Our Baby Is 1 1/2!

Kenna's 18-month birthday was last week (August 27), so I figured it's time to do another Kenna post. At the moment, she is wailing downstairs, a frequent activity of late. I hope she is teething and not starting her moody years this early! She has been waking before 6:30 a.m. and napping a grand total of anywhere from 45 minutes to 1 1/2 hours. This is not acceptable! At least she's still sleeping about 12 hours per night...but with her grumpiness, we've been putting her down for bed by 6 or 6:30 p.m., and then saying hello much earlier in the morning than we'd like. Sigh. Poor little grumpy girl.

OK, we'll move on to some happier reports. She is communicating much better these days, mostly by sign language and grunts. Here's a list of the signs she uses the most, quite a few in combination:

please
milk
thank you
eat
more
hungry
cracker
cheese
(do you see a trend here?!)
all done

Her words include mama, diaper, bubble (which sounds much like diaper), eat (eee), baby, uh-oh, and give me attention right now, which sounds like "AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!"


Her current loves include the following:

* Fine cuisine--basically, anything we're eating is great, but she also appreciates the aesthetic qualities of oatmeal, as you can see here.

* Dogs--or any animals, but particularly dogs. The bigger, the better.

* Gymnastics--hanging from the bars of our playground, going down slides, scaring her mother by standing precariously at the top of our slide while waving frantically at the birds...

* Art--her favorite medium is marker on walls.


* Looking good--leave a brush or comb lying within reach, and she's preening for the next hour. (See movie shot pose here--the brush is in her left hand.) Sunglasses are also part of the image...we no longer have to worry about her keeping them on, as she has apparently been told she's cute while wearing them way too often. Oh, yes, and how can I forget shoes...she ADORES her shoes. Well, for that matter, she likes everyone else's shoes, too. We frequently find our shoes in odd places.

* Vitamins--we started giving her a half vitamin for breakfast and dinner after we discovered she could indeed chew the kids' Shaklee vitamins. I'm not sure how many she stole before we took drastic measures to keep them out of reach...

* Water--if I'm not careful and she makes it into my bathroom when I'm getting ready, she's liable to climb into the tub and turn the water on. Or, she has also been known to climb onto my sink and perch there with her legs in the basin, water running. Washing her hands is a FAVORITE pastime, and we must comment frequently about the "bo-bos," or bubbles, that she leaves behind in the sink.


* Dolls--she still likes to love on her babies.

* Books--but we have to turn the pages on her terms.

* Puzzles--she's not quite there on her own yet, but she likes removing the pieces anyway.

* Music--she has learned how to turn on the piano and bang away, and she also enjoys her little xylophone-type toy thing. She must be the one to push the button for her sleepy-time CD, and if she hears upbeat music, she tips her head back and forth and grins...that's her "dance."

And now, to close, a very short (35-second) video of her antics in the backyard. I wish I had brought the camera with us to the park tonight--she was going down big kid slides like no one's business! NO WAY would Charis have been doing all that at her age, nor would Tobin. Arden probably would have, but Kenna is definitely the daredevil of the family!