Spotlight on...KENNA

I put myself on a 10-day Facebook hiatus so I could be sure to update my blog and generally organize life...so I'd better get updating, right?! It's time now to continue the spotlight on the kiddos. The older 3 were spotlighted last month, so now it's time for the "li'l 'uns."

Kenna is by far our most jubilant child. Her zest for life keeps us smiling and laughing, and her affectionate personality is a joy to all around her. She has not yet outgrown her "Kennis the Menace" phase, but the incidents seem to be fewer and farther between than they were, say, a year ago. Recent "Ken-cidents" include:

* trying to scrub the potty after she pooped in it...BEFORE flushing.

* smearing "Butt Cream" on her face. (Lucan's diaper cream--that's the brand name!)

* sucking a candy cane down to a lethal point, then jumping with it and stabbing herself up the nostril. (Blood flowed freely...she was pierced for this transgression...)

* turning the tall laundry basket upside down and placing it on a chair so she could climb up and reach the M&Ms on top of the refrigerator.

Kenna has never been one to quietly play with toys, opting instead to get herself into trouble with other objects. However, our little troublemaker is growing up! She has recently become very interested in puzzles, which thrills all of us as she keeps herself busy with the little puzzles we haven't seen in years. (I remember that Arden at this age was doing 100-piece puzzles by himself...that obviously isn't Kenna's area of giftedness, but at the rate she's going, she may be there sooner than we think!) She also enjoys anything with little pieces, i.e. our Bananagrams game tiles, Mancala game pieces, dice from the Yahtzee games...see a pattern here?! We find small objects in strange places...

Another favorite pastime of Kenna's is singing and dancing. She loves attention (no surprise there to anyone who has spent any time at all with her), and she'll turn anything into a stage: an upside-down laundry basket, a toy bucket, the trunk, a chair, a spread-out blanket. She makes up songs and sings LOUDLY, often twirling in circles until she falls over and dissolves into shrieks of laughter. She is quite a little ham and will do anything for a laugh. She jabbers away to anyone who will listen, and listening to her sometimes takes some effort, as her pronunciation isn't all that exemplary!

Kenna is a stellar big sister, cooing over Lucan and making him laugh, keeping small objects out of his reach (while yelling "NOOOOO!"), and bringing him acceptable toys. She loves to crawl around on the floor with him and still seems to think he's the greatest thing since Papa John's pizza. She can often be heard admonishing him, "No, Yu-can!" when she thinks he's doing something he shouldn't be, and it's amusing to see her scramble when he heads in the direction of her toys.

We're just two months away from Kenna's 3rd birthday--hard to believe! She's already as big as Charis was at about age 4! I'll have to measure and weigh her again soon. Kenna is in bed right now, but I think I can fill out some answers for her for this portion of the Spotlight:

Favorite color: Purple (closely followed by pink).
Favorite food: Anything with sugar.
Favorite toy: Currently the ponies she got for Christmas; also anything she can pretend is a phone.
Favorite object: Her "nee-nee," which has been her word for her blanket since before she was really talking. It's a fuzzy Pooh blanket that was given to Charis as a baby and has really become a huge source of security for Kenna.
Favorite activities: Running wild, singing and dancing, giving hugs, watching movies, generally doing whatever the big kids are doing.