Spice Girl

Kaylee's had fun showing off all week to her Grandparents in from NM. She takes circles around our kitchen/living room to show off her walking and babbled joyfully the entire time.

One of her latest favorites is the spice drawer, I actually locked it off but the lock broke and now she's in there (of course we supervise this) grabbing all the spices and walking around the house with them. We removed the chicken bullion, loose spices, etc so she doesn't make a mess. But she loves carrying them all around the house, one in each hand. She is loving walking and holding things in both hands, but has trouble with falling and catching herself with something in her hand.

Yesterday her Grandma said she took a sweater and put it over her shoulders and head and walked around playing peek-a-boo while walking. She had trouble with this since she couldn't see where she was going, and took some falls but in the meantime thought it was super funny and laughed hilariously at herself.

I don't know if I've ever posted this before or not - Kaylee likes to 'read' books. She's been doing this for the past few months now, she has been turning the pages even longer. I didn't think this was anything special until my Mother in law pointed it out as a skill. She stands at the coffee table with a book open, turning the pages and making lots of noise as if she's telling a story. The sounds she makes have a lot of ups and downs and exclamations. She sounds like she'll be a great storyteller someday! :)

Kaylee tried bananas for the first time. Lots of times offered and turned down. She ate them and took a few and I was so excited. Yesterday her Grandma fed her lunch and she had quite the buddah belly afterwards: 5 potstickers, some water, strawberries and 6 ritz crackers! Wow! She seems to eat one good meal a day at least now. What a relief things seem to be coming along in that dept. now.

She has been waking up a lot at night again. Last night I gave her Motrin because it sounded like she was in pain, after that she slept the rest of the night. She may be going through getting more molars again - this is so much worse than the teeth in the front were they seem to cause her much more pain. I'll be glad when she gets them through because then she'll be done for a while.

Everybody have a good weekend!

Kaylee can run!

It's been a busy couple of weeks which is why I haven't had a chance to post. Kaylee was sick Sunday thru Tuesday with the flu. She is feeling much better now and is her old self again. Eric had it too so it was a bit of a rough week. Glad they're feeling better.

Some of this is sort of random but is what's new with Kaylee:

- Kaylee can run! We went to Costco and I was at the customer service counter forever waiting...and a sales member started stomping towards her playfully. She began walking towards the lady and then to my amazement, running! I was nervous because it was concrete but she only fell on her butt (which is padded with a diaper anyway so no biggie). Now we have to follow her diligently around the house as she explores, it's a bit more tiring but it's so amazing to see her experiencing this newfound independence.
-Kaylee started saying, "Hi Dad" to Eric it is so sweet and I am totally jealous.
-Kaylee is also reaching a new milestone congitively I think, she now tries to stack blocks on top of each other instead of just knocking them down. She's not too effective at the stacking though and gives up quickly.
-She is also noticing that she can cross her fingers and thinks this is pretty cool. She giggled when she figured it out.
-She's getting better at her sippy cup.
- When leaving, she waves her hand and says "Ba"
-She loves when I reenact books for her. Like Up/down, in/out, wet/dry...I just play act things out and she thinks it's pretty funny. She's using her hands to motion a lot of gestures during her babbling, and obviously she's trying to convey something. It's very cute, enthusiastic and can get very LOUD!
-Kaylee clicked her tongue for an entire day to practice the new sound.
-Kaylee barks at the dogs now, not just saying "woof, woof."
-She chases my parents and sisters cats around the house, they are very frightened, except for Mia who tolerate it well and seems to like the attention. She's very anamored with them and wishes they would stay to play.
- Kaylee didn't seem to know what to do in this hot weather. At night she likes to rock and cuddle, but kept on squirming but then when we put her down she didn't like that either. She didn't know how to be comfortable and cuddle.
- Kaylee woke up in the morning after a hot night and saw the ceiling fan. She sat up and yelled, "Holy Shit!....Shit!" I know she didn't actually say it but her baby babble so closely resembled it. Both Eric and I perked up and I laughed, "Did you just hear H-O-L-Y S-H-I-T?" Eric said, "Yep! Sure did!" (Sidenote we don't say Holy or Shit very often so this was a fluke)

Eric's parents are coming into town Monday and we are so excited to see them. Everybody have a very Happy Memorial day weekend. Yay for 3 day weekends! And no one will be sick too! Yay!

