30 months!

She is looking more grown up every time I do this. A full two and a half years now! She is my big helper around the house and talking so much! She is full of attitude but is such a sweetie. Still doing great without her paci and is doing excellent on the potty. She is even napping in underwear these days! Last month I mentioned taking the safety door handle off her door so she could come out of her room when she woke in the morning, well this month we put it back on. She soon started taking advantage of that and we found her 'needing a drink or needing a kleenex' waaaayyy too often. She would open her door and help herself to the bathroom where she would hang out for a while and then run back to her room. She was also getting up much earlier than usual. Like over an hour earlier just so she could come out of her room or something! Anyway, it is back on now and things are back to normal. It is sometimes a pain to have to leave what I am doing (ie: nursing) to go upstairs to let her out of her room but she handles it really well and I would rather it be this way then fight with her to stay in her room!

Funny Adah/Kezzie story: The other day Kezzie asked if she could hold Adah, (this doesn't happen very often, in fact, it has been a really long time since Kezzie has held Adah) so I had Kezzie sit up in the recliner and I plopped Adah on Kezzie's lap. Kezzie was done in a heart beat and I thought to myself, maybe she would enjoy it more if she could actually see Adah's face and interact with her. So, I turned Adah around and put her legs so they were straddling Kezzie's tummy. Kezzie was enjoying this so much more and they were laughing and smiling at each other all the while I am supporting Adah's back and joining in the fun! All of the sudden Adah spits up A TON of spit up (she had just finished nursing) all over Keziah. The look on Kezzie's face was priceless. It went from a full blown smile to complete mortification! And she was even more offended that I couldn't stop laughing. She looked up at me and disgustingly, boldly stated 'Adah spit up' as she tried to push her off her lap. It was priceless!

I wanted to say a word on the rash on Kezzie's face too. It's been a while since I have commented on it but until this month I have still had to daily put Elidel cream on it. This is the first month that I haven't put it on in at least a couple weeks. Hopefully she is finally outgrowing this eczema that she has had to deal with for the past year now.

One of Kezzie's favorite things to do is match things. She is always trying to find things around the house that match. She will open up DVD cases and get the inserts out and match them to the correct case, she loves to match a picture that we once took of her receiving a gift to the actual object (ie: she just recently saw a picture of herself next to her Easter basket and in her basket was her stuffed animal chick, she immediately went and found her chick and put them next to each other and said ,'look it's a match'), she also has a couple matching games that she frequently requests to play!

One of Kezzie's most favorite things to say when asked a question is...'cuz I want ted to' with some very clear annunciation! This is becoming a very annoying response and just might have to be nibbed in the butt (is that the correct expression?) really soon!

Kezzie is still napping from about 1:30-4 and goes to bed by 8pm. She wakes around 7/7:30. She is never interested in something to eat for breakfast but loves her liquids! I usually mix 1/5 juice with 4/5 water. And after about an hour of being awake I offer her some cereal with milk, oatmeal, a bagel, or some toast (she hates eggs right now). She is doing pretty good with her other two meals but definitely isn't going through a growth spurt. She can't have a morning snack or you can forget her eating lunch at all, but she will always have an afternoon one when she wakes from her nap because that ties her over til supper when we eat around 6.

Until next month...we'll keep on smiling and thanking God for our precious little girl!

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!

Yeast update!

I have an update for Kezzie's rash on her face. I took her back to the doctor (a different doctor) and he also insists that it is yeast. He prescribed a different kind of yeast cream and said to give it 2 weeks and if it didn't work then he was just going to send us to a dermatologist. It has been two and a half days since I started applying it and it is the worst I have ever seen it. I am feeling really discouraged and worried. I pray that there is something out there that is going to work. It doesn't seem to bother her but it looks incredibly painful and very red. I feel so bad for her and am even a little embarrassed to take her in public. I wash all of her bedding and her favorite blanket in hot water about every other day. I make sure she always has a clean cup to drink out of and I make sure her face is always clean using a clean rag every time. I have been religiously putting her cream on her face three times a day and it just isn't going away. I don't know what else to do. Just say a prayer for her sweet little face as we try to get this figured out once and for all.

