Kaitlyn's Page

04 January, 2008

    Kaitlyn is doing great!  Her ability to solve simple problems and to see how she stacks and moves items to get the cookies that we left out on the counter is awesome!  She loves riding her tricycle and working with puzzles.  Lately, she has been playing with her play dough and loving it.  Soon she will be enrolled in tiny tots (a pre school type class) as well as ballet and gymnastics.  We can't' wait!

19 December, 2008

    Kaitlyn is doing great!  She just turned three years old yesterday!  She started the day off with her choice of breakfast.  She chose mommy's cereal.  She had a great time answering adult questions, like "How old are you, today?"  At first she was baffled by the question, even though we had rehearsed a few times earlier.  Eventually, she came around to telling people that she was four.  A little gentle correcting and she was firm with her answer "three!"

    We had a birthday party for Kaitlyn over the weekend.  She had a blast!  She had her best friends, Emily and Allysa, over as well as a few other playmates.  She received some great gifts.  Perhaps one of her favorites came from Bill and Erin, they got her a pink power wheel!  It was definitely one of the hits of the party.  Just about each and every girl took turns riding it up and down the sidewalk!!  Kaitlyn was so excited that she was nearly shaking with anticipation to ride her new toy!

    Along with that, Kaitlyn is doing a great job of forming and communicating coherent thoughts.  She will ask for things and is beginning to understand simple reasoning.  Of course, this also brings with it the dreaded "Why?"  Unfortunately, when she really wants something there is no reasoning with her.  So, its cool to see her little brain working toward a conclusion most of the time!

    One of favorite foods right now is candy.  She loves candy and asks for it throughout the day.  There was plenty with Halloween and now again for her birthday party.  We've noticed that she gets a little more hyper when she has candy, and will likely find a way to dispose of the excess candy.  We love our little girl!

11 December, 2008

    Kaitlyn is doing great!  She constantly talks in complete sentences.  She is polite too, often saying please and thank you.  Her favorite foods right now, are gold fish and any candy.  She has also developed a taste for water, which we're not about to complain about.  I think she needs to drink a little more milk though.

    She has also developed an attachment to Ama's green blanket with a picture of a giraffe on it.  It all started about a week ago, when a company was having a promotional giveaway of a product that would record your voice narrating your favorite children's book and also allow you to insert background music and certain sound effects.  This is something that I wanted to do anyway, but having the background music and sound effects will make it that much nicer.  Anyway, it was cold that night and we bundled Kaitlyn up in a blanket, the very same one that she has developed an attachment for.  So, that's it, she has found her security blanket.

    Also, Kaitlyn had a great time decorating the tree this year.  She had been looking forward to decorating the tree for some time.  She was jumping up and down when it was finally time to start decorating.  It was very nice and very cute.

That's all for now.

ENJOY!

22 November, 2008

    Kaitlyn has finally learned to ride her trike.  I guess all we had to do was bring it inside the house.  I'm not usually one for allowing bike's or trike's in the house, but she does very well.  She learned in just a few minutes how to turn and how to continue using the pedals.  Before, when were out in the front of the house, she would get on it then start crying and just want to get off of it.  She was having problems figuring out how to turn and how to use the pedals.  Then, all of the sudden I guess it just came to her.  Now she is doing laps around the house.  To make it a little more fun I would cheer her on each accomplished lap.  She got to the point that when she finished a lap she would throw her hands up and say "I win." (I taught her that too!)

    Kaitlyn is becoming a real handful!  She still loves to explore.  She was getting into the fish food for a while.  Mandy and I left her alone for about five minutes, in that time she had successfully mixed two different kinds of fish foods with a majority of it on the floor.  Yesterday she climbed up on the counter using her bathroom stool and grabbed the salt and pepper shakers.  Of course, she also has learned to open the refrigerator and enjoys trying to poor her own milk or apple juice.  All very cute and all very messy!!

    Earlier this week I got her to sing with me.  I've been trying for quite some time to get her to sing Twinkle Little Star and she finally did it with me at the dinner table.  I realized I might have a shot when I made up a song to help her remember to only paint on the paper. :)  Anyway, I would pause at the end and she would finish it for me.  She now has Twinkle Little Star down pretty well and enjoys other songs that have motions to them as well, like Itsy Bitsy Spider.  I have to get it on video and youtube it as soon as I can.

