I knew things had changed after asking my girl to sit down on the couch and she responded with a pretty resounding "No" as she continued to run and jump thinking herself oh so hilarious. As shocked as I was by her answer I decided to give her a choice just like I do my babies at school. I calmly said "You have 2 choices. You can sit down or you will have to get down. Sit down please". She of course looked at me and laughed as she continued jumping so I nicely picked her up and placed her on the floor. She wasn't happy and she may not have completely understood my words, but she understood "I am not supposed to stand/jump on the couch and if I do I have to get down". That conversation right there people absolutely broke my heart because it suddenly made me realize my baby isn't a baby anymore and she actually understands what I am saying to her and can respond and make choices. Mama mind blown!!
It is so strange how these milestones always catch me so off guard. I know she is growing up and soaking everything up like a sponge, but it is too much for this Mama to accept that her baby isn't a baby anymore. Now don't get excited about me having another baby anytime soon because that won't happen for quite some time no matter how many people keep telling me we need to hurry up and get on it before she gets too old. I am enjoying my time with my girl way too much right now and then just the thought of being pregnant scares the ever living daylights out of me. Plus I know myself and my limits and our family is doing really good with where we are at right now and we want to wait a little while longer.
For 1 thing I did not enjoy being pregnant one bit. I think I can honestly say I hated every aspect of it except the end result and I am not looking forward to doing it again any time soon. We actually had to rethink our #2 timeline because we always said when Mckinley was potty trained we would start trying again. We were thinking she would be 100% done by 3 so if we started trying by her third birthday we would have #2 a little before she was 4 which sounded great to me. Well as you may or may not know Mckinley has actually started potty training and we are no where near being fully trained, but getting them to go is half the battle so we are at least half way there and the child isn't even 2 yet!We honestly didn't expect her to start the potty process so early so we retract our previous statement because no one especially me wants to see this anytime soon!
Potty training is such a huge milestone in my book and that got me thinking about other milestones my girl has achieved and since I am not doing a great job keeping up with her monthly posts I thought it would be fun to document where she is right now before she is a year and a half!
Mckinley at 17 Almost 18 Months
We are still rolling along with this whole potty training thing. I try to stay on top of # 2 since I love not having to spray out too many diapers anymore, but I am not pushing #1. If she goes she goes and we celebrate each time she sits on the potty. We sit, wipe, flush, YAY! I don't want her to ever feel like pottying is a "bad thing" by pushing her if she isn't ready and just like everything else we try to follow her cues for when she is ready for the next step. She does a pretty good job telling me when she has to go poop (bend over, grab crotch, yell I POOP!) and I scoop her up and
we run to the potty and most times she will do this when she just has to tee tee (Yup we say tee tee and i may or may not have said this when I have had to go). I usually just say "It is time to go potty" or "let's go potty" and she usually enthusiastically
runs to the bathroom where ever we are, but every now and then usually in the morning she just does not want to go and will fuss, but it is usually pretty easy to get her in the bathroom and sitting down. Now actually getting her to go potty is sometimes another story. Sometimes she has already gone in her diaper/trainer, but we sit anyways just because. We actually just got her new Best Bottom Training Pants which we are using with our Small Best Bottom Liners and we are absolutely LOVING them! They make the process of going potty so much easier because we don't have to take her diapers on and off. I am itching to buy another pair or 2, but we will wait until we are really 100% training. We are also loving our
Arm and Hammer Potty Seat that goes on the actual potty because she can't get down on her own. Maybe once we get her Trainers and she can pull her own pants down we can pull out the ole
Froggy Potty again.
We don't do potty treats, but our sweet babysitter likes to make my life
miserable fun by sending home suckers in Kinley's bag so she gets one every now and then for special treats and what's better than toilet time with a lolly.
We no longer have a high chair and have officially moved into a booster seat at the table. Mckinley is doing pretty good eating off of her divided trays from Target until she is done eating and starts sliding her tray all over the table. She is also doing pretty good with using a fork to feed herself, but she usually gets tired of it or wants
to eat faster than it allows and starts shoveling the food in with her hands. The spoon is another story, but we have our Squooshi Reusable Food Pouches which make those foods much easier to eat.
Mckinley is 100% my child when it comes to her demeanor, eating habits, and her speech. What can I say my girl is a talker. Brent and I sat down the other day and wrote down all of the words/phrases she consistently says. She will repeat pretty much anything you ask her to say now, but these are the words she actually says.
