Keira Tidbits

-- She's still my smileroo. She has an amazing, open, beautiful smile and she's always smiling. Strangers comment on it in the store and it never fails to brighten my day or mood. As you can see from the picture that Dendi took, she is a very cooperative smiler for the camera and will generally say an enthusiastic and unsolicited, "CHEESE!"

-- She's talking up a storm. Although, I feel like I'm always saying that. For her 18 mos. checkup I figured they'd ask me how many words she was saying, so I started jotting them down. I got to 85 words right before we moved, and right before her appt. Now, she's regularly speaking in four word chunks. It's amazing. She can generally convey her meaning about anything that she needs, even if it's in the other room. Of course, when she can't convey something to me or when I say "show Mommy" and it doesn't work, she gets to use one of her favorites, "MAD, MAD, MAD!!!" This is a little gem that I picked up from one of my favorite books, "Happiest Toddler on the Block". When she's about to throw a tantrum I mirror her emotion and speak in "Toddlerese", so far it's averted many disasters. We said it with Eli, too, but Keira has actually picked it up and uses it herself.

-- She sings constantly. She's usually singing a tune, like when she's playing or riding in the car. Sometimes, I can pick out the tune, and sometimes I can't. Not only is she always singing, but at times, she sings her requests, too. During the holiday season, she would sing many requests to the tune of Jingle Bells. "Num num couch, num num couch, num num num num couch..."

-- At night, she likes to pause in the bedtime routine and talk about her day. She did this a lot right before Christmas, when she was starting to put together thoughts and words after things happened, and often many hours later. It was so neat to hear her talk about things that we had done hours beforehand. Amazing to see her little mind working. Now, before bed, we talk, but mainly read. Sometimes we read about 20 of her books. Some of her favorites are, "So Big!", "Brown Bear, Brown Bear", "Time to Eat", "Elmo and Abby Want to Play", "Let's Build" and any Maisy book.

-- She has an opinion. :) I find myself saying at least once a day, "My children definitely have opinions." I say this to some of the teenagers at Eli's school who talk to Keira. She eats up the attention for a moment and then tells them, "No!" when they get too close. I also say this at Kroger, WalMart or Target when strangers love her huge smile and then try to get too close and engage her further. They often get the same response as the teenagers do. Attention, especially from strangers, or anyone outside her nuclear family, has to be on her terms.

-- She adores her brother. When he's sad or in trouble she always seeks him out to give him a kiss. It works wonders on him. As many younger siblings do, she loves and wants to be just like her brother. Her version of dress up so far is dressing up like Eli. She puts on his crocs and his hat, usually backwards. We call her Eli Jr.



-- Monkey See, Monkey Do. Not only does she want to dress like him, she wants to do everything he does. After he takes his inhaler, she has to "take" it too.


-- Speaking of monkeys... many animals are cows and monkeys. This is related to the earlier tidbit. She has an opinion... When we went to the zoo before Christmas, she was absolutely fascinated by the animals. Eli is interested in the animals very temporarily, in fact, on the way home he told us if he owned the zoo he would put in more rides. But, Keira stood transfixed in front of the giraffes, zebras, elephants, lions, tigers, pandas, gorillas and many more. I almost had to drag her away from each animal. Interestingly, when we got home and talked about the zoo later, and I asked her what animals she saw, she said cows. Hmmm. When I tried to correct her or expand with other animals. She said, "No Mommy, cows." Okay.

Monkeys seem to be another favorite. She calls many non monkey animals, monkeys. For instance, for Christmas, she got a pink and purple unicorn pillow from Uncle Jason and Auntie Andrea. She loves it. And, she insists on dragging it into bed and leaning on it every night when we read. She calls it her monkey pillow. Huh? I've tried to correct her, and say it's a unicorn pillow. She just looks at me, a little incredulously and says, "No Mommy, oooooh ooooh aaah aaah, Monkey pillow." I guess the monkey noises settle it. :)

-- She has amazing manners. She says unsolicited "thank you"s and "no thank you"s most of the time. It's incredible, she rarely misses a beat. She's so consistent that it actually turned into a game with Ashley Kate the other evening. We were across the street playing in Ms. Shannon's back yard. Ashley Kate was doing her best job sharing, as we all know that's HARD for someone who's about to turn two and is having to share on their turf. Both girls were playing in the sandbox and at one point, Ashley Kate handed something to Keira, at which point Keira promptly replied with a thank you. Ashley Kate handed her another toy, Keira thanked her. Then, Ashley Kate ended up giving her almost the entire contents on the sandbox. Too cute.

-- She says, "I got it." I'm not sure where she picked it up, as I don't think she understands the pronoun "I" yet, but she uses it correctly all the time. She says it when she's finally opened something, or climbed up somewhere.

-- She says "try." This is her response when I tell her that we can't do something. For instance, she looks longingly out the window and says, "Outside, outside, outside!!!" I look out the window at the snow on the ground and look back at her with no socks, no shoes and her pajamas on, and I tell her that we'll have to go out later. She promptly responds, "Try!" Scott thinks she got it from her brother the master negotiator, who will often be heard saying, "Let's just try, Mommy." Her "try"s are slowly morphing into "please"s which are much more socially acceptable, but a little less giggle inspiring.

-- She says "right here" all the time. She says it when answering many questions like where's your nose or where are your shoes? It's usually accompanied by a pointing finger. "Right here" can mean on her face or on the other side of the house. Interestingly, Scottie remembered that at this age, Eli always said "over there (dare)" and it, like "right here", had no specific distance requirements.

-- She counts to ten. She's been doing this for a few months now, and is now working on counting to twenty by hiding her head in her arm and pretending to be Eli when he's counting for Hide and Seek. When I catch her doing it she lifts her head and flashes a big grin at me, almost sheepishly.

-- She working on learning her colors in a unique way. She calls orange, "Dendi" and sometimes she gets blue right and calls it "Daddy". As I did when Eli was learning his colors, I talked about the colors by telling her about people's favorite colors. She's taken it one step closer and actually calls orange "Dendi". :)

-- Finally, she's fascinated with personal grooming tasks. As she has been for a long time, Keira still loves water. I haven't encouraged her playing in the sink since we moved to the new house -- it's winter, and having a bigger kitchen means I can't stand right next to the sink and put the dishes away. She seems to have forgotten about the sink, but is definitely interested in washing her hands, brushing her teeth and taking baths much more often than personal hygiene requires. She's also been interested in trying to put on clothes for almost a year now. Her skills have improved a lot. The other night she played for almost an hour -- putting my sports bra over her head and her pants on one leg or the other. Then, she would take it all off and start again. About a week ago she kicked off this new bout of dressing by putting my underwear proudly on her head over and over again.