Kaitlyn's 22 months update and Christmas!

Height: 83cm
Weight: 10 Kilograms

Kaitlyn started saying 3 