Playing the piano

Kaylee had a lot of fun at our neighbor's house yesterday playing piano with one of their daughters.

Doctors visits and walking progress

Kaylee has been making great strides (literally) in the past couple of days. She is all of the sudden, much braver and walks all the way across the room. She can walk all the way from the living room to the bathroom (her walker was in there). She now walks not just to us but the things she wants...toys, dogs, etc. She has adopted additional walkers, she pushes around Eric's big blue square water container for his aquariums, her rocker, and a laundry basket in addition to her walker. It's funny to see a baby walking around pushing a laundry basket around the house. The mess in our house is more now since Kaylee can get around more to make it! So now I find myself more on my toes cleaning up clutter.  She's so sweet walking by herself, she babbles, squeals and smiles in the enjoyment of her new skill. She takes these little ginger shuffle-like steps. Very sweet.

This week we got some sort of bad but expected news about Kaylee's allergies. The blood test came back showing that she is allergic to milk, eggs and peanuts.  She has a high enough allergy for all of them to raise concerns and limit them in her diet but the doctor said there's an 80% likelihood she will outgrow them so she will be tested every year. For her milk allergy, we have already had great success introducing soy as an alternative. Now I will use it in some of my cooking too. Her milk allergy is quite high (but not in the severe category) so we need to not have any dairy in  her diet. We now have an epipen and benadryl on hand to treat her allergies. But where Eric and I are different is in regards to treating the egg allergy. We will by no means be giving her scrambled eggs or something but we have noticed when eggs are cooked into something like pizza crust or bread, she does fine with them. This obviously opens up a lot of options for us and we will continue to operate on this assumption that it is safe for Kaylee. Eric and I went together to see the allergist and he said some children have an allergy to just eggs but don't have it to eggs cooked into foods. She will not get her flu shot because of this. For the peanut allergy, her numbers weren't quite as bad and he's thinking she'll outgrow it. Our daycare has a policy against peanut butter and you aren't supposed to feed any baby under 3 peanuts anyways so it won't be as big a deal. We will be watching our labels for peanuts to make sure she doesn't get any though.  

We've known for quite a while that Kaylee has dietary sensitivities. We noticed eczema, redness around the lips and face, and on one occasion hives on the lips. Also we knew she had a milk allergy because she threw up formula and milk, she would down the bottle and then throw it up 2 minutes later.   So this wasn't exactly a surprise but I still felt sad because I thought maybe it was an under-one-year thing and that she would outgrow it. Oh well.  

Daycare has an epipen and benadryl too, and all their staff is trained to use the epipen and when to use it. It makes me feel good at the moment that we have her at a center, instead of a home because they are much more familiar with these things. The cook in the kitchen has a list of all the kids with allergies and makes them alternatives to any food that would cause a problem. I love not having to worry about packing her special food to take along for daycare.  We got all her paperwork signed and the meds in place, it was more of an undertaking than I thought it would be so I'm glad we are done with the setup.

Kaylee also went to the doctor yesterday for our follow-up with her pediatrician who wanted to see her back in 6 weeks. She was encouraged to see Kaylee following her own weight curve. She is now 21 lbs 12 oz. The doctor was a little unsure about it because her weight at one point did drop from 80% to 50% but after seeing Kaylee several times, she said Kaylee's following the 50% curve quite well and is still in porportion to her height.  She was glad to hear from me that Kaylee is eating some more foods as well. Strawberries, carrots, insides of potstickers, pizza crust, crackers with avacodo on them, etc. She was super happy to hear Kaylee likes meat and is doing well on the soy (with no reaction).  She feels she'll get her fat and protein well, but wants us to limit her milk to 32 oz a day to make sure she eats her food too. She recommended to us we get a multivitamin for Kaylee to take daily just to make sure on the fruits and veggies, and recommended that we try a couple new things --- getting the fruits from a can (unsweetened) so that they are soft, and also getting the veggies from soup  so that they are soft.  So we will be trying those things.  

