Kiki

Kathleen is in the midst of the "toddler word explosion". Every day she learns more and more words. At first it was just one word a day, but now she just learns so many new words that I can't keep up. I have no idea how many words she knows. She repeats a lot of what I say (yes including the bad words).

For the most part her pronounciation is pretty understandable. Especially if you know the context of what she is saying. But sometimes she comes up with some things out of the blue, and I have to admit even I don't always understand her.

Her powers of observation are amazing. She is always looking around and notices the smallest details that I would normally miss. Things like a tiny National Bank logo on a newspaper, she will immediately spot and say "neigh" (because it's a horse). And don't even mention Dora or Maisy. The funny thing is when she spots something that reminds her of something that happens in one of her videos or books. She will say for example "Dora, Dora, Dora" until you acknowledge her - "yes, Dora has a bracelet doesn't she", or "yes, Maisy's friend Eddie fell over and hurt his knee too".

One day last week, Kathleen and I were playing outside. We found a small stick and I told her it was a stick, which she repeated a couple of times. She then said "cookie". I was like "it's almost lunchtime, you can have a cookie after lunch". But she kept insisting "cookie, cookie, cookie". I kinda wondered where she learnt that word from, as we say "biscuit" not "cookie". But I figured she probably learnt it from one of her books. Anyway, she kept insisting "cookie", and when it became obvious to her that I wasn't understanding, she changed tacks and said "dogg, woowoowoo". Then I realised she wasn't saying "cookie" at all, but "Corky" the name of the dog in one of her books. A dog who chases sticks. It's the little associations like this that she makes that really blow me away.

Some of the funny things Kathleen says are:

Kiki - She calls herself Kiki, and it has stuck. Half the time we now call her Kiki instead of Kathleen (I only call her Kat when I'm typing now because it's quicker). She's actually pretty good with names and can say the names of everybody she knows (except for Uncle Richard - see below), but can't say her own name. But she knows that Kiki is herself because if you show her her photo or look in the mirror, she will say "Kiki".

Uncle Winkle - Kathleen's Uncle Richard was for the longest time just called "Uncle". Or "Uncle, Uncle". This morphed into "Uncle Runkle", whether by Kat intentionally or by being misheard by us. In any case, everybody thought it was funny and reinforced the name by calling Richard "Uncle Runkle" all the time. Kat has since morphed this into "Uncle Winkle" and this is what she calls him now.

Speaking of Uncle Richard, he and Kat's Auntie Mardie and Poppa have all now moved back to Texas to live. Kathleen misses them a lot and talks about them all the time. She understands that they have gone, because every mention of them is followed by her saying "pann", which means "plane". Which is her way of saying "they went away on the plane".

Lubb ju - This is her way of saying "I love you". Awwwww.

Numbers - Kathleen learnt long ago to say the number two. Especially if she's in trouble and we start counting to three - "Kathleen ... one ..." and she will smile up at you and pipe in "twooo". Which makes it incredibly difficult to keep a straight face and continue to "three".

Her standard answer if you ask her how many of something there is, is always "twoo".

She has learnt even more numbers than that though.
- She'll sometimes say "wunn".
- If you say "one" she almost always says "twoo".
- If you then count "three" through "five", she will say "siiix" after each one.
- If you say "seven" she will say "att"
- If you say "nine" she will say "tennn"

In other news, we are all doing well. Peter is now contracting at IBM in Petone. A bit of a hassle for him to get to and from work (bus + train) but he seems to be enjoying it. A couple of times Kat and I have gone out on the train to have lunch with him, and she has really enjoyed it.

A little over a month ago we all went up to Mount Ruapehu with Richard and Mardie. The idea was to give them the opportunity to try skiing or snowboarding before they went back to Texas, where I imagine there aren't a lot of ski fields. Richard had a go at snowboarding, while Mardie, Kathleen and I went sledding on the learner slopes. Had a good time, but it was very crowded, being the end of the school holidays and great weather. Kat enjoyed eating the snow!

I am doing well. Here is a comparison of Kathleen and Not Nooboo at 28 weeks gestation ...

Not Nooboo

Kathleen

Cheers,
Megz

Introducing Not Nooboo

We had our first ultrasound scan for the new baby last week. It was great to finally see him or her, and now it finally feels real to me - there is now a reason for my ever-expanding tummy besides eating too many biscuits! Luckily everything is looking ok in there. Everything is doing ok on the outside too. Kathleen continues to grow and her vocabulary is ever expanding at the rate of at least one word a day, plus she repeats a lot of what we say. We are trying to prepare her for the new arrival. She understands that there is a baby in Mummy's tummy, but there's no way we can really prepare her for what that means.

We have nicknamed the new baby Not Nooboo, and here is an explanation of what that means.

Before she was born, Kathleen was known as Nooboo. This term comes from the Sims 2 computer game, which I used to be addicted to, back when I used to have time for such things. The Sims is all about controlling virtual people as they go about their daily lives. Because it is designed to appeal to as wide an audience as possible, the sims don't speak English but rather they speak a made up language called Simlish. The Simlish word for baby is Nooboo. Thus Kathleen was known as Nooboo.

