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!