    Another favorite of hers is pretend play.  She loves to pretend to be a puppy.  I'm not completely certain what the fascination is, but she loves it.  She also enjoys dress up and playing with stuffed toys and dolls.  At least she's mostly done playing with my toes.  That's right, my toes!!  She used to pretend they were alive and feed them and talk to them and play with them.  To her credit, I'd have them play with her too. :)

5 November, 2008

    Kaitlyn is talking in ever more complete sentences.  She loved to play with her dog, but alas that time has come to an end.  After Halloween, the dog nipped and growled at Kaitlyn.  Hoping that it was an isolated incident we separated them and let them go on.  Later, the play was repeated.  The puppy had to go.  It didn't help that Kaitlyn would play with his chew bones while he was eating them, or that she didn't understand how to let the puppy play, standing over him with a squeaky toy but never throwing it.  So, Oliver is gone now.  Kaitlyn has asked about him a couple of times, but doesn't seem overly put out.

    In fact she seems more concentrated on a balloon she lost.  Ever hear the phrase "When you see a balloon floating high in the air, you know that there is a child somewhere crying."  It's true.  Kaitlyn went to do something and lost her Jack-O-Lantern balloon.  As it floated away, her cries grew.  It took the rest of the afternoon to calm her down, and she still asked for it throughout the night.  The next day, she woke up "My balloon go in to the clouds?  My pumpkin go into the clouds?"  "That's right Kaitlyn." was my reply, trying not to belabor the issue.

    Let me continue working backwards... Halloween was a blast.  We met up with some friends and their kids and traveled as a group through the Murphy Canyon area, or at least our little corner of it.  Kaitlyn was dressed as a pirate, by her wishes, I was dressed in ghost robe, the mask scared her, Mom was witch and Ama was a strawberry.  As we went from home to home Kaitlyn was staring with absolute awe and wonder.  More than a couple of times I thought that her feet were moving her without any mental direction.  She was staring around at all the sites and how some of the houses got really into it for the holiday.  She wasn't often scared, in fact I think that there was only one costume that she didn't want to go near.  The rest of the night was great, as she would go up and shyly say "Trick or Treat" and say thank you over her shoulder as she was walking away, more concerned with the weirdness of her surroundings than with the candy gained.  She has apparently processed much of what she saw that night, because she used references to it more than a couple of times since.

22 October, 2008

    Kaitlyn is doing great!  Everyday she amazes us.  She loves to play with the new puppy, Oliver.  She chases him around and lets him chase her around the house.  She also loves to play fetch with him.  The biggest drawback to this activity is that she doesn't throw very well.  She'll get there.  Along with that, she enjoys teasing the dog.  She'll grab his bone-treats and run around the house with it, Oli chasing her all the way.  The down side to this activity is that Oli she thinks she can grab things out of his mouth while he is eating.  Oli has growled at her once or twice because of this.

    Kaitlyn's favorite toy is the sandbox.  We got her a Clifford sandbox a couple of weeks ago and she absolutely loves it!  She spends hours in the backyard playing in it.  She also enjoys when her friend Alysa comes over to play, so they can both play in the sand.  Of course, every good thing comes with a bad thing... we now have to sweep on a daily basis to keep the sand under control. :)

    Well, I guess that's about it for now.  Enjoy.

4 October, 2008

    Kaitlyn is doing great!  She is truly smart.  She knows how to turn on the lights in her play room and the bathroom.  Okay, sometimes she doesn't like to turn them off.  She also knows how to turn on the TV, maybe that's not the best thing, but she is smart!  Her vocabulary has really expanded.  If we thought she was a sponge before.... well she is definitely a sponge now.  She used to repeat a word out of a sentence, or an exclamation (especially the ones while driving).  haha.  Now she is able to repeat whole sentences with little problems.  Even to take your statement and turn it into a question.  "Kaitlyn, time for a bath."  "It's time for Kaitlyn bath?"

    It has taken her a little bit of adjustment time to get used to her new house.  She likes it, that's for sure.  She has much more room to run around in, she has a play room that the girls will share.  She even has a backyard to run around in.  Soon she will have a puppy from the pound to help occupy her time.

    However, the move wasn't all cookies and cream.  She had a bit of a difficult transition at first.  Mom and Dad didn't make the correlation, but when we were getting ready for the move, we weren't sure if the Navy was going to move us.  Well, it turned out that they did, YEAH!  but we had already packed up Kaitlyn's toys and much of her room in the expectation of moving ourselves.  We didn't get her toys unpacked until a couple of days after we had arrived in our new home.

    Well, during that same period Kaitlyn had progressed into a crying machine.  She would cry at the drop of a hat and she became pretty hateful as well.  When we had finally unpacked her toys and got her play room set up, she went to her toys and began to pick each one of them up and hug them.  Talk about making us feel a little guilty!  We had no idea that she was missing her toys that much and had believed that the new house would be enough to keep her occupied until we had the chance to unpack the toys.

