Leah Caroline, 2 1/2 Years

I’m 3 months late on this post…There’s no why other than just life. Kids. Work. Reasons.

Let’s see, what has happened since Leah turned 2?? Tons! First of all, Leah started preschool. It was a little bit of a shaky transition with tears at drop off for a few weeks, but she settled in. After 4 months at that school, we moved her (and Caelan) to a bigger school. We anticipated tears again, but she did not miss a beat! No tears, and she settled right in.

Just a couple weeks after her birthday, we took her for her first hair cut. She cried and squirmed the whole time, but she came out with bangs!

It’s actually amazing how much her hair has grown since then. And now we are growing her bangs out, which is annoying, but she does look cute with them clipped back.

Leah was Robin for Halloween last year and she went trick-or-treating for real this time. I’m still not sure she actually spoke, but she enjoyed it.

In November, we moved Leah to a big girl bed. The transition was smooth – no real problems. However, after a couple of months, she’d get up out of bed and leave her room. Sometimes she’d go into Caelan’s room and sometimes she’d come to our room. We eventually put a gate up at her door and that has fixed that problem for the time being. We also gave her a clock that turns green at a certain time in the morning and we’re working on her learning that she can’t leave her room until the clock is green. She’s fairly good about it at this point.

At Christmastime, we went to see Santa and Leah actually agreed to sit next to him. She sort of understood Christmas this year. We also included her in our Elf on the Shelf tradition and she gave our elf his middle name, Mike. So now he’s Train Mike.

In March, we started swimming lessons for Leah. It was the first time she had ever been in a pool and she has done so well! She’s much more comfortable in the pool than Caelan was at her age, though she is still apprehensive. We’ll be starting another session this week.

Since Leah has been in preschool, she’s made progress with things like letters and numbers. She can sing the alphabet but only knows 2 or 3 letters by sight. She can count from 1-13 and then from 17-20, but is a little fuzzy in between. She can also count objects up to about 5. She knows most of the basic colors, and she still LOVES books. LOVES. It is not unusual for her to appear with a stack of books and ask to be read to.

Her speech is excellent for her age. I think she is perfectly understandable to anyone, but of course she does still mispronounce some words and she uses pronouns incorrectly. She did stop calling herself Yah and started calling herself Leah. She also stopped calling Caelan Gaga and calls him Caelan now. Bill and I still call them Gaga and Yah sometimes, though.

Leah’s sleep has been better in recent months. She still wakes too early for my taste (6-6:30am) and occasionally she will wake up at night, but for the most part she has been sleeping well at night lately. However, naps are now kind of iffy. She’s always been pretty good about napping and she still takes a 2 hour nap at school, but at home it’s different. Sometimes she goes down easily, but only sleeps for an hour, and other times she just wants to play in her room. And it’s not that she’s not tired, because if she skips her nap, she will usually crash around dinnertime. Leah still has quite a few “buddies” that she sleeps with including Penguin, Owie, Hippo, and seahorse. She has recently started using the same projection mobile that Caelan used to use. We have gotten a lot of use out of that thing!!

Potty training is…not really going. We aren’t really trying. She sits on the potty at school and we are trying to get more in the habit of it at home, but she’s not really ready. If she does happen to go, she’s SUPER excited but that doesn’t seem to inspire her to go all the time.

When it comes to food, Leah is generally not very picky. If she feels like it, she will eat anything. I can’t think of much that she doesn’t like. She is still a huge fan of fruits and veggies. She is still a very messy eater though.

For self-care skills, Leah wants to do everything herself. Bill has been working with her on dressing and undressing herself. She has long been able to put her own shoes and jacket on. The independence is good on the one hand, but can also be frustrating.

And while we’re talking about things that are frustrating…2 year olds. Yeah. Leah has nailed the throw-myself-on-the-floor tantrum. Oh the drama. And any tiny little thing can set her off – not picking her up, not letting her choose, giving her the wrong kind of fork, etc. We generally try to ignore the tantrums in an effort to teach her that shrieking is not going to get her anything, but omg the shrieking. We’re actually in a phase right now (this very second at least) where Caelan’s behavior has improved lately, and Leah’s has gotten worse. Hopefully Caelan will continue to improve because Leah’s threenager year is coming and only one hysterical kid at a time would be super! Leah already has the sassy attitude down so she’s well on her way.

The kids, Leah and Caelan, have become more difficult to handle as a unit than they are individually now. I can take them out together to run an errand or something by myself, but I try not to. It’s not usually worth it because the whining and bickering and the cliche she-kicked-me, he’s-looking-at-me crap gets out of control. They really do love to play together SO much but they are siblings so they fight. Leah worships Caelan. She repeats everything he says, parrots his opinions, and wants to do everything he does. I think the person that will have the hardest time with Caelan going to kindergarten this Fall will be Leah when she realizes she can’t go with him.

Leah is still such a cuddly little girl. I love that about her! She loves to be held, picked up, hugged. Often that is what she needs to snap her out of a tantrum. Sometimes we have to refuse to pick her up when she is tantruming or being rude and I hate that but I also want to teach her to use words to communicate, not whines. I really do try to savor every single cuddle and hug (and even the times when it takes forever to get her down for a nap) because I know these days won’t last forever and I won’t always have this little girl climbing into my lap, wrapping her arms around my neck, and giving me a kiss on each cheek before she goes to bed.

2 1/2 Years Old

Leah’s 2 1/2 Year Old Stats

• Wearing 3T tops, 2T bottoms and 3T pajamas, size 7 1/2 shoes
• Size 6 diapers
• Weight: 28 lbs
• Height: 36 inches
• Favorite foods: Yogurt, toast, goldfish, pizza, any and all fruits and veggies especially tomatoes and grapes
• Loves reading books, Daniel Tiger, Super Why, anything Caelan likes, Hi Ho Cherry-O

 

 

Leah Lines, Part 3

SARAH: Leah, when are you going to go on the potty?

LEAH: On Monday.

———-

Leah is sitting on the air conditioner vent…

LEAH: Ooooooooooh!! It’s cold on my butt!!

———-

I notice that Leah’s diaper is full…

SARAH: Leah, do you need a new diaper?

LEAH [casually]: No. I fine.

———-

CAELAN: Whoever says “butt cheek” first wins!

