Baskets and dentist apts.!

Adah and Kezzie have a new obsession...baskets.  Kezzie pretends like our big blue basket is her shell and she goes inside it.  She has started putting a blanket over it since there are holes on the sides and she doesn't want us to be able to see her.  Adah sees this as an opportunity to either a) annoy Keziah b)to have fun hiding under a blanket with Keziah.  Kezzie doesn't see it as b and as you can see in the picture tries to yell at Adah to leave her alone :(.  I guess they can't get along all the time!  Adah has a hobby of her own.  She likes to climb in and out of her small toy box.  She thinks she is pretty cool stuff!  And then just last night she found the baby cradle and gets in there.  This is way more fun then the toy box because it actually rocks back and forth.  She gets going pretty good in it too! Gotta love cheap entertainment!

Today Keziah went to the dentist.  Actually, Austin, Kezzie and I all three had dentist appointments.  Luckily mine was first thing in the morning and Kezzie was able to see how easy it was.  Her and Austin go to a peds dentist who is really good with kids so that helped too.  She was really nervous to go but after seeing me get mine cleaned she was ready to go and knew exactly what to do.  She climbed right up on the table/chair and opened wide!  Dr. said she still has quite a crossbite but that her teeth and gums look really good.  She said we should give her a paci back because she is doing way more damage with her finger then she will with a paci.  If you remember right, we've been through this before!  Summarized:  early 7/09 we took her paci away, late 08/09 she started sucking her finger, early 09/09 gave her paci back, 04/10 took her paci away again, it wasn't until Sept. or so that she started sucking her finger again.  I don't know what to do.  Dr. said her arch in her mouth is being affected and that her cross bite is getting worse.  Any suggestions? She has an oral fixation and has to have something in her mouth all the time (takes after her dad!).  She typically sucks her finger while watching tv or going to sleep but it doesn't stop there.  She also bites her fingernails already at her age and will chew on her blankie and even the collar on her shirts and sleeves.  The Dr. thought maybe if we gave her her paci back something would click and she would think, 'I don't need this, I'm a big girl'.  I don't think we are going to be that lucky!  But I don't know what else to do!

29 Months!

Keziah is another month older and it continues to amaze me how big she is! She is such a joy to be around. I know I say that every month, but it is so the truth! She makes me laugh all time! She says the funniest things and is learning more everyday. Every morning that she wakes up I swear she is smarter! Her sentences are becoming very complete and she almost speaks as well as some adults! She gets her words jumbled in a sentence sometimes but I can always tell what she is trying to say (ie: 'what say you?', 'where she is?', etc.)

Keziah is still taking her afternoon nap. I am just waiting for that to one day come to an end. I will cry when that happens! She sometimes has a really hard time getting to sleep and if I have her skip her nap for a day when we are busy she isn't hardly even phased by it. When she does fall asleep she will sleep for a good two hours and still sleep the same amount at night as she usually does which is great (8pm-7am). Also, we just took her door handle cover off so she is free to leave her room when she wakes up in the morning. It's only been two days and so far she hasn't been taking advantage of it. We will have to see if it becomes a problem and we need to put it back on! Every night when I put Kezzie to bed we pray on our knees next to her bed. She really loves this special way of praying and I love that I am teaching her something so important. She prays and says thanks to Jesus for many things but one thing she never forgets to say thank-you for is 'the pool'. We haven't swam yet this summer, other than at a hotel and that was over a month ago, but she insists that she thank God for it. I guess she really has a love for the pool! She also comes up with new things to be thankful for, things that I wouldn't even think of that we do earlier in the evening that she is happy about and thankful for. She will also frequently thank Jesus for her warm bed. I think we all too often take for granted things like our warm bed that we get to crawl into every night, so it really warms my heart that she thinks of those things. I think it is so sweet!

This month we also took Kezzie's pacifier away. It didn't even seem to phase her. Here is the funny story if you missed it. Another instance this month she actually found a different paci somewhere in her bed and when she came out after nap she was sucking on it. I asked her where she had gotten it and she said, 'it was just in my bed'. We had been missing that paci for a while and I guess she had found it! She is a smart girl but not smart enough to stash it away and keep quiet about it! I don't think there are any others hiding in her room anywhere that are going to emerge!

