Jed and Heather

Saturday, May 21, 2016

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!

First solids!

All the girls in the family

Cuties

Loves the water!

Sitting all by herself!

Kara loved playing with Uncle Daniel!

At Uncle Wesley's wedding

Swinging with Friends

Kara is so fun to make laugh!

Practicing

Cuddles with Grandma

First birthday!

First birthday

Kisses

Santa wasn't a hit for Kara this year...

At the beach

Easter

First Day of Nursery

Bed head is common now, with everyday ponytails

Playing on the swings

Park Day with Daddy

Playing in the mud

Flashback to Kara at 5 months

This was written way back in March 2015, but I never published it. Probably because of pictures. Pictures are my least favorite part of blogging ha ha. However, it's one of my favorite things to look back on, so I know I must do it. I'll add in some pictures for this though.

Now we have had our little Kara for almost 5 months. She is such a sweet baby! From the start, she does not get fussy often. She really only cries when hungry or tired. Then once in a while we won't know what she wants and don't know what to do because we rarely have to deal with fussiness! This week we have had a lot more crying and we are thinking some teeth may be coming in. She definitely acts like she's teething. (Hindsight--she wasn't teething. First tooth came at 12 months!)

The first week of her life, I actually worried about how much she slept and how little she ate. She slept pretty much all the time, and fell asleep eating or directly after eating. After the first week, I felt like she had her day and night switched. She would eat and then be up for another hour or two at night. It was awful! But that changed quickly enough.

This time around we are using the schedule from Babywise to guide us, and I simply love it. With Chris the schedule was sleep, play, eat, sleep, etc. With Kara it is eat, play, sleep, eat, etc... And it is so much better! She doesn't depend on nursing to fall asleep (which Chris did and that made life pretty difficult when I left him with Jed) which is awesome.

Unlike with Chris, we try to put her down often. Of course, being the second child I need to put her down more often than when there was only one child. With Chris, he rarely had tummy time and if I wasn't holding him, he was in his bouncer. With Kara we try to put her down on our jungle play mat instead of the bouncer and I can definitely see the difference between how quickly Kara has gained muscles and how quickly Chris did. At almost five months, she can hold her head up easily on her tummy, and can even look up at people standing while on her tummy. She's a great supported sitter and I expect her to probably be sitting up around six months.

Kara eats like a champ. It was amazing how much easier it was to nurse this second time around. I knew what was doing, and Kara was born later in the pregnancy than Chris and weighed much more than he did at birth. All these factors helped us catch on quicker. She has been pretty much exclusively breastfed, but has eaten from a bottle and eaten formula often enough. Clearly she is growing well. From the start she has been 98th percentile for weight and she stays consistent with that (currently 19 lbs 7 ounces). Her doctor was shocked that she gained a pound from birth to two weeks. I kind of am sad I didn't get the small baby phase for very long but I love her chunkiness and I love her rolls. Her chubs have meant that she is a very cuddly baby and we love that. We have fed her oatmeal once, which she did not like, and haven't since. Since she clearly doesn't need the solids for extra nutrition, and since breastfeeding is so much easier than feeing her solids, we will stick with that for now.

It was so lovely when she started smiling. Now she loves to laugh which is so fun! She laughs most often at Chris. She thinks he is hilarious and I love to see then interact so positively. He has been a wonderfully big brother. Never has he taken out any jealousy or frustration on her by hitting. He loves to give her kisses and talk baby talk with her. They are just too cute together.

I have loved seeing Jed interact with her this time around. It's no secret we both really wanted a girl, and we both love having a girl. She's a daddy's girl, too. I didn't think we would see it this young but she lights up when she sees him. She loves to be held by him and he loves to hold her.

We will end with some fun pictures from Kara 5 months and younger!

Kara's baby blessing - same dress Mommy was blessed in

Kara holding onto her favorite toy

First Bath - November 8, 2014

First Santa Picture

Starting to Smile

Almost one month old

Kara's baby blessing

Thursday, May 19, 2016

Chris Lately

Up next is our crazy, cute Chris.

How would you describe Chris? No inhibitions, friendliest kid you know, willing to do anything (unless it's eating dinner), chatterbox, incredible imagination, loving, sweet older brother, silly, performer, and just plain cute!

Yes, Chris is amazingly friendly. I feel like most kids this age have at least a dash of shyness, but not this kid. I consider it a blessing and a trial ha ha. He wants to tell anyone and everyone everything on his mind. If someone is sweet and says hi back to him, say at the grocery store, he stops and tell them, "I'm Christopher Daniel Steeze-a-fin, I have a fin in my name. I'm FOUR years old and I can go upstairs or downstair at the gym. Lydia wants me to go downstairs but I want to go upstairs. Our house selled and we live in GRANDMA'S HOUSE!" Some of it changes but at the moment that's pretty much what he wants to tell everyone. It's a little embarrassing, and thankfully he hasn't disclosed anything personal to anyone yet (that I know of). Also thankfully, everyone always is so sweet to him and some people even ask him follow up questions. I'm always so grateful to the store clerks who engage with him. I hope he never loses his ability to talk to anyone. I would have loved to have that ability in high school!

The amount conversation he has with strangers can give you a hint to how much he talks at home and in the car. In the car is the one that kills me! I often get lost in my thoughts and plans for the day, only to hear, "MOM! Didn't you hear me?" It's honestly one of my harder trials in life, the amount of attention Chris demands every day. He loves to talk, loves to perform and do tricks, and it can get tiring. This kid has boundless energy. I try to love it, though, and in general he is seriously a great kid.