LEAH [practically before Caelan finishes his sentence]: Butt-cheek-I-win!!

———-

Leah is talking about her ceiling fan…

LEAH: My fan in a time out.

SARAH: Your fan’s in a time out?

LEAH: Yes.

SARAH: Why?

LEAH: Cause he eat me.

SARAH: Your fan is in a time out because it ate you??

LEAH: Yes.

———-

Leah sees Mickey, Donald Duck, and Goofy on TV…

LEAH: Mickey, Donald, woof!

———-

Leah gets Caelan a tissue which he refuses.

LEAH: You fine? [She squats down so she can look up his nose.] Okay.

———-

LEAH: I put Mickey in timeout. In the oven.

SARAH: Oh no, what did he do?

LEAH: He hit Gaga (Caelan).

Leah’s Next Big Adventure: Preschool

We made the decision for Leah to start preschool just after she turned 2. I was (and am) excited to have both kids in the same place again (they were both in their home daycare together for about 6 months before Caelan went off to preschool). Leaving our daycare provider was very bittersweet since we have been with her for 4 years and she took such great care of our babies in that time. But we are excited for Leah’s new adventure!

Despite having been through this same transition with Caelan last year (crazy that it was only last year – it seems like it was much longer ago!) I had a hard time anticipating what this would be like for Leah. Caelan has never been a clingy child but even he had a rough transition to preschool. He was fine the first two days, but then sobbed at drop off for a week and a half after that. Leah is much clingier so I had to expect that this would be even worse for her. Plus, she is used to having only 1 or 2 other children around at daycare. A class of a dozen, plus another couple dozen kids in neighboring classes and I was sure she’d be overwhelmed.

There is also a huge difference between 2 years, 9 months (Caelan’s age when he started preschool) and 2 years, 1 month (Leah’s age). Leah speaks well for a 2 year old, but she isn’t used to sleeping on a cot or with a pillow, she *just* learned how to drink from an open cup, and she is still a baby in many ways. And she’s my last baby which makes her just that much more of a baby to me, no matter her age 🙂

I dropped her off on the first day of school. She walked in as she always does when we drop Caelan off, this time excited to have her own lunchbox, but still not realizing that I was about to leave her there. When she did realize, she WAILED. I was expecting it and I made my hasty escape, but not without shedding a few tears myself. I know it’s normal, I know she’s going to be fine, but it’s hard to leave your baby screaming like that. Apparently, she stopped crying fairly quickly and went on to have a good first day.

The tearful drops offs continued through the first week, and the second week…Finally now, at the end of her third week, she’s started to do better. She hugged me today and said “Bye!” without so much as a quivery lip. I won’t be surprised if we have a few more rough mornings in the coming weeks, but hopefully now we’ve turned a corner.

Leah’s very own cubby

Leah Lines, Part 2

Talking to our Amazon Echo, Alexa…

SARAH: Alexa, what is my name?

ALEXA: Sarah’s Profile.

LEAH: Say “Mommy”, Alexa.

———-

SARAH: Leah, can you say “I love you”?

LEAH: We go Chick Fil A??

———-

Leah and I are watching Caelan NOT nap on the monitor…

SARAH: Go to sleep Caelan.

LEAH: Listen a Mommy, Gaga!

———-

SARAH: Leah, do you want to take a nap?

LEAH: A nack [snack]?

SARAH [enunciating]: No, a naP.

LEAH: No, sssssnack.

———-

Leah is very annoyed by a few flies who have sneaked into our house. I overheard this from the lunch table…

LEAH: No fly, that my milk!!

———-

SARAH: Your hair is a hot mess.

LEAH: You’re a hot mess.

Leah’s Carnival Party

At this point, it’s no surprise to anyone that I’m going to go all out on a birthday party for one of my kids. I know it’s insane and it’s TONS of work (especially this one), but I love putting the parties together. And my kids have a great time and that is the ultimate goal 🙂

So going way back to this past Christmas, friends of ours gave us a popcorn machine. My first thought was “Okay, one of the kids is having a carnival party this summer.” Funny how these ideas come about, but that is how this one was born.

Nailing down the details for this party was tricky. I wanted to include classic carnival foods, but also some non-junk foods. And the games needed to appear to kids ranging from 2 to 11 and be self-operating.

In the end, I figured out the menu, the games, the prizes, etc and it all came together really well! The amount of prep was crazy though. I had EIGHT people helping me do food prep and set up right before the party and we still managed to get it together just as the guests were arriving. (PS: THANK YOU to my “crew” (aka my family) for helping out!!)

Invitations

I found a few inspiration pics from a Google Image search and designed this invitation for Leah’s party.

Decorations

We had minimal decorations since the food and games were kind of the stars. I put up streamers and balloons in the kitchen near the food, but that was about it except for the pictures. I have done this monthly pictures display for both of my kids for their 1st and 2nd birthdays. It’s fun to see how quickly they’re changing!

Food

Here was our menu:

• Hot Dogs
• Chick Fil A nugget tray
• Corn on the Cob
• Pasta Salad
• Watermelon & Grapes
• Popcorn
• Soft Pretzels
• Funnel Cakes
• Cotton Candy
• Marshmallow Dumbbells
• Lemonade, Soda, Beer, Juice

I also made little signs for all of the food…

Cupcakes

The cupcakes (ironically) were the only thing that went really wrong. First off, the cupcake liners I ordered from eBay arrived 2 days AFTER the party. Fail. Luckily, I have a stash of liners and I actually had some that were really perfect for this. Crisis #1 averted. I made plain old chocolate cupcakes and planned to frost them with a new icing recipe I found for a whipped cream icing. I was making the icing at the last minute and I was so busy that I kept turning on the mixer and walking away and forgetting about it. Between that and the humidity, my icing was soup 😦 But a call to my mom and father-in-law to pick up some canned frosting and my sister and brother-in-law icing the cupcakes at the last minute saved the day! Box cake and canned frosting, and you know what, they were delicious. Crisis #2 averted.

Entertainment

I really wanted to have a bouncy castle (as my kids call them) for this party. It seemed fitting. We decided to purchase one instead of renting. It seems a little extravagant to me, but hopefully it’s a good investment since we can use it for future parties.