Just after we moved to Auckland in 2002 we got a new tortiseshell kitten named Noodle. When she was about six months old, Noodle went missing. We put up posters and an ad in the local paper. One morning when I was out, Peter got a phone call from someone who had found Noodle. They brought her around to him and he said "well she looks a little different but I guess I haven't seen her for a few weeks", and took her in. I got home an hour later and immediately said "that's not Noodle". And it wasn't. But we didn't know where she had come from and couldn't return her. We advertised her as a found cat but got no reply. So she stayed, and became known as Not Noodle, or Bubby. Noodle was never found, but we still have Not Noodle.

So when we were coming up with nicknames for the new baby, I said to Peter "will it be Number Two, Nooboo Too, or Not Nooboo". He ROTFLOL and said it had to be the latter.

-Megz

Conversations with Kathleen

Kathleen, what sound does duckie make?
Makes a quacking sound

What sound does piggy make?
Snorts

What sound does cow make?
Mooooooo

What sound does sheepy make?
Ba Ba

What sound does horsey make?
Nee

What sound does lion make?
Raar

Kathleen, where's Mummy?
Mama
Points

Where's Daddy?
Dada
Points

Where's pussycat?
Maow
Attempts to give the cat a cuddle

Do you love pussycat?
Attempts to give the cat another cuddle

Do you love Mummy?
No

Do you love Daddy?
No

Can you say Yes?
No

Is it time for a nap?
No way


-Megz

An addition to the family

Our little family is soon to be joined by one more. And no, we're not getting a new cat (although Peter did try to kidnap a beautiful Burmese a couple of weeks ago). We are going to have another baby, a little brother or sister for Kathleen. He/she is due in mid November so the two of them will be around 22 months apart, almost two years. I'm sure she will love being a big sister. Already one of the few words in her small vocabulary is "bebe" and whenever she goes to playgroup she is always excited to see the other "bebes". I am a bit nervous about having two babies/toddlers in the house - one is definitely hard enough. But I'm sure we will find a way to cope. Hopefully Kathleen will be of an age where she will enjoy 'helping', but with the terrible two's looming, who knows...

We had our first midwife appointment this week, and got to hear bub's heartbeat for the first time. So that kinda made it official for me at last. I'm currently almost 15 weeks pregnant, past the first trimester now. There's nothing to see yet. Kathleen didn't pop out till well into the 20's so I don't expect this one to be much different. Once again we're not going to find out if it is a girl or a boy.

Apart from that we are all doing well. Kathleen now happily toddles around everywhere, although I still carry her when we're out because she's just so darn slow. She is now working on expanding her vocabulary. Words she currently says are:

MAMA, DADA, MIMI and BEBE
NO (LOVES to say this one)
GO (especially when I say "let's go")
UH OH
OH KEEEY (OK)

And in the last couple of days she has added TEDDY and MICKEY to her vocab. Plus she loves to repeat words that I say, particularly CLICK, CLOCK, CHICKEN, SOCK, STUCK, TRUCK and anything else with a "K" sound.

She also says many, many, many other words that I'm too dense to understand.

We've all been pretty busy as of late. Last weekend Peter travelled to Nelson for a paintball tournament, while Kathleen and I went to Palmerston North to help a friend move house. This weekend we're all headed back to Palmy for another friend's baby shower. Heard on the news today that NZ is experiencing a baby boom. That comes as no surprise to me as I know lots of people having babies at the moment. That's good - lots of friends for Kathleen and number two to play with.

Cheers,
Megz

Walking

Finally, at the ripe old age of 14 months, Kathleen taken her first steps. Not that I was worried or anything. But she was the first in her group to sit up and the first to crawl, and then ... nothing. All the others have been walking for a while now, but not our Kathleen. Maybe when she started crawling at six months she thought that was it, she'd found a way to get around and she was going to stick with it. She finally took her very first independent steps at the end of March, but it took her until April 20th (a day shy of turning 15 months) for her to actually decide to try walking without mummy or daddy encouraging her. She is still very slow and still crawls a lot of the time, but at least she is giving it a go now. More often than not she'll reach for my finger and ask me to take her wherever it is that she's going. Walking holding on to someone's hand is definitely her preferred mode of transport now - a la the photo above of her with Poppa and Auntie Mardie.

Now I love this photo here. It perfectly captures Kathleen as she is most evenings lately - climbing onto the couch by herself and screaming her head off. Not screaming unhappy. Not screaming scared. But a combination of screaming "look at me" and "I like the sound of my own voice". Sometimes I worry about her falling off the couch, but I can't stop her and hey, a few bumps and bruises are all part of growing up. She's fallen a couple of times but it certainly hasn't stopped her. She's such a clown. No shrinking violet, this one.

We are all doing well. It has started getting a lot colder around here lately and we have the fire going every morning. Kathleen has settled into a good routine of waking up around 8-8.30am, having lunch around 12-12.30pm, a nap around 1.30pm until 3pm, dinner at 6.30pm, bath at 7.30pm and bed at 8.30pm. This is working out quite well for us. I know it's a bit of a late bedtime, but dinner and bath and getting dressed and reading a story take SOOO long. And if we started any earlier, Peter wouldn't be home from work yet. So it works.

-Megz