Kinder Tales

Isla has been learning like crazy lately!

She is still a climber!

Isla loves letters and numbers and she is still obsessed with Starfall. She says parts of the alphabet, she usually starts at h and goes from there, and then skips a few before ending with x,y,z. She often counts from 4 to 8, and then says 10, 11. At the library one day she started identifying the magnetic numbers they had in the children’s area. Another child came up and picked up the 4, (which Isla was calling “h”) and Isla became very upset at him. I’ve never seen her fight for something like that and she tried snatching it out of his hands a few times. I had to keep telling her that it was okay to share with the other kid but she was so upset she could not forget about that 4. The child walked off with it while I tried distracting Isla by playing with the other letters, but Isla soon dropped everything and walked off after the child saying, “h”, “h”, “h”. When she found the child he had discarded the 4 and I showed Isla where to find it. She was very relieved and brought it back to the rest of the letters to play with.

Here is Isla playing with her “h”.

One day Isla started talking about “yellow”, but I didn’t think she knew it was a color, or even what a color was, I just thought she had learned a new word from her books. Then at her music together class the teacher passed out egg shakers. Isla took a blue and purple one. Another child asked for a yellow one. Isla immediately dropped her eggs and ran frantically to the teacher saying “Isla!, Isla!” the teacher said, “oh, you need another egg?” and Isla said, “lellow!” so the teacher gave her a yellow one and Isla was very satisfied. Since then she has requested yellow things often. She got a pair of yellow socks when she had her surgery and now she always says, “lellow socks on”. The other day her yellow socks were dirty so we gave her kitty socks instead. Her kitty socks don’t have treads on the bottom so she slipped and fell on our hard wood floor. Daddy found her crawling and he said, “Isla, why are you crawling?” and Isla, who was both annoyed and upset, whined, “lellow socks have it!” So we had to change her socks to some that had treads on them.

Isla found a few puddles on our walk. Like all toddlers, she loved splashing in them!

Isla can now draw a circle and she is getting more interested in coloring and drawing. When we read her book “Everywhere Babies” and we get to the page where it shows a baby on a slide and one on a swing, Isla gets very excited and starts pounding on her own chest saying, “Isla!, Isla!, Isla swing! Isla slide!” When she is swinging or sliding for real, we have to hold the swing in the air and say, “ready? set? go!” and then let go. She says it along with us. Then she goes to the top of the slide and says, “ready? set? go!” and then slides down. She doesn’t have much fear with slides the way her big brother did, she just hurls herself right down and then rushes to do it again. Isla calls the thermometer “temperature”. She has started answering “sure” to everything! She traps us this way by walking up and saying something like, “Isla go side” and then we say, “what, you want to go outside?” and she says, “suuuuuuure” and turns around to get her shoes and jacket on. Instead of saying “yes” or “no”, she says “sure” or “no” to everything. She has also started saying “too” as in “Isla do it too” or “Isla go too”. And whenever we go to a store she picks things up and says, “have it”. I’ve had to open boxes of crackers or other snacks before the check out (something I’ve never done before!) because she is so insistent that she get to have something right then.

On March 16th, her and I were watching a YouTube video together and the word “zoo” came on the screen. Isla saw it and pointed at it and said “zoo”. I’m still not sure if she recognized the word or if it was just a fluke, because later when I asked her identify the word “zoo” she didn’t seem to know it. But she still could be starting down the path of word recognition because a few days later we were watching “Y” on Starfall and the word “yodel” came up. Isla pointed to it and said, “Doda”, which means “Yoda”.

On March 18th  Isla sat down on her potty chair to read a book. Owen distracted her by talking about her favorite song “trot trot Joe”. Isla stood up suddenly to see what was going on, and out came some poopy that landed right on the floor next to her chair! She was surprised and confused by this and I had to explain that she had pooped. Once she realized that she pooped she started to giggle about it in a nervous way. I told her that she was doing good by trying to do it in the potty chair and that next time she should stay sitting down so the poopy goes in the potty. But, the next time happened on March 22nd, and she didn’t exactly heed my advice. Daddy and I were in doing dishes while periodically checking on Isla in the living room who had decided to strip naked and try going potty. Suddenly, Isla calmly walked into the kitchen and got a rag out of the drawer and then walked back into the living room. I told Daddy he better follow her because she had probably gone potty on the floor. Daddy came back and reported that there was no potty, but a pile of poopy right next to the potty chair. We all laughed at the thought of Isla trying to clean that up with a rag! Isla giggled again when she realized she had gone poopy and not potty.