And a word on potty training...we had some major setbacks this month. I'm not sure what it was all about but she was definitely having more accidents...like one-two too many a day more accidents. All I did was went back to a day without pants on and she is back at it like a big girl. She is actually even better than before holding her pee for much longer at a time. Hopefully this will work her into a dry diaper at night time. For a while there I was actually waking her up before I went to bed to have her go potty because I wanted to see if it would eliminate her from wetting her diaper. A couple nights she stayed dry and it was successful but more nights then not she still woke up wet. I guess her body just isn't ready for that phase, so for now she will continue to wear a diaper to bed. For naps she is still staying dry but still wears a pull up. I'm just not brave enough to leave it off!

Keziah also had a dentist apt. this month (4/20/10). She did great but has a slight cross bite. I'm sure this is due to two years of pacifier sucking but the dentist thinks it should be fine especially when she gets her permanent teeth in. She just warned me that we probably need to start saving for braces! No shocker there since both her parents wore braces!

Kezzie says some of the cutest things...here are a few:

'whatever' using hand gestures and all.

'for ever, ever, ever' she will use this phrase for many different things whether it makes sense or not!

'don't you?' she will pretty much end any statement with this question. ie: I want to go outside, don't you? or I want to have a snack, don't you?, etc.

I know there is more so maybe I will be adding some again. I hope you are enjoying life with us as much as I am. I try not to bore you but at the same time there are things I want to put on the blog just for me to remember and be able to go back on! So thanks for going along for the ride!

A Yay and an Ooops!

Tuesday night (4/6/10) Kezzie gave up the pacifier for good. She has gone through two pacis in the last three weeks due to biting holes in them and I finally decided I wasn't replacing another one at over two years old. To my surprise she was fine with this. She asks about it for nap and bed but doesn't put up a fight to get it. I put the pacifier on her dresser so she could still see it and that is where the paci 'went to sleep'. However, at nap time today I heard some footsteps and a crash. I was busy with Adah so I didn't get up there to check on her right away but when I did, she looked very nervous as I walked in. She was laying in bed sucking her paci! I asked her how she got it and she proceeded to tell me a long story of how she got her chair out and climbed on it, got her paci and then fell, etc.She almost started to whimper as if to get sympathy for the fall. The funny thing is she didn't want me to see the chair out so to keep me from noticing, even after falling off the chair, she took the time to put it back where it belonged! It is so crazy to me that she came up with this brilliant/sneaky idea all on her own. Oh and I forgot to mention...the first night she went to bed without it I was so focused on remembering to put her to bed without it that I forgot to put a diaper on her...luckily she woke at 6:30am yelling over the monitor "I got to pee, I got to pee". She was completely dry! Yay Kezzie!
The next morning was Kindermusik and we have to drive almost an hour to CF. As we were sitting in the parking lot of Gallagher I was nursing Adah before going in for class and Kezzie said she had to pee. I asked her if she was going to be able to hold it and she said yes. I was sitting there nervous she was going to pee and encouraging her to hold it. It was silent for a few seconds and she said, "Mom, don't be mad." I said, "why would mommy be mad?" She said, "I pee my pants." How could I possibly be upset when she is so darn cute?! But my question is...how does she make it 12 hours the night before but can't make it one hour the next day...it can be frustrating! Needless to say, I had both girls in new outfits before we even arrived in our Kindermusik class!

24 months!

It's official...Keziah is 2! What a big girl she is. She is doing great at learning her ABCs and recites them regularly (see video at bottom of screen). She is so smart and it amazes me that she is able to know something so complex at such a young age. She will even sing the end part of the ABCs. Another favorite of Kezzie's to sing is 'Pinkle Pinkle Little Star'. She is starting to get the hang of a couple others too: Row Row Row Your Boat and Rock a Bye Baby. Her favorite CD is one I found from when Austin was little and it has songs like 'The Wheels on the Bus', etc. She LOVES that CD and requests to listen to it all the time.
Keziah is back to her normal sleep pattern. She is going to bed by 8 most nights and wakes by 8. She will nap a solid two hours. I wasn't sure if she would keep this pattern being that she just got into her big girl bed but she is doing so well. She rarely gets out of bed. There was one time that we 'had it out' and she hasn't gotten up since. It was a long two hour battle during nap time but she eventually gave in and went to sleep. I WIN!!!
Keziah continues to wear a pull up at nap time and still wakes dry. At night she wears a diaper and still wakes fairly wet. Someday she will get the hang of it but for now I am fine with this! She does excellent during the day telling me when she needs to use the potty.
As for the pacifier. I think we are getting close again to giving that up. She almost completely has all of her molars in which is what I am waiting for to attempt taking it away and knowing that she won't have that need to suck. With a new sister on the way and just getting into a new bed and new room, I think this is on hold for a little bit too.
At Kezzie's two year check up she weighed in at 26.5 lbs. making the 50%. She is 35" tall which is in the 75%. I don't know where she gets that from! She did have to get a couple shots which she did wonderful at. She also had her iron tested again and she was in the normal range. Yipee!
I am excited to have another little one to share our day with but I can't believe how quickly these past two years have gone by with just the two of us home during the day. It's going to be an adjustment for both of us. In the meantime I continue to cherish the last couple weeks we have together and try to do as much as possible! Keziah is so much fun to be around and I consider us extremely blessed to have her as a part of our lives!

