Can I get a "Wha, WHAT?!?!?!?!"

Age of Lady Kaitlyn:  22 months and 29 days

Family,

And a good Monday evening to you from the Queen City, where the Bull and Striker are relaxing at home after another wonderful weekend.  Plenty to cover, so let's get amongst it, shall we?

Let's start on the vocabulary front, where the Sneetch continues down the path of explosive learning.  New words for the week:

1.  Boy

2.  Clean - usually said after she finishes bath time or while reading "Pig Takes a Bath"

3.  Dump - said after she watches Pig get dunked in the tub during "Pig Takes a Bath."  I will say "Big Dump!" just like mommy does before dousing K with water from a cup, and K will respond "Dump!"

4.  Pop - she knows that's what bubbles do (and we blow bubbles over her while she's in the bath)

5.  Bite - this is one she's learned from us saying "you want a bite?"  She's actually developing quite the food vocabulary - she's got multiple ways to beg for food, and she'll do a combination of saying and signing please should she be desperate enough for whatever tasty treat Jenny and I are consuming (this week it was hummus - DESPERATE FOR IT, she was...)

6.  Eat - see above - this kid doesn't PLAY when it comes to calorie consumption

7.  Thumb - I mean, she should know this one, for crying out loud...

8.  Green (dean) - she actually knows this color as well.  SCORE!

9.  Red (ride) - again, she knows this one and (usually) gets it right.  Okay, granted - there are times when I ask her what color an apple is and she replies "YELLOW!," but still - she does know the color. Genius, I tell you!

10.  White - she definitely knows this color (even though we also give her credit when she says white and points to beige, tan, or taupe - I mean, come on, I didn't even know what taupe was until I was 25...

11.  Bottle - this is one of the words that gets used every time we read (insert me cringing as I type this) "Bitty Baby and Me" (now insert me rolling my eyes in misery).  The bottle is at the dinner table on page 2 and is the first thing she says after spoon (poon), usually followed by mama.

12.  Plate - this is another word that is said during page 2 of Bitty Baby, after the above three words and bowl.  Honestly, if I have to read one more time about the damn mermaids having a tea party with the porcupine, I might lose it...

13.  Day

14.  Cone

15.  Plum - she rattled this one off while reading "The very hungry caterpillar."  It's pretty darn cute - we go through moon and sun on the first 2 pages before getting to the fruits the caterpillar eats through. K will say "Apple!"  And flip the page, saying it again as she puts her finger in every hole.  She'll then say "Plum!"  twice and repeat it when she flips the page.  This is followed by "Pear! (Pee-uh)," which she says three times.  This is then followed by strawberry (which she just said tonight for the first time). Full disclosure - "strawberry" is currently coming out something like "wawabana."  I mean, at some point adorable covers for enunciation, right?  LOVE THIS KID!

16.  Attic - NOT KIDDING - the child said attic this week.  She pointed up at the trap door in the ceiling and said "ATTY!"  I mean, how the hell did she know that was the attic?  We have talked about it maybe twice in her life, and we didn't mention it in the month of January.  Mind like a steel trap, I tell you...

  

17.  Cry - so this one is a little disconcerting, but K loves to make her little baby cry.  It should be noted that the baby also possesses the capability to laugh, and you can get her to do either by pressing on her chest (it just alternates).  K could care less when she laughs - she does NOT want this child happy.  Instead, she keeps saying "more" when you make the kid cry because, well, I THINK SHE ENJOYS HEARING THE KID SUFFER.  Another point to raise - she is all about the child being comforted...just not by her.  She wants you to swaddle the baby and rock it (oh, and make it cry AND stop the laughter as soon as it starts).  Such a sweet and innocent child, we have - just watch your back.

18.  Fire truck - I know, I know, you think there's no way.  But I'm telling you - THIS KID SAID FIRE TRUCK this week.  Again, the pronunciation wasn't great, but she definitely knows the difference between the fire engine and a regular truck, and there were definitely 2 syllables there.  It counts, by crackies...

In other news, K can now name the "Disney 6."  Daisy and Donald were elusive for a bit, but they are spoken for loud and clear now.  Toodles is still proving tricky, but she says "Oh TOOTEEEEET!!!!"  about 457,000 times per day.

The speed demon in full stride on the way
out - looking just slightly happier than
she did on the way back.

In terms of development milestones, Jenny has been a rockstar working on K's A-B-C's and colors, and K is slowly starting to learn some of time.  On the letters front, she's saying "A-B-D," but D=C in her pronunciation (I've got the words from her vocabulary to prove it), and she can identify T, K, A, B, D, P, & O.  It's been crazy to watch how fast she's picked it up this week - things that have just been objects to date (the bath letters, blocks, etc) are now being recognized as letters and numbers.  Very exciting!