A little door and a big door to get into Isla’s urologist appointment.

And as I wrote about already, Isla had a renal ultrasound, a visit with her new urologist, and is now off antibiotics. Yay! When she had her ultrasound we called it an x-ray since she knows about x-rays from her Franklin Goes to the Hospital book. After her x-ray whenever she sang the alphabet song she started saying, “w, x-ray, z”. I suppose it is kind of confusing since x is always for x-ray.

I came home to Owen and Isla dressed in green on St. Patrick’s Day. This was Owen’s idea. Everyone walking by going to Shamrock’s restaurant thought she was adorable. Especially when she stripped down to her birthday suit and ran around the yard! A whole bus full of people spotted her running around in the nude and got quite the kick out of it.

Isla is also busy learning new social things. She is playing with Owey a lot more lately and playing like a big kid. They actually have little games and things they do together now. They play outside a lot together in the gazebo and Owey helps her on her slide and “babysits her”. Owen is so overattentive to Isla and will barely let her do anything on her own and constantly bosses her around. Daddy says he is quite the helicopter brother.

Owen and Isla like to play “mail” in which Isla throws all the papers she can find out the mail slot and then Owen retrieves them.

One day at the park Isla saw two brothers there. One was about her age but a much larger size and the other was a couple years older. Isla called the one her age “baby” and he called her the same. Isla was really enjoying interacting and playing with them. She sat down on the curb by the bigger boy and called to the little one, “baby sit! baby sit!” while she pounded on the curb next to her with her hand. She is going to be a bossy friend!

Isla’s winter Music Together class ended this month, but we are signing up for the spring session so she will still be going every Friday. We just got done with “bells” and will be moving onto “triangles”. By her last class Isla was not nervous about going anymore. She loves her class and marches right in ready to participate. She dances and tries to sing and everyone says how cute it is that she even moves her shoulders while she dances (I guess younger kids like her usually just move the bottom half of their body). At home, Isla arranges her dolls and stuffed animals in a circle and starts singing with them like she is the teacher.  One day in particular she arranged two stuffed animals and sat down and started clapping her knees and singing “Hello Everybody” and “Trot Old Joe”. Isla sings “Trot Old Joe” often, which she calls “trot-trot Joe” and she gets to the line where you bend backwards and say “whooooa Joooooe” Isla says “whoa Jee-o-whoa” as if “Joe” is three syllables long. Often she will sing “Hello Everybody” and for the line “Hello everybody, so glad to see you. Hello to _____ so glad to see you” Isla will say, “lo, body, see you. lo, body, see you. lo Mama, see you.” Then she goes through everyone in the family, so she will shout out, “lo Daddy, see you” and I will sing the whole version with “Daddy” inserted. Then before I’m even done, she says, “lo Mama”, and so on until we’ve gone through Owey, Isla and kitty too.

And I’ll end with a couple funny stories. Isla learned the word “heavy” in the context of something being too heavy for her to pick up. Isla misunderstood the meaning and she thinks that “heavy” means “difficult”. So, her shoes are too “heavy” to get on, her zipper is too “heavy” to zip up. So the other day when she tooted and we laughed, she tried to push another toot out, but informed us, “toot heavy”. When Owen wore his Yoda sweatshirt, Isla got so excited, she just loves Yoda! As soon as she saw it she started trying to take her own shirt off while pointing at Owen saying, “Doda, Doda!”. Apparently she wanted to wear his Yoda shirt right then and there!

Isla decked out in her winter garb. Notice she has about three different colors of pink on. We don’t pay much attention to matching these things I guess.

Isla has been one very busy little girl this month. She continues to learn to talk more and more. She is now using many three word sentences such as,  “more ride stroller” or “Daddy water Isla”. She also has some two word phrases she uses really frequently such as, “there go” (there you go), “did it” (I did it), “hands wash” (please wash my hands), “here you go” and “Isla go”. She’s been using words expressively as well by saying “ready? go!”. She sometimes is really suspenseful and says, “ready? ready? ready? … go!” She also says, “ta da” a lot. I’m not sure where she picked it up, but she understands how to use it and uses it often. One day she said, “Mama, Mama, Mama” and when I looked she said, “ta da!”. She had a visor hanging around her neck she wanted to show me. Sometimes she sounds like she’s clearing her throat when she says anything with a c followed by an s sound. She over emphasises and drags out the “ks” in “books” for example.

