Life with Keifer

Keifer is a busy, busy, busy girl, as always. She loves to be mommy's shadow (or daddy's if she gets tired of mommy), and wants to do everything we do, including cooking, cleaning, etc.. Here she is (above) putting some laundry in her "washing machine" sans pants. LOL. I don't remember, this must have been either before dinner or after- sometimes for meals, I strip her down, as the amount of OxiClean we go through is insane these days. Oh, how I miss the days of clean clothes! Poor Kyla- anything from Keifer that has been worn since food was introduced is FULL of stains on the neck/front and arms. Oh well, that just shows how much our girl enjoys eating.

Let's see, lately our girl has been spelling her name for us every night. She initially kept telling us that she spelled her name "K-I-F-E-R" - but now she's adding in the first "E" - so it's K-E-I-F-E-R. Amazing to me. I credit Elaine and her friends at daycare for all this knowledge she is acquiring. Spelling her name, rote counting, identifying shapes and colors, as well as letters, and now some numbers. She picked up a block the other day and said, "that's a 4, mama". Um, yes, it was a four! HOLY CATS!

She is using 4-6 word sentences all.the.time (CJ and I joke that we know our girl is either tired or not feeling well if she's quiet), which is wonderful. She has the vocabulary of a four year old, and continues to sing EVERYTHING. There is nothing better than driving somewhere, hearing my girl sing in her sweet voice along to songs on the radio, or songs on CD, or songs from memory. I especially get a kick out of 1)when she tries to sing in a high falsetto (giggle), and 2) when the climax/end of a song is gearing up, and she reallllly belts it out, such as the end of "that's, Elmo's songggggggggggg" - with her mouth open really wide and she's practically screaming the end of the song. Hee hee. What is cute is, we'll be driving along and she'll see a farm yard or corn field and say "what's that?" and so I'll tell her it's a farm, and she breaks into 'Old McDonald" or "The Farmer in the Dell". It never fails. We live in a suburb that is surrounded (now) by farm yards, so this happens a lot. It's become her pattern.

Last week, we were talking about how daddy has a name (she calls him by his first name quite often: "where __, go?"), and we told her MY name. She repeated it, and then said "My Carrie!". Ahh, sweetness! When we asked her what HER name was, she thought for a minute, then smiled proudly and said "Princess!". CJ and I had a great laugh over that one. It all made sense the next day, after I asked Elaine about it. Apparently, that day at nap time, all the kids were asking to be sung to goodnight and to be called "Princess", so Miss Imitator also wanted to be called "Princess" like her friends.

Each month, we receive a magazine for toddlers in the mail - a gift from Nana Marge. We love it- and I wish I could show you the look in K's eyes when I tell her she has mail and when I hand back the magazine to her. It is priceless!!

Our girl continues to love her Meghan and ballroom dancing. It has become a routine for her to also ask me each day in the morning, "go dancin', mama?". I feel so bad that we only go once a week! As always, we pull into the parking lot, and she lights up, and starts saying "shake, shake" (the parachute), and now, will ask "see Annie?" - in reference to her little friend Dani (elle), who has attended ballroom each week along with us. K loves to see Dani and her other ballroom regulars :) Then, when we are there, she quickly runs to make a circle and sits down to perform/sing all the songs and finger plays. She's also trying very hard to imitate all the ballroom steps we learn- and has been doing very well imitating the waltz (up two three, down two three, etc.). The hardest part has been not being able to lift her up (all 35 pounds of her)all the time when she wants mama to hold her and dance. And, the little mama's girl does not like when anyone else tries to pick her up to dance, even though she loves them (such as Meghan or Dani's mom).

And...now that spring has finally decided to be kind to us, K is enjoying going to a park and playing on the swings and slides. Another question I get on a daily basis is "go slide, mama?". She loves to climb and swing and slide. It makes me very excited for this summer- to be able to enjoy activities with her such as this, and hopefully baby Kyla will enjoy tagging along with mama and her big sissy!