22 months old!

My baby is quickly approaching her two year mark. It's amazing how fast this year has gone. Kezzie is getting more of the attitude that comes along with turning two. It is really frustrating sometimes because you don't know how she is going to react to certain things. For example, sometimes she will be completely happy to get up in the high chair and put on her favorite bib and other times she will scream that she doesn't want to wear a bib at all. Her newest thing is putting her head on the ground and just crying...a couple minutes later she will get up and be just fine. It's funny what she will try to get attention...as if she doesn't get an abundance of that!!

Funny things she says: 'Sorry mommy', or whoever. She is really very polite when she wants to be! She pretty much always says it at the appropriate times and sometimes doesn't say it when she should. As a discipline action she sits on the carpet for 90 seconds and when her time is up she immediately says it and repeats it over and over until you give her a hug and say it's ok. She will say 'tay to (thank-you) mommy' when I get her something she wants or when I help her with something. She says 'pease (please)' as well, although you usually have to prompt her on that one. She is more likely to get frustrated about something and start yelling 'help mommy' repeatedly before she is willing to calmly say please. Her favorite ways to respond are by saying yep, yes, yeah, uh huh and sure. She has also started this really funny thing at the beginning of most of her words. It's something like this 'i-e-i-e-i-ya'. It can mean several things depending on the words that come after it. I want, I got, I have, etc. It's pretty cute. She will often say to me 'i-e-i-e-i-ya idea (I have an idea)'. Whenever she comes to me with an idea I always tell her, "wow Kezzie, that's a great idea". I guess she picked up on it! In the morning lately she will abruptly wake up yelling 'i-e-i-e-i-ya (I got to) PEE'. She is holding her bladder a lot more at night and I guess she really has to go! She will yell it over and over until somebody enters her room and then she calmly states it once more!

Favorite piece of clothing: I found a nightgown at a garage sale that is pretty hideous but comfortable looking so I bought it for Kezzie. It has The Wiggles characters plastered on the front and the sleeves are decorated in some pretty obnoxious pattern. Kezzie saw them in the laundry and thought it was the Imagination Movers and fell in love with them right away. I set her straight on who they were and ever since she calls them her Wiggles jammies. She wants to wear them constantly. If we go out to play or to run errands I make her get dressed but the minute we get home she requests to have her Wiggles put back on. She hadn't ever even seen The Wiggles before until I recently found a video at the store and bought it for her. I wish I never had! I am really hoping this phase passes quickly! I guess one positive is I am not washing as many jammies these days!

Quarks about Kezzie: It's really quite strange but we have noticed it getting worse lately...Kezzie is afraid to walk on shiny floors. Wal-mart and Target are pretty much a guarantee that she is cart-bound. Anytime we go into a bathroom when we are out she has to be carried over to the toilet. If we try to have her walk she will take the tiniest steps yelling 'help' and have a look of horror on her face the whole time she is doing it and you can tell she is so frightened. It has something to do with the reflection of the lights on the ceiling. Maybe to her it looks like the floor is missing in those areas or maybe it looks slippery to her... and recently she has started doing it in our own kitchen. If she is playing hard enough or has something on her mind enough to not be looking down at the floor and notice it then she is fine.

Kezzie continues to learn her numbers and alphabet. She will often spout off three numbers in a row. For example, if I start out counting she will usually chime in with seven, eight, nine. She can't/won't say the number one so she will never start there. She is a pro at her colors. I think this is contributed to all the things we do with colors. When she picks her candy after potty, when she gets dressed, etc. Pretty much everything we do/see is defined by its color.

