Observant, clean and alien

When we take Kylie to the mall, she is keenly observant. You can practically hear the wheels whirring in her head.

After walking around the mall a bit, we took her to the little, mall play area. I gave her whispered instructions to not catch a cold or a virus. What does she do? She crawls over to the only place in the carpet that had a piece of embedded gum and proceeds to pick at it. That's my girl.

I did manage to lure her away and she played a bit on the various props. All the kids around her were much older and very rambunctious. I'm continually impressed with Kylie's ability to not get overwhelmed in situations where there are a lot of kids and noise. Even when one child started to play with her hair, and then another slightly pushed her away from a prop, Kylie just looks at them as if to say, "Hello fellow human child. You are quite an interesting creature".

I've started to call her my little scientist (and sometimes my little alien--she gets this "other-wordly" look about her when she stares at you).

Anyway, here are a few photos of the day.

Mommy helping her walk across a bridge so that she can slide down the other side.


Bouncy plastic flowers--fun! fun!


And a little bit of ice cream.


You might remember this picture from our April TN trip--still trying to catch up on scrapping all of those. I've just got two left to go!

Details are here.

WALKING!

At last! At last!

Kylie is walking!

Our cautious, 15 1/2 month-old girl is now taking steps. She took 8-10 steps all by herself several times today. We are ecstatic!

I must admit that it has been slightly worrisome to attend our weekly Gymboree classes and see almost all the babies start walking on their own at 12 months. For 3 months now, we've been saying to ourselves, "Maybe this week". And now, THIS is the week.

Each time she walked today I would stop breathing and just stare. I was afraid to hoop and hollar too much because I didn't want to startle her. But I sure did praise her every time.

Now, I know you're might be thinking, "Oh, you'll look back on those non-walking days with envy before you know it". You are probably right. But for now, I'm just so stinkin' happy and relieved.

I wasn't able to capture the walking on camera. But I did get this great "Standing Up" series.






I love the toe-curling, lip-biting Kylie action.

Let's see.....
A few more pictures.....
If you were to click on this zoomed in photo, you might be able to see one of Kylie's new upper teeth. It's on the right upper side in the photo.


Oh. And we got two new chairs today. We had to buy them because one of the cats peed on one of our matching set family room chairs. We got a good deal on these and they match our family room sofa very well. Here's Kylie playing peek-a-boo on one of them.


But the big news of the day is the WALKING! Hang in there sweet Kylie. It's only going to get easier and better.

Just stuff

This word art was created by Wordle/create. Just type in your blog address and you'll get back an image like this one. Be sure to play around with the rounded corners, different fonts and colors.

We had a pretty quiet weekend.

We saw the movie Wanted on Friday night. Pretty high body count on this one. I don't think I'll buy it on DVD--even though it has the lovely Angelina Jolie as the starring actress.

Karen spent some time building new shelves for our garage and cleaning it out. It looks so much better.

I started reading Victory of Eagles on my Kindle. I'm loving my Kindle by the way.

And I finished this scrapbook page. This was from Kylie's first zoo visit. I had this page almost completed back in June but I just hated it. So I started all over and ended up with this.

The creative process just fascinates me. Usually I'll have an idea in mind when I start a page but it rarely looks like that first mental picture when I finish. Watching a page evolve and trying new things is part of why I love to scrapbook. For me, it's so much more than capturing pictures and stories (which is awesome in itself). Anyway, details of the page are here.

Foot rattles

My foot-freaky girl has been intent on wearing her infant foot rattles for the past few days. They barely fit on her feet but she finds them totally amusing. Whenever one of them falls off, she'll crawl over to me and hold the sock out and her foot up. She's a strange little critter.

You can't see them in pictures yet but Kylie has finally cut two more teeth- one on the top and one on the bottom. And she has several more that look ready to cut any day. She's had only her four teeth since she was nine months old. Some more teeth will be a welcome change.

We just got her this mermaid washcloth that we keep wet and in the freezer. She likes it much better than the frozen teething rings.


Have a great weekend!

New "B's"

Baaa
For the second time this week, Kylie has seen a picture of a sheep and said, "baaaa".

EyeBrows
As Karen was playing with Kylie, she lifted her eyebrows up and down. This utterly fascinated the baby and she is intent on trying to move her own eyebrows around. Mostly, it just looks like her squinting.

