Kaitlyn & Sadie Playing

Kaitlyn likes playing with Sadie; this is really a new thing. Kensey doesn't know how to handle the two of them roughhousing. He thinks Sadie's growling is aggression. Seeing how he feels Kaitlyn is a maggot that needs to be out of our lives, well, he doesn't need any other excuse to jump in and bite. We have to really watch Kensey while the girls play making sure he stays out of it.

We Tried!

To our parents we want you to know we tried. Kaitlyn is in agreement with Neal and I that spinach is gross. I think she has my gag reflex, but thankfully she didn't employ it last night. Actually she didn't even taste it. She took the fork to her face and it looked promising, but instead of taking a bite she smelled it. No bite. Yuck! It actually touched her cheek and she quickly started wiping trying to get the juices off. Neal and I had an agreement that if she didn't like it we were going to immediately put it in the "recycling" bin. Well, it was "recycled" right after this video was taken.

By the way, I'm a parent, I'm supposed to say it's good, but I don't have to try it. I say, "Mmm" when I give her tomatoes and she doesn't want to eat them yet I would never put one in my mouth. Remember the gag reflex I mentioned above? I don't want to scare the child. "I can't eat that, mommy just vomited."

Toddlers

Kaitlyn is being really trying today. She has thrown her cloth wipes and disposable diapers off her changing table four to five times today. If I had cloth diapers stuffed and up there as well as the container of wet wipes full she would have had those everywhere too. I'm tired of picking them up so now I have moved to making Kaitlyn pick it all up. Why not she made the mess and knows how to pick things up. Since the second mess of the day I've had her hand me everything while I reorganize it. I try not to let her seem me chuckle while she stoops over and hands me everything behind her back. Her I am looking at a little booty and back, reaching almost down to the floor anyway, so I can retrieve diapers and cloth wipes from her hands. There have been spankings. Yes, we spank! Don't confuse a spanking with a beating. Kaitlyn gets her thigh swatted once or twice when needed. It took a couple swats to get her going a few minutes ago, but she finally handed me everything. After picking it all up I told her to get on her bed. It's amazing she can climb a changing table/dresser, but not a bed. I gave her a little boost up. I wasn't downstairs no time when I heard the distinct noises of her making another mess. I immediately went back upstairs to see all my hard work on the floor again. No spankings were needed this time to get her picking everything up (I put the cloth wipes away this time as well as the water bottle (to wet wipes)) and headed to bed. I haven't heard anything from her. I hope she is actually going to sleep. She used her mess making as an excuse not nap this morning.

Oh, I better go call the vet.

"Ken-sey"

Kaitlyn learned a new word yesterday. After months of her calling everything with four legs and sometimes two (ex.a peacock) Sadie, she finally said Kensey yesterday. She has never been able to say K's so tackling this name was big for her. I got her to say it a couple weeks ago, but after two tries she was done. Yesterday she kept calling Kensey Sadie and I would correct her. Suddenly she said "Ken-sey". She played around with the word a little bit until she felt it was perfected.

Speaking of Kensey, he is doing really well. Or at least he isn't vomiting and pooping indoors anymore. I'm hoping yesterdays success wasn't just the product of all the shots he got. I still have three meds I'm squirting in his mouth or pills I'm having to put down his throat; I hate forcing pills down a dogs throat.

Baby

I've started to wonder if Kaitlyn knows how to take care of her babies. There have only been a handful of times where we have showed Kaitlyn how to feed them. Today I decided to show her again. I picked up a baby and started cradling it. I declared it was hungry and grabbed a bottle. I noticed the two quilts laying nearby so I wrapped the baby up in one. Kaitlyn quickly got interested. There was another baby near me so I wrapped it up and handed Kaitlyn a bottle to feed it. For whatever reason feeding the baby in person wasn't the same as watching me feed it because I ended up with two bottles and one abandoned baby. I sat her on the couch and handed her my baby. I then picked up hers, fed it for a moment, burped it and laid it back down; the whole time she just sat there watching while feeding the baby she was holding. A few minutes later I walked through the living room to see this...


Easy come easy go. I guess the bottle looked more appealing to her then feeding the baby. For all inquiring minds Kaitlyn hasn't had a bottle since she was 11.5 months old and a paci since she was 5.5 months old. She is sucking/biting on it just because.

When walking downstairs this morning I was thinking how we need to keep things put away at night after Kaitlyn has gone to bed. We tend to leave the kitchen gate open, the remote laying around, Neal's cup and/or plate out from the last thing he consumed. Now that Kaitlyn can come down on her own she is able to get to these things. It's okay for her to have raisins, but we usually give them to her 1-2 at a time. Raisins are a choking hazard. Notice she dumped some raisins into the lid, like I do when serving her a couple, but she's eating out of the container.

Already this morning I can tell we have moved into a new phase in toddlerhood. Kaitlyn has taken her pants off 4-5 times and her shirt twice. Is it overall time???

Inspiration

I need some new inspiration to get back in the saddle again. I still haven't put Grandma's birthday present together and her birthday was last month. Oops! I have fabric for Kaitlyn some sleeping pants that I really need to get to because it's getting colder. I haven't washed it yet which is really what's the hold up. I have some bows for Kaitlyn that just need the clip and center knot glued on. I know if she had an outfit they matched I would have put them together right away.

I did make her a tiny green bow recently just because. It's as long as the clip it's on. I haven't made her one that size since she was about 6 months old. I go through periods of wanting her to have something small in her hair and others where she needs a big bow.

Here's the small green bow.

This is a big bow I made for her new dress.

I got some fabric in a couple days ago for me a skirt and Kaitlyn a couple dresses. I really need to get to them. I would hate to transport fabric to our new home.

You would think this new play pretty would be enough to get me going again. I actually haven't taken it out of the box yet.

Moms and Dads

There's a reason God made women to be moms and not men. Today I took Kaitlyn to base so we could check the mail then go to the community center where she could play while I worked out. I asked her if she wanted to play before we left the house and told her she could slide. I went to the post office first figuring I should get it out of the way. While taking Kaitlyn out of her car seat she is saying "slide, slide" at which I reminded her we were going to check the mail first. She kept up her chanting, "slide, slide... slide, slide". After checking our mailbox I started taking back to the car. She was determined she was going to slide. On a side note you can see the park from the post office. Before I got Kaitlyn into the car she went limp on me. The child wanted to slide and of course mommy had either forgotten that is what she promised or mommy is a liar. Either way she wasn't pulling out any stops. She started to cry, but quickly suppressed it. I kept trying to reassure her she was going to slide. It didn't matter her lips were quivering and you could tell she was fighting to regain control. When I told Neal about this tonight his response was, "I would have taken her for five minutes". Of course he would. His daughter is in the middle of learning an important lesson in controlling her emotions and he would ruin it by giving her what she wants or thinks she wants. I backed the car out of the space and started to the end of the parking lot; Kaitlyn kept her eyes glued on the park the whole time, her lip still quivering. As I took a left (park to right) headed for the community center she didn't cry. She started looking around at everything around us and didn't saying anything about "play" or "slide" again. I kept trying to tell her we were going to play, but she didn't understand. The place she wanted to go was behind us. A minute later we were getting out of the car at the community center. Kaitlyn had a good 40-45 minutes of playing while I beat my body on the treadmill and stationary bike. If I had taken her to the other park even for 5 minutes she wouldn't have lasted so long at the community center. That is why I'm Kaitlyn's mommy and not Neal.