The Kalia Show

I'm catching up on a few video posts from the past few months that make me grin. The reason I haven't uploaded them is because I don't have time to edit them down, so I'm just uploading them anyways. Feel free to stop watching whenever you are no longer entertained by them! First up, Kalia and Kodi with her beads.  She actually put it around his neck before I started filming, but decided it was better on his back afterwards.  Her beads are a common theme throughout these videos!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bmqXh8vdSCY

 Next up, just in case any of you thought I was semi normal, here's proof otherwise...it's Kodi's birthday...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBCMO0wGa24


And here's more evidence that Kalia doesn't stand a chance at being remotely normal.  In our defense, most of these are taken when we've had rough nights or when it's close to Kalia's bedtime and she's starting to throw fits.  The goofier we are, the less fits she throws!

Chris's not normalness (taken a few months ago, before the beads :-)) : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qUDbsesj0rQ

...and my not normalness: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxV8Oc108HY.

Contrary to what most of you believe, I think Chris has me beat in the non-normal department!

*PS - If you tried to watch Chris's not-normalness and got sent to blogger's homepage, it's fixed now!

Kalia : All Things Christmas & 18.5 months

I'm skipping Kalia's 18.5 month post and just doing one on Christmas things!  As far as what she's doing these days, she loves all things Santa, Elf, Snowmen, and Kodi :-).  She also :

• knows her colors - red, yellow, blue, green, brown, black, white, purple, pink.  Daddy took her to the Y one weekend and there was a birthday party going on at the playground (they let her join) and there were beads everywhere.  Kalia took home quite a few of them, and will sit in her little toddler chair and put them on and off for 20 or 30 mins.  She puts them in and out of containers a ton too.  We started telling her what color she was putting on, and now she applies it to everything...cars, the table, flowers, signs, crayons, chalk, and of course, her beads :-).
• broke through her 4th molar, so we're at 13 teeth now. Just three more canines and her set of two year molars left to go and we're done with teething until she's 6...or if it's true what they say about kiddos that get teeth late, lose them late - until she's 10!  :-)
• says "here you go <Mommy, Daddy, whomever else>" and reaches for you when she wants you to take her.  I guess it came from us telling the other one "here you go" and handing her off.  She also says it when she wants to hold something.
• called my boobs boo-boo's.  Yes, personal, but too funny not to share!  She poked at them and said "oh no Mommy, boo boo, oh no!!"  I laughed and told her they were my boobies, not boo-boo's, and she smiled and said "oh, BOOBIES!!!".
• has gone crazy swimming at the Y.  She can swim with just the noodle and me holding onto it, and goes to the edge when she gets tired.  She gets so so so excited to go in the pool.  The lifeguard there said she was swimming better than the 3-5 year old class he teaches.  She's honestly not too far from being able to do it on her own!
• gets called a boy ALL THE TIME.  At the Y I got told TWICE he was adorable, and once that he was going to be a ladies man.  Kalia was wearing her swimsuit and swimshirt...no shorts....and her bikini is black and pink and her swimshirt is brown and pink with a heart on it.  ?!?!?!?
• still says poop everytime she toots...which is less than awesome when she's in the big swimming pool with me at the Y and yells it at the top of her lungs.  We get some really worried glances our way.  It's also less than awesome when she walks with the junior high schoolers to their bus stop in the morning.  It's not really cool in teenagers minds to yell poop and grin!
• loves to look at herself in the mirror, especially when she puts on something that makes me laugh.  She'll yell "MIRROR, MIRROR!!!", so she can see what's so funny!
• loves to play hide and seek still.  She also loves if you hide from her and jump out and scare her.  Her eyes get huge and then she dies laughing.  I'm guessing she will not take after her Mommy here and she'll actually like things like scary movies and roller coasters!
• went to see Santa and was scared to death of him, but can't stop talking about him and the toy he gave her (see the video!).
• went with us to Christmas Eve service at church and yelled "light!!!" everytime the lights went on and off, yelled "NICE!!!" everytime the preacher said the word nice, yelled "NIGHT NIGHT!!!" when they showed a little video and it had a girl getting out of bed, and waited until everyone got very quiet to say a prayer and yelled "<GASP> SANTA!!!!!!!!". After that we went out to the lobby area to watch the rest of the service on the monitors there, and Kalia let us know she wanted to "run, run, run!!", liked the "Christmas tree" and ran and high-fived the snowmen (or "NO-men!" as she calls them.).  We do not give this child sugar for a reason! They gave out cookies and hot chocolate afterwards and Kalia kept yelling "BITE, BITE, BIIIITEEEE!!!" everytime Chris or I took a bite of one.  No way, no how! :-)
• loves everything about the moon still.  She gets SO excited to see it out, and finds it in every.single.book she owns!  (She still loves Elmo too!)