“Baby” Gaga

She uses language to identify characters now too. She calls Sponge Bob “Bob Bob” and she calls Yoda, “Doda”. She told me that Yoda was a puppy We have many pictures of Yoda and she always points and tells us who he is.

Isla wearing Mama’s glasses.

She also uses the language she knows to ask questions. I thought she was saying “work Daddy” to me on the days that Daddy was not home. But then one Monday she looked up and said, “where Daddy?” I finally understood that she was asking me where Daddy was, not telling me that Daddy was at work. One day after her and I got home from the store she got all excited and said to me, “buy candy? buy candy?” I said “no” and she started crying. I had to find her a treat to eat. One day at the zoo her and I were walking behind a dad with his kids. Isla turned around in her stroller and said intensely, “Daddy work?” I realized she was asking me where the heck our Daddy was if this guy in front of us was at the zoo with his kids. James said that she already thinks she has our society’s gender roles figured out – Daddy’s are supposed to be at work. We will have to deprogram her

Isla is fascinated with camera’s. She says, “picture” when she sees them and tries taking a picture and then wants to see it on the screen.

Isla is truly obsessed with letters. I showed her Starfall on the computer one day and from that day on every single time she sees me on the computer, or sees the computer, or someone says, “computer”, she wants “B”. “B” is what she calls the ABC’s on Starfall. She also refers to it as “B, Backpack Bear”, “O”, “W”, or “computer”. If I fail to respond to her request she will try throwing other letters out there too to make it more clear what she wants. The “B” letter has backpack bear, which is a bear wearing a backpack that dances around. She likes backpack bear so much that she wants to wear a backpack everywhere we go and wants her bear to have a backpack on too.

Isla dressing up with her cousins for the first time. (That is makeup on her older cousin’s face, not dirt

Due to Starfall Isla started recognizing many of the letters. She now points to signs that have letters in them and excitedly tells me about it. For example, the other day when we started a movie and she saw the Twentieth Century Fox logo she said, “O” “Mama, Mama, O!” She also thought the search lights on the logo were lightsabers. She’s very in tune to lightsabers, she even thinks the candles that Grammie’s snow babies hold are lightsabers.

See how these snowbabies are battling it out with their lightsabers!

She plays with Owen fighting lightsabers and swings it around making sound effects and all. But back to letters, she recognized both “O” and “W” on the Gone With the Wind title, and she recognized “O” in the Famous Footwear sign at the mall. She got so excited and turned around in her stroller and said “Mama, O! O, Mama!”. I think she was surprised that letters weren’t just in her books and on our computers, but were also on TV and in stores.

Isla enjoying afternoon tea.

And letters aren’t the only thing Isla recognizes. She also noticed our heart shaped soap in the bath tub and said “heart”. She has a small book of shapes that has a heart it in, but we didn’t know she could recognize any of the shapes. She seems to learn a lot from her books. Another day she saw a yellow Volkswagon Beetle and she got excited and pointed and said, “fire truck”. I told her it was a car. Then later I realized she has a book with a few vehicles in it, one of them is an old Volkswagon Beetle, and one of them is a Fire Truck. I think she was just trying to tell me, “I see a car like the one in that book with the fire truck”, but with her limited vocabulary it came out as “fire truck”. I know she knows how to say “car” and identify one so I’m pretty sure this is what she meant.

Isla being very affectionate with her sleeping little cousin. She didn’t notice the baby while awake, but once she went to sleep Isla couldn’t keep her hands off her.

Isla doesn’t spend all her time with books and letters though, she has also been playing quite a bit this month. One day she decided she wanted her baby doll to take a bath with her, so we put Isla and her baby in the kitchen sink (which often serves as Isla’s bath tub). Isla loved this and she fed her baby spoonfuls of water and made chewing motions for the baby. She also washed the baby over and over again with her wash cloth. She loves her babies when they’re outside of the bath too. She likes to put them to bed in the cradle. She covers them up with a blanket and sings “rockbye baby”. She even makes her baby get a little wild and jump on the bed. She puts baby on the potty chair, especially when she is going. She moves hers and baby’s potty chair around and around. Then she puts the baby on the potty and says “ssssssss”. She claps baby’s feet together and says “ahh!” “ahh!”. She wraps baby up in a blanket and then dances with her just like how Daddy does with Isla. She also started doing a pretend cry for her baby.