Hot
Cold
Up
Down
Please
Ball
Yes
Okay
No
Doggie
Shoe
Sock
Hat
Car
Achoo
Paci
Daddy
Mama
Grandpa(we are still working on this one)
Ya Ya
Jen Jen
Julie
Milk
Water
Bite
Cheese
Sit
Hey
Elmo
Cookie
Nose
Eye
Counts 1, 2, 3
The letter Q when we sing the ABC's
Open
Stuck
Boo
Splash
Mine
Shoowee (not really a word, but she says it a lot)
Stinky
Uh oh
Thank You
Go Night Night
Brush Teeth
I Poop
All Done
Where's Daddy?
Tee Tee
Itsy Bitsy
Kiss Kiss
That 's about 50 words she says on a daily basis! Not bad for a peanut.
She is still a fantastic eater and sometimes I side eye her at her food choices at particular times of the day. For example, the other night for dinner she had black beans, shoe peg corn, creamy garlic pasta, edemame, and a bite of steak and after barely touching her delicious waffle this morning she begged for black beans! She is still iffy on chewy meats because she doesn't have the molars just yet to chew it, but she loves those Perdue lightly breaded chicken strips and chicken patties and her ground turkey meat so we can always find something for her to eat. She would eat a spicy black bean burger over a real burger any day, but as long as she is eating a healthy balanced diet I am happy. Usually what ends up happening is whatever Mama or Daddy is eating she wants and I am not complaining because she has greatly cut my portion sizes which I think is the main reason I have lost a few lbs. so I am not complaining about my good eater.
We are kind of sort of in 18 month clothes, but the curse of the shortness means we can still fit in most 12 month pants and we might still rock 1 pair of 9 month jeggings because they look like little hipster skinny jeans and yes I know we aren't hipsters, but they are just so cute on her fluffy bum. My mom called me the other day to ask me to go through a box of smocked dresses to pull out some jumpers to bring with us when we came over in case she wanted to change her when she was keeping her. Needless to say my mother doesn't care for how I dress my child, but if her choice in Easter dress says anything I am ok in my decisions and my girl is always clean, cute, and comfortable with a big giant bow to top it all off.
I just cut Kinley's bangs for the third time the other day while she sat on the potty and Daddy was holding her hands down which caused a few shrieks, but you gotta do what you gotta do sometimes. We actually already had her first haircut at Ya Ya's house a few weeks ago and yes we saved the baby mullet she cut off and yes Ya Ya you were right it does look much better since we cut it.
Sleeping sucks right now. It is very hit or miss and some nights I feel like we have a new born again. Ok it's not as bad as a newborn, but when you are used to sleeping all night and then your child starts waking up once or twice a night you feel like a walking zombie. I would rather just stay up all night then have interrupted sleep. I know all of this is because she has molars coming in and she goes back down after a little milk or water, but I need my good sleeper back. These teeth need to hurry it on up and come on in. I can actually feel a big ole molar on the bottom right and I am not looking forward to next week because I know we won't be sleeping for a few night. Thankfully we have a brand new bottle of infant pain reliever and Hyland's tablets and gel ready and waiting for any middle of the night screaming fits.
I can't believe we are so close to the One and a Half mark! She will be closer to 2 than 1 in just a few days!!!!!!!!!! That is just too much for my brain to process right now. Even though I will be sad to be celebrating this milestone it will make it a little better since we have decided we will be celebrating all 1/2 birthdays by a visiting our favorite Donut shop down the street. Mckinley actually had her first doughnut yesterday at Dunkin Donuts when they gave her her own little jelly filled munchkin which she took a bite or 2 of and then promptly started throwing around, but it was pretty cute seeing her holding her own mini doughnut.
No matter how sad I am that my baby is quickly turning into a real grown up person I am getting pretty excited to start planning another birthday. And I am so glad I already found my
Inspiration Piece to work from
and Kristi at
Best Impressions Paperie has already started working on the invitations and they are ABSOLUTELY PRECIOUS! I am so glad to have these 2 things out of the way and since this year things will be much simpler I have most of the hard work done.
Man writing all of this down makes me realize how much my girl has changed from this time last year to now.
Oh my wild child how I Love and adore you!
