Four!

Well, I admit I'm far from a born blogger, but thought I'd post an update anyway, at least for my own memory later on down the road.  :)

Kayla turned four today.  Four years old!  It's hard to believe that four years have passed, but alas it's true. 

So let's see.  About Kayla...

She is still Savannah's number one fan and loves spending time with family.
She loves going to "school" (daycare) and her friends there.
She enjoys drawing.  After a long spell of working on letters, she's finally gone back to drawing people and they. are. CUTE. 
She's been reading simple stuff for a few months now.
Her favorite things to do at home are play with her "kids"--pretend she's the teacher and her baby dolls are the students-- and play with her dollhouse, specifically: giving each person a chair.  It's a big to-do. 
She's taking a dance class and loves it.
She's on a PB&J kick and wants it for breakfast most days.

Worst Mommy Blogger...Ever?

I am so bad about not updating Miss Kayla's blog! I just don't have tons of time to work on it. She is 18 (and a half!) months old and doing great. She had a good checkup two weeks ago. She's slim and tall for her age and a great little talker. I stopped counting when she got to 100 words a month or two back. She is using lots of two-word phrases and occassionally putting her own two words together.

She, Daddy and I went to Wilmington this weekend and had a great time. We played on the beach, though the ocean water was darn near freezing, walked through downtown along the river, toured the Battleship North Carolina, and visited the NC Aquarium at Fort Fisher. It was a whirlwind trip--just Saturday to Sunday--but we had a blast and made lots of memories.

This Time Last Year

A year ago today, Kayla Grace Ali was just a beautiful little girl who I didn't even know yet.
A year ago, from this moment, she was 16 minutes old and I'd never held her in my arms.
Getting to know her, hold her, care for her, and even worry about her, has been an amazing adventure.
Thank you, Kayla, for the best year of my life.


I will add pictures, etc., tonight from Birthday #1!

Showing Off

Kayla has been working on her skills the last few days--
signing more and all done,
playing "so big" with Mama,
giving high fives,
copying us more when we say yum, bye, ball, dog, and uh-oh (and saying some of them on her own, still, too),
making the same sound whenever she plays with things that have wheels (not a "vrrooom" but her version of one),
and generally being her adorable, sweet, cuddly self.

Long Time No Post

Wow. I have been really slack about keeping up with Miss K's blog! She has changed, grown, and learned so much since last time... Let's see if I can think of most of her tricks and some other tidbits:

• She says baba, mama, dada, daw (like dog), da (like that, as she points at all kinds of stuff), and uh-oh, as well as copying us when we say ball, yuck, and yum. **Correction: She actually says ball on her own, not just when copying us.
• Her true crawl is the army crawl, but she does a very cute and careful hands-and-knees crawl for shorter trips.
• She loves to pull up on everything but barely takes any steps.
• She claps when we say "yay."
• She blows kisses into the air--no hand involved.
• She taught herself the lovely little sound where she moves her finger back and forth on her lips while making sounds. (I call it the wubba wubba, but don't know if it has a real name.)
• She loves splashing in the water of the pool or tub, and getting her face wet.
• She likes to sit on my tummy and hold my hands by the outside, making them clap.
• She enjoys trying to brush her own teeth much more than letting us brush them for her. When we walk by the toothbrushes she points to them and says, "aaah."
• If she is crawling and we ask if she wants up, she'll get onto her knees and reach up for us. She taught herself that, too, I guess and I think it's adorable.
• She loves Goodnight Moon before bed and points to the kittens on each page they're on; she just loved them from the first time we added the book to her bedtime routine, which I also think is adorable.
• She has found the way to Sadie's heart is through her stomach, dropping bits of food when she can. This is how we found out that Sadie has a taste for bananas!

I'll try to add more as I think of them, and try to do a better job of keeping this current!

PRUNES!

Making Daddy's Day!

Kayla said "dada" for the first time last night, which melted her daddy's heart, of course. This adds to her expansive vocabulary--mama, baba, and now dada. She also combines these sounds to make fun new words. Kayla got herself onto her hands & knees and rocked back and forth yesterday, too, though she hasn't actually crawled yet. She is just impressing us more and more each day.