Kaia Every Day: March 2018

Saturday, March 17, 2018

Happy Saint Patrick's Day, and Kaia's Belated Monthly Update!

Happy Saint Patrick's Day! I'm way behind on Kaia's monthly updates, so here's a quick review of what she's been up to the past few months.
Kaia is now 2 years and 2.5 months old. She's very active and just as talkative, too. I think at about the 2 year 1 month stage, Kaia began speaking in 3 word sentences. Now as of this month, we're up to 4, sometimes 5 word sentences. Today's example was: 'No Daddy, Mommy change Nuggie pee'. So I guess that's actually 6 words! Kaia also refers to herself as 'Nuggie', since we always use the nickname of 'Nugget' for her. She does recognize that her name is 'Kaia' and will answer to it and also point to herself when asked 'where's Kaia?', but she will just as happily correct someone and tell them that her name is 'Nuggie'. She likes to refer to herself in the third person, as in 'Nuggie try!' or 'Nuggie hungy' (hungry). Kaia doesn't speak a lot of Japanese, but she seems to know a fair amount of Japanese words. She will hear Keila or Daddy say something in Japanese, and then say the English word. Some words she only uses the Japanese for, such as 'kuma' (bear) or 'ata!' (there it is!).
Kaia has started practicing jumping, although she's still just in the beginning stages and can't get too far off the ground. She can, however, swing by herself on the monkey bars just a bit.
Other favorite activities include 'cooking', playing with Keila's Legos, coloring, and dancing to music and singing. Kaia still loves books, and we've been going to story time once a week at the local library. Last week she was more interested in the crackers in my bag than the stories, however. We're on a huge cracker kick, and nothing else will do for a snack. This kid loves salt. Sometimes a banana or piece of fruit will suffice, but usually there's some sort of upset until the crackers are produced.
Kaia can throw massive temper tantrums when she's exhausted, so we try to stick to a nap and bedtime schedule as much as possible. Terrible Twos will hopefully not turn into Troublesome Threes!
Kaia is still not too tall, only 83 centimeters last time she was measured. I think she's holding steady about 11 kg too, but we haven't weighed her lately. She also just got some back molars in, so she's finally got more interest in food now that chewing isn't so painful. Maybe she will shoot up some this year.
Finally, today was the first time that Kaia got to 'hold' a cat, and as you can see by the pictures, she was thrilled!! The cat, not so much...