The trickiest color for her right now is orange, as she constantly calls it "YELLOW!"  In fact, yellow is about 70% of the visible spectrum right now, but we are chipping away at that.  As a volunteer fan, it's important she be able to recognize orange from an early age.  I mean, she always knows the T in my man pajamas - it's just time to take it to the next level. :-)

One of the cutest moments this week was when I in passing as a joke said, "Wha-what?"  Well, K thought that was the greatest phrase EVER and proceeded to repeat it about 5,011 times.  When we started laughing, she knew she had comedic gold in her vocabulary, and she then continued saying it for about 20 minutes.  There were many different variations - sometimes the "Wha" component was used four times before "What" ever actually appeared.  I vowed I wouldn't say it, but let me tell you this - sometimes you don't really how often you leverage a phrase in your daily life until you're trying to NOT say it.  Consequently, K has probably said "Wha Wha Wha Wha What!!?!?!?" no joke a thousand times in the last 96 hours - THUG LIFE!

"Hi, my name is Kaitlyn.  If you're reading
this, then you see how my dad dresses.
Help me, Obi-wan.  You're my only hope."

The weekend was great, as the weather was PERFECT!  On Saturday we took the munch over to the greenway for a walk. It was the first time she'd been there since I took her by myself in June (the day she almost overheated, had a meltdown, and drank basically an entire sippy cup of water the second I got her back to the car) and the first time altogether as a family.  The first hour was AMAZING - K actually walked - scratch that, RAN - for 1.5 miles!  Seriously, this kid was in a full-on gallop at times, and she never seemed to tucker out!  She didn't want food.  She didn't want water.  All she wanted was to kick and/or throw a ball on occasion, push the stroller for us, and run like the wind blows.   Oh, and she also wanted to poop - which she did announce to us, for the record.  In fact, not only did we have the distinct privilege of changing our daughter's near blowout on the greenway (where she was an angel, for the record), but I also had the joy of feces on my fingers, as it was quite the mess.  I did use a wipe or two, but let's be honest - when it gets on your fingernails and fingerprints, it's there to stay until you scrub it off (which wasn't an option, as there are no bathrooms on the greenway - details...).

Fast forward to an hour later.  We've found a playground.  We've played on this playground for a good thirty minutes.  It's 11:30.  We are 1.5 miles from our car and it's lunch time.  We tell K "time to go!"...which she chooses to ignore.  We tell her she can go down the slide 1 more time, but she has to take the stairs.  She doesn't like this plan and instead tries walking up the slide.  After we try rationalizing and helping her, she starts pouting.  We then pick her up and carry her to the stroller, thinking she'll be fussy but all will be well.  HOLY (INSERT STREAM OF EXPLETIVES HERE) - that child had THE BIGGEST MELTDOWN TEAM TAYLOR HAS EVER SEEN FROM OUR
DAUGHTER.

Family, I cannot describe it in terms other than "volcanic," galactic," "something you would read about during the Salem Witch Trials or Spanish Inquisition" - it was that bad.  K screamed NONSTOP at the top of her lungs for 30+ minutes while we tried to hot foot it back to the car.  People passed us with "Good morning!" and a chuckle, so at least folks were good humored about it and didn't act like we'd shattered their perfectly tranquil morning.  When we got back to the car, I picked K up and held her, trying to calm her.  That worked for about .000000007 seconds until I tried to put her in her car seat.  HOLY (ONCE AGAIN - TAKE YOUR PICK OF WORDS THAT SHOULD NOT BE SAID IN PUBLIC) - the child went into rinse/repeat.  Only this time we had the added bonus of being confined to our car.

K and Francisco playing - I have this feeling K is going
to be a gear head, as she LOVES the Matchbox cars.

We got the sneetch home and even managed to get some food in her, but her nap was much quicker than expected.  The good news is that this let us get on the road for the featured event of the weekend - dinner with the Puma and family!  Now a bit of backstory here - the Puma and his family moved to the US in November (they are from Costa Rica), and we've worked together for about 3 years.  He and his family are great, and they treated us to a DELISH meal - complete with some proper Tico trimmings.  We spent a good 3+ hours there eating like kinds, and just before we left K decided to drop bomb #2 of the day, once again COVERING MY HANDS in feces when I went to check her diaper.  Can I just say BOOM GOES TEH DYNAMITE.  That kid's excretory system was in overdrive on Saturday.

Sunday was great as well, as we got tons of time in the park (it was 70 degrees!).  I got a run in, JT got a walk in, we got a church service in, and we ate like kings all day (including some Gallo Pinto from the Puma - so guuuuuuuuud).  All in all, another perfect weekend in the books.

Last item to note - as we've discussed in blogs previous, I've come to the realization that, if I want to help K be the best person she can possibly be, then I have to work to be the best person I can possibly be.  This desire, coupled with the recent blessing in our life of finding Freedom House Church, has put in motion a desire to codify this improvement, the culmination of which is something Team Taylor is affectionately calling "The Altitude Project."  Simply put - I am trying to put goals into my life every month to make myself better, as well as goals in K's life to keep her growing and developing.  These goals are a mixture of physical, mental, and spiritual, but the net effect is (I hope) that I am a better husband, father, and Christian in the years to come and all the remainder of my days, so that not only my words but also my actions can help teach K what is right.  I've started tracking my goals (don't worry - I won't bore you with them), and I'll be calling out when we introduce an "Acclimator" for K as well (the first of which comes tomorrow, so stay tuned!).  More to come on this, but suffice it to say I'm really excited and feel good about what we've been able to do so far.

Okay, that's all the news that's fit to print.  Chat soon!

Love,

Sam and Jenny