We just had Kiley's 15 month appointment. She weighs 24 pounds and is around the 75th percentile in height and weight I believe. We didn't blog about it, but at her last check-up, the Dr. heard a heart murmur and also referred us to an opthomologist to check her eyes, since esp. her left one is sometimes pointed a little inward. In earlier photos, she looks cross-eyed in a few. Even though that had gotten better, I had a stranger stop me and tell me about his son's eyes and recommend I see a specialist for Kiley. So, we mentioned it to the Dr. and he said that if we saw any evidence of a 'lazy eye' past 9 months that he was supposed to refer us. The good news is that the eye specialist told us last month we have nothing to worry about, and this month our pediatrician heard no signs of the heart murmur. Kiley is a perfectly healthy toddling little girl.
She has a few words. Her first real word that she uses in context and consistently is Bye-bye. She will wave and say bye-bye - initially often not until the person was out the door, but more appropriately now. She says 'mo' and does the sign for more when she wants more food or drink, and now really when she really wants... something, anything. She can say 'Mama' and 'Papa', but doesn't do it on any regular basis. When she's upset, she will sometimes cry 'mamamamamama' very adamantly. I think we've written about this before, but she has said clearly, 'ball' and 'doggie' - but she doesn't use them regularly. The other word she says a lot now is 'Wow'. I didn't realize how often I use that word, but realize I use it as my personal clean expletive - whenever something surprises me. She's caught on and now whenever I say it I hear her going 'wow... wow... wow...' Pretty funny :)
Kiley now has two top teeth and two bottom teeth. She has that same gap between the top teeth that Sydney had with her baby teeth, and if you look at a photo of Sydney this age and compare it to Kiley there is a huge similarity. It will be interesting to see how that shakes out as Kiley gets older.
We had a great time. We hadn't really gone on a long, far-away family vacation since the Disney trip where Martin proposed in 2007. It was really a great, bonding experience. Granted, on day 2 I had to threaten the kids, but once I did, the fighting stopped and the whole dynamic just changed. (I told them I didn't come 1/2 way across the country to listen to them fight and that if they kept it up I would find a babysitter to watch them in the hotel so we could go out and enjoy our vacation away from their bickering...) Somehow being away together just made a difference in how we related. I've been in total catch-up mode since we got back - with work and business end-of-year and tax stuff, but hope to have a decent blog entry soon. Thanks to my wonderful hubby for keeping everyone up-to-date in the meantime! This weekend courtney is out of town working on a new scrapbook project. she does incredible work. I can't wait to see what she comes back with. :)
tonight sydney went to her dad's and jake is hanging out with some of his friends from the neighborhood, so it was kiley and papa. we played alot tonight cause that's what you do when youre 1 year old. one of her favorite games these days is hey chase me papa. so that's what we did for a little while. she runs around and i follow her. "where's kiley, where's kiley, where's kiley?" she dances around singing and dancing as she strolls through the house. i love the way she walks. rocking back and forth, back and forth. if she could whistle i bet she would be. it's very very cute.
we did that for about 10 min. that's about the limit of most games. We moved on to snack time. we had some fruit and veggies. I think the puppies got her last sippy cup today so we'll have to re-arm tomorrow. We need to be moving her to a big girl's cup at some point. maybe it's time?
i was thinking this could get boring for most anyone that's reading this very quickly so i'll shift gears and be brief. played with her car, played with barbie van, stumbled upon her brush on the counter and had to have it. she walked around for a while brushing her hair and dancing in front of a mirror in our bedroom. she is so stinkin' cute!! after one of the snacks her shirt was a little wet so we pulled the shirt off and on she went. playing more and more...we moved to the piano, this little leap frog music table she has, reading books and then climbed the stairs a little. i like to make sure she has lots of practice on the stairs. the sooner she's confident on them the better. :)
kiley goes Up the stairs....kiley goes Down the stairs.....doop-tee, doop-tee, doop.....we had a blast.
i chased her around a little more and finally the yawns and eye rubbing started. we did our good nights and she went to sleep very quickly.
i love our little nugget....:)
I took Kiley up to bed. She was a little cranky. I spread out her blanket and was about to lay her down. She decided she didn't like how I put it in her bed so she picked it up, threw it back down and put her head down in it.....with her butt in the air of course.
She is such a cutie. :)
This afternoon Courtney went to lunch with one of her girlie friends and me and Kiley had some time together. If you look around the house you can see exactly what we did. I tried to do everything she wanted to do. we had a snack. Bananas and strawberries, then we went to get tacos for all of us. We went to Rudy's for breakfast tacos. It's funny, when we started to leave from Rudy's this she got upset because she was thinking we were going to eat them there. I had to explain to her that papa dressed her this morning and she was a little mismatched and people would have looked at us funny if we stayed. We were quite a pair. her in yellow jammies, pink socks and a green and blue jacket and me in shorts and flip flops and a beanie in 30 degree weather. :) We looked sharp. Ha!!!!