    Anyway, that's over and its a huge lesson learned.  Kaitlyn is an awesome little girl.  She enjoys playing outside, only if we are outside with her.  One outside activity that she enjoys is to play pirate.  She will also play outside with other kids.  Lately, Alysa(sp?) has been coming over to play with Kaitlyn.  They get along pretty well, and have a good time playing.

That's it for now!

22 July, 2008

    Kaitlyn is doing great!  She is so smart and getting smarter all the time.  However, she can also be more than a handful, especially an hour or two before bedtime.  This can be a difficult time for us because it is during the "ramp it down" time period that we like to do to help Kaitlyn prepare for bedtime.

    Her speech is  very clear for her age and she does well with it.  She is like a parrot so we have to be on guard with what we say.  She loves to go outside, and we can't wait to get a place that has a yard so that she can have even more outside time.

    Though sitting at the table is something that she is still not too keen on, she has much less problems lately with eating dinner.  When she has spaghetti o's we still have to lend some assistance, but otherwise she does well on her own.  She even makes smart and healthy eating choices.

    Her play is becoming more active and physical.  She loves loves loves to climb things, but as there is not much that we will let her climb in the apartment, she usually resorts to climbing her Daddy.  Each day that Daddy comes home is welcomed by Kaitlyn, who comes running up to him give him a hug and a kiss. :)

    She has adopted a few of Daddy's sayings which are super cute!  For example if you ask her something to verify that's what she wants she'll reply "that's right."  If you ask her a yes or no question you may just get a "soo-er"

21 June, 2008

    Kaitlyn is doing great!  I can't believe how well she is doing!  A couple of weeks of ago she helped me make breakfast.  She had a hard time keeping the shell out of the eggs after she cracked them open, but other than that she did very well.  I still won't let her help around the hot stove, but helping with toast, breaking yokes and mixing eggs? Absolutely!  We have so many great pictures of her that its hard to decide which ones to showcase on this page.  Her vocabulary skills are also increasing.  She is doing very well speaking in sentences.  She frequently says "please" and "your welcome", though not as much "thank you". :)  For the most part, she takes direction well, as well as one can expect from a 2.5 year old. 

    She actually does better when the directions are for help.  She loves to grab her little vacuum and get the floors clean right along with us.  She also enjoys making breakfast, and believe it or not, she loves to help in changing her sister's diapers.  She is in charge of the wipes and the "shake shake" or baby powder.  When her sister is crying she has followed her father's soothing call and tells Amaris "it's okay," sometimes adding "sister" or "baby". :) 

    She also loves to get the mail and to drop it off in the big blue mail box on the corner.  Recently, I took her to the pool to enjoy some outside time and she had a blast.  She loves to get into the water and swim around.  She actually made it from one end of the pool to the other on her own!  Speaking of things that she loves, she loves to get her nails done.  She frequently comes up to Mandy and points a finger at her nails and says "Pink! Pink Mommy!"  She will then, with Mom's permission run to get the nail polish and giggle uncontrollably as Mandy applies the "pink".

    She is certainly full of energy.  She always seems to get a burst of energy just about an hour before bed time.  This is the time that Mommy and I liked to use to decompress a little and get some food. The other day we went to "LA" to visit with Kaitlyn's aunt Julie and cousin Breanna, who was graduating later that day.  She had a great time over there, and wanted to play constantly, especially with Julie's dog.  Speaking of dogs, they create a bi-product that we often refer to as "land mines"  and you can only guess whose little shoes managed to find one!  She had a wonderful visit with Julie and family and interacted well with them all.

    She has also recently been to Sea World, the San Diego Zoo, Julie's house, Cadman Park (she loves arts and crafts),

    Kaitlyn  is such a bundle of energy and so curious about the world.  We love her so much.

2 June,2008

    Kaitlyn is still adjusting to having a little sister.  She is starting to notice that she has to share the spot light with her little sister, who takes much of Mommy's time.  So, the inevitable result is that she hangs out with Daddy more.

    Kaitlyn is getting so smart.  She is talking in full sentences of about 6 words on a fairly regular basis.  She is also creative and imaginative.  She has created her own song that Daddy calls the Yummy dance.  This is because that is the word that she repeats as she shuffles from side to side.  I haven't been able to make her do it on demand, she will tell me, "No, stop it!  Kaitlyn's song."

