Kinley is 17 months old now and she is all attitude and sass. Things have been getting a little better/easier with her over the past couple of months. She still whines about so much, but there are so many more moments of being happy and content than before. She has all of her teeth now, which I think has definitely made a difference. She is able to communicate with us more as each day passes. She really doesn't talk that great, but I'm able to understand what she is saying or wants. She says several different words that sound similar to each other, but she does know the difference: bird, bath, bye-bye, baby, eat, eggs, eyes, ears, ice, light, out, nose, dog, drink, uh-oh, wow, hot (which she learned by touching the grill, just like Tyler did) and she loves shaking her little finger at something while saying, 'no, no, no.' She points to her eyes, nose, ears, belly and hair now and enjoys picking out her own clothes and is even becoming more cooperative with changing. Woohoo!
She is into everything and can climb up on the kitchen chairs and table (interestingly, she can't climb up on the couch or any other furniture). She's at that stage where she loves helping out- dusting, vacuuming, sweeping and putting toys away. She's always scooting the chair across the kitchen to get a better peek at what I'm doing at the counter and wants to help out with whatever. She's seen her first trip to timeout for being a stinker to Tyler. I wouldn't say that timeout worked and I'm struggling with appropriate punishment for a 17 month old. She can be so mean to her brother- she'll walk up to him and hit him with a toy or yank his hair for no reason at all. I try to redirect her, but I hate that Tyler may take that as her "getting away with it" sometimes. He's so good about understanding that she's just a babe and we have to teach her what is right and wrong. I'm hoping that she learns this pretty soon!
She still has some pretty severe separation anxiety (I moved her to a "severe" category, haha), but she is enjoying Travis' company a lot more lately. Finally!! She has already learned to move on to him when she isn't getting her way with me (and he's already a total sucker for it). I have tried to leave her at the YMCA childcare a handful of times for about 30 minutes and it hasn't been very successful. I think I have given up on that. The stress and anxiety on both of us isn't worth a 30 minute break. We did sign up for a great program at the Church, where Tyler will be going to pre-k, and both kids will be going to their childcare for a couple of hours while I'm attending the meeting (just twice a month). This place seems so much more kid friendly and has a very experienced staff, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed that she'll enjoy that and get to socialize a little.
Her napping/sleeping situation has been very slowly improving. She's been off and on with a good nap/decent night for a few days and then back to a short nap/a lot of night wakings, however, we've been on the good nap/nights for several days now. One day it will stick.
That pretty much covers the highlights for now. :-)
16 months old:
17 months old:
No smiles for Mom this round~
Toddler on the move~
I'm sure I don't even want to know what she's thinking....
I couldn't think of any words this child knew when trying to film her, but I love the way she scrunches up her nose while saying nose or no, no, no. :-)