I also wanted to include face painting. I was reluctant to hire a pro for this since we had already spent money on the bouncy castle so I purchased a face painting kit. I printed out some simple ideas and hoped the parents would be willing to try their hand at face painting. Many parents did give it a go and the kids looked great! Unfortunately, sweaty faces + water guns and we had a lot of smearing and I’m pretty sure there is a fair amount of paint on the bouncy castle. Oh well, it’s washable.

Games

We had 3 games. They were set up so that each child could win 1 prize from each game, and the idea was that those 3 prizes would be their party favor. The games were fairly self-explanatory though my husband did supervise a couple of them. And since we were left with more than half of the prizes at the end of the party, I don’t think how to win a prize was quite clear.

Ring Toss

I made this ring toss set with empty iced tea bottles, a cardboard box, and a set of rings (found on Amazon). Each bottle was numbered, and each number corresponded to a prize bag.

Fish Bowl

For the fish bowl game, I used clear plastic cups and taped a picture of a fish with a number on the bottom of each one. The cups were then filled with water. The kids tossed ping pong balls and tried to get one in a cup. Again, the numbers corresponded to a prize bag.

Water Gun

For this game, I stuck golf tees in a block of stryrofoam and the object was to shoot the balls off their tees with a water gun. I couldn’t figure out how to do prizes for this game so I just did a grab bag of prizes instead of individual ones. The kids did play this game, but the water guns were a hit on their own (I thought they would be!).

So that was how we celebrated Leah’s 2nd birthday!! Everyone seemed to have a good time and it was our first time having a large party at the new house. There will be many more, I’m sure 😉

Leah Caroline, 2 Years

Today our baby is 2!! I’ve been saying she’s “almost 2” for ages it seems, but now she finally is. It’s mostly sweet, but it’s a little bittersweet also. The older she gets, the farther and farther away we move from the baby years, since Leah is our last baby. I think the year between age 1 and age 2 shows the most dramatic change. Of course, from birth to age 1 is a huge change but at both the start and end of that year, the child is a baby. At age 1, Leah was standing but not walking (though she did take her first steps 2 days later) and she had about 3 words. For the most part, she was still completely dependent on us and we were not able to communicate with her very well. Fast-forward to today and it’s a totally different story!

Driving Daddy’s tractor

I’ve said this before, but it’s still true…18 – 30 months is hands down my favorite age so far, with both of my kids. The squishy newborn days are sweet and the crawling/standing/first steps are exciting, but the learning to talk is my favorite. It’s fascinating to me to watch Leah learn how to pronounce letters and words and to figure out how to use the words to communicate with us. Naturally, it results in some mistakes – many of which we don’t correct because they are too hysterical/adorable.

Around 22-23 months old, Leah progressed to 4-6 (or more) word sentences. (“Watch a show, Mommy, please?” “I ride the bike, Daddy!”) Her sentences include verbs and pronouns now. The pronouns are mostly used incorrectly, but they’re there. (“Here coming me!”) Right now, she basically narrates everything going on around her and repeats the same sentences over and over again. That can be a little tiring (Caelan has complained about that and I just love the irony 🙂 ) but you can tell she’s practicing. She basically says everything and she is very understandable, even to people who aren’t around her much. Some of our favorite phrases:

• “Mommy, hot dog me?” (Similar to “beer me” if you’re familiar with that phrase 🙂 )
• “I sitting here!”
• “Where Yah go?” (Said while hiding – “Yah” is what she calls herself)
• “I haveita booboo, Mommy”
• “Come on, Gaga!”
• “You comin’ Mommy?”

“Haveita” is my favorite. Bill and I have incorporated it into our own conversations.

Little Miss Talks-A-Lot is super bossy now too! And very, very independent. Reminders to use her manners are frequent. She wants to do EVERYTHING by herself (“I no need help.”). Her fine motor skills are really great. She can put her shoes on by herself and she can even buckle her sandals. I was kind of shocked when she came into the room with her sandals on and no one had helped her! Of course she also wants to help with things like changing her own diaper, which is far less helpful.

Putting her shoes on

Speaking of diapers, we’ve got nothing on the potty training front. Occasionally I ask her if she wants to try and usually she says no. She did agree to sit on the potty once, but she thought it was weird. We don’t push her because, really, the last thing I want is a too-young, not-ready potty-trainer. Honestly, at this age, diapers are easier. However, when she starts preschool at the end of this month (!!!) she will need to wear Pull Ups.

Reading

Leah and Caelan are still buddies, but the bickering and fighting has escalated, as has the whining from both kids. Sometimes it’ll be quiet and I’ll investigate (because quiet kids are usually trouble) but I’ll find them playing well together, or reading together, or sharing a toy together. However, more often their play is NOT quiet. Often it’s still fine and they’re getting along, but there are plenty of fights too. I know its normal – I have a sister and while I don’t remember what it was like when we were 2 and 5, I’m sure we did fight. There are fights over toys and someone grabbed something from someone else or Leah starts crying and then I need to figure out if Caelan did something to her or if she’s just being dramatic. We set a lot of timers to switch off using certain toys.

Leah adores Caelan. She loves all the things he loves. When I asked her what she wanted for her birthday, she said “Lightning and Mater!” I’m excited for them to be in preschool together in a few weeks (though they will be in different classes). She still calls Caelan “Gaga” (and Bill and I do too sometimes) but she also calls him Kai. When asked “Can you say ‘Caelan’?” she will say Cay-en, so she CAN, she just prefers Gaga.

Playing together

Leah’s sleep habits are…slightly better? I can’t really tell if it’s that or if I’m just more used to it by now. How is it possible that we have a 2 year old who doesn’t sleep through the night?! I mean, sometimes she does – probably a few days a week. But the other days, she still wakes up 1-2 times a night. And then she’s up for the day at the butt crack of dawn. At her age, I’m not even sure how to fix it. When she wakes up, it’s easy to get her back down again, but she needs to be doing that herself, without us. Maybe it will be better once she’s out of the crib and in a bed? I think that change may becoming in the next few months. I’ve already started planning an owl theme for her “big girl room”.

