The Journey of Parenthood…

Summary of Month 14

I know I’m behind on this, but aren’t I always??? This past month has been rough with sicknesses and rashes but we still managed to make some memories and Kye still had plenty of changes too! (I have to give a big shout-out to Ms. Sedgley’s class as I know they love seeing all of Kye’s pictures!!! Behave for Ms. Sedgley, you have the best teacher ever!)

Teeth: FINALLY Kye has 5 teeth now! It was a struggle getting #5 to pop through as it’s in a pretty bad location…I think braces may be in our future if the permanent teeth come in anyway close to how these baby teeth have what do you think? You can see #6 coming soon in this picture too!

“Kisses”: Kye has started becoming much more loving lately. I figured he’d be even less cuddly as he got older but that hasn’t been the case at all! Since birth we’ve always stressed for him to “be sweet” and “be gentle” with the animals and now when we say “be sweet” he gives “Kye kisses.” Kye has never been much of a legit kisser..his way of kissing is leaning his forehead into you. It’s still sweet though and reminds me of when he first started doing it on our way home from Cancun 🙂 He doesn’t really love on his parents much unfortunately. He’ll be sweet randomly to some stuffed animals but he’s especially sweet with the cat!!! How strange is that?!? Zeke has become Kye’s bff and he’ll lay there and let Kye slam his head on him (being sweet for Kye is still pretty rough for most kids I think) in his way of “giving kisses” and he’ll let Kye pull on his fur and everything! He really is a great cat…so far we’ve only had him scratch Kye once and I don’t really blame the cat for that one bit!

giving Kye kisses to Zeke!

Drinking from cup: Lately Kye has been wanting to drink from a cup on his own (no sippy lid). While we don’t let him do this at all with his milk and such we do let him drink out of our glasses sometimes, out of water bottles, and we let him practice in the bathtub. I know it’s gross that he drinks bath water but he likes it and his own filth probably won’t kill him right? 

Rocking Chair: We have a MASSIVE chair in Kye’s room (my old nursing chair) so we spend a lot of our playtime playing on or around the chair in someway. Kye’s learned that it rocks and he loves to rock it back and forth. We always sing “rockabye baby” while he does this and he’ll even “sing” now when he does it too. Here’s a video of him doing this!

 

Big Helper: I’m nervous about having baby #2 someday as Kye LOVES all the attention on him and it makes me worried about how he’ll handle sharing that attention with a new brother or sister. One thing I do feel better about though is how helpful Kye will be. When he was born and I found out we had a boy I figured all help for me was out the window as girls are seen as mommy’s little helpers while boys are always seen as daddy’s helpers. Not my son! He loves to help Mommy! Here’s a video of him cleaning off the stool of the chair in his room (I had just cleaned off a pen mark on it).  He’s also become helpful with the laundry! I do laundry once a week and just bring in all his clean clothes to his room in a basket to put them away. I was hanging things up in the closet when I looked over and he’d opened one of his drawers and started piling his clean clothes in it to put them away for me! Here’s a video of him doing that as well as another video of him helping put away his clothes 😉 The other day I was up on the kitchen stool reorganizing our pantry while letting Kye play in his drawer in the kitchen. I looked down and noticed that Kye had climbed up on the stool behind me and HE was “organizing” the pantry too (just lifting up something and putting it back down on the shelves we have on the door). I yelled at Zach to come snap a picture (of course!). I really LOVE this helping stage and I hope it lasts awhile 🙂

my cleaning Man!

laundry day

on the stool with Mommy

climbed to the top all by himself!

Still climbing: Obviously by the last picture Kye is still in a climbing stage. He just climbed up on that stool like it was nothing! He still tries to climb into his crib (not successful yet though) and he even tries to climb up the white pole we have in our foyer…he’s so silly. While visiting Robyn and her family he climbed into Lorelai’s play shopping cart and even got back out without any help at all!

Turtle Rider: I did an earlier post on Kye’s “bareback” turtle riding…he just LOVES this turtle! He got it as a birthday gift from Ashley and at first I wasn’t too sure about it. The age was 18 months and up but we’d already opened it so we left it out and just figured it’d be awhile before he enjoyed it. But early on he was just drawn to it! He LOVES pushing the buttons and standing beside it. It’s become his favorite toy this month as he entertains himself forever by climbing on and off of it. He’s not even big enough to use it for what it’s meant to be used for yet (which is bouncing but his feet can’t touch the floor on it!). Here’s a video of Kye mastering his turtle climbing skills 🙂 I love the face Kye makes once he’s able to climb up on the turtle, you can just tell he’s so proud of himself. Here’s his “proud face”

Spoon with water: I love how Kye’s progressed with his play in our bathroom! First it was just standing at the side of our tub, then turning the knobs, then touching the water, and now he’s all about getting the water with the spoon to drink it with. He hasn’t mastered it yet, but the practicing helps keep his attention long enough for me to get semi-ready 😉 Here’s a video!

Musical Man: Another thing that keeps Kye’s attention in our bathroom is his musical instruments. This child LOVES to make music 😉 The drum we got him is seriously one of his favorite toys! He plays with all the instruments and enjoys making some beats with the drum (here’s a video) and shaking the egg shaker things (here’s a video). 