During the doctor's visit, Kaylee was showing off for the doctor. She was walking between the bead board on the wall and me the whole time we were talking. It was kind of hard to talk through all the babbling and squealing she did. The doctor clapped for Kaylee and said she was so happy to see her getting around so well. Kaylee cried when the doctor left the room for a minute because she was in the middle of hamming it up and wanted her audience back. She loves attention.  

She did well with the chickenpox shot and didn't even cry.  But then we had to go to the shot room for the usual hemoglobin and lead tests that they do, and boy did she cry at that. They do a finger prick for it and then scrape out the blood into a little vial. The part she didn't like the most is how she was being restrained.  I'm glad that's over with, secretely I wanted to just leave after the chickenpox vaccine. Vaccines are obviously benefitting Kaylee, as are the allergy tests because we had a reason for them but when they want to just check on things because that's what they do with all babies, I just want to get out of there. But my logical side realizes I need to do it...I'm guessing most Moms feel this way. 

From our portrait session

Baby Babble (and some words)

It's been a big couple of weeks for Kaylee, she's developing and changing so quickly! I haven't wanted to post anything because it would mean that the videos go lower on the page, so please scroll down if you want to see the cute videos of what's she's been doing lately!

Kaylee is walking a few steps at a time, at her own pace when she is in the right mood for it. She is still quite hesitant, and needs to feel comfortable.  When her aunt and uncle visited the other day, she had fun showing off all her new skills for them.  She looked very proud and dainty walking toward her aunt, her arms twisted slightly to the left to keep her body more in balance.  She also loved showing them her walker and her rocking chair. 

Kaylee's been responding to any question I ask her with a "no".  It's her favorite thing to say. We are hearing more and more her repeating words and sounds she's hearing.  The other day I told her "you are so cute" and she said "so cute" twice.  It was hard for her to say but she did it. I can't remember whether I posted that she was trying to sing Row Row Row your Boat.  She would sing along and say "row row row" and then when Merrily, Merrily came us she would say "Mer Mer..."The other day when I dropped her off at daycare she looked very happy to see her friend and I said, "Kaylee, can you say Hi, Kayla?" and she said, "Hi Kay."  It's fun that she's stringing together two words now sometimes.  She still loves to say "woof-woof" around the dogs.  She also says "quack-quack" for duck.

I took Kaylee for her one year photos the other day. It was an experience....sort of a pain.  They started the appt 40 minutes late which is not good when you have an infant = she was very tired when they finally started. During the first few mins, she was happy to show off her rocker to the photographer and she shot a few cute portraits but then she realized that I wasn't going to stand next to her and began crying. Then she got really attached and wouldn't let go of me.  There were tears until the last few minutes, when we were able to distract her with a fake flower they had.  My arm was in a few cute photos we had to erase, but we did capture the best photo candidly with her and the flower near her face.  I'm glad we went but it was a pain at the same time.

I thought Kaylee had gotten over the stealing nukies from other babies at daycare thing because I hadn't heard anything about it from the teachers...However, yesterday when I picked her up she was in the wagon with William and excitedly flinging around his nukie (on a string), she was squealing and exclaiming in her baby babble. William was looking on in wonderment and not crying (which is unusual for him).  Maybe he gave her his permission? :)

Eric and I went on a date on Saturday night and it was very fun. It was great to sit together, talk as adults and have a couple drinks. It was very nice to have someone babysit.  I wasn't quite ready for babysitting until recently. I still feel very connected to Kaylee but somehow not quite as much since she's over a year old now and I know she doesn't need me quite as badly as she did, it makes going out more enjoyable.