hasn't heard a song before, if she likes it, she tries to sing along. We took Kayla to see the Mama Mia movie and have listened to the soundtrack a ton - well, we've created a monster. EVERY time we are in the car, she wants to listen to the Mama Mia soundtrack. She knows exactly which song comes next on the CD and knows every word to the music - it is the cutest thing in the world to hear her singing it in the back seat. When we play it at home, she does this hoping dance around the house and just puts her whole self into the music. There is another song she does from CinderElmo that goes "step to the right and shake, shake, shake; step to the left and shake, shake, shake; jump up and down; turn turn around; everybody's do it, everybody's doing this dance" and she will do the whole dance and song for you if you ask her to do the Elmo song. If I teach her a new song, I'll hear her repeating it to herself until she knows the words. Now, mind you, I think mommy and daddy are the only ones that understand her regularly, but the words are there. It is funny - 90% of what she says and sings seems crystal clear to me but I still have to translate the majority of what she says to other people. She has a hard time understanding when people don't understand her.

Her fine motor skill have been pretty good for a while (playing with tiny pony accessories), but they are getting better. This morning she wanted to go play downstairs and I said we would after I put my contacts in and she said she wanted to put her contacts in. She went in our bathroom for a little while and came back to my side of the bed with my contact case with one side unscrewed and open!! I couldn't believe she had gone from the bathroom to the bed without spilling and loosing the contact! Up until that point, I didn't think she could unscrew the case! And our world is close to changing as she has almost mastered opening door knobs.

Kayla loves helping when she can. When I vacuum, she gets her pusher- ball popper around to help me. Any time I'm wiping things down or dusting, she needs her dust cloth too. But, it is great to find thing she can do that actually are helpful. She closes doors that are left open, she puts used dishes in the sink, we can ask her to throw things away in the trash or bring something to mommy/daddy, etc.

Other fun Kaylaisms - "that's 'cause why", "I thinking" (with her index finger to her mouth), "think so, yeah I think so), me sad (with index finger going down her cheek), that makes me sad, I be so sad

Kayla has been in a big girl bed for a while. The reason you put a child in a toddler bed is so that they don't try to crawl out of the crib and hurt themselves. Kayla's big girl bed is her crib without a front so that she can safely crawl in and out. One night Jose and I heard banging and a crash and the major crying. Instead of getting out of bed to get to a toy, Kayla had crawled over the side of her bed and had the exact accident you try to avoid by moving a baby to bid girl bed

Kayla is developing a strong set of dislikes and fears. Some aren't surprising - loud/surprising noises (that she laughs at once she knows what they are), spiders and snakes, hands being dirty, anything green. Some of the stranger things are: ride attendants (she'll be totally excited to get on a ride at an amusement park and when the attendant talks to her she wants to get off the ride), sea weed (any time the beach comes up, she brings up sea weed and how she "no like sea weeeeed" She is a cautious girl and definitely observes new situations and doesn't jump in right away.

She is still a picky eater, but honestly it is a battle I haven't decided to fight yet. She eats very few vegetables and is still good with fruits. There is a variety of foods she will eat but on one day something might be fine, but the next day she won't touch it. We aren't worried about the calories anymore but she is definitely picky when things are green or messy looking.

At this age, here is what our day to day is like: She wakes up around 7. If she wakes up before, we leave her in there until after 7. Half of the week, we get out of the house before 9 or 10 for activities or errands. The rest of the week we take the morning easy and play with toys and do things around the house. But, we at least get out of the house once a day - even if it is a walk around the neighborhood. Her nap is 1-2 hours. Depending on the day's activities, the nap can be 1-3 or 2-4 and sometimes 3-5. It is still a challenge to get her down for naps. If we are really active in the morning, it is easier than chill-out days. But we definitely have at least one day a week where she just doesn't sleep and ends up reading books in bed instead. After nap activity varies but we don't go far from home. If dad get off work before dinner, they often have time at the pool together. She eats around 6:30 and bath is between 7 and 7:30 and she goes down between 7:30 and 8. It is still consistent that if she goes down after 8, she will wake up before 6:30 am and be cranky the next day.

Potty training ... well, we made a go for it and decided to take a break. We'll start again in a few weeks. We got all the bribes and prizes and fun potty-stuff. We had two great days of staying home and training. She got the concept really quickly and was getting herself to the potty when she needed to go. After two days, we slowly started going out of the house again with a pull-up and she seemed to be holding it for long periods and going when she went on the potty. But, then we realized she hadn't pooped for 5 days. Her stomach was bloated and hard and she pretty much stopped eating because she was filled up. (FYI, don't read the rest of this if you don't like potty talk) We had to give her some help to get things flowing again (suppository). She screamed for a half hour but it did get things going. Then we had her drink Mineral Oil with juice for a few days along with having her only eat things that we get her to go. We finally got her going again but it was all pretty traumatic. The next few days she seemed still up for peeing in the potty but then two days in row, she seemed to have lost all interest and started basically peeing all over the house. I decided I needed a break and she needed a break. If she asks to go, I still take her to the potty, but we'll take another go it it a little later.

We are having SO much fun with Kayla these days. She has such a loving, cheerful personality and is a joy to spend time with most days. She definitely has her toddler moments but we definitely have little to complain about in that respect. She loves giving kisses and hugs. I love her so much and feel so blessed to be her mother.