Pacifier update: Kezzie started sucking her finger the end of last month but it didn't get really bad until this month. She was sucking it more then she ever needed her paci and it was starting to interfere with how much she would talk. She was laying around more and not playing purely to get the gratification of sucking. After a lot of prayer and thought we decided to give her the pacifier back (9/15/09). We have been letting her have it whenever she wants, all the time to try to get her re-attached to that so that maybe when we take it away again she will forget about her finger and be done with it all. I think she started sucking her finger because she is getting her two year molars (first noticed it poking through 9/1/09) so I am hoping she won't feel the need to go back to it. This is a process and only today has she started having limited paci time (she can only have it when she is in bed). She hasn't even once asked for it and hasn't put her finger in her mouth at all. She played really well all morning and has been talking up a storm. And she is easier to understand when she isn't trying to talk through her paci! I just pray this works! There was no way we were getting that finger away from her and it only seemed to keep the moisture around her mouth which irritated her rash even more...

Rash update: We took Kezzie to see the dermatologist on September 9. There were only three little specks on her face when we went and that morning I even contemplated going because I didn't think the doctor would know what to do for her. Regardless we went and I'm glad we did. He thought from what he could see it didn't look like yeast and he took her off all previous creams she was on (we were told she never should have been on that yeast cream for so long). He prescribed something called Elidel which is used for Eczema. This didn't seem like it was working so I took her back to see a different dermo (our first one was on vacation) on Sept. 16. This doctor said we just hadn't given it enough time and said to continue using the Elidel but to quit using any shampoos, body wash, bubble bath we were using and only use the CeraVe samples that she gave us. It's a new moisturizer. She was right. In just a couple more days we started to see some results. We put on the Elidel and then over top of that we placed the CeraVe lotion. And when she takes a bath we use the CeraVe body wash. It seems to really be working. Pretty soon we should be able to stop using it and only use it when her skin is irritated. I never would have thought she had something like Eczema! I am so thankful to finally know how to treat it. Hopefully this is something she will eventually grow out of. We won't need to see the dermo again unless we have further concerns!

Like I always say, everyday is an adventure. I must say...I look forward to putting her to bed at night but then after a couple hours I find myself excited to spend the next day with her and see what new things we will both learn! It's so much fun being a mommy!

21 Months!

Keziah was 21 months old yesterday! Oh how the months fly by! She will be turning 2 before we know it! Not much lifestyle wise has changed this month. She is pretty much on the same schedule. Wakes at 7:30 bed by 8. Naps from 1-3:30ish. Still doing great without her paci. However, she recently discovered her pointer finger and frequently sticks that in her mouth and sucks on it. She will pull it out and show it to me and tell me it is her paci. I have been taking it out and telling her she doesn't need a paci anymore but she insists on sucking it. It mostly happens when she is about to go to bed or down for a nap. She has also replaced the paci with a sippy cup and is very addicted to having that at nap and bed. She almost always drinks an entire cup full of water before falling asleep and has actually even puked/spit up all the water because her belly was too full. She's not much of a breakfast eater but she will always eat a little something. She is a really good lunch and supper eater though! Kezzie is getting really good at her speech. She says everything imaginable and has even started putting words together. It is so fun to hear her talk and sometimes we can have conversations with her using just one or two words for responses. She gets frustrated very little now because she can almost always find a way to tell me what she is thinking or needing. If she has an idea she will usually either tell me or pull my hand to come with her so she can show me (ie: Kezzie: mommy ball. Me: oh, you want me to play with the ball with you? Kezzie: yes). One of her favorite phrases is 'hereyago' (here ya go). It really sounds like all one word but she has heard it enough that she says it all the time and even uses it properly. One of Kezzie's favorite things to do is dance. I love this about her because she really gets me moving sometimes. She knows exactly which button to push on the stereo to turn it on and knows which one turns it up too. She claps, spins, jumps, and waddles to show her happiness. She even clicks her tongue or puts in a few hums here and there to go along with the music. It is adorable! Speaking of jumping...she actually gets some air now. She has been working really hard at that! Another fun game we play is we get on Brian and my bed and we pretend like we are going to sleep and she pretend snores. It's hilarious! Kezzie is also doing excellent with her colors. I have yet to catch them perfectly on camera but yesterday she brought a book to me with all sorts of colors in it in the shape of squares. She pointed to each color adding the word square on the end. There was red, pink, orange, yellow and green squares on the page. I was very impressed! Sometimes she gets confused but she always gets yellow right for some reason. It seems to be her favorite color in everything she does! Who knew a 1.5 year old could have a favorite color! She also has a preference in shoes. If she sees a pair in my hand that she doesn't want to wear she will promptly request "pink shoes". It's her hot pink crocs that rarely match anything. But I am sure they are incredibly comfortable! When cooler weather arrives I think we will have to make them vanish somehow! Keziah continues to do well with her numbers. She can tell me when she has a group of two or three of something and she will show it to me. She is also starting to say some letters. There is a bookshelf in the office with A, B, C and D on it and she will point to each one and tell me what they are. Again, she isn't always right but she is definitely interested and can often surprise me with her accuracy. One of Kezzie's newest things she says is 'syie' (sorry). She says it quite often. Sometimes it's when you aren't sure why and then you wonder what mischief she has been into. I think this has come about because we have started having her apologize when she intentionally hits another family member. A lot of times she will say it when she bumps into you or knocks something off the table. It's pretty sweet, but sometimes I wonder if she really means it!!

