Swimming

Kayla has started swim lessons, as of last week. She is doing great! At the first lesson I noticed a lot of other children were quite reluctant to get into the water, but Kayla got right in. She does a great job in there and would love it if we would just let go of her and let her go off on her own! Her instructor, Pete, says she has no fear and that she does really well for her age. She has been practicing blowing bubbles and kicking and floating both on her back and on her tummy. Her third lesson in, Pete taught her to jump off the edge of the pool and right into the water. She did it no problem! I WAS SHOCKED! Sometimes when she has a bath at home she will freak out a little bit if we pour too much water on her head at once when we are washing her hair. So I was thinking we would have some trouble getting her to go under the water, when she jumps in. She just seemed like she loved it though, and she would pop right out of the water every time and clap her hands and yell "all right!".

That's all for now, I will check back in soon with some more updates on little miss Kayla! :)

Holy sentences batman!

Kayla has turned into a full fledged, sentence speaking, question answering little person! She always has something cute and funny and insightful to say. It’s amazing! Her one word responses are definitely a thing of the past! Although she has been speaking sentences for quite some time now, over the past month her tentative sentences have turned into full on adult like responses. She asks questions, answers questions, and can practically carry on a conversation on just about any subject. Her desire and appreciation for learning new things is astounding. It about knocks the wind out of me. Every single day she says at least one new word. She literally repeats every single thing we say – so we do have to be a little more careful nowadays =)
Here are some recent pictures of my walking, talking, mini adult child!

New Pictures!

Kayla read her first word last night!

Last night, Jake was wearing a shirt that said Papa Bear on it. Kayla came walking up to him, pointed at the word bear and said "bear"! We were in shock, we couldn't believe it! We kind of thought it was a fluke but then Jake grabbed a book of hers that had the word bear on it. He covered up the picture of the bear and then pointed at the word and asked her what it said and once again, she said bear! SO PROUD! xoxo

New Pictures from the Weekend!

Kayla's Outdoor Adventures

Kayla is having so much fun now that it is sunny outside again! She gets to go on walks every day with Daddy, plus another walk at night after dinner with both of us! She is at the point where we keep her in the stroller or the wagon up until we get about a half a mile from the house, then we let her walk the rest of the way. If we let her do any more than that she would run away from us mid walk. Right now, everything for her is all about exploring. If she hears a noise from the side street, she runs to check it out. If she sees a flower growing in a side yard, she wants to pick it and carry it everywhere she goes. If she sees a rock, she points at it and exclaims "rock"! I just love her curious personality and her love of the outdoors. Everything is a big adventure!
She is also learning how to play well with other kids. When we go to the park she is extremely friendly and always wants to make friends with the other kids. She will run after the big kids and talk and laugh at them...even if they don't know she is there. We have a neighbor boy who she just loves to pieces and anytime we see him outside she runs up to him and wants to play. He is a year and a half older than her so he does really well with her, always talks to her and gives her hugs, and together they explore the outdoors.
Her teething has finally slowed a bit and so she has been in a much better mood the past couple of weeks! More updates to come!

New Words & Phrases

Here are some of Kayla's latest words and phrases:

I see you
I did it
More please
Mine!
I"ll get you
Tickle tickle tickle
Okay
Hold on!

New Pictures!!

Kayla's 1st Tattoo ;)

New Kayla Pics

Sentences

Kayla has started saying sentences...
It started out with her saying things like "Hi Mama" and "Hi Dada" and now it's evolved into much more! Here's some of the sentences she has been saying for the past week:

Hi Mama
Hi Dada
Bye Mama
Bye Dada
Thank you Mama
Thank you Dada
Thank you baby
Thank you for the bucket
I love you Mama
I love you Dada
I'm sorry Mama
I'm sorry Dada

I had all of last week off of work, so we had a lot of fun together. We went to the park, we went on lots of walks and we even let her play in the puddles in her rain boots. Here’s some pictures:

Happy 17 Months Kayla Noelle!

Happy 17 months to the sweetest baby in the world! Mommy & Daddy love you, little miss personality!!! ;)

Current Word & Phrase List

Here we go...I finally brought Kayla's current word and phrase list with me so I could type it all out. I am also adding a picture of her from yesterday, when we went on a walk!

Mom
Dad
Please
Thank you
Hi
Bye
Yes
No
Yup
Elmo
Cat
Kitty
Dog
Pig
Duck
Feet
Toe
Eye

Nose
Teeth
Sorry
Cracker
Color
All done
All gone
Baba (bottle)
Baby
Shoe
Sock
Yum
More
Ty Ty (Uncle Tyler)
Tree
Santa
Nice
Gentle
Trixie (Family dog)
Uh-oh
Ball
Binkie
Book
I love you
Car
Truck
Fish
Sissy
Apple
Banana
Pretty
Cool
Pets
Hat
Really?
Peek-a-boo
Sheep
Cow
Bucket

Kayla Update

There is so much going on in Kayla's life and I am feeling guilty about not being good with doing my updates on here. She is now just a few days away from being 17 months old. It's incredible to me that we're coming up fast on the 2 year mark; everything just flies by so quickly. She has tons of new words and phrases and I have been so impressed by her verbal abilities that last week I decided to write down every single word and phrase that she can say, and I’ll just say that it’s definitely not normal for a child her age to be able to say that many words! I will bring the list to work and record it all here on the blog. It is amazing to me, how smart she is. She continues to learn new things at an alarming rate, it’s almost like she can’t even keep up with herself sometimes, she is learning so quickly! It just makes us incredibly proud of her and it’s so rewarding to see all of our hard work with teaching her paying off.

Her personality continues to blossom, as well. Kayla is sweet and thoughtful, smart and silly. She loves to play games with us; she likes being chased around the house. She loves when we interact with her by reading books or playing with her on her slide. She loves to try to figure out the things that we do, and copy them in her own little way. She loves to cuddle and loves to be the center of attention too! I will say she also has a bit of a temper going on! She has learned to throw little mini temper tantrums and has gotten pretty good at throwing little fits. We try to ignore these the best we can, because we don’t want to feed into it! Kayla is so independent and she definitely knows what she wants and will pretty much do whatever she has to in order to get it!

That’s about all of an update I have for now. I will bring the list of all her words and phrases and add those to the blog just as soon as I can. I think it will be great to have the full list recorded on here, so that we can add to it in the future and watch it grow!

Update

Well, Christmas has now come and gone. Kayla did really well with Christmas time. She didn't quite understand everything that was going on but she had a lot of fun opening presents, seeing Santa and spening time with family. She has recently learned how to say Santa, tree, sissy, pretty, and so much more.

Here's a couple of recent pictures: