Sometimes in the middle of a rough and tumble play session, Kayla will suddenly look up from her fit of giggles and simply stop and hug me. Those moments take my breath away because in those moments I see that she loves me in the same, incredible, overwhelming way that I love her. It is the best. feeling. ever.
Kayla will be 18 months old this coming Saturday. 18 MONTHS! I remember back when I would see Big Kids running through the park and I would say to their mothers "Oh my gosh, she/he is adorable. How old?" And the mom, without exception it seems, would answer "18 months." 18 months...and now my little baby is turning 18 months and I can't quite figure out how the time has gone by so quickly. It's funny, I've never had a good memory, but still...it's amazing how much has already faded from my mind in terms of what Kayla was doing three, six, 10 months ago. I try to remember what four months was like...I remember that was the month we took Kayla to the beach with my family. I remember that she had just started rolling over. I remember that I was getting toward the end of wanting to breast feed, but was also struggling emotionally to make the decision to stop. I remember that we couldn't really have Kayla in the sun at all, so when we went to the beach, she slept in a little tent and we waited to take her into the pool until the shadows had fallen across it in the afternoon. I remember that we were still struggling with her nighttime sleep habits, but I definitely can't remember if she was still up regularly in the middle of the night or what exactly those "habits" were. I know she was still getting up early, because I was not at all interested in staying up and playing beer pong with my cousins, knowing that I would hate myself for it when I was back on duty and exhausted at 0'dark hundred the next day. I remember that Kayla had lost all of her hair and was completely bald. I remember that she gave her first true belly laugh to her uncle John on the front porch of the house. Okay, that actually sounds like I remember a lot, but it's all from one one week period. I can't remember anything else about that month!
I have a lot of friends with brand new babies and so lately it seems like I'm constantly getting questions about "When do they..." and it's answering those questions that has made me realize how many details I've forgotten. I honestly could not tell you, without cheating, how old Kayla was when she first crawled. I want to say it was around seven months or so, but I can't pinpoint it in my mind. I also can't remember when she first was able to sit on her own...5 1/2 months? I don't remember when she officially got her first tooth and I can't tell you when we first let her try banana. And now I am starting to feel like a bad mom, but the reality is that there has been SO MUCH THAT HAS HAPPENED in this first 18 months, that it's really hard to keep it all organized in your head!! It's actually making me really thankful that I kept this blog and my little handwritten diary for Kayla. It's my cheat sheet for recalling all those facts and for reminding myself how far (and how fast!) Kayla has come.
These days, Kayla is in the midst of a word explosion. Not like a little bottle rocket explosion, but more like a volcano about to spout enough lava to form a new land mass explosion. It seems like every day Kayla says a new word. Her favorites right now are "Daddy", "Mama", "up", "shoes", "moon", "outside", "more", "dog", "hi" and "bye bye". She also says "cracker", "slide", "sign" (this last one because she is currently obsessed with her Baby Signing Time video and I guess she decided she better learn how to say the word if she wanted us to catch on when she was requesting a viewing session)...She says "sit" and occasionally breaks out with something new and completely random. Tonight, for instance, she was definitely asking for bath time. It may have sounded more like "flash fine", but in the context and with the help of hand gestures, she clearly got her point across. Almost more impressive, tonight, for the first time, she put two words together! She and I were sitting on the living room floor and she was attempting to put Chris' shoe onto her own foot when she looked up, looked me in the eyes, pointed down at the shoe and said "Daddy's shoe". !!!!! Daddy's shoe? My child is a genius!! Her ability to communicate is growing leaps and bounds. It's so funny to watch her now mimic not only word sounds, but intonation. Her inflection is spot on and hilarious, depending on what she is mimicking.
Kayla's also starting to throw out all kinds of sign language motions that I had no idea she was picking up. We did sign language light when she was younger. She never seemed that interested in it, so we tried to focus on the signs that would have been most helpful for her to know, like "more" and "all done". Lately though, she is suddenly using signs that I thought we had sort of let fall off the map. She now signs "banana" and "Mama", "dog" and "fish". She's funny about these later ones. With the exception of banana, most of the others she uses more when she's performing than when she's simply talking. It's clear that her getting a reaction when she uses the motions gets her all excited and so her gestures and her knowledge of the gestures gets exhibited a lot more when she knows that she has an audience. She even broke out the sign for "cracker" the other day...I about fell off my chair.
What else is Kayla up to...she is still a singing/dancing fool and is in love with anything and everything music. She sings "Twinkle Twinkle", "Row Row Row", "Happy Birthday", "ABCs" and she will often join in for parts of far more complicated songs. She is desperately in love with "A Whole New World" from Aladdin, as well as with "Part of Your World" and "Kiss The Girl" from the Little Mermaid. She is seriously lucky that while her mom may not remember when she first crawled, her mom does remember nearly every word to every Disney song ever made. Kayla is also a big fan of little song/rhymes like "Five Little Pumpkins", "Five Little Monkeys", "Itsy Bitsy Spider" and "Wheels on the Bus".
Kayla's also making crazy connections lately. For instance, the other night, she looked up at the sky, pointed to the big glowing orb above her head and said "Moon". So, I said "Yes, that's right, moon" and Kayla proceeded to launch into the "Moon Moon Moon" song that we used to sing in her baby yoga class. We saw a picture of a monkey in a book and when I told her it was a monkey, she started performing "Five Little Monkeys", hand gestures at all. And the cutest one yet...She has blocks downstairs; one of which has a koala on it. I pointed the koala out and named him, "Koala". Kayla put on finer to her lips and said "Shhh." Weird, I thought...so I pointed to the koala again - "Koala." "Shhhh," said Kayla. Same response. And then it clicked! Kayla has a book about Australian animals and on the last page is a sleeping koala and every time we get to that page, I say "Shhh. Koala is sleeping." CONNECTION! And it's so funny, because when you acknowledge the connection she made, she gets this big grin on her face like "I KNOW!! Am I incredible or what??" Seriously...how could you not worship this kid?
I have to say that with every passing day, I am more and more amazed at how much I love this little person. She makes me smile even on the worst days and her infectious smile, laugh and energy take all the stress out of you. Sure, she has her moments. We all do. And sure, sometimes after a long day of work, the last thing I want to do is change a diaper, go through a bedtime routine...but then we're lying there in that chair and she is cuddled up - face pressed into my neck, her legs wrapped around my waist and suddenly there is nowhere in the world I would rather be.
18 months...
I wouldn't have it any other way.