Kalia also had her 18 month checkup (and got sick - throw up sick and loss of appetite from her vaccine!).  Her stats are :

Heights : 35" (off the charts)

Weight : 26lbs (71%)

Head : 19.25" (48.9 cm) (96%)

compared with her 15 month stats (which were taken at 16.5 months -oops!) :

Height : 34 inches (off the charts)
Weight : 24 lbs 4 ounces (60 %)
Head : 47.5 cm (83%)

So, she's still a giant, her head is almost giant sized, and her weight is getting back up where it should be now that she hasn't been sick so much!  The doc was overly impressed with her communication skills, and how she knew her colors, and is starting to count.  She said she is definitely advanced with all of that, but we have to be careful not to expect that out of her emotionally as well.  Booo!  I thought if we sped on through all the learning stuff, we could speed on through the temper tantrums too!  Ha!  :-)  Really Kalia does throw her fair share of fits, but she is generally easily distracted.  Focusing on what she's throwing a fit about is about the worst thing we can do...she is, afterall, her Mommy and Daddy's daughter, and both of us have quiet hard noggins!

Onto Christmas pictures!  The rest of them will get posted with the 19 month post!

Kalia woke up to the chalk drawing I did of the snowman and thought he was so cool.  I gave her an ornament and told her to smile.  She told me I was out of my mind.

"Oh cool snowman!!!  HI!!!"

"What's this in my hand?  Oh, pretty ball!!"

"You want me to do what Mommy??  Stand here, hold this pretty ball, in front of the cool snowman, but face you, and smile?  Yeah right!  I'm not going to be THAT easy!"

"Hahaha, okay Mommy, you're silly, I'll smile!!!" 

Me : "Chris, do something silly to make her SMILE!"
Kalia : "What in the world is on Daddy's head??  What is he DOING???!"

"Oh, hahaha!  I can pull the hat over my head and play peek a boo!!!  D-YA!!!!" (She calls herself D-ya and when she wants you to play peek-a-boo with her, she hides her face, and yells D-YA! and then yells out a name of who she wants you to ask if they've seen her. Kodi, Elmo, Snowman, Santa, Elf, along with Mommy and Daddy get said all the time!)

"Peek a boo!!!  Give me back my hat Mommy!!!"

"Hahaha Mommy, so funny!!  Now give me back my hat or I'll take my dress off!"

"Hahaha suckers!!!  Got my hat back AND I took off my dress!!"

"Yummm...tasty hat!"

"But why do I need a dress on?  I can use my hat instead, see??"

"Fine then, no hat covering!!  Good luck catching me to put the dress on!!!"

"Hehehe Mommy, you know this is about to go downhill, right??"

"D-YA!!!"

"Really Mommy??  You think that if you just sit me on my hiney in front of the snowman, I'll just stay?  You have lost your mind!"

"Now that's better, there's my entertainment!!  Hahaha Mommy, you are so silly!  The things you will do to make me smile!"

"Oh, I like the stool!  High five Snowman, high five!!!"  (She really was high fiving him nonstop!)

"So you're saying Santa comes down through this thing?  Really??"

"Seriously?  How does that even work??"

"I gotta get in here to figure this out.  From up there?  Santa comes down here??"

"I don't get it...if Santa comes down this chimney, where does his sack of toys go??"

"There's no way Santa AND my toys are going to fit down that chimney.  I've been good!!   I want toys!!  NOOOOOOOO!!!!!"

"Really?  A magical powder that makes them both fit if I'm good??"

"Yay!!  Toys!!!  I'll be good!"

"Allright Santa, I was good.  I put up with these things for long enough!  They're coming off!"

Our Christmas tree all decorated, but without all our gifts under it yet.  It was 11 feet tall, and Kalia thought it was AWESOME! (allright, she still thinks it's awesome...it's still up...sigh...anyone want to come take it down for us?!?!)

Our trip to the mall to see Santa!

We got there before Santa did and snagged a few pictures in the sled.

"What is this thing?  It's ginormous!!!"

"Mommy, look!  Presents!!!"  (she really said Mommy!  Presents!!")

 ...and meeting Santa...

"Mommy, don't even THINK about handing me over...."

"Woah...he's a lot bigger in real life.  I'm not sure about him yet."

"You.really.are.Santa......woooow...."