Seriously, this kid is great. I have never had issues with him hitting friends or getting in fights with friends. He never hurts his sister. While he moves around a ton and runs a ton, he never takes anything out physically by hurting people. I've been so impressed with that! He is so loving. He will give us hugs and kisses all the time. He will give strangers hugs often, too, ha ha. (I actually worry that he would totally walk off with a stranger if they asked him to. We're working on the stranger danger!)

Chris has done preschool this year. His little group of six comprised of five girls and him. He has dealt with it perfectly, though! And all the little girls love him. Several times they wanted to play wedding, all of them wanting to marry Chris (their options were a little limited, I suppose). He has been chased around the yard by a couple of them when he resisted marrying them ha ha. While I can't say he made strides academically, he and all the kids have made huge strides behaviorally. They sit for circle time, know how to act in a lesson, and respect each other pretty well. Chris loved to help and pretend to be the teacher. He isn't much of a colorer, but now he will scribble on the entire coloring page rather than just a few scribbles here and there.

Chris loves to perform, and recently I tried teaching him jokes. His favorite is: Why did the cookie go to the hospital? Because he was all crummy! (It should be, because he was feeling crummy.) He usually says "How did the cookie...." rather than why, but he's grow out of that soon enough, I'm sure. He thinks everything he does is hilarious. He loves to laugh. He's a great kid to chase and to tickle, and I'm pretty sure that's Jed's favorite thing to do with him.

Chris loves to be outside and get dirty. He loves to play with water. Recently he planted the garden with Grandpa and I think it was the highlight of the month. He loves to check on his plants.

Eating is not Chris' forte. He will eat fruit snacks 100% of the time you offer them. He loves granola bars, cereal, chocolate milk, cheese, and bread. Sometimes rice, chicken, broccoli, french fries, carrots, apple sauce, smoothies, eggs, yogurt, corn. Rarely he eats beef, green beans. Pretty much anything else he refuses. We've gone through a lot of methods of getting him to eat, but have given up on most. We didn't like dinnertime being a fight, so basically we follow the rule that we determine when and what he eats, he determines if he eats. He's still growing, and every once in a while he surprises me by trying a new thing on his plate, so we will continue with this method.

Had his 4th birthday this year! He got to have his first friend birthday party, too. We kept it simple, a play date at the park with friends. I made an alligator cupcake cake (I may have swayed his opinion on what he wanted to what was easiest), and it turned out cute. He loved his birthday. His friends were sweet and got him fun toys for presents.

Also for his birthday, we went out to Red Robin for dinner. The waiters came to sing happy birthday to him, and when they ended he yelled, "I luh-hove this!" He seriously loved it. The waitress said it was the most enthusiastic response she has ever gotten. He loves being sung happy birthday to. (Also, singing happy birthday and pretending to blow out candles is a pretend play that he does often.) When they sang to him in Primary, he was super happy and even danced while they sang ha ha. This kid could dance all the time if just given an audience.

I must also mention what a sweet older brother he is. Chris and Kara have always shared a room. Sometimes he doesn't want to share toys, but he is very generous most of the time. He never just takes toys from Kara. He loves to take her hands and lead her around in circles. They both think it's hilarious. If I tell him to go get his sister, he will bring her to me (leading her by the hand). He will help her feel better if I tell him to. He's a great older brother.

And now for the random things. I've been keeping little notes on my phone for a loooong time of things I wanted to write down. So, here they are:

- Funny things Chris has said (most he has grown out of):

- suckadow (we have no idea what this means, but he used to say this ALL the time),

- torti-YA (tortilla),

- sue-ca-nack (fruit snack),

- see-dee-waiter (see you later),

- "are you sure?",

- "I'm so proud of you mommy. You're my best mommy ever,"

- "I will just use my feet," (when he wants to be barefoot outside),

- "I have a giant noses" (I have a diagnoses), "I have blue on my eyes, and you have eyes on your glasses!"

- merote = remote

- Chris says people's names with just about every sentence when he is talking to them.

- Counting in Spanish with Chris: uno, two no

- When Brittany was pregnant, Chris wanted the baby to come out. He asked her all the time if she could open her tummy so he could see the baby. Once born, he called the baby "Baby Germy" for a while (Jeremy)

- Most embarrassing stories, around the same time as pregnant Brittany, he asked just about everyone who looked remotely larger than average if they were pregnant. SUPER embarrassing. I felt so bad!

- Christmas time, we played "Don't Eat Pete," but Chris calls it "Don't Repeat." Also, he is terrible at that game, because he can't keep a secret. Don't let Chris know your secrets! He will tell everyone ha ha.

- When asked what he wants to be when he grows up, it is either a daddy or a doctor

- When asked who he wants to marry when he grows up, he answers his cousins

- Rolls around terribly when he sleeps. He falls off the bed almost weekly

- No naps for this kid (too much energy!)

- Loves to read with you

- Can count to 30

- Starting to recognize beginning sounds in words

- Can't write anything yet, including his name, but he can recognize his name

- We've been stressing privacy when going to the bathroom, and at random times he will want privacy. Today he was pouting under a blanket, but Kara kept lifting it up to look at him. He got mad and told her he needed his privacy.

- Fully potty trained (May 2015), started standing when peeing around December, but only does it on rare occasions

- Not super coordinated with a ball, but has great balance on the strider bike

- The perfect day for Chris would include: playing outside in the yard with Grandpa, ice cream and fruit snacks, watching Big Hero 6, popcorn, dino chicken nuggets, and lots and lots of friends and cousins. He loves people!

Last, some pictures from this year!