Kayla is now almost 2 years and 5 months old.  She is becoming a very independent and functional individual.  No longer a baby requiring constant help.  Here is an update on all her capabilities now.

VOCABULARY (Words, Sentences, and Singing):

Kayla has a very large vocabulary.  She can repeat most words she hears although sometimes she can't pronounce them well.  She has learned all the animals names not only in our household but also in my sister's household.  She knows the words of most items she has been in contact with previously; phone, shoes, chairs, etc. If she doesn't know the word of something, once it has been introduced to her it only takes once or a few times of telling her what it is before she remembers it.  She can tell the difference between similar objects such as she knows the difference between shoes, sandels, and flip flops.  She seems to recognizes some pronouns but for some reason whe she wants us to hold her she usually says "Hold You" instead of "Hold Me". 

She can string lots of words together now to make sentences.  She says "I Love You Mommy", this is my favorite!  She can often get enough words out so that you know what she is trying to say.  When speaking she often says all the nouns in the sentences but leaves out mainly the adjoining words but still says enough other words to know what she is trying to say.  She seems to recognize the spelling of a few words but not very many.

She has learned alot of songs.  Some of the songs she knows are "ABC song", "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star", "Ba Ba Black Sheep", "Jesus Loves Me" and "Ring Around the Roses".  She knows all the words to most of the words of all these songs. 

STAIRS:

Kayla has gotten good at climbing and going down the stairs.  She can pretty much go up and down them without even holding on to anything or just with slight assistance by putting her hand on the railing or wall or touching the step slightly in front of her when going up stairs.  Although she can do it on her own we still have her hold our hand or onto the wall when going down and we always stand on the step below her as we go up or down so if she slips we are right there to catch her. 

EATING:

Kayla eats regular food all the time now and has been for awhile. 

She still mainly loves eatting fruits.  She sometimes switches on which fruits she likes best.  Like one week she might want to eat blueberries all the time and then the next week she won't touch them.  I haven't really found any fruit as of yet that she does not like except maybe cantaloupe.  Lately she seems to really like eatting pears and apples. 

She is very picky with meat.  I can't get her to eat most meats.  She won't even try them most of the time to see if she would like it or not.  The only meats I can get her to sometimes eat are hotdogs, chicken nuggets and ground beef/turkey.  When I say chicken nuggets that is what I mean.  She will not eat any other form of chicken.  The ground beef/turkey has to be mixed in with other foods that disquise the taste such as chili and hamburger helper type meals.  She often will eat the meat toppings on pizza as well but even then she sometimes picks off the ham and pepperoni but usually will always it the sausage.  She also seems to like the large meatball that I get on our spaghetti from Fazoli's.  However, If you try to sneak other meats in her meals by mixing them in with her other food she will end up spitting it out.  I have tried this several times with chicken mixed in her mashed potatoes and other foods but she can tell it is in there and spits it out.  I'm not even sure what meats she should be eatting at her age, some of the meats such as pork chops and steak I don't really even expect her to eat because they might still be too tough for her. 

In the last few months we have switched her from whole milk to 2% milk.  She seems to like the 2% milk more than the whole milk but she is becoming less and less willing to drink milk.  I think we probably waste more milk from her just letting it sit there than what she actually drinks.  It is quite annoying.  I try to not give her much of the other drinks but she gets apple juice, orange juice, kool aid, and water too. 

Her favorite thing to have is popsicles.  She asks for them several times a day but we try to limit her to one or two a day.  We give her the FlaVorIce Popsicles so they are really probably just frozen Koolaid. 

COUNTING:

Kayla can pretty much count to 20 but sometimes misses a number here and there in the high teens.  She seems to recognizes numbers (such as 1, 2 , 3) up to 10.  She sometimes is able to count the amount of something when asked but othertimes does not count them correctly.  She does seem to recognizes quickly the number of fingers you are holding up on one hand though.  She does not seem to recognize the spelling of numbers yet. 

COLORS:

Kayla recognizes a lot of colors such as green, red, blue, purple, yellow, black, and white.  She might know more we just haven't really asked her lately to name off colors to know what all she knows.

DRESSING SELF:

Kayla just recently started to try to take her own clothes off.  She has trouble still getting her shirt off but can pretty much easily do everything else; shoes, socks, shorts, pullups.  She doesn't really try to put clothes on herself except her socks and shoes but she could probably do everythign but her shirt if she tried.

