20
April 2006 – almost 16 months
Gosh a
year down the line and what a beautiful year.
Kayla – alias Miss Chaos Factor – is simply beautiful. She is the happiest most content person I
have ever come across and she is absolutely thriving. She is crawling now and started doing so in
Feb. She is so fast now and so
independent. She goes all over the
house. She crawls up the stairs to leave
our bedroom but hasn’t quite got the gist of coming down the stairs. She loves exploring all the rooms and all
aspects of the rooms. One of her
favourite activities is to pull all the magazines from the shelves and sit in a
pile of print. This journey on the
communication channel is so exciting.
She is starting a few signs – bath, more, milk and understands many
commands – blow bubbles, splash, clap hands.
She clearly shows her displeasure by growling like urghurgh sort of
noise.
We
started Aquatots 2 months ago which she loves.
She is confident in the water and wriggles around like a little
tadpole. The Aquatots is basically
teaching the children how to get in and out of the pool, how to float and I
guess just how to be comfortable and as safe as possible in the water. We have signed up for the next classes so
we’ll see what we learn next. We also do
Kindermusik which is stimulation through movement, music, beats, textures,
socialising. I chose these 2 activities
because Kayla loves the water and music so much. She dances often when she hears music – just
jigs her little body up and down and often sings in accompaniment as well.
She
generally feeds really well but clearly spits out the food that she doesn’t
like with a wrinkled face clearly showing her displeasure. She loves egg and I make her scrambled egg
with herbs (basil, parlsey and oreganum) quite often. She also loves liquorice as you can see!
Memory
did not in fact end up working for us but we have another angel instead. Lydia started with us last year
May. She was the only lady I interviewed
besides Memory and she got the job because when Kayla sneezed she leaned
towards her and said “bless you baby girl”.
Lydia
is wonderful and loves Kayla very much.
She has her own little boy – Thabo who is about 3 months older than
Kayla. He is walking and talking quite a
lot and is very sweet with Kayla. Often
when he comes into the room Kayla gives a shout of joy and bolts over to him as
fast as she can crawl.
I am more
convinced that she is saying Dada with more understanding and tends to say Nana
for Mama. Although for the last couple
of days she has been saying more Mama noises.
She slept
over at her Nan and Grandad’s 3 weeks ago
because Doug and I were doing an
adventure race. I was quite upset all
night (although I did sleep through the whole night!) and she slept most of the
night there. When she woke up in the morning
she was apparently a little upset and kept on turning her little mouth down and
there were silent tears running down her cheeks. But apparently by lunchtime she recovered her
cheerful happy self. She made up for it
the next night by waking up loads of times in the night – I guess to check we
were still there.
She had a
tummy bug a few weeks back for about 15 days and she seems to have fallen into
a habit of waking up a few times in the night now looking for her bottle. She was doing that while she was sick I guess
because she was hungry coz she didn’t want to eat much at mealtimes. She is still sleeping in our room in a camper
cot. I am ready for her to move to her
own room but we are still in negotiating stages with Doug
over this.
She has
been so healthy – only having a couple of colds and a tummy bug. I breast fed her solely until she started on
solids at about 5.5 months. Then at
about 8 or 9 months she started getting formula as well. We stopped breastfeeding at 12 months. She barely noticed we had stopped (although
we were only doing a morning feed at that stage) but I definitely noticed. My breasts were very hard and sore for a few
days and I was quite sad to stop.
We did
start with the vaccinations and started them when she was 1 year. She had no funny reactions and was generally very
brave with the injections. Kayla has a
pretty high pain threshold and tends to only cry when she bangs herself
hard. Shame, with learning how her body
fits in space she falls and bangs herself and pulls things on top of herself
regularly – poor pumpkin. That is the
learning process though.
22 April
2006
My days
are much slower but so full with this little girl. I haven’t been working since February and it
has been so wonderful to have this rate opportunity. I don’t really miss the work – the money and
sometimes the challenge perhaps – but not the stresses and the results of the
work. So much time is spent on Kayla and
this family and myself. Perhaps I should
put myself first. It is Saturday today
and Doug went off for the morning on
a long cycle at Hartebeespoort Dam.
Kayla was very restless last night and woke up about every 30 minutes or
so from 22:00. So needless to say Mom
was quite tired this morning. We woke up
at 07:30 and had a shower and some tea.