Blowing Bubbles
Kylie has started leaning over in her bathtub at night and blowing bubbles into the water. She just spontaneously started doing this which sorta freaked me out. To my knowledge, she's never even seen someone stick their face in the water. I guess she just instinctively knew how to do it. She just leans over and blows. And when she sits up, she doesn't rub her eyes. She just blinks away the water and smiles. Amazing. I guess we'll soon be going to swim classes.

Banquet
Kylie has started stuffing her Elmo's mouth with Cheerios.
(picture captured with the iPhone in the car).


Lastly, here is the very simple scrapbook page I made of Kylie's recent wake-up photos.

Fork and spoon

Yesterday, we let Kylie feed herself with a fork and spoon (with a little bit of help from us).

Here she is eating a mandarin orange:

And then a banana slice:

She is so proud of herself! And loving those cheers we're giving her.

Then we moved on to applesauce and her own spoon.

Which was also a big hit.

Come a little closer with that camera Mommy!

I'm a big girl now!


And here's another scrapbook page:

Details are here.

A few new things

I wanted to capture and share with you a few new things that Kylie's doing.

1. Sshhh goes the air conditioner
Kylie is very aware of the air conditioner in our home. When it kicks on, she smiles and makes the shhhh sound. Then she crawls to the nearby air vent and puts her hand over it to feel the air. If I say, "Can I have some air?", she'll "grab" some air and hand it to me. It's very cute.

2. Walking the stairs.
Although she can crawl up the stairs much faster, lately she's been insisting on holding onto my hands and "walking" up the stairs. This "walking" mostly consists of me hefting her up by her hands (which makes me worry that her arms are going to pop out of socket) as she touches her toes to each stair. It's a good workout for me and it makes her feel like a big girl or something so I'm indulging her on this one.

3. The garbage can is fun!
Kylie has also learned to lift the lid of our kitchen garbage can and drop things in it. So now I have to keep more of a watchful eye on her when we are in the kitchen together. Fishing Little People out of kitchen scraps and trash is not my idea of fun.

4. Peek-a-boo and hugs
Kylie has been playing peek-a-boo with us by peeking around furniture and by using a blanket or other toys for quite some time. But now she has learned to put her hands over her eyes to play peek-a-boo. It's very sweet. I just wish she didn't want to play this so much while she is eating. Food ends up everywhere!
And Kylie has been hugging her stuffed animals for a while. But now when you say "hug" to her, she'll grab her shirt with her hands and twist back and forth--essentially hugging herself.

Lastly, here's a scrapbook page.

Waking Up Photo Series

Sits up, rubs her head, wonders why Mommy is taking pictures.

Grabs teddy bear and yawns a bit.

Stands up.

S-T-R-E-T-C-H-E-S.

Smiles. (and secretly plots to wake ME up with camera as soon as she can).

Flickr fun

I found this meme from Stitch Marker's blog and thought it was fun.

Here's how it works:

Using BigHugeLabs Mosaic maker to make a mosaic and Flickr to do your searches,
Type your answer to each of the questions below into Flickr Search.
Using only the FIRST page, pick an image.
Copy and paste each of the URLs for the images into fd’s mosaic maker.

The Questions:
1. What is your first name?
2. What is your favorite food?
3. What high school did you go to?
4. What is your favorite color?
5. Who is your celebrity crush?
6. Favorite drink?
7. Dream vacation?
8. Favorite dessert?
9. What you want to be when you grow up?
10. What do you love most in life?
11. One word to describe you.
12. Your flickr name.

It is pretty wild what shows up on that first Flickr page. Can you guess what some of my answers were? They may not be what you think.

Language Explosion

Yesterday was one of those day where Karen and I would meet each other's eyes over Kylie's head and smile a lot at one another. The reason for all this smiling was listening to Kylie mimic us and say lots of new words.

It started when Kylie heard our garbage truck coming down the road. Momma Karen held Kylie up to the window and said, "It's the garbage truck" and Kylie prompted said back, "Truck". Kylie said "truck" to herself for most of the morning. Our little block is a good place for the garbage trucks to circle to change their directions, so we saw lots of garbage trucks going yesterday. Each time Kylie heard the a truck, she wanted to be held up to the window and she would say, "truck" again.