POTTY TRAINING:

We have been trying to teach potty training since alittle after Kayla turned two but do not always keep up with it.  While at grandma's during the day she puts Kayla on the potty three to four times a day and she goes potty on it half the time.  We tried putting just regular panties on at home to see if she would tell us rather than going in the panties but that didn't work.  So we have attempted the naked manuever at home several times and at first was having some accidents.  The last few days of trying this though she has ran to the potty everytime she has needed to go.  However as long as she is wearing pullups or really any form of underwear she never tells us when she has to go potty.  So at this point we are going to try to keep underwear off her as much as possible when at home until she has no more accidents for sure and then try putting regular panties on her again and see what she does.  Pullups remain our friend at this point when outside the home.

TANTRUMS:

Kayla has hit the terrible two's and throws tantrums sometimes when she doesn't get what she wants.  She was doing this alot for awhile but has recently seemed to start not being as bad about it.  We have been using time out and usually just telling her she is going to get a time out will settle her down now. 

NAPPING and BEDTIME:

Kayla has been on a toddler bed since a little after she turned two and has done well with it.  She still gets two naps when at Grandma's during the week but has moved to only one nap when at home on the weekend.  That is if we can even get her down for one nap.  I may have to start telling grandma to only give her one because she doesn't seem to want to go to sleep at night alot which I don't know is due to her getting too much sleep during the day or not.  I'm not sure because even when we only give her one nap she sometimes will not go to bed at night also.  She hates taking naps when at home but usually we can get her to take one by either having her lay in our bed for awhile and she eventually falls a sleep and if that don't work we just put her in her room and let her cry until she falls a sleep. 

Bedtime ritual is usually us going to lay down in mom's bed at 8pm where she usually watches a movie such as Finding Nemo, UP, or Ice Age for an hour.  Then we put her in her own bed between 9 and 9:30pm.  We read her a book, give kisses goodnight, and pray.  Sometimes she will go straight to sleep and other times she fusses before eventually falling asleep.  We had to put one of the childproof knobs on her door to keep her from coming out of her room in an attempt to try to stay up later. 

TEETH:

Kayla has all of her baby teeth, the last set came in during April/May.

SOCIAL SKILLS and MANNERS: 

Kayla has become more interested in playing with other kids.  She loves being outside and playing with the kids on the street.  She calls them "People".  She always says "I see peoples outside".  She knows the name of some of them.  She was enjoying the company of her friend "Leia" at daycare (grandma's) but Leia turned 3 in June so is no longer at her daycare, this makes Kayla the oldest kid there now.  A new kid around the age of 19 months old just recently started at daycare and is starting to warm up to Kayla so at least she has someone new to play with.  She still enjoys playing by herself though as well and sometimes as with any kids gets into arguments over toys.

She has very good manners.  She often says please and thank you.  She says bless you when someone sneezes.  She says sorry when she knows she did something wrong. 

TECHNOLOGY:

Kayla has the ability to use our iphones.  She knows how to press the button to make the screen come up.  Knows how to flip throw the pages, knows what items to press on the screen to get to her games and movies.  It seems amazing how well she knows how to use it.  I don't know f this is normal for anyone her age or not.  She knows how to use the Nintendo DS also. 

This week Kayla started sleeping in her new toddler bed.

Our first few attempts at Kayla sleeping in her toddler bed went badly.  It was a new room and new bed which might of been to overwhelming for her.  So we decided this week to move the toddler bed into the old bedroom for now.  Once the new baby arrives it will have to be moved back, but thats not for awhile.

  Our first real attempt at this was Wednesday night.  The first time we put her down around 9pm she cried hysterically.  We let her lay in our room for another 20 min or so.  I then put her back into her toddler bed.  The second time after she seemingly was ready to sleep I shut the door.  5 min later she is up and trying to open the door, she inadvertently locked the door and we had to find a screwdriver to open it from the outside.  After 3 times of doing the Super Nanny technique of its time for bed and laying her back in the bed and walking away, she finally went to sleep.

Last night, Thursday, I was playing hockey so it was mom's turn.  From what I was told she did a little better and fell asleep only after a few tries.  So it appears she is adjusting quickly to the new bed which is a major relief for both of us since we feared that would be a major issue when she had no other place to sleep besides that bed.

Next to tackle, Potty Training!