"Allright, I sat in this thing, I'm all done.  Not quite sure what the hype is about.  ALL DONE MOMMY!"

"Woah...a toy.  It's really true...you really bring me toys!"

"Woah...toy...and Santa...woah..."

"Oh please Mommy, don't make me give him a high five or sit on his lap.  Thanks for the toy though Santa!"

 Working on our annual Christmas crafts.  She "high fived" the ornaments with Daddy!

Christmas Eve pictures outside of Church!

She literally went from that face expression above to this one below.  Priceless!

Trying to tickle a smile into her!

Kalia and Emalee (who took the pictures above for us!).

Chris and i made this snowmen cakepops for Christmas.  What a pain in the rear!  The most exciting part about it was that Kalia woke up the next day and got all excited about the "no men!!".  :-)

 Santa came!

Christmas tree on Christmas morning before all the fun started!  (The star had seen better days! :-))

We video'd Kalia seeing her Santa gifts, so no pics of that.  Here she is after her breakfast, unwrapping gifts.  She insisted on sitting on her little stool and got the hang of unwrapping pretty quickly.  She also got overwhelmed and overstimulated pretty quickly too, which is why her face expressions are so serious!

Whew!!  The End!

Kalia : 18 months

Kalia :

• spent her first weekend without Mommy and Daddy.  Granny called a few months back and offered to come down and watch her and Kodi while we went to Jenny's wedding in Ponte Vedra Beach (I was one of the bridesmaids), and we took her up on it!  It's one of the reasons weaning HAD to happen!  She did really really well!
• has started putting her hands in her diaper and spreading her poop everywhere...ALL over her, the crib, everything.  Her Granny started putting a onesie overtop of her pajamas to keep her hands out of her diapers, and that's the only thing that works.  We eventually gave in and got some zip up pajamas with a button on the top.  She's in a size 3T in pj's.  What the ???  We got some footed ones the other day and she fully fills it out length wise.  They barely make ones without feet in them, and they don't make them that aren't pretty expensive.  We have to change her into her zip up jammers for nap and bed, else Kalia, and everything in reach, are covered in poop.  I apparently used to do the same thing.  Kalia could've taken after her Daddy here, I would've appreciate it!
• had a whirlwind of a week!  Granny came over for the weekend and Mommy and Daddy left, and we got home Sunday late afternoon, and then headed to Uncle Shawn and Aunt Christina's with Granny and Grandpa Hoskins for Tuesday through Thursday, then to Grandpa and Grandpa Drago for the next weekend and visited with Grandma and Grandpa Taggart and all her girl cousins and Aunt Jennifer and Aunt Jessica!  Whew!
• decided that she didn't want to sleep...at all...at Uncle Shawn and Aunt Christina's house.  Too much fun going on with Maddie around!
• has a really great memory.  Maddie has a duck bathtub that Kalia became somewhat obsessed with, and she keeps talking about Maddie, the duck, and open the door (which we had to do to let her see the duck).  She also talks about Noah, their dog, quite a bit!
• is trying to talk in sentences.  We were sitting at the pool this weekend and Kodi barked to be let in and Kalia said, without Chris and I saying a word "go around Kodi, go around!".  She might hear that a lot!
• loves to play with puzzles, dolls, Elmo (of course), and has a newfound love for Mickey and Minnie.  Maddie had a Minnie doll that Kalia loved.  We have Mickey and Minnie Christmas nightlights, and she goes crazy over them!
• loves her Christmas tree, the giant polar bear out front for Christmas decorations, Santa, Snowmen, and finding where her Elf (for Elf on the shelf) is every morning.  Overall, she loves Christmas already!  She wakes up every morning and asks us to turn on the Christmas Tree and to go outside to say hi to the Polar Bear.
• likes to run, run, run!  Chris and I are training for a half marathon, and took turns doing sprints around our circle and taking care of Kalia, so now she's decided she wants to run fast too.  Really fast...we have to keep a slow jog to keep pace with her.  I've made her go around with her bike helmet on after she fell and hit her head a few too many times for my liking.  She hasn't figured out that if she's running forward, she can't look back without falling flat on her face!
• got her first trike from Grandma and Grandpa Taggart and loves it!  She's on that thing all of the time!
• had a few playdates with Reese!  They're so cute together, they're really starting to play together on their own and show each other things!
• says "O" before names when she thinks you're being silly.  We hear "Oh Kodi!", "Oh Mommy", and "Oh Daddy!" quite a bit around these parts!
• is in almost all of her 2T clothes, and the 3T dresses and shirts aren't really that big anymore either.  She's in a 5 1/2 to size 6 shoe now too.
• broke through another molar (that's 3) and the bottom tooth on her right side too.  Those are teeth 11 and 12 (4 front, 4 bottom, 3 molars, and the one next to the bottom now).  I wish these would get done already, I'm ready to sleep again!

