2 1/2 Years

Kayla is officially 2 1/2 years old! We have loved watching her grow and learn. These past several months she has figured out how to express herself a lot better. She uses complete sentences and can articulate her emotions. Grammar is a bit of an issue, but we'll work on that later. (example: "I want a please sucker pink.")

Kayla has a very tender heart and always makes sure that people around her are "ok". When we cough she always asks, "Are you ok?" and we have to respond promptly otherwise she will just keep asking. Tonight one of her friends who is already gone for the holidays called. Her friend had to get stitches on her chin from an accident she had and was telling Kayla about it. Kayla asked her, "You have an owie? Are you ok? I'll kiss it better." and attempted to kiss the phone. Pretty cute.

She also loves going to nursery on Sundays. Almost every day Kayla asks if she gets to go to nursery. Today she loaded up some little dolls in her toys car and said they were headed to nursery.

Logan loves smiling at Kayla and she gets very excited when he does. She shouts, "Baby's smiling!" She holds his hand and gives him kisses. One day I saw her reading stories to him. When he is crying she tries to give him his binky. She sings to him and rocks him in his little bed. Kayla is a great big sister.

As far as size goes, Kayla is still fairly little. She is only 29 lbs. and still wears pajamas she got for Christmas last year. Being little is helpful for her because one of her favorite activities is being tossed around by Daddy when he comes home from school. She lays down on the ground and sticks her hands and feet in the air for Braden to hold on to so he can swing her above his head. When he stops she shouts "HIGHER!" and giggles with joy. I love watching them play together.

Kayla is a handful at times and is too smart for her own good. She loves to get on the computer and open up her movies to watch. Since we don't encourage constant movie-watching, we removed the itunes icon from the computer. Kayla, however, figured out how to go into the applications folder, find itunes, open it, and get her movies. She also knows she can pull a chair over to the refrigerator so she can reach the freezer where her frozen go-gurts are. It's good to know she won't starve if I can't get her a snack right away.

We love our little girl and are so happy she is part of our family.

On My Own

With Braden gone to Illinois for career stuff this weekend, I'm on my own with the kids. I decided to be brave and go to the ward Christmas party tonight. Everything was going well until someone started sawing wood on the other side of the room. Kayla doesn't particularly like the sound of an electric saw (I think it was a chop saw??). For the rest of the evening she plugged her ears, which made eating dinner interesting...

Last weekend there was a holiday party with our apartment complex. It was a lot of fun, but we found out the hard way that Kayla does NOT like Santa. Knowing that Santa was coming tonight to the party, all week long I had her watch some Christmas shows with Santa in them. Today we talked about how nice Santa is and that we don't need to be afraid of him. She was excited to see him when we left home, but when Santa finally arrived it was a different story. Maybe next year she'll enjoy taking pictures with him. Logan woke up just as we were about to leave so I decided to plop him on Santa's lap. At least one kid cooperated!

Santa tried to make Kayla happy by letting her ring the bell. It was a nice gesture.

On a side note, Kayla woke up from her nap this afternoon to a creepy little friend crawling in her bed. One would think with all the "Charlotte's Web" she's been watching lately she wouldn't be terrified of spiders. Normally when she wakes up she just comes out of her room. When I heard her screaming in there I ran in and saw our terrified little girl sitting paralyzed on her bed. I saw the spider and swiped it away. When I found it again I smashed it and showed Kayla that it was dead and wouldn't get her anymore. It took another 10 minutes before she would get off my lap. Maybe two traumatizing experiences in one day was just too much for her, which is why she wouldn't stay in bed tonight until after 10:00. Hopefully she'll forget all about scary spiders and Santa for tomorrow night and go to bed at a decent hour.

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving this year was spent amongst friends here in Cambridge. Braden started the day with a "Turkey Bowl" while I started making cranberry bars and my mom's delicious rolls. Braden also made a ham and scrumptious mustard sauce to go with it, but we don't have pictures of that unfortunately.

Kayla organized my nail polish and picked out some colors to wear (pink on her toes and green on one hand).

Braden showed Kayla how awesome the Wii is. They played tennis and she was able to hit a few of the balls!

I put Kayla's hair in braids the night before so it would be wavy on Thanksgiving (which is why she has cornrows in most of the pictures). Here she is giving loves to her little brother.

We hope everyone had a fun Thanksgiving!