In the meantime, her bedtime rituals ARE very cute. Her best “buddy” is (the aptly named) Penguin. Other current favorites are Ernie and Hippo (we are creative with the names around here). She lines them all up, not forgetting the glow bear in the corner, then tucks Penguin under her arm, curls up in the fetal position and waits to be covered with her “owls” and her “fuzzy banket” (both blankets which were formerly “behbens” but are now “bankets”).

Leah’s buddy, Penguin

Despite being of average/petite height and weight, this girl is a bottomless pit when it comes to eating! Especially snacks (aka “nacks”). Omg she asks for a snack all.day.long! She may prefer to be a grazer, but we don’t really let the kids graze so maybe that’s why she’s constantly asking for snacks. It’s not like we don’t feed her though! She gets 3 meals plus 2-3 snacks a day! But she will literally get up from the dinner table and ask for a snack.

She eats all the foods. She really will eat basically anything. There are a few random things she’s iffy on (like chicken nuggets and potatoes) but I don’t know that she really refuses anything. She would eat fruits and veggies all day long – she is a huge fan.

Leah still has her baby hair and has yet to have a first haircut, but her hair is definitely getting long! She needs a barrette to keep it out of her face and, thankfully, she is very tolerant with me doing her hair and she doesn’t bother it once it’s up.

Her hair is getting long!

Last month, we went on a family beach trip with Bill’s family. This was Leah’s 2nd trip to the beach, but last year was very different from this year. Leah liked the beach last year, but she wasn’t walking yet so she didn’t do much other than nap and play in the surf a little. This year, she was having a BLAST running in the surf with Caelan, jumping waves, and just running full out straight into the ocean. She kept Bill and I (and Pop) running! She got knocked over by a wave once or twice, but it didn’t phase her much.

Running on the beach

Cooking up something with a bucket of water and some sand!

Last year at the beach, we often found ourselves trapped in the house during the afternoon nap which was kind of a pain. But this year, Leah only takes 1 nap and she is much more flexible with it so we were able to get lots of beach time AND some beach naps! Beach napping with Leah was probably my favorite part of that trip. Everyday, she napped on the beach. Something about standing near the surf was like a tranquilizer and she was out within minutes. Going on vacation with little kids is the opposite of relaxing, but that hour or so a day when she napped was like a little slice of the vacations of yore – only better because I was snuggling a sleeping baby AND relaxing myself. (Obviously, Caelan was there too but he was often playing or being supervised by Bill during Leah’s nap times. He’s also become more and more independent, but more on that in his next post 😉 ) I’m a little sad that this year was probably the last year for beach naps for the kids. I mean, maybe we’ll luck out and she’ll nap some next year. She is a decent napper…

Beach napping

Now that Leah is older, her personality is really starting to come out. Yes, she is dramatic. She’s bossy and she has a little attitude, but she’s TWO so it’s kind of hysterical too. She has the exasperated sigh down pat and I ALWAYS laugh when she does it. She’s meticulous in the way that 2 year olds are (lining up toys, laying out a blanket just so) and she can dissolve into a tantrum out of nowhere over seemingly nothing. I don’t know, maybe because we’ve been through this before (or because I know this is NOT the worst its going to be), I don’t get that upset about it. Well maybe sometimes. Like when she won’t COME HERE for a diaper/clothes change or when she insists on buckling her booster by herself, which she can’t really do.

This face saves her.

As dramatic and screamy as she can be, Leah definitely has a quiet and reserved side too. She is vary wary of unfamiliar people and surroundings. Sometimes that makes her a Velcro baby stuck to my hip, but she does warm up eventually. She does so much better with people who *don’t* approach her. Once she’s had time to evaluate the situation for herself and once she realizes that some of these new people might be A) friends to play with, or B) people who will read books to her, then she will join in 🙂

Leah is very affectionate. She really craves that closeness more so than Caelan did at this age. She likes to be held (which is getting painful at this point since she’s too old/heavy to be carried around everywhere) and though it can get to be too much at times when the kids treat me like a jungle gym, she does like to sit with me/on me/in my lap. I know that won’t last forever and I am already sad about it ending someday. Leah is my heart and I am so excited about the little girl she is growing up to be!

And now some comparison pics…

Pig tails, age 1 and age 2

Caelan and Leah, age 2-ish (23+ months)

Happy 2nd Birthday to my sweet girl!! Mommy and Daddy and Gaga love you!!

Happy 2nd Birthday!!

Leah’s 2 Year Old Stats

• Wearing 24 month tops and bottoms and 24 month sleepers/pajamas, size 5 or 6 shoes
• Size 5 diapers
• Weight: 25 lbs
• Height:
• Favorite foods: Yogurt, oatmeal, goldfish, hot dogs, any and all fruits and veggies
• Loves reading books, lining up toys, spreading out her blankets, trying on shoes, eating snacks, Mickey Mouse, Mater

Leah Lines, Part 1

I cannot believe it is time to start Leah’s conversations posts!! It is so much fun to talk to our kids and hear what they come up with. The very first entry here is from April 2015, when Leah was 20 months old.

——————–

I hand Leah something…

LEAH: Thank you.

SARAH: You’re welcome.

LEAH: MY welcome!

———-

CAELAN: No way!!

LEAH: Yes way!

———-

Leah farts.

SARAH: What do you say?

LEAH: Thank you.

SARAH: No, what do you say when you fart?

LEAH: You’re welcome.

SARAH: Um, no.

———-

Background: Leah calls herself “Yah”

SARAH: Hi baby.

LEAH [sternly]: No baby. Yah.

———-

When I dropped Leah off at daycare, she climbed into Ms. Sheila’s lap as usual and then looked up at me…

LEAH: Go home.

Leah Caroline, Months 15-18

I’m sure I JUST wrote Leah’s 15 month post…not sure how it’s time to write this one already! Somehow our baby is a full fledged toddler now.

Leah is a pro at walking and running – and dancing!! This girl LOVES to dance!! She’s also started trying to jump, which basically means she bends her knees and springs up like she’s going to jump, but her feet don’t actually move. Caelan did the same thing and it was hysterical then and still is now. She’s also getting better at climbing. She can climb onto the couch by herself about 50% of the time and she knows how to turn around and slide off by herself. She can climb up the stairs on her own (though we always walk behind her) but she doesn’t know how to go down on her belly yet. She insists on walking down (holding our hand and the rail, thankfully). She’s also asking to walk more during daycare/school drop off which I guess is kind of nice because she’s getting heavy to hold, but it’s tricky keeping hold of 2 kids’ hands in the parking lot.