But she also mimicked us and said these new words:
pop- while pointing to her pop beads
poot- I'll let you figure that one out.
peek-a-boo
baa- when she picked up her toy sheep and
woof woof- when she saw a dog

Those last two she said on her own without us saying them first. The next few days will tell if any of these words are official "learned" words but it sure was fun hearing her talk so much.

I had fun making this scrapbook 2-pager last night. The journaling is from Kylie's 15 month letter update.

Details are here.

15 months

Dearest Kylie,

This month you learned the word “No” but you don’t always use it appropriately. For example, we’ll ask you if you want juice and you’ll say, “No, no, no” but then you’ll reach for the juice and drink some anyway. You like to walk around singing “No” to yourself. It seems that saying this word gives you a sense of power and independence. Yet you can also use the word correctly—like when it’s time for a diaper change and you want to keep playing or when we offer a food that you don’t want.

You love to say “Hi”. One memorable event was when we were walking through a bookstore. You were walking holding on to Momma Karen’s finger and cruising the aisles looking for people to say “Hi” too. You light up when people say “Hi” back to you.

You can point to your own eyes, ears, nose, mouth, hair, and toes. You can also point to these parts on your dolls and your mommies.

You’ve become fascinated with belly buttons or as you call them, “beh-buh”. You’ll pull your shirt up several times a day to touch your belly button and pronounce its name. And then you’ll insist on seeing ours. You like to put your fingers in our belly buttons and laugh.

You’ve always liked being outside but this month you’ve become insistent on it. You love to push your cart up and down the sidewalks for what I’ve started calling your “adventure walks”. You touch the neighborhood plants and play with rocks and have a wonderful time.

You now can follow simple instructions. For example, we’ll say, “Kylie, it’s time to go upstairs” and you’ll crawl to the stairs and start going up them.

You’ve learned how to drink from a cup if we hold it for you. You can also easily drink through a straw. And you’ve started offering your sippy cup to your favorite dolls and make sipping noises for them.

We took you to a child’s shoe store and got you fitted with your first pair of “real” shoes. You wear a size four and we got you a pair of tennis shoes and a pair of sandals. We also took you to a pool for the first time and you loved it. We found a nine-inch wading pool at a nearby recreation center that is perfect for wading. You’ve enjoyed it so much that we’ve taken you several times this month.

Although you’ve started to assert your independence and will a bit in typical toddler fashion, overall you are an easy-going, happy, curious, loving little girl.


PS- the sunglasses photos have nothing to do with her 15 month update but they were too cute not to post. We took them yesterday with Karen's iPhone. If you zoom in on the bottom one, you'll see me with my usual open-mouth, incredibly loud laugh and Karen as she's giggling and clicking pictures.

Skinned knee

We were walking on the sidewalk late yesterday afternoon. Kylie saw some people ahead of her and wanted to flirt with them so she quickened her pace to a very fast walk. Sure enough, she got going too fast and lost her balance. She slid on her knees for half a foot. The good news was that she didn't even cry. She just got up and started smiling and flirting. The bad news was she DID start to cry when the water from the bathtub hit the skid burn.

And this is what it looks like this morning. Not too bad but I can tell that crawling on it bothers her. It is just the first of many I'm sure.

Cruising around and snoopy vultures

Kylie is just a few days short of her 15 month birthday. She's not walking independently yet but she really flies when she's cruising around with her walker. Here's a quick (but poorly lighted)video:

And if you watched it to the end, you can see that she's quite adept at getting stuff out of her way!

The Little People are a huge hit!
She likes to push them all up into a chair.

Takes a brief moment to enjoy her stash--usually she sits on them too. Don't ask me why.

Then she drops them back down.

And then the process starts all over again. I'm lovin' that she can occupy herself with these.

Kylie loves to hang herself over the arms of the furniture. This used to freak me out because I was afraid she would topple over but she does it so much now that I've gotten over it. I think she does it for the head rush. She dangles so long that all the blood rushes to her head. Then she pops up and laughs about it.
This pose of hers always reminds me of the Snoopy Vulture.


This happy, weird kid of mine delights me every day.
Big thanks to Aunt Amy for this great Minnie Mouse romper. Kylie loves it.

There are a few more pictures here if you want some more.
I only got one scrapbook page done this weekend.


Details and a larger look can be found here.