Then breakfast and then I tided the house and then we eventually made it
out the house at 09:40. We only went to
3 shops – hardware, vegetable and fish shop and then back home again. She fell asleep in the car. I love watching her sleep. I wonder if she plays with her angels in her
dreams. Then when Doug
came home we had tea and made a fire. I
read and watched my little daughter play with her toys in the lounge. She was putting the blanket over her head and
squealing with delight. She also bangs
things together and puts them in buckets and talks to them and gets this high
pitched excited noise at times. It is
priceless to watch. So much so that I
put down my very good book and this rare time of reading during the day and sat
on the floor with her and played. Her
face just lights up.
She is
like a blossom that attracts all the insects.
At the shop this morning there were about 3 people who came immediately
over to her with such purpose to be in her space I guess. She is so friendly and cute with them and so
engaging. I am so blessed to have this
child in my life – even if I did not get more than 3 hours consecutive sleep
last night!!
07
June 2006 – 17.5 months
It is
amazing and wonderful to watch her little personality develop. She is a happy child, content with others and
by herself. She displays stubbornness –
“stubbornness!” I say with disbelief, “it can’t be! Now where on earth would
she get that trait from?” It is so
rewarding watching her little thought-processes work. She climbs up the stairs from our bedroom
very easily but not so going down. She
was sitting on the floor in our room and found an empty toilet roll (no doubt
from the dustbin she loves to go digging in).
She was squealing with delight at her precious find. Now she couldn’t get it up the stairs coz she
needed her hands. So the clever pixie
puts the toilet roll one stair up then climbs up to meet it and puts it another
stair up until she got to the top of the stairs. She squealed again in sheer delight and joy
to have her precious find with her. I
was in awe at her thought processes.
She
learnt to point about 3 days ago. It is
quite a cute sight to have this tiny little finger pointing at everything and
the mouth saying “ba ba” to everything.
Due to having gotten this pointing thing right she is now able to do the
“more” sign which is a finger tapping the centre of the other hand.
She also
understands to lift her arms up when we are taking off her clothes and to lift
them up to put them in sleeves.
We are
back at physio working on the walking.
Di, as always, is so positive and fabulous with her. Kayla favours her left leg and doesn’t
generally put too much weight on her right leg although she appears to be
right-handed. She shows her stubbornness
when trying to do the various exercises so needs to be distracted.
She is
coming on beautifully with the swimming.
We do quite a bit of back floating and today she floated so well. I hold her in front of me and look down into
her face. I just see this little face
with these little button eyes looking back at me. It nearly always tugs at my heart and as soon
as she can she tugs at my costume. In
fact I have had to change swimming costumes because she pulls so hard at my
costume (heart!?) that I pop a boob out – lovely!
28
June – 18 months today
Wow a
year and a half has gone by. Somehow 1.5
years seems significant. We had a couple
of days with so much communication from Kayla – it was such fun and so
exciting. She did the signs for bird,
dog, more (lots of that), cat. She also
got down the stairs (the 2 in the lounge) at Dave and Shirley and did it quite
often. Sher loves “barping” our noses
and laughs hysterically if she is given a fright with a LOUD barp or bark or
something. She is quite “mummified” at
the moment and likes to be near me and climbing on me and talking to me. She hasn’t wanted to go to Lydia but if Lydia comes to her without me being
in the room then she is fine. She cries
more now than she used to. It is like
she understands a little more to show her dissatisfaction. We bought her a doll a few weeks ago which
she enjoyed for a while – playing with its hands and nose and feet.
I made a bowl of jelly for her and put her
out in the garden with no clothes on.
She had a ball. At first she
touched it quite conservatively and then just relished in it – the taste and
feel and texture. She was sticking her
head in the bowl and gasping with the coldness of it.
She is
also trying to feed herself more now.
She takes the spoon away from me but will allow me to dip the spoon on
the bowl. It makes for longer and MUCH
more messier feeding times. Sometimes I
have to remind myself how important it is for her to do this and learn to feed
herself coz I get impatient with my dirty clothes and how long it takes to have
a meal. I am constantly reminding myself
how blessed we are that she can do these things and keeps on learning. These things are not taken for granted.
