We had so much fun with Kaelynn and her parents the weekend before Thanksgiving. One of the things I liked best was that she answered "yes" instead of "yeah" (I'm not even that disciplined). Apparently they taught her that at daycare. By far, though, I was most impressed by her newly (as in the last 7 days) acquired skill:
Daddy works at Apple and they had purchased an iPad for Kaelynn and Mommy had found a 2 year-old proof case/stand. She knew how to push the button to make the screen come on, then Daddy would say "OK, swipe", and she would, with her tiny little index finger. Then she could do her "ABC's". It was an app that was a word puzzle. It would display the word and then wipe the letters away to the side. She would then need to pull the letters with her fingers to the appropriate places. If the word had an "L" in it, the "L" would sound "la, la, la, la" while she had her finger on it, until she dropped it in the proper place. Similarly, the "S" would hiss like a snake - and on and on. It was really cute. She wasn't doing just short words, either. She did "xylophone" and "musician", which I thought was pretty good for a 2 yr old (though obviously I'm not biased!) She also had an app to build cupcakes (working on colors and shapes). K's parents limit her time on the iPad and it's not used as a babysitter. She's learning and having fun at the same time. While Mommy and Daddy went out and Granny, Granddad and Aunt Sarah had her, she wanted to do "hi-pad", so we got it out. She wanted to do "tuptakes", but I couldn't find the app for it. Turns out, she knew - it was buried as a game within a group of games and she found it!!
Another fun thing we did was that K went to "work". She had a glow stick necklace, her gift bag of "cookies" (2 stuffed Cookie Monsters from Granny and Aunt Sarah), and then the Fisher Price record player that she called her purse. She would make the relatively long commute from the kitchen to the front room, work for about 15 seconds, then commute back "home" to the kitchen. I don't know how many times she did that, but we were all for getting out energy. She loves to go "ou-si" (outside) and she couldn't because it was cold and wet, so we needed to tired her out before bedtime somehow! :)
During their visit, Mommy and Kaelynn and Granny, Granddad and Aunt Sarah were in the room and Mommy was pointing to the person and asking K "who's that?" Mommy pointed to my Mom and K said "Granny". She pointed to my Dad and K said "Granny" (she called both of them that!) Then when Mommy pointed to me, K walked over, took her little hands and cupped them around my face and whispered "Sarah". It was like a moment of time froze and just the two of us were in it. I hope I remember it forever, it was so sweet.
The next day we went to the mall for K to ride the carousel, one of her current favorite things to do.
Then, it was party time! Since the TX family had never met K, we were having a 2nd birthday party for her a week early. Here is our pretty girl all dressed up. You can see how much she looks like her beautiful Mommy here.
Kaelynn likes Sesame Street right now, particularly "Cookie" (Monster) because he is her favorite color, blue. So that was the theme of her party.
Cupcake cake with TONS of frosting holding it together...(it tasted great, though! The adults scraped off the blue icing so we wouldn't have blue teeth!)
Last year, K didn't want anything to do with her 1st birthday cake - even after Mommy put frosting on her lip. She actually cried. Not so this year. She's had a year of her friends' birthday parties to practice! She dug into that cupcake with reckless abandon! :)
When we started laughing at her after she had blue frosting on her face, she realized she was funny. So then, she purposely tried to get more blue icing on her face. This next one is one of my favorite pics, and one I posted earlier. Because she wanted her Daddy to share in her blue fun, and because her Daddy adores her so much that he will do any reasonable thing to make his baby girl happy! Nothing melts my heart more to see my brother be a tender Daddy to his baby girl!
After cake, she got to open her presents. She got a little Elmo game with colors that talked. Apparently K thought it was something else. Perfect example of what era we live in:
By far the best part, though, was just being with our sweet, funny, beautiful girl and her parents.
And my parents were over the moon to show off one of their grandbabies to their friends at church in person (vs. all the pictures they've seen from the brag book!). I have very rarely ever seen my Dad smile this big!
We're so thankful our precious redhead and her parents were able to come for a visit, and we can't wait to she her again, probably after the first week in July when her baby brother or sister comes!!!
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