Onto the good stuff - pictures!

Thanksgiving!

Kalia : "I'm really supposed to just smile with all of these other people running around like crazy people??  Umm...cheese??"

Kalia : "Woah...my cousins are kind of crazy..."

 Kalia's tricycle!

Back at home...prepping for Christmas!

"Mommy, I don't have time for this picture taking nonsense, I've got my Christmas apron on so I can get to baking!"

"Allright, lets see...first up I'll need two eggs..." :-)

Fun time outside!  She picks out what hats she wears...

"Allright Mommy, put down the camera and come play bubbles.  Yes, THAT camera!"

"Open!!!"

"Yes??  Can I help you??  I'm just popping bubbles, why do we need pictures of this??"

"Oh Koooddddiii!!!"

Playing peekaboo with her hat.  She grabs the hat...

...covers her face and says "D-ya!" which is how she says her name...

and then comes out giggling.  Such a silly little girl!

She loves to fill her buckets with water from the house and then put this strainer in there and watch the water come out of it.

Santa's Little Helper!

She thought this shirt that I was wearing with Cookie Monster on it was the coolest thing in the entire world!

Attempting to finger paint.  She's decided she likes it in theory now, but doesn't like the mess that it entails.  THAT, she MUST get from her Daddy.  That certaintly does not come from me!

Fun time with puzzles!

Insisting that I come play too!

Playing with Reese at the park (Amy took the pics with her iphone and shared - thanks Amy!).  Amy put in one of Reese's bows in Kalia's hair and she left it in there for quite some time!  Everyone keeps telling me how cute "he" is, maybe that would help!

"Amy - can you please tell my Mommy what's in this goodie bag of Reese's??  My Mom doesn't give me this good of stuff, I just get plain boring cheerios!!"

I promise all of you that Kalia gets at least half, if not more, of her loudness from her Daddy.  He's just undercover around the rest of you!!

"Oh Daddy, you are so entertaining!  Keep it up!"

She climbed into one of her play baskets half filled with dolls and kept telling me to get more dolls or more babies.  She thought it was great!

Kalia's multi-tasking at it's finest...

She keeps pulling off all of her clothes and asking to sit on the potty, but runs around, naked bottomed, getting stuff to keep her entertained while she tries to do her biz (we just try 99% of the time anymore).  I told her potty was all done and she promptly carried it out to the kitchen and grabbed her computer while sitting on it, so I flipped over her basket to make her a table...

...but it kept slipping, so I got her chair instead.

"Oh hey Mommy!!  I'm trying to go pee pee!  I've got important stuff on the computer to finish up too though, so I'm multi tasking!"

"Lets see...now...where was I??"

"Sigh...too much work, too little time!"

I'll post the outtakes of Christmas pictures, but I tried for a round two solo, and didn't get very far.  She just wanted to play peek a boo with me!

Loving on Blake Harvey...a little too hard, ha!  He wasn't sure what to think about his agressive lovin'!

Daddy taught Kalia how to play golf.  We started with a tennis ball :-).

"I do what again Daddy??  Too many words...lets just get to action!"

"I swing and hit the ball like this!  I got it!"

"And when I'm done, I put my clubs in my bucket!"  (Yeah, note the big red bump on the middle of her poor head!)

"Mommy, your turn!"

Trying really hard to actually push the pedals down on her bike.  She normally just sits on the bike and walks it around with her feet.  I showed her how to do it right though, and she's trying!  She's almost there!

Hanging out in the hammock with Daddy while Mommy cooks dinner.  She kept blowing me kisses through the window!

...and then thought Daddy needed to blow me kisses too!

Out in front with our giant polar bear that she loves so much!

Play date at Reese's!  They were painting with markers before this (she liked that a lot more than finger painting!) which is why they're both in their dipes.  Kalia was scared of Reese's little trampoline to start off with, but kind of got into it after awhile.  She went down to the neighbors and saw theirs and went crazy saying "jump, jump, jump!!!"  I think she loves it now!

Playing with Kalia's car that she let Reese borrow.  Reese was pushing Kalia around in it, really cute!!!

Giving Reese hugs night night!

Reese giving her Mommy a high 5...

Kalia's not sure if she wants to join in the fun or not, so Reese helped her out!

...and one last tackle hug!  They were so cute together!

Whew...busy few weeks!  Till next time!