During a cold winter day, Isla threw the jacket off that was covering her, took her hat and mittens off, and took her boots and socks off. Apparently she got a bit warm back there!

Because Owen had some sensory issues show up at this age I am keeping an eye on Isla to see if she will have the same. So far she seems to have a few, but they could very well be just typical toddler behavior. I just don’t know what typical toddler behavior is She likes her sleeves pulled down at all times and if one gets pulled up she gets very upset and wants it pulled down again. After she eats, she comes to us and says, “hands wash, hands wash”. She does not like her hands dirty at all. She hates loud noises. Whenever something loud happens she inquires, “mama?” and I have to explain what it is. Then she talks about it forever and keeps bringing it up over and over again. She seems to walk on tippy toes a lot too. At night Isla sometimes dances to music with daddy to help her fall asleep. One night she covered her ear during the song “Georgia” and said “no, no”. Daddy had to switch the song because she did not like it. The next song came on and she settled right in and went to sleep. Another night she said “ear hurt, ear hurt, ear hurt”. Daddy turned down the music and then she settled in and was fine.

Isla sitting in my Grandma’s chair holding the same the kitty I used to play with.

Also this month, Isla throws garbage in the garbage can and recycling in the recycle bins. She learned the difference, and when we say “garbage” or “recycling” she goes to the appropriate container to dispose of the item. She is trying to learn the stairs by herself. One day she held on to the brick fireplace as she started walking up the stairs the right way (instead of crawling) and then said “did it!”. When she isn’t proud of her accomplishments, she is melting down out of frustration. She usually has meltdowns for things she wants to do by herself but can’t. One day she was playing with a tiny monkey toy. She came up to me and said “booba” with a silly smile on her face. Then she started saying, “”monkey booba”. I undid my shirt to nurse her and she held up the monkey and said, “monkey booba”. So I had to nurse the monkey first. Isla had her first tattoo this month. Of course it was a temporary one, but Isla thought it was going to be permanent. It was Sponge Bob, who Isla calls, “Bob Bob”. When Daddy put it on her she was so delighted and bewildered by it. Soon she started to love it. One day in the bath she was washing with the wash cloth and I said, “are you going to wash off Bob Bob?” and Isla looked at her tatoo and looked really serious and then said, “nooooo”. But eventually Bob Bob started to wear off and Isla would look at her arm and cry and say, “Bob Bob”. We told her we would put a new one on her other arm, so she keeps showing us that arm and smiling and saying “Bob Bob”. We need to restock our Sponge Bob tattoo supplies before we can accommodate her though.

One morning while Owen was taking a bath Isla brought him his towel that he keeps hanging on a hook in his room. She likes to be helpful like this and she seems to know what belongs to who in our house. When we do laundry she hands me the clothes and says the name of the person it belongs to. She is always right, even with things like wash cloths and towels, she knows who uses which ones. She is loving her music together class. Well, she loves it at home. In class she spends the first half whining and trying to put her coat and boots on and escape over the gate. Then she gets into it and starts to sing and dance. At home she wants to hear “low body” all the time. Which is the song “Hello Everybody”. Isla turns her hand and wrist in the air like she’s turning a dial and says, “low body, low body” to tell us she wants her CD on. Then she dances and sings to all the songs. She sings, “low body, see you” which means, “Hello everybody, so glad to see you…”.

On the day before Isla turned 19 months, we went to the Conservatory at the Zoo to take her 18 month photos (just in the nick of time!). Click here to see them! Isla of course was a big stinker! She is not photogenic like Owen, who used to smile and light up as soon as I got the camera out. She does not look at the camera and seems to actively try to avoid it. I can call her name out a million times and she will not look at me. And getting her to smile is nearly impossible. She is very hard to photograph because not only does she not look at me or smile, she is constantly on the move and wanting to explore her surroundings. While we were there Isla was introduced to the concept of throwing money in the fountain. She loved this idea and wanted more and more money to throw in. Later she kept saying “money water” to me, and to Owen and Daddy too. Afterward when she would find money, or some water – even just a cup of it – she would look at me and say, “money water?” It made a big impression on her and she is really excited to do it again.