Ear Plugs!

Kezzie plays on our bed daily and happened to find my ear plugs on my night stand. I showed her what to do with them knowing she could never get them in far enough to do damage let alone barely stay in. She walked around with them in her ears for quite a while today. If one fell out she would get really irritated and bring it to me to put back in. She is quite the goof-ball. Notice the rash still on her face. I posted on her 20 month post that we thought the rash was gone for good but apparently even with medicine put on daily it is getting worse. I guess another trip to the doctor is in order :(

20 MONTHS!!!

I opted to do some jammie pictures since I haven't done that in a while. Those were done on the 23rd but the purple outfit was the next morning. I couldn't resist how cute she looked in her pig tails!

Now, where do I even begin with the changes that Kezzie is making...first of all she isn't sleeping as much. She goes to bed anywhere between 7:30 and 8:30 (usually on the later side) and wakes between 6:15 and 7am (usually on the earlier side). She still lays down for a nap around 12:30 and wakes between 2 and 3 (rarely later, but sometimes). I am trying to get her to learn that I am not going to rush in the second she makes a peep in the morning. She does pretty well with this and actually has fallen back to sleep a couple times. I really think sleeping without her paci is still something she is getting used to and that she will eventually go back to her regular schedule. The look you see in the middle picture is pretty much the one we always see anymore. I don't know what it is but she will usually stick the frowning eyebrows in there with the stuck out lips right before she cracks a big smile. It's her new expression. Kezzie is doing great without the paci and sometimes doesn't even require giving it a kiss good night anymore! She still asks for it several times a day but usually when I tell her she doesn't need it because she is a big girl she doesn't bring it up again for a while. I have noticed she is becoming very attached to her blankie though (we still mostly only let her have it in bed). And I noticed she has found a new way of getting comfort out of it. Besides sniffing the taggies around the edges she now likes to stick the triangular shaped one up her nose and leave it there to sniff continuously (this just may fit under my 'quarks about Kezzie' category!). Kezzie is still doing well with potty, although there have been more accidents as I gradually let her take over the telling me when she needs to go. It typically happens when we are doing something fun and she doesn't want to take time to go to the bathroom. She is still saturating her diaper at night most nights so I think this part of it all is a long way off. Night time is when she drinks most of her water too so that will be our next habit to break!

Kezzie is very much into gathering things that belong together/match. She likes to stack things and make piles. Recently she has taken a new interest in her baby and stroller. She seems to stroll her baby everywhere in the house and frequently takes it out to give it 'tisses' (kisses) and 'ugs' (hugs).

Also, almost this whole month we have been trying to get rid of some type of yeast on Kezzie's face. She struggled with this 'rash' type thing for several weeks before we decided it wasn't going to get better on its own. After taking her to the doc she prescribed a simple diaper rash cream and finally after 2.5 weeks it is almost all gone!

Kezzie is doing AWSOME with colors. I didn't realize how much she was catching on to this but we talk about colors a lot. Upon picking her one skittle she gets for going potty Brian asked her which one she wanted and she said 'lellow' and grabbed for the yellow one. Also while eating Applebee's she was coloring with crayons and handed me each color while saying them (red, blue and yellow). I am amazed at how that girl learns!

Her favorite character is Elmo, without a doubt! She LOVES Elmo's world.

Kezzie has taken a huge interest in the alphabet and even though she can say hardly any of the letters, you can tell she is trying to sing the song. It's adorable. Same with numbers. She is getting better at saying numbers but mostly you can just tell she is numbering things off by the tone in her voice. She tries to count anything that is in a group. She is going to like numbers like her daddy!

Quarks about Kezzie: she is obsessed with cleaning her feet. If given a rag/wet wipe to wipe her face or hands she will immediately go for the toes and wash them (she still LOVES sniffing wet wipes, btw!). Kezzie is also obsessed with closing doors and gates behind her. Every time we head upstairs she has to close the gate behind her and when we reach the top, again she has to close the gate behind her. Same with the bathroom door when she is done going potty.

I know this post is really long but I don't want to forget a thing. I am sure I will add things over the next couple days as I am reminded of them!!