Sadly, the broncos ended their season this very day, but the uniform is a 2T so she can wear it next year!

Leah is obsessed with books. Her favorite thing to do is grab a book and then ask to be picked up so you can read it to her. No doubt, reading has helped a ton with her speech. I tried hard to keep my expectations in check when it came to her speech. I knew that Caelan had a major vocabulary explosion between 15-18 months, but I couldn’t necessarily expect that from Leah since they are different kids and all that. But she HAS had a vocabulary explosion! She had about 15 words at 15 months, and now she has about 50. She seems to pick up a couple new ones every week. She also knows several animal sounds (“moo” is her favorite, and ours!) and can identify about a dozen body parts. I’m excited for her to start stringing some words together, which should be coming soon!

Leah calls us Mommy and Daddy. She started with Mama and Dada, but mama became a word that seemed to mean “help” so she stopped calling me that and started calling me Mommy. The transition to Daddy has been somewhat long. Sometimes she still calls Bill Dada, sometimes it’s Daddeee, and sometimes its My Daddy. Her word for Caelan is GaGa. It sounds like gibberish but it’s very clear that she means Caelan. Sometimes it sounds more like CaGa but until she can say L’s, it will probably not sound much like his name at all. She calls herself Eah (again, she can’t say L’s yet!).

Reading

Leah loves to color and scribble. Her fine motor skills are excellent and she even knows how to hold a pen/crayon correctly. She doesn’t do it all the time, but I was shocked that she could do it at all!

Leah is going through a phase with some separation anxiety. She is fine at daycare (because she’s gone there everyday since before she can remember) but anywhere else, even familiar places, she gets clingy and has a meltdown when we leave. She does calm down eventually, after we are gone. On top of the separation anxiety (which is normal for her age) she’s also in a “mommy phase”. I am her favorite right now and that is good and bad and interesting all at once. Caelan always preferred Bill, so this is new to me. On the one hand, it’s sweet that she wants me to hold her, but I’d also like a break sometimes, and I feel bad for whoever gets an earful of screaming when they pick her up. Hopefully she will ease up as she gets older and more independent.

Girl has perfected the death stare – a valuable skill!

Leah likes playing cars with Caelan, or really anytime he lets her play with him. They play together often and she just LOVES him and will do anything he says. There are more and more “incidents” lately that almost always involve someone taking a toy from someone else, but they can play together nicely too. Leah is also great at playing by herself. Sometimes I’ll notice that it’s a bit too quiet (normally a bad sign) and I’ll go looking for her just to find her quietly “reading” by herself. With a bigger house, and double the number of children we had when Caelan was this age, Leah gets A LOT more freedom around the house. Both kids have free reign over the main level which is pretty well toddler-proofed. It’s a relief for me to not hover over them all the time. If I can keep them in ear-shot, I’m happy.

These two ganged up on me at the grocery store, which is exactly why I don’t normally take BOTH of them with me!

Feeding the kids is becoming easier as well. Leah has 15 teeth now and is eating pretty much anything. She drinks milk like it’s her job – she LOVES it! We still cut some food up for her (especially meat) but she prefers to be given larger pieces of food to eat (whole slices of pizza, for example). Leah normally asks for utensils at dinner and she likes to hold them but doesn’t always use them. For yogurt, she will use a spoon, and pretty well actually. She pretty much still likes most foods and hasn’t really entered a picky stage yet. She is still sitting in the highchair most of the time, but we could probably switch to a booster. If she sits on her own (like in the pic below) she just gets up from the table too many times, so she’s not ready for that quite yet!

Eating lunch

A weird thing has happened to ME as Leah is getting older…She’s bringing out my girly girl side. Maybe it’s that her hair is finally long enough for barrettes or pony tails, or that there are so many cute clothing options for toddler girls. She’s reasonably good about keeping hair accessories in lately, so that is a nice change! She is still quite a few months away from needing a hair cut though.

Yay pony tail!

How are Leah’s sleep habits these days? Eh…at this point, it just is what it is, I guess. Bill puts her to bed 95% of the time and she is pretty easy to put down. She dropped her bedtime bottle between 15-16 months old and that was an easy transition. On average she sleeps 8pm-6/6:30am, so that’s not too bad. We usually hear her once or twice overnight. Sometimes we have to go in and settle her down and sometimes she falls back to sleep on her own. There have been a few rough nights with many wake ups but those are usually because of teething or illness.

Speaking of illness, it’s been a rough couple months. Somehow Leah got through her first year hardly ever getting sick, but this year has been a different story. Both kids had a cold and ear infections, among other things in December. This time of year is my least favorite for this reason. Bring on Springtime!!

Showing off all those teeth!!

Leah’s 2nd Christmas was really more like her first Christmas because this year she was old enough to at least have some idea of what was going on. She helped Caelan spot our elf every morning (sometimes finding him before Caelan did!) and she had fun opening her gifts on Christmas. We didn’t put ornaments on the bottom 3rd of our tree this year, but Leah didn’t really bother the tree anyway. We didn’t get to go see Santa this year but it was probably just as well since I doubt Leah would have gone anywhere near him! She did see him when he came by on the fire engine, but I don’t think she knew what was going on.

What a difference a year makes!

A few family members have mentioned to me recently that they didn’t feel like they really knew Leah very well, or that they hadn’t got to spend much time with her. Part of that is that she’s pretty clingy in a big group so when people see her, she’s stuck to my hip and not really interacting with anyone. She’s also usually overshadowed by her brother simply because he’s older and he’s able to talk and play, etc. But Leah is 18 months old now and rapidly learning to talk so people are finally getting to “know” her! She is sweet and funny and she loves to read, and play, and dance. She’s starting to parrot us some and that can be pretty hysterical! She’s definitely less laid back than Caelan and some have called her high-maintenance, but *I* don’t think she is! HighER-maintenance than Caelan, sure, but that is not a fair comparison 🙂 She does have that high-pitched shriek down pat (omg my bleeding ears).