One of the only photos out of almost 200 where she is both looking at me and smiling.

This is Isla’s static hair! She has very straight hair, not like Owen’s wavy hair. It did curl slightly in the back when we were at the conservatory for her pictures, so maybe in the humidity this summer it will get a little curly in the back.

Isla got to go to a waterpark this month. She loved it!

Isla spent this month learning to say as many words as she possibly could, stringing many two word sentences together, and even some three word sentences. She also began to have temper tantrums, or as I call them, meltdowns. She seems to be growing in height and weight as well, and has noticeably filled out. None of her 12 month clothing fit anymore, and I had to go through and pack many of her old pants and shirts away. She was also quite sick this month when she got a really bad cough which left her waking up almost every hour at night for about 4 nights in a row. Mama and Daddy were exhausted and I began to wonder if she had whooping cough, but there was no “whoop”, just the cough, so we just gave her honey and lemon and let her work it out over the course of a week. It was a very long and sleepy week for us all. She seems to be permanently affected in that she now wakes more frequently at night.

Isla is a big talker. She seems to be way ahead of the curve as she just now turned 18 months, but has a vocabulary so high I couldn’t even estimate how many words she says, and she is learning and saying new words every day. It’s very exciting to see how such a little person uses language, especially because Owen was limited to made-up signs and about 4 single syllable words at this age. One day Daddy wanted to put Isla’s jammies back on after changing her diaper. Isla shook her head “no” and said, “see body”. Apparently she wanted to admire her cute little body! She calls feet “beeps”. She is trying to say, “feet” but it comes out “beep”, which is very funny. When she wants to sleep she says, “booba nigh night”. Sometimes in the morning if I get out of bed before her she will pat the pillow with her hand and say, “booba nigh night” because she wants me to lay back down so she can nurse. Isla loves music and she likes to sing. She sings a little song about our family that goes like this: “daddy, Owey, Daddy, Owey, Mama, Daddy, Owey”. Once she learned to say “Isla” she puts that into her song sometimes too. When we sing “Baby Beluga” to her at night and then think she is asleep and stop, she points to our mouth and says “baby” to get us started again. She is also learning her name is Isla, and has started saying it. One day she patted her chest and said “Isla”. She will also point to herself in photos and say “Isla”. I thought it was cute that she called herself “me”, but she has abandon that in favor of “Isla”.

Isla holding her new cousin. This is the first real baby she ever held. She was unimpressed.

She has been putting two and occasionally three words together. When Daddy comes home she jumps up and says, “daddy’s here!” When she is nursing and done with one side she says, “other one booba” “other side”. I thought she was just copying what I say, but then one day I put some shoes on her and they didn’t match her outfit, so I took them off and put different ones on. She got upset and said, “other one shoes!, other one shoes!, other one shoes!” So she wore brown shoes with black pants that day, and also showed me that she actually knew the meaning of “other one”. She also loves the snow and will go up to the window and say “snow side (outside)”.

Thanks to Owen, Isla has learned all about robots. She calls them “boba” which is hard to distinguish from “booba” so we have to be careful The other day Owen stayed home from school and asked to watch a movie. As soon as Isla heard “movie” she started saying, “wawee, wawee, wawee” which meant WALL•E. I really didn’t know she knew what a movie was, or knew what WALL•E was, but apparently she did. She sat and watched for a long time. A few days later she started playing with the little Eva toy that Owen has. She kept calling Eva “wawee” and WALL•E “feefa”. I think because in the movie they say each others names and not their own. We taught her that the toy she was playing with was actually Eva and she started calling her “feefa” and then “eefa”. She wrapped “eefa” up in a towel and cuddled her.

Isla learned about some animals this month. She would look out the window often and see squirrels and say “bear”. So one day Daddy decided to set her straight and show her some videos of actual bears. She was quite surprised to see what a real bear looked like. Then Daddy showed her some videos of elephants. Isla thought they were hilarious and laughed and laughed at them. She kept pointing to her nose. She started calling them “fatphant”.