Balls: Kye is SUCH a boy. He’s obsessed with balls (just the toy ones for now…I’m sure the obsession with the private type will be coming soon enough…) and loves to throw. Of course I’m sure Daddy is hoping for a future quarterback…but we’ll see. Here’s a video of his skills.

Phone: We’ve never let Kye play with ANY of our phones. He’s allowed to play with his own toy phones but never ours. Our house phone is actually Zach’s office line and it’s funny b/c when the answering machine picks up (I never answer it as it’s all business calls) he will say “Daddy” as Zach’s voice is on the outgoing message. Now he actually says “Daddy” when the phone just rings! He likes to carry around the little toys phones (I carry my cell with me ALL the time so I can watch the time for his schedule and we listen to a lot of Pandora) and he will put them to his ear to talk and also put them behind his head. It’s pretty cute. It’s super funny to see him try to crawl while carrying it too!

Hair: When we named Kye, Kye, we always planned on letting him have a shaggy type hair style as Kye is such a surfer name…however I DON’T want people thinking he’s a girl and I’m kinda worried about that. Also it’s at a point now where’s it’s SCREAMING to be cut!!!! Any thoughts on this???

Sweet Boy: I mentioned earlier in this post that Kye’s gotten much sweeter and he really has. He will ask to be carried a LOT (which is quickly becoming more annoying than sweet) but he’ll also climb up into my lap now to sit with me. I LOVE this. Someday soon he’ll be much too big to fit in my lap and I just wish I could freeze time each time he does it and hold onto him forever. He will crawl over to his bookshelf now and point to the books when he wants me to read with him. Isn’t that so sweet? In this picture too you can see he is really into wearing hats right now, I’ll be posting on that soon!

Roomtime: I did a post earlier on roomtime and I’m lovin’ it! It’s much easier to do than independent playtime (and sooo much easier to say!!!). We’re using the timer now and a couple times he’s fussed while waiting for it to go off but for the most part he enjoys the time too. After we clean up we’ve been going outside as I feel like he needs a change after being in his room all that time. I think it’s good to establish a clear ending to roomtime (he’s at 25 min right now)! I snuck around the corner to snap this picture of him playing without him seeing me 😉

Talking/Pointing: Kye is still talking a lot, not too many new words this month though. I think the sickness stuff kinda set him back with all of those kinds of advancements. On our walks I have taught him both “flowers” (although it does NOT sound like “flowers”) and “house” (which does sound like “house”!). His favorite word is still “car” and he probably says it over 100 times a day. No joke! He won’t say “please” or “thank you” anymore and I don’t know how to get him to do it again (just like we can NEVER get him to say “duck”). Kye’s very into pointing right now and we read his Your Baby Can Read books before each nap and he’ll point to the eyes, nose, mouth, etc on each picture. He can also point to eyes, nose, and mouth on himself and on us (he especially loves pointing to my nose thanks to the nose ring). 

Rash: The rash is 100% gone now which is SUCH a blessing. People still comment to me about how bad it was! I don’t think of it as that bad though b/c I lived with it so I adjusted to how he looked! While it’s 100% gone I am a little worried about it having a lasting effect as now whenever he gets hot his cheeks flair up with it again. It goes away once he cools down, but it still makes me a little nervous. Maybe it’s normal? I plan to ask at his next checkup about it but it’s not worth taking him up there over. You can see his little red cheeks here.

FIRST STEPS: FINALLY Kye has taken his first steps! He took them on May 2nd, two days shy of being 14 months old. I was in the shower getting ready for church and Zach was playing with him in his room. Kye was playing with his cell phone and was standing up not really paying attention to what he was doing and he walked from the changing table to the dresser! Zach didn’t want to tell me b/c he was afraid it’d hurt my feelings but I was glad Zach got to see it and it was fine that I “missed” it. Of course I didn’t take my eyes off of him the rest of the day and I saw him take a couple steps for the first time that afternoon going from his table to our chair. He’s been taking short steps since and walking holding onto our fingers A TON so hopefully next month I’ll be able to report that we have an official walker! While I didn’t get the first steps on video, here’s a video of him taking some of his early steps (I was getting ready to go and Zach ran inside and told me to come quick so I’d see it!)

 

I really am still loving having a toddler so far! I think this post is very clear that I’m LOVING this stage as I feel like I wrote the word LOVE like 1,000 times. 🙂

 

Here’s our current schedule, I don’t see this changing much for awhile:

7:15: up for the day, dressed, prayer, breakfast, vitamins, brush teeth

after breakfast: video time, then walk with Mommy (I’m hardcore doing this now…like we go on HOUR long walks! go me!)

9:15: diaper if needed, Y.B.C.R book, nap

11:00: up from nap, lunch

after lunch: roomtime then outside to play (and sunscreen is a MUST every day!)

1:00: book, nap

3:00-3:30: up from nap, snack (water with string cheese typically)

afternoons are free time…typically we go in my bathroom so I can get ready (I lay out from 1-2 then shower and eat lunch during that nap) for whatever plans we have that evening. We will go outside again if time allows, sometimes he’ll do the video again, if Daddy is home at 5 then he’ll play with Daddy while I get dinner ready, etc.

6:00: eat dinner

6:45: bath time, brush teeth

7:00: lotion, family time in bedroom

7:15: pjs, story with daddy, prayer, and bed

Emily Parker
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