This age is SO much fun because of the vocab explosions, but it’s also a little tricky. She understands us, and we mostly understand her, but she’s not quite old enough to be reasoned with. We can’t bargain with her to eat one more bite of corn before she can have another tortilla, and we can’t explain to her why she can’t have a snack right before dinner. But we’re going to have to start trying. It’s going to be a long process, I know. We haven’t really started time outs with her, but that is probably coming soon. She’s got the tantruming down pat, so she’s well on her way to 2 🙂 😥 😮

Happy 18 Months, sweet baby girl!!

Leah’s 18 Month Stats

• Wearing 18 month tops and bottoms and 18 month sleepers (but growing out of all), size 5 or 6 shoes
• Size 5 diapers
• Weight:
• Length:
• Done with bottles!!
• Favorite foods: Macaroni & cheese, pouches, waffles, corn, tortillas, fruit
• Loves reading, dancing, coloring, taking off her socks, and still loves playing with her brother

Leah Caroline: Months 12-15

Leah has pretty much just jumped head first into being a toddler! It’s crazy how different she is now than she was just 3 months ago.

First of all, Miss Leah took her first steps at her 1 year doctor’s appointment which was just 3 days after her birthday. The doctor had already left the room, of course, so he didn’t get to witness her milestone. After that, it took her about 2 weeks to really start using walking as her primary mode of getting around. Just shy of 14 months, she started running. She had incentive, of course, in the form of Caelan running off with some toy or something else that Leah wants. She tries as hard as she can to keep up with him and that definitely requires running!

Walking

We went on a family beach trip to the Outer Banks a week after Leah’s birthday. It was her first trip to the beach and she seemed to have a great time. She did the traditional beach napping, plus she also seemed to enjoy playing in the sand and the surf. At this age, she was too young to be frightened by any of the above so it was great to see her having fun!

Mixing it up

Playing in the surf

The other major milestone in the past 3 months has been her speech. By her first birthday, she had about 3 words that we recognized. Now at 15 months, she has 15: all done, uh oh, hi, up, Dada, again, Jake, more, bye bye, milk, all gone, Connor/Caelan, waffle, paci, and Mama. Notice that Mama was last 🙂 Caelan was the same way – he didn’t say Mama until 15 months as well! She also seems to understand quite a lot. She’s able to follow simple instructions (“sit down”, “come here”, “get your shoes”) and she understands some of the rules we have for her, even if she’s not great at following them. We haven’t really started time out with her yet, but at this point we are usually redirecting her or removing her from certain situations. For example, she loves climbing up onto the hearth, which we allow as long as she sits. If she stands up, she gets kicked off. I remember this phase with Caelan and it takes a loooooonnnngggg time for these rules and consequences to sink in, but they will eventually.

Leah will also mimic some of our behaviors including blowing kisses, giving kisses, waving “hello” and “good bye”, giving high fives and fist bumps, and I’ve even seen her grab a bag to put over her arm and then wave and say “bye bye” as if she’s leaving with her purse! She also dances. She LOVES to dance!

Cruising

We’ve started looking at picture books with her and trying to teach her animal sounds. She can’t yet tell you what sound a kitty cat makes, but she’ll tell you that sharks growl and it’s hilarious 🙂

Leah’s personality is really coming out and she is such a ham. I don’t want to say that she’s “spirited” or “difficult” because I don’t think she is. She just has an older brother who was the poster baby for an easy going baby and compared to him, Leah is a little bit more animated. But she’s a decent sleeper, she plays independently, she is NOT a picky eater at all, and she’s been pretty go-with-the-flow with all the changes in the past few months. But she’s loud and she’s dramatic! If you take something away from her – omg – she will throw herself on the floor and wail. But if you just ignore her she’ll get over herself in a few seconds and go back to whatever she was doing.

Having a blast

Sleep habits are ever-changing. For the most part, Leah has been sleeping through the night about 9-10 hours. Occasionally she wakes up and cries but it’s usually just for a minute and then she’s back asleep. Now waking up in the morning has been the tricky part lately. In the past month or 2, she has decided that 5:30am is an awesome time to wake up. I pretty much hate it! For naps, she’s been transitioning (awkwardly) from 2 naps down to 1. About a month ago, we really tried to push her nap out to after lunch so that she’d be getting 1 substantial mid-day nap. For the most part it worked. She still takes 2 naps occasionally but we try to keep her on the new schedule. And it’s great to put both kids down for 1 nap at the same time. However…Leah is only sleeping about 1.5 hours and Caelan doesn’t sleep at all…Oh well, we’ll take whatever quiet time we can get.

Sleep

It’s been a busy 3 months for teeth! When Leah turned 1 she had only 4 teeth, but now she has 12! They all, especially the molars, just seemed to come in all at once. Honestly, Leah wasn’t as much of a basketcase about the molars as I expected. I didn’t even notice they were coming in until I happened to check one day and 2 were already in! It seems to be those front teeth that really gave her trouble. The last one came in after the molars did and she was back to being a whiny mess for the few days before it came through.

Upside down Leah!

Leah is still getting 1 very small bottle a day at bedtime but it’s whole milk, not formula. We phased out the formula somewhere between 13 and 14 months. We will probably drop the bedtime bottle in the next few weeks. For meals, Leah eats whatever we’re eating, usually. She’s not picky at all – she seems to love everything! She especially likes peas, grapes, pears, and of course macaroni and cheese. I started giving her a fork/spoon sometimes around 14 months. She had already been using them a bit at daycare and she’s actually not bad with them. But oh man, she’s a messy eater, even without the utensils. Food everywhere.

Eating with a fork

Now that Leah is a real toddler and she can run and play, she and Caelan are having a blast together. There are arguments (shrieking, mostly) over toys, but for the most part, they play well together. Since Leah is still little, we sometimes have to step in and make sure Caelan isn’t accidentally being too rough, but overall it’s really nice to just watch them play together. There are plenty of moments where I get to sit on the couch and watch them call for each other, squeal, run and play together and I think THIS makes it all worth it. There are plenty of hard parts to having 2 kids, but the good parts are just SO good. These kids have a live-in BFF, how cool is that?! Of course I expect them to fight and have all the normal sibling issues and who knows if they will remain BFF’s forever, but right now they are having a blast.

