I must say, life with a 1 1/2 year old is an amazing amount of fun... and it completely wipes me out. Kaden is non-stop all day. From the minute he wakes up in his crib, he is chatting. I hear him on the monitor just talking away- sometimes I hear an "uh-oh" and find myself sprinting upstairs to make sure everything is okay. Most of the time, he has dropped his penguin or a chomper out of the crib. He usually wakes up pretty hungry and can get pretty whiny before breakfast is made. After he has some food in his belly, he is off. I typically have to "bopen" (open) the closet door so he can get to his "dahdoom" (vacuum) and the attachment. He likes to start off the day with a clean house, I suppose. He runs... runs... around the house screaming at the top of his lungs with vacuum in hand. Then he makes sure he uses the attachment to get to things he is not supposed to get to... the dogs, the counter tops, etc.
If I am cleaning up from breakfast, he will typically grab a few books and read them by himself. His favorites are "Am" (Green Eggs and Ham), "Go Go Go" (Go Dog Go... getting closer!), and Hippos Go Berserk. He is getting into Are you My Mother, in which he replies "Noooooo" when you ask him if the kitten, the hen, the dog, etc are the mommy. I'll get it on video. It's cute! I try to have something planned for the morning so we don't both go crazy. Typically we have errands to run so we are out and about for awhile. He is pretty good when we go out, especially if I have food with me. I think he would eat all day long if I had enough cereal to refill his snack trap.
We eat lunch around 12:30 and nap around 1. I am definitely ready for his nap by the time 1:00 comes around. He sleeps for 1.5 to 2.5 hours and then we start the afternoon all over again. Our house is a complete wreck by bed time, but luckily Kaden has been very good about helping to clean up his mess. One night I said, "Okay Kaden, we need to clean up before we go take a bath," and he started singing, "Meanup meanup" (clean up, clean up) like the preschoolers all sing. I learned Grammie sings that and so does Kelly at day care. I was shocked when he started singing that... I had no idea where it came from!
Kaden talks non-stop and learns new words every day. Today we drove past a grocery store with pumpkins out front and he yelled, "punkins!" without any hints from me. I told him we were going to Be-dazzled today and he said, "Mimi, Yeayah (Drea), Don (John)" We are still working on Steph- not an easy word to say.
His favorite things in the world are buses and trucks. He gets so excited when we drive by a bus. One day I chased one down in our neighborhood for him... it was very exciting. Yesterday he was standing at our front window and a school bus drove by-"Bus! Bus! Bus!!" Then he pulled Nic over to the window to show him.
Kaden knows the color yellow. We are currently working on blue. He likes to count things and usually says "Bus, tooo, eee" for one, two, three. He is getting better at using a fork... I honestly didn't have the patience for it, but figured it was probably time he stop eating with his hands. He'd prefer to use his hands at this time because he can shovel a lot more food in that way! Kaden loves stacking things. Today at lunch he stacked his string cheese rings. He can do a puzzle with only a little help! He knows most of his body parts (including weird ones like lips, tongue, cheeks, tushie). He is even saying a lot of them instead of just pointing to them ("eye, nose, mouse (mouth), gear (ear), beeps (feet), bips (lips) and keeks (cheecks)).
Kaden is very shy. It takes him awhile to get warmed up to new people, toys, noises, etc. I feel a little frustrated at times, but I have to tell myself not to push him... he probably gets that from me anyway! He is also a big scaredy cat, seriously. He gets scared really easily- today he was riding in a cart, and the wheel stuck and made a weird noise and he started crying! For some reason he is scared of coming down the stairs (not a bad thing, I suppose) and now he stops 8 feet away from them and won't walk toward them. No, he has never fallen down them or even gotten close to that. Yes, he knows how to go down them safely on his belly and pretty well walking down them holding on to the rail. Crazy boy.
Kaden now tells me when he has pooped... "Poop." We are working on going on the potty, which I thought was going really well. Now he'd prefer to take the potty apart than to sit on it. I hear it takes awhile with boys. I feel like if he did it once (and the potty started singing to him) he will always want to. We'll see!