Isla continues to love books. She spends about 60% of her playtime sitting on her chair reading a book or demanding that I read one to her. (The rest of her playtime is split between playing with her dolls, dollhouse dolls, and her kitchen). She often connects what she sees in books with real life. For example, she will see it snowing outside and then want to read her “snow” book. One night it started snowing as we were coming in from being out. When we took Isla in to get her coat and shoes off she demanded that we go back outside to see the “neow”. Daddy took Owen and her outside for a little bit and Isla decided to catch some of the large falling flakes of snow on her tongue, and Daddy and Owen thought this was a good idea so they did it too. Weeks later we saw that her book called “Snow” shows a young child catching snow flakes on her tongue.

Owen got a new computer for Christmas so Isla was given his old one. For a long time it sat on her little table and she would go to it and turn it on and spend a great deal of time watching the computer go through all the letters. Each letter would show something starting with that letter and make a sound. Her favorite was “R” for rooster, and she laughed every time it went “cock-a-doodle-doo”.

At the very end of the month we discovered Isla can count! Well, kind of. We picked her up from Grammie’s house after we went and saw a movie and Grammie told us that she had counted “1, 2, 3, 4…” and Isla said, “5″. I didn’t believe it at first, but then we said to Isla, “1,2,3″ and Isla said “4, 5″. We’ve now heard her say, “3,4,5,7,9″ or “4,5,C, 9″ (when typing in a calculator). I knew she was very interested in letters, but I didn’t know she was interested in numbers. She isn’t identifying them yet, but the little bit of counting she is doing it pretty cool I think.

Isla started taking some of her baths in the big tub instead of the kitchen sink. This tub is so huge it is hard to reach over and clean her, but she loves it a lot so every now and then we let her play in there.

Isla is beginning to show some emotions this month. She is showing some fears. She really dislikes loud noises and will always point them out by pointing in the direction of the noise and saying, “noise”. A loud noise to her might be a washing machine beeping, or Owen playing upstairs with his marble works, or the vacuum or garbage disposal. One day when Daddy and Owen and Isla were all downstairs, Owen pushed a button on one of his large robots. The robot made a loud noise and started to move and Isla started screaming and crying. The rest of the day she would stop and say, “push, Owey, push, Owey, boba (robot)”. The next morning she was still thinking about it and said, “stairs, boba, loud” “push, Owey”. Throughout the entire month she has reminded us over and over that Owey pushed the robot and it was noisy. This incident made a big impression on her.

Isla has begun to have little meltdowns. Mostly due to frustration at not being able to communicate effectively enough with us. Sometimes she is just angry that the fun is ending though. Like one day when we were watching Ellen. Isla usually comes running as soon as Ellen starts and says, “dance” and then starts dancing. On this day, Isla was excited to dance with Ellen as usual. But when Ellen stopped dancing, Isla got very upset. Isla dropped to the floor and started crying. Sometimes hugging her helps, sometimes trying to figure out what she wants or distracting her works. One day she wanted her baby’s clothes off so she could, “see body”. Daddy took them off and Isla then wanted the doll’s cloth body off too. Daddy tried to explain that this didn’t come off but Isla was already melting down. She kept going back to the doll and crying and getting angry at it. We finally had to remove the doll and get her thinking about something else.

Isla started her Music Together class this month. So far we have gone to two classes. She likes them somewhat, but spends most of the class time trying to escape and climb over the gate. Last week she threw her and my shoes over the gate in the hopes that this would get us to leave. I know she doesn’t like loud noises, and she seemed to get upset when they brought the drums out, so that may be part of it. As social as she seems, she tends to get overstimulated in new settings and handles this by running around and not doing the planned activity. We’re hoping as she gets used to the class she will get better at actually doing the fun activities.

And some cute and funny things happened this month too. Owen and Daddy made a movie together in which Owen ran down the stairs yelling. For about a week afterward Isla would say, “Owey!” and he would say, “what?” and she would go, “Ahhhh!” really loud. It must have made a big impression on her! Also, she gets on her play phone and walks around yelling, “Asa!, Asa!” I guess she is pretty upset with her cousin Asa for some reason and had to call and give him a piece of her mind.

Taken on the day Isla turned 18 months old.

Isla gets measured against her 2×4 to see how much she’s grown on her 18 month birthday.