Siblings

We are pretty firmly moving out of baby territory now. I’ve unloaded most of our baby gear and the kids’ outgrown clothes. We’ve left formula behind us with bottles to follow soon. Of course Leah will be in diapers awhile longer, but we’re definitely in toddler territory now. I love this age because it is fascinating and amazing and exciting to watch them learn – and so quickly!! They are little sponges, just soaking up everything around them. It’s also an exhausting age because Leah is old enough to be mobile and to play independently but she’s not old enough to understand limits or know what might be dangerous. We’ve blocked stairs and closed doors to rooms she shouldn’t be in, but otherwise she has free reign on the main level. We kept Caelan on a much tighter leash at this age and we also had a much smaller space. It’s something of a relief to just keep her in ear shot rather than following her every move, but we still have to be careful.

Caelan and Leah at 15 Months Old

While Leah IS starting to talk and to be able to communicate with us, there is still a lot we don’t understand and that can be frustrating for both her and us. I’m eager to get to the point where I can really talk to her as a small child and not a baby, but we are a little ways off from that. And I don’t want to rush her either. I love that she does things her own way and in her own time. She’s sweet and funny and enthusiastic and really just such a joy. I’m excited to hear her made up words and funny expressions and to help her learn in the next few months (and forevermore, really!). 15-18 months is when Caelan really had a vocabulary explosion and started talking a lot and as much as I do try not to compare the kids, I am hoping her talking takes off too! Either way, I am excited! The holidays are coming up and this year Leah will at least have some idea about the festivities and that should be a great time 🙂

Happy 15 Months Bugs!

Leah’s 15 Month Stats

• Wearing 12-18 month tops and bottoms, 18 month sleepers, size 5 shoes
• Size 4 diapers
• Weight: we’ll find out today!
• Length: we’ll find out today!
• Takes 1 bottle a day at bedtime (3 oz)
• Loves macaroni and cheese, pacis 😦 , filling and emptying containers, retrieving shoes, playing in blankets, taking off her socks, and as always her brother ❤

Happy 1st Birthday Leah Caroline! (Months 9-12)

Time passes differently with a 2nd child…with a probably last child…faster and in more of a blur.

I have been super excited the past month or so, anxiously awaiting Leah’s first birthday but there’s also a tiny layer of guilt in there…like she made her way all the way to 1 and I missed it.

Birth Day

I didn’t miss it, of course, but it’s easy to feel that way sometimes. Since Caelan was such an easy-going baby, everyone told us we were bound to be in trouble with our 2nd baby. But we weren’t. Leah is not quite as laid back as Caelan was, not quite as good a sleeper, and she is a little bit more clingy, but she’s such a smiley, happy baby! She’s loud and talkative and eager to join in with whatever is going on around her.

Laughing at dinnertime

But let’s back up. At 9 months, we were just getting started with finger foods (we got a late start). These days, I can usually still get some purees in her, but Leah wants to eat REAL food! Current favorites are grapes, peas, meatballs, and butternut squash. So far, I haven’t come across anything she’s refused to eat. We try to give her some finger foods and some purees at each of her 3 meals.

Loves grapes!!

Around 11 months, we dropped her least favorite bottle (the first thing in the morning one) and replaced it with a pre-breakfast snack of a pouch and dry cereal. She still gets 3 bottles a day, 6-8oz each. I suppose we will try to cut out the daytime bottles over the next month or two, but I’m not sure how that’s going to go. We’re going to start mixing in some milk with her bottles and we’ll phase out the formula (FOR-EV-ER)!!

We were late, too, giving Leah a sippy cup (one more example of 2nd child syndrome). Once we started giving it to her regularly, she quickly became a pro. She is so enthusiastic about tipping the cup and her head back that she’s been known to topple over backwards when sitting on the floor. When I gave her a straw cup, she wasn’t sure how to use it, but the second time I gave it to her, she figured it out. She’s picking these things up fast!

Got the hang of it!

Leah’s sleep is…a little unpredictable. Well, truthfully…it’s been horrible the past month or so. She used to sleep through the night, about 8:30pm-6am. But there were nights when she woke up several times for no apparent reason. We’d let her cry it out and she’d usually be back asleep within a minute or two. Things started to go downhill when we moved into the apartment and Leah and Caelan started sharing a room. We were quicker to go in and quiet Leah when she woke up crying so that she didn’t wake Caelan, but that may have backfired on us. The past month has been pretty rough. We can’t tell if it’s teething or a sleep regression or separation anxiety or a cycle of not enough sleep, but whatever it is, it sucks 😦 We’ve tried moving her bedtime up, giving her a Ferber refresher, rocking her, rubbing her back, standing next to her crib and *not* rubbing her back, all with varying degrees of success. We will be so happy to get into the new house and get the kids back into their own rooms and hopefully get everyone back on track. The past week or two have been better. Leah has been sleeping about 10 hours at night and waking up 1-2 times but just crying for a couple minutes and then going back to sleep on her own. (I’ve rewritten this paragraph a million times in the past few weeks! Sleep is ever-changing…)

Leah and Daddy

Speaking of teeth (sort of), Leah now has 4. A 5th one has been on its way in for a few weeks now. Getting those teeth in was not pretty. She is definitely a whiny mess when it comes to teething, but I can’t really blame her. I can blame her for biting me though. Yeah, she bites!! She particularly goes for shoulders or knees, but whatever she can get to is fair game. Luckily, she hasn’t bit anyone at daycare (that I know of).

Leah usually takes 2 naps a day. Her morning nap seems to be the good/long one (1-2 hours) and she goes down after her morning bottle around 10-11am. Her afternoon nap is usually much shorter (<1 hour) and the timing changes daily. When Caelan was this age, he had already dropped down to one (questionable) nap, so the fact that Leah is still usually taking 2 naps a day is nice!!

Talking on the phone

Leah’s preferred way to get around is crawling. She is a pro for sure, and she chooses crawling when she wants to get somewhere fast. Around 10 months old, she started cruising but she didn’t really master that until closer to 11 months. It was also around that time that we started encouraging her to walk holding our hands. At 11.5 months she started to try to stand on her own and she could do it for a few seconds at a time. Rather than pulling up on something and then letting go, she would try to stand up from the floor. Her way is harder, but she wasn’t afraid to try!

Ta da!

