Jed and Heather: Kara Lately

We have had Kara in our life for over 18 months now. She has been a wonderful addition!

First off I will say having two kids, in some ways, is easier than one! They play with each other so well, it helps me to get cleaning and cooking done and makes those times when I have household things to do much easier.

What to say about Kara? She has always been a bit of a chunk. She is in 2T clothes, size 6 shoes. She has to go a little big for shoes because she has wide, thick feet (as many babies do.... Some brand needs to make better shoes for these babies!).

Kara is getting her 9th tooth. Just a couple weeks ago she got two top molars and now one bottom one is coming in. She still doesn't have her bottom lateral incisors, but I will continue to assume they will come one of these days!

Despite her lack of teeth, she eats like a champ. There are few foods she can't eat. For a while, we worried because she would clear her plate so fast at dinner and want more. I guess she was in a constant growth spurt because now she consistently eats 3/4 of her plate. I need to give her smaller portions, now.

Kara is super cute when she sees someone she loves or hears she gets to do her favorite activity. She sticks both her hands in the air and says in a super high voice, "Bapa!" Or some gibberish term. She LOVES to see her grandpa walk in the door. She always yells excitedly for him. She also gets super excited anytime we play with our friends, the Dilworths. It's amazing because we see them almost every day (we not only go to the gym together but do play dates), but Kara never fails to be excited to see Tommy, who is four days older than her.

Kara's favorite activities include brushing teeth and bath time. Those are the two things she gets excited for. Dinner time, she sometimes will too. Kara also loves to go outside, and will grab her shoes at any opportunity. She will also dart out the door super fast so you gotta keep an eye on her.

Kara's speech is definitely a little behind where most kids her age are. She says mama, dada, Bapa (grandma or grandpa), shhh (Gigi), baba (bath time or teeth brushing), and basically that's it. I prompt her to use words for things she wants, and she just cycles through the few sounds she knows. She can say what sounds certain animals make, (cow-oooo, dog-woo woo, cat-ow [high pitched], duck and pig are the same-gdug [its weird. It's hard for me to make the sound she makes because she really uses her tongue to do it]). So perhaps soon there will be some speech therapy, but I'm not sure I will be concerned until after she is two. She has made improvements, so at least we are heading in the right direction. Chris was also slower than I thought he should be in the speech department, and clearly he caught up with that...

Kara has always been a sweet, cuddly girl, but now we pretty much only get cuddles at nap time or when she is a little scared. Opposite of her brother, Kara can be quite shy. She has her friendly moments, but usually takes some time to warm up to people. The gym daycare and nursery at church have been a small struggle for her. As we approach the room, she will put her head on your shoulder and hold on tighter with her arm. She generally cries pretty loud and hard as soon as you pass her off to the day care worker, and then you just have to leave! It was so hard in the beginning, but what made it easy was I knew she would stop crying pretty quick. She really does stop in less than a minute. But then, when you go get her, she plays perfectly content until she sees you, and then she starts crying again ha ha. That's the funny one. But then we generally get cuddles again. This last week was the first one where she didn't cry when I dropped her off at the gym daycare. Finally! It only took five months.

Lately we have been moving down from two naps to one nap. She's in a transition phase where she only needs two naps a few times a week. We also have been having some lovely temper tantrums in the store. I generally go to the store after the gym, so late morning, so I'm not sure if they're caused by her being tired, hungry, or if it's just her age, but man oh man, these can get ridiculous. Just a couple weeks ago we went to Target with our friends and Kara refused to let me push the cart she was sitting in. Our friend had to do it. If I touched it, she would try to pry my hands off the bar and start screaming. Like I said, lovely. Not much works to calm her down, so when the tantrum strikes I hurry to finish my errands.

Kara loves to play with just about any toy. She definitely prefers pushing toys. She loves to push her dolls in the stroller or shopping cart. She also loves to play with her toy purse. So girly toys mostly, but she loves to play with her brother's cars or Paw Patrol sometimes too. Books are probably her favorite "toy." She is a great independent "reader."

Kara still has a pacifier. With the move to my in law's, I decided I would rather her sleep well than to take it away. Soon, though, we really need to take it away. She only uses it for sleeping and the car, but if she sees it, she wants it.

She is a bit of an escape artist, this little one. She also has great fine motor skills, as she can undo her footie pajamas, zipper and all. She can take off her pants and her diaper. Generally, she only tries to take clothes off when she's poopy. It wasn't an issue until she could take off her diaper. A few weeks ago we found her after a nap with poop EVERYWHERE. I had never dealt with that before. It happened right before we were leaving on a date, too. Since then, we put her in a sleep sack, backwards, for sleeping. We figured the backwards would mean she couldn't reach the zipper but we were wrong! She can unzip it backwards. Ridiculous. So now we use a locking diaper pin to keep the zipper down. She can actually escape through the neck hole of the sleep sack, as it is a little stretched, but thankfully she only did that once. Watch out for your zippers around this kid! It's her secret talent.

So while I haven't been amazing at blogging this year, I did try to keep track of milestones for our little Kare Bear. They are all in 2015. So here they are:

February 11 - Rolls front to back

April 14 - first solid food

April 30 - sit unassisted

May 11 - bounces back and forth on knees

(Not a milestone, but cute memory): May 15 - I shared some of my hummus with Kara today. She loved it. The garlic flavor would reach her and she'd give a little shudder, then she'd want more.

May 30 - crawl

June 5 - hold bottle

June 12 - pull to stand

July 14 - gives kisses

August 27 - Wave (also around this time she learned to clap)

September 20 - Walk

October 26 - First tooth

I realize I don't have first word.... she had said "dada dada" for a long time, and it was questionable if she was just babbling or saying "Dada" for Jed. After a while we finally decided she had changed and was definitely saying it for Jed. I want to say that was around the end of 2015.

Now, time for pictures!