14 Months
Kayla is improving on her verbal communicate skills! She signs "more" all the time and the other day when signing it I asked what she wanted more of (because we were changing her diaper!) and she said "ju" (juice)!! I was thrilled and of course got her her juice as soon as she was in her clean diaper and praised her so much! She also says "dow" (down) when she is ready to get out of your arms or out of her feeding chair. She also says "ch" (cheese) when we ask her to, and at dinner the other night she pointed to it and said it when she had finished her last bite of it and wanted more! She says "hhh" (hot) when I tell her things I'm giving her to eat are hot, or when I'm cooking on the stove top, or when I'm opening the oven door. She mostly repeats the words when we ask her to say them, but she's starting to say them on her own (in the last few days). She continues to say "ba" (ball) whenever she sees them (in person, in a book, on tv, on our shirts!), and points out dogs and says "da" for them. I'm still really unclear as to whether or not she is saying words or just sounds still, but she is communicating to us and it is a lot of fun!
She LOVES "The Itsy Bitsy Spider". When I start to sing it she does the motion for "down came the rain" (that's the only motion she knows!) and it often sounds like she is trying to sing with me!
She says something that sounds like "tickle-tickle-tickle" (which we say all the time when we tickle her) and makes the tickle motion to us and giggles with us!
She can point out her own belly button, which is super cute! She can point to mine too (much to my dismay, as I really dislike belly buttons in general!)! She also knows where her toes and nose are and will point to them occasionally when prompted. Speaking of toes, she bit her big toe a long time ago (6 months ago maybe)... and just last week I told David that it looked like she might lose her toe nail because it was starting to turn a different color and looked almost like there was another nail growing behind it. Well, sure enough, it fell off last week! I looked down at her and she was playing with the nail which was almost completely detached - yuck! But at least it didn't hurt her! Hopefully she learned her lesson and won't bite her toes again! :)
She has lately been obsessed with putting things in and out of other things. For example, we play with her farm and I'm sitting Indian style on the ground.... she puts all her farm animals between my legs and then takes them out, and then puts them in. Or, we have these boxes from Ikea that my mom got for her and she loves putting things in them (including things like our slippers) and then taking everything out, then putting it all back in and so on. She also likes to put herself in these boxes and play! She is starting to show interest in the shape sorter and putting objects into the correct holes! That is fun to see.
She continues to find new ways to climb. She can now climb up the dining room chairs. That means that I need to have them pushed in at all times or she is able to access anything she wants on the table top (which is the only place left in the main area that I had previously considered child proof). She also climbs on top of the couches and and transfers from couch to couch via the arms. Sometimes she moves from the arms of the couches and onto the end table inbetween them. Not good.
She is really running around these days. In the last several days I've noticed that she's suddenly much less stable than she has been! I don't know if she's just wired or what, but it's like she is bouncing off the walls (literally) and tripping over imaginary toys all the time! Hopefully this phase passes soon!
She just got her top 2 canine teeth this week, making 14 total!
We've dropped the afternoon nursing, so she is nursing just 3 times a day. She eats a pretty large breakfast, a massive lunch, but her dinner has slowed down. She still eats a good amount, but not as much as she used to. David has been working with her on this trick (see below!!).
She's sleeping about 11 hours at night these days (9-8) and is taking about a 45 min morning nap (late, though, like around noon) and then a longer nap in the afternoon (often an hour plus, but again late, like at 5). She's possibly going to transition to just 1 nap soon, and ideally right after lunch. We'll see how the next month plays out. (She takes her naps in her crib, but the picture below of David is right after she woke up and still was sleepy. The picture of me and her is one afternoon when she wouldn't go down for a nap so I nursed her to sleep on the couch and we napped together!)
1. Her eyes are still a pretty blue color.
2. We gave Kayla eye drops for the 2 weeks the Dr suggested (which was mildly traumatic... she did get used to them so it got a little better with time). We are now in a holding period where we are just looking for signs that it is either plugged or not plugged. Time will tell I guess.