We can’t tell whether her first solo steps are minutes away or still a few weeks away. She’s getting better and better at walking holding our hands or pushing this toy, but when she lets go she usually just slowly lowers herself to the ground. She can walk holding our hands (or just one hand), but she’s still fairly wobbly. She’ll be walking on her own soon, one way or another!

Learning to walk!

In the meantime, Leah is a climber. I keep hearing that girls sit and play quietly while boys jump and climb and wrestle. Not so with our girl! Leah is definitely more of a climber than Caelan was at this age and one of her favorite games involves her getting knocked down when Caelan runs away with a blanket she had just been holding. Maybe the sitting and playing quietly will come when she’s a little older (and we’d more than welcome it!!) but at the moment Miss Leah does love to climb up on anything she can.

Climbing

We’re pretty sure Leah’s first word was “all done” (“ah da” – a single word to her) around 11 months old. She also says “uh oh” (“uh uh”) and “hi”. While she does say “mama” and “dada”, they aren’t really directed at us, so I can’t count them as words yet. But she’s getting closer. She does say “da” a lot and she’s always pointing at something so that is likely her default word for things until she figures out the real words. We never really made much progress with sign language with Leah. She will occasionally sign “more” but not too often. Like Caelan, she chose to say the words “all done” (ah da) rather than using the sign for that one. I can’t wait for the word explosions that are likely to happen over the course of the next year! Caelan had some hilarious “substitute” words that Bill and I still laugh about (and even use sometimes – nommy, apalumb, leepin). I am excited to see what Leah comes up with!!

It was just about 2 weeks ago that Leah started showing some comprehension of what we were saying and doing. She starts waving goodbye whenever someone gets their shoes on to leave the house. She will point to or crawl to an object if we ask her where it is (it has to be one of only a couple specific things though).

I am especially curious to find out what Leah ends up calling Caelan. At the moment, she doesn’t respond if we ask her where Caelan is, but he is definitely one of her favorite people. (Update! She shocked us by saying “Cay-la” this week when we asked her to say Caelan, but we’re pretty sure it was a fluke. Still…) She loves to follow him around and try to play with him. She yells and tries to get him to yell back and she lights up when she sees him. They are definitely starting to play together more and more now that Leah is mobile and into everything. There is the occasional tantrum or argument over who broke a train track (Leah-zilla!!) or who was playing with which toy first – and no doubt that will get worse in the coming years – but for the most part, they get along well. They’ve been sharing a bedroom for 2 months now and even though Bill and I don’t like that they share a room because of the sleep and bedtime issues it causes, THEY like sharing a room, or at least they seem to in the mornings!

Sibling hugs

Also in the past month or so, Leah has entered into a super fun phase where she screams like she’s on fire if you leave the room. It’s awesome. Separation anxiety is normal for her age, but man, I hope it passes quickly. Caelan never went through this so it’s new to us. Thankfully, Leah seems to be fine with being dropped off at daycare or with her grandparents, it’s just when I leave a room in the house. It happens a lot in the mornings since I have to leave her either in her crib or in her high chair while I get dressed and ready for work. Usually Caelan is with her and sometimes that pacifies her, but not always.

It’s exciting to watch Leah learn how to stand, how to walk, and how to talk. Even though we’ve been through this before with Caelan, it’s STILL just as exciting. The other day, I gasped and clapped as I watched her correct her balance and stand on her own for 7 seconds instead of 5 like the day before. I beamed as she smiled and waved “hello” to Caelan’s preschool teacher. In those moments, I have no memory of her screaming at 1am.

Leah loves the swings!

There are times when it is absolutely exhausting to handle Leah – like when she’s crying and she doesn’t want to be held AND she doesn’t want to be put down. And now she does this cool thing where she arches her back when you pick her up or try and put her in the car seat or high chair. Not always, but when she does it’s pretty frustrating. And then there are times when I come home after work and she lets out a shriek when she sees me, puts her head down, and charges over to me in a furious crawl and with a huge smile. Those times are more frequent than the difficult times, thankfully. The transition over the past year from 1 kid to 2 kids has been overall more easy than hard, but there have definitely been difficult times. The past few months have been difficult as Leah became more and more mobile and Caelan became more and more of a 3 year old AND we crammed ourselves into a tiny 2 bedroom apartment for the summer. Some days I am exhausted and frustrated (and so is Bill) and other days we seem to have it together and I am proud of how well Bill and I handle our kids. It’s a constant up and down and there never seems to be enough time for anything, but it’s worth it.

Siblings

And I love having a little girl! Not that I don’t love having a boy too, because I do, but before Leah was born, I was wondering how I would handle a girl. I always wanted one of each, but after 2 years of being a “boy mom” I wasn’t quite sure how it would go. Of course so far, it’s pretty much the same. But I like that dresses are an option and that I can buy headbands and hair clips for her. Some people have been surprised by how I dress her due to my being fairly vocal about not being a girly-girl. But her dresses are super cute and sufficiently not frilly. Actually, most of the time, her clothes are pretty neutral and she gets mistaken for a boy more often than not. So while I did feel like just a “boy mom” a year ago, now I feel like just a “mom” 🙂 I love that we’re getting to experience both having a son and having a daughter.

Pig tails!

So…onward now into the toddler years!! I can’t believe it. This year has been such a blur and Leah has been “along for the ride” for much of it. I tell myself that it’s good for her. This is the hand she was dealt – being the 2nd child – and I hope she loves it. She falls down more often, she puts more random things off the floor into her mouth (dead bugs – yep, that happened), but she’ll be better for it somehow. She has a big brother who absolutely loves her and looks out for her and she has parents who, while exhausted, love her to bits as well. I mean just look at this face!!

Heart breaker!

We love you so, so much Leah Bug!! Happy FIRST Birthday!!!

Happy Birthday!

Leah’s 1 Year Stats

• Wearing 12 month tops and bottoms, and 12 month sleepers, but rapidly growing out of all of the above
• Size 4 diapers (as soon as this last pack of 3’s is gone)
• Weight: 21 lbs 11 oz
• Length: 28 1/2 inches
• Usually takes 3 bottles a day, 6-8 ozs each plus 3 meals of purees/finger foods a day plus a snack
• Loves my cell phone, putting anything and everything in her mouth, pacifiers, butternut squash, and as always her brother ❤