Yeast Update: We switched back to the original yeast medicine since that was at least keeping it under control and made an appointment with a dermatologist in Sept. It doesn't seem to want to fully disappear but it is back to being very minimal. Praise the Lord. I at least feel like I can take her in public again and not wonder if people think she is contagious. I just pray there is enough of it there when the dermatologist looks at it to be able to determine what to do next.

I enjoy everyday that I have with Keziah and don't take a minute for granted. I am so blessed to be home with her and watch her grow. It sometimes makes me sad that I am the only one that really gets to see on a daily basis how smart she is. I guess that's why they invented blogger, so I can just brag about her instead! And I definitely do enough of that!

Battle Won?!!

Last Friday I took the kids to the dentist. I normally wouldn't have had Kezzie checked so early but since I had a concern with some extra tissue between her two front teeth I decided to have her seen when Austin was. The dentist really stuck it to me and made me feel like a horrible mother. He said her pallet was very deep and the cause of this was her paci (even though for months now she has only been allowed to have it in her bed). He said also that the paci was keeping her two front teeth from coming together and that the tissue was growing in between as a result. He also went on to make it clear that he did not believe me that I brush her teeth twice a day religiously (probably because Austin was there getting a cavity filled). He must just think I don't care about my kids' teeth at all. With all that being said, we are now brushing three times a day and working on breaking her paci habit. Saturday (7/18) was our first attempt at doing so before remembering Sunday was going to be a busy day and she would be napping at my parents' house (and we didn't want to have her 'crying it out' with our whole family there to hear it). Before thinking that all through we laid her down in her crib after warning her that nap time was going to be without a paci, I just quietly removed the pacifier from her room. I think this caused a lot of problems for her because she just kept looking for it in her bed (I did tell her it wasn't there but I don't think she understood that). She cried for a half hour straight before we gave in and gave it to her. We decided Monday was going to be a much better day to start it anyway. 7/20 Monday at nap time I put Kezzie in her crib and showed her her paci. I told her to say good night to it and give it a kiss and then she watched me put it in her dresser drawer. She was asleep within 15 minutes. A miracle!! I think mentally she just had to know it wasn't in reach and that she just needed to go to sleep. She only slept an hour though compared to her normal 2.5/3 hours on a paci day :( Monday night she did fantastic also. Again, we had her give her paci a kiss (which ended up being more like six kisses) and then we 'put it to bed' in the dresser drawer. She didn't even cry or mention it. She talked herself to sleep like usual and slept until 3:45am. I went in her room, she told me she needed to go potty, she gave her paci a kiss, and went right back to sleep. She woke at her regular time in the morning (7ish). I was shocked she only woke once the entire night! I think we could call this battle won, don't you?!! I told the dentist that taking her paci away from her was going to be 10 times harder then potty training her. He didn't think that was very funny! And before talking to him, I honestly wasn't even considering taking her paci away from her because of how much she was addicted to it. It has turned out to be much easier then I thought though. Kezzie is handling it like such a big girl. You can see it in her face when she 'puts her paci to bed' that she wants to cry but she just sucks it up! And every time she goes to give it a kiss she opens wide and tries to maneuver her head to 'accidentally' get a couple sucks. It makes me kind of sad too because her paci was the last babyish thing about her. I can't believe how fast she is growing up!