A Hales Life: 2.5 Year Update: Kayla Marie

I feel the need to write about Kayla as I am almost always writing at Brody. Mostly because ALL I'm writing is monthly updates which are going to end soon! So here's a little late 2.5 year update on our little peanut/peewee (my favorite nicknames for her, which actually sometimes I call Brody and she always looks at me like I'm crazy.)

Potty Training: We did the three day potty training thing last November. Kayla was catching onto things really quickly so I thought I'd stick her in underwear and give it a go. Since day 3, she's been probably the easiest kid to potty train I can imagine. She had a little set back when we moved into our house and changed her daycare, but overall she's been pretty great. She now only has accidents if it's been a while since she went and she literally can't hold it any longer. She even goes to the bathroom, wipes and flushes and everything by herself now. I always get a little stab of pride when I tell someone she's been pretty much potty trained since 22 months, with an occasional accident here and there, and they are always shocked. Honestly, I think it was mainly easy because Kayla is pretty astute and loves to do what I am doing.

Sleeping: For the most part Kayla has been sleeping for at least 10-11 hours straight at night and for a while was taking some LONG naps (like 3-3.5 hours). She stopped sleeping until 7 at least and has now started waking up at 6 am pretty much on the dot almost every day no matter what time she goes to bed (7-9:30 pm if we are out and about).

She has recently stopped napping at daycare for some reason but always consistently takes at least a 2 hour nap at home easily.

At night, we've been struggling with on and off fears at night. Not exactly sure what of, but sleeping with "mommy and daddy's pillow" and daddy "catching the scaries" in her room before bedtime seem to help. Overall she's pretty great, I just wish she would sleep in a little later, but she usually just comes to my bed and watches educational videos on youtube while I rest for another hour or so.

Gross and Fine Motor "stuff": Let's see, she's learned how to really jump now. She's pretty adept with running, climbing, etc. She loves to dance and sing. She's pretty awesome with a spoon and fork and loves practicing cutting with a knife.

She also LOVES cutting with scissors at school. Like, loves cutting so much it's a little disturbing. :) She loves coloring and is actually great and tracing her letters. I bought this dry erase cards with a little pen in the dollar section at Target. They are amazing and she loves them. She is definitely right handed, but will occasionally put stuff in her left hand.

Likes:

Baby dolls
Pretending to cook in her kitchen
Singing
Youtube videos of nursery rhymes
Playing with cold water in the bathtub (man she really gets a kick out of that)
Bubbles
Parks
Cereal
Our monthly activity box that comes with stuff to make and do
Making Brody laugh
Being the first one to get Brody when he wakes up
Her friends at school
Nail Polish
Pink and Purple
Dresses
"Taking" pictures
Being just like Mommy
Doing everything "myself"
Airplanes
Fountains
Shoes (trying on shoes at every store we go to, even the grocery store, because doesn't EVERY store have shoes?)
Getting her hair braided

Dislikes:

Justin sometimes (you should hear her say his name)
Sleeping in
Going to bed
When you tell her no (Daddy LOOK at Mommy!; Don't talk to me!)
The scaries in her room (the truck across the street)
Loud noises that she doesn't understand (the lawn mower, thunder, sometimes the vacuum cleaner)
When you tell her what to wear
When you tell her she can't wear shoes in the house
"Strange" foods
The "skin" on food (crust, apple peel, for example)
Leaving her hair up in any form of ponytail (unless it's a braid) Note to self: learn to French Braid

Verbal: Kayla's verbalization, sentence forming, etc really exploded after Brody was born. She enunciates really well (I think) and she's actually very insightful. She really uses a lot of "sayings" I use and you should hear the way she says Justin's name when she's mad at him! :) "JusT-in" I don't know if it's because I'm her mom and I'm always around her, but I think she really speaks very clearly for her age, compared to the other kids I've been around. Again, not sure if it's just because I hear her ALL day every day and I only hear other kids sporadically or what. She still has some trouble with tenses of tough words (geese-geeses) and some trouble with words that have multiple meanings. I have realized in watching someone learn the English language at how hard it really is in comparison to other languages. She is really doing great though.

Kayla is really a little mommy. She wants to do everything I do, she wants to help me with Brody. She's more likely to eat something if she "helps" me cook it. For the most part, she's really easy to be around. She doesn't have a ton of toddler meltdowns, or maybe I just know how to deal with her better and I know how to pick my battles with her. I'm still trying to mainly lean towards positive reinforcement for discipline. I think the most frustrating thing for me as a mom of this particular toddler has been the extreme fear and anxiety I can see in her (that is one of my worst traits which I've actively tried to not project onto her), and the way Brody always wants to play with her or see what she's doing and sometimes she wants to play be herself. She kinda whiney in those instances and is a bit of a "tattle tail." But if that's the worst, I'll take it because those two kids are seriously like soul mates. :)

Here are some recent photos I've taken of Kayla. I've been working really hard on my photography and am hoping to be able to continue to progress towards maybe taking some photos of someone other than my kids. Maybe I'll offer up some pregnancy/family photos to my little sister. ;)