    She drives her daddy nuts when we go out shopping.  She loves to sit in the basket, and her newest favorite thing is to grab items that are within reach when we stop.  Also, we went somewhere the other day and were using a basket.  I had set it down to discuss a Skype phone with Mandy, when I went to get the basket it was full of items that Kaitlyn decided that we needed.  What she was going to do with all that phone cable is anyone's guess.

    Singing and dancing are her favorite activities and she has also discovered how to do a summersault lately.

    That's it for now!  Enjoy

21 May, 2008

    Kaitlyn is doing great!  She is still getting used to the idea of having another body in the house.  She loves routine and is learning things very quickly.  She loves to play sing-a-long songs that the whole family can enjoy, and she picks up the flow of the song very quickly, even managing to remember a verse or two!  Amazing!  Her schedule is a little off right now, she can blame her sister for that! ;)  She is always talking and is now nearly up to full sentences.  She has begun asking reasonably well framed questions.  This last has blown us away!!  What has not blown us away is her defiance and the use of the word no.  Time out is getting used more and more, and continues to be the most effective way to correct it.  After time out she comes to us more calmly and we explain why she went. 

28 April, 2008

    Kaitlyn is doing great.  She loves to jump and play.  Her vocabulary is constantly growing as Mommy and I look at each other and ask, "when did she learn that?"  Like when she said the couch was "slippery."  We think that she is getting the last of her molars, at least we're hoping that's the reason for the sudden onset of saliva and drool.  The other day she told us her ear was hurting, fearing another ear infection we, okay Mandy, took her to the hospital the next day, she checked out okay, but that's when they told us about the molars.

    She does very well with her colors, she does much better when she focuses on answering the questions.  She has the primary colors down, and is working on defining the shades of the colors.  For example, red and pink, she seems to get these two colors confused.

    She still loves music and to dance, just make sure that you don't sing or dance without her permission or else she'll tell you to "stop it!"  I found a great website to help her get comfortable with the computer and to have a lot of fun.  We go to PBSKIDS.ORG.  She really enjoys the the Curious George games, the ones on the right, like the matching games.  She does very well with these.  We were actually quite surprised when she was shown a picture of a baker and immediately chose the image of a cake to pair with it.  WOW.  As we continued to explore this site together we discovered the Dragon Tales area of the site.  I didn't much care for it until I stumbled upon the songs.  We are now going to go out and buy the dragon tales CD.  She loves participating in the song and dance of the songs, as do we.

Well I guess that's it for now.  ENJOY!!

03 April, 2008

    Kaitlyn is doing very well.  She still loves to climb on everything.  She flops around all over me and her Mommy.  She is getting smarter every day, too.  She loves to learn new things.  Her latest mastery is in the area of colors.  It has taken a little while, okay a few months, but she can now identify a color with relative ease.  She still loves to watch Dora and Diego and loves to go outside to pick flowers.  The other day she surprised her mommy and me by saying "No Daddy, Kaitlyn sit right here!"  When I called her to come to me.  This wasn't surprising for its defiance, but for the complexity of a six word sentence!

    She is also testing her boundaries.  During a walk the other day, she was leading us down the sidewalk and got further in front of than we felt comfortable with.  Calling to her simply prompted her to walk faster.  Not to worry, I caught up to her and explained why not to get so far ahead of us.  While I'm sure that she doesn't each word, I know that she understands that Daddy wasn't going to allow her to cross this boundary.  Also, her favorite word and phrase is No and "Stop it".  Saying it freely to Mommy and Daddy whenever she decides that she doesn't want to do something.

    She loved Easter day.  She had a great time waking up and finding where the eggs were hidden, and of course it helped that each egg was filled with her favorite treats, jelly-beans!  She also enjoyed talking to the camera for short video recordings and then seeing them on the computer before daddy sent them out to family.

11 March, 2008

    It has certainly been a while since I had updated this page.  Kaitlyn is doing great.  Her vocabulary is growing at a phenomenal rate.  She is starting to get the hang of numbers and colors.  She loves to climb!  She tries to climb her daddy so that she can get up on my shoulders.  Obviously, Mom isn't going to have any of that!  She is learning so fast, that I find that I often have difficulties trying to keep up with her.  Recently we've had some issues with her eating at the table, she doesn't like it.

    Another milestone, is that she tries to wait until morning to pee, and frequently makes it.  She is nearly entirely potty trained.  I guess she observed her Daddy one too many times though.  When she is on the potty in the mornings she grabs one of daddy's magazines from the shelf and reads it while taking care of her morning business.  It is too funny!  Well, I guess that's it for now.  Take it easy everyone.  ENJOY!!