So we got home and had second breakfast with mom and then played with her car for a little while. After that she pushed her stroller around for a little while with a one of sydney's purses on her arm. very cute. i got some video and some pics of that. After that she was very anxious about going out in the stroller. she kept climbing into it. i tried to explain that it was cold but she was very persistent. So i bundled her up and grabbed a jacket and we took a quick stroll around the block. When we got back we took a bath and played in the tub, then we played with blocks and trains and her little table games.
She's sleeping now so i think i'll pick up a little. We don't really pick up as we play so there is plenty to do.
it was a good morning. :)
our final full day! this vacation has been a joy. except for the down times when we couldn't keep the kids occupied enough. they are truly a joy to have around. we took our time this morning and even let kiley get a nap in before heading out. today was a free day to stroll around seaport village. we did a little shopping and caught a couple of street acts before finding pizza.
we headed back to the hotel after a few hours, just in time to do....you guessed it, swim. i played with kiley before going down to the pool. so courtney got a great start on our packing in preparation for tomorrow. heading home....as i mentioned a couple of other times before it's been a great week. we stayed in a fantastic hotel where the staff went out of their way to be accommodating.
...im feeling tired...i may add to this post later. :)
The week went by very quickly, too quickly, and I enjoyed every moment. It was unusual that we would take a trip at Christmas time but our company gave us additional time off and it made sense to take a trip somewhere fun. It was the first time the kiddos have ever been to CA and they loved the beach. They noticed immediately that the sand was so much softer than we have on our Texas beaches. On one of our visits to the beach they buried Kiley's feet and she wasn't sure what to do. it was pretty funny.
Hello all. I'm so glad you have made it with me this far. Today is going to be another good day. The plan was to head out to sea for whale watching then to legoland for good times and to bring in the new year with crazy hip-hop and fireworks.
we warned the kiddos that they should expect a boring sail out to the pacific and to bring games. that seemed to work really well because not once did they ask when we would be docking. so when it seemed as though we would not see any gray whales on our little 3 and a half hour voyage we saw a blow way off in the distance. a-hoy matties...
Towards thee I roll, thou all-destroying but unconquering whale; to the last I grapple with thee; from hell's heart I stab at thee; for hate's sake I spit my last breath at thee.
--captain ahab, Moby Dick
I've gotten a little behind on my posting and now I have to remember what happened on day 4 and 5 before moving on to 6. Is that right 6 days? yep, i guess so.
...today the plan was to hit the zoo but it changed slightly because the kiddos had so much fun a the beach yesterday that we had to go back. So we started the day at the beach instead. the water is icy cold, but we went in our bathing suits anyway. Jake's goal was to play in the dunes and sydney's was to get in the water. Icy cold water i might add. so naturally we went to the dunes first. kiley was sleeping when we arrived so courtney stayed in the car with her and read. she loves to read so i think that worked out okay for everyone. we went to the water first and played in the shallows for a while then i went over to the dunes with jake while sydney worked on her tan (it was extremely overcast but she was intent on laying on the beach). we raced to the dunes (i hope we got a picture of them cause jake would really like that). we dove off the dunes and did some guy only stuff, hand to hand combat and grenades and hide and seek sort of stuff. since i was trying to divide my time as evenly as possible we then headed back to syd.
after interupting her tanning session we went back to the water and she and jake went fairly far out into the water, icy cold water, i should remind you. i went out almost to my knees which was far enough for me, then i talked them into building a sand castle that would definitely get hit with the water. we tried to build it so that when the water did eventually hit it, it could withstand one wave. we build barriers and created a moat and made the walls so that the water would flow around. kinda like a wedge. we waited and waited and well, waited until finally we saw courtney coming our way. the distance from the water to the sidewalk was about 100 yards. we went out to meet her at which time i'm sure jake demolished the sand castle. when we got to courtney and kiley we played with kiley for a while but decided that it was too cold for her. so we bundled her up and made our way back to the sidewalk and into the hotel for some hot chocolate and coffee.
the hotel del coronado is beautiful! it's old but the reoutfitted it quite nicely. we rode in an elevator with a operator and the steel gates. really cool. the kiddos didn't really get it but we did.
we got back to the hotel, had a snack then headed to the zoo. quite an amazing place but it got dark very quickly for us today and started raining. in spite of all that we got to see a lion pacing and roaring, elephants walking about and some really cute younger ones, and a recently born giraffe. We took a bus that showed us a lot of the rest of the park and made the best of it.
after another great day, yes you guessed it back out to the pool for time with sydney. ....oh that little sweet girl is nutso about the pool. so that was our day. bedtime came shortly after...goodnight brush, goodnight comb, goodnight bowl full of mush...