13 February, 2008

    Kaitlyn is doing great.  I think that her teeth havev been bothering lately, but other than that she is doing fantastic.  She loves to run and play and explore.  Some of her newest activities are to shut herself in her room.  Or she'll drag us in and then shut the door.  She seems to enjoy the whole door thing.  Of course, she can't open that door yet, so she's been pretty upset a few times, because she locked herself in.

    She is growing so quickly its hard to keep up and its hard to keep taking note of how fast she is developing.  Her vocabulary is constantly growing which is very cool.  She knows light and dark and knows hot and cold.  She has just recently learned what "color" means and while she can identify the differences between colors we are still working on identifying the individual colors.  She has absolutely no problem sorting by color.

    We found out, quite by accident, that she loves to dance and loves to make music.  We were in her room the other day when I spontaneously grabbed a toy box and started to drum on the bottom of it, she immediately began to dance.  On her own, she picked up the blocks, which have small objects inside them, and began to shake them.  AMAZING!!  We have since cashed in our change in order to buy her (and daddy) little drums.

    She still enjoys climbing on daddy's back to ride him like a horsey, and has lately taken to telling daddy where to go.  It is very cute.  She is also hitting her temper though.  She will scream when she can't get her way.  We have discovered On-Demand on cable and would use it occasionally to let Kaitlyn watch her Dora shows.  Now she comes to us with the remote and tells us what show she would like to watch.  She seems to be favoring the TV a bit too much, so we are slowing down the amount of TV that she gets.

    She does so many amazing things on a regular basis that it is often difficult to keep up with everything.

Enjoy!

20 January, 2008

    Kaitlyn has been off to a great start so far this year.  She has visited with the doctor for her 2 year check up and is doing very well.  She is in the 95 percentile for height and in the 50th percentile for her weight.  If I remember right it was something like 37" tall and 27 pounds.  The Dr told us she is almost as tall as girls about a year older than her.  I'm wondering when she'll slow down.

    Lately she has been teething.  Her back molars have been coming in and she has been a little moodier than normal.  I think that's its also affecting her sleep and her balance.  She has fallen on our furniture twice now hitting her mouth in the same spot.  No, she didn't do it on purpose, she's just at that perfect height for smacking her mouth on stuff.  I remember a few months back when she'd fall and hit her head, giving herself nice little welts on her noggin.

    Anyway, she recognizes and calls out shapes.  She loves to make the sounds of the animals that she knows.  Speaking of animals, one of her favorite things right now is to feed her fish. We bought her a Beta (sp)  for Christmas and then we discovered that a friend was also getting rid of their two gallon tank, complete with equipment, fish and a frog.  Kaitlyn loves the frog and the Beta, which for some reason has been called Paco, while the frog is called Ribbit (which I taught her).  It is funny to hear her say frog, because it most certainly does not sound like frog, but more like another 4 letter word that begins with that letter.

    We just got done with a milestone in parenting.  We realized that Kaitlyn was becoming dependent upon us to feed her.  It only took a day but it was a painful day for us, as we transitioned her back to feeding herself.  Now on to the utensils!

    And I was saving the best for last....  Kaitlyn has the basics down for potty training.  In just a few days, Mommy helped Kaitlyn figure out where she was to potty.  She now cries "oww, ow, ow" when she has to make peepee.  She has used the potty for poopoo but she normally goes at night, and we haven't tackled that issue yet.  She also mostly uses the potty at home, meaning that we are still saving on diapers!

    I know that there is more that I wanted to add, but I can't for the life of me remember right now.  I guess it can wait. 

ENJOY!!

03 January, 2008

    Kaitlyn had a great Christmas and new Year!  She enjoyed her tricycle and other gifts very much.  She loves to play with anything that we can play with her.  I'm still working on how to properly use the computer, as opposed to simply bashing away at the keyboard and throwing the mouse, which with a wireless system is not very nice.  Anyway, Kaitlyn had a great time.

    One of her favorite gifts was a tea set that we finally got out of the packaging the next day for her.  I was the first guinea pig to play with it with her, and she had a blast.  Now it is one of her favorite things to grab us to sit at her little table and play tea party with her.  On occasion she'll play with one of her dolls, but not as often as wanting to play with us.

    Our little girl seems to get the idea that Mommy has her little sister in her belly.  She will point to Mommy's belly and say "sister" or "baby".  It is very cute.  She is absolutely amazing and is constantly growing, not just physically but mentally as well.  She frequently talks in short sentences and uses pronouns very effectively.  She is in that mimic mode, so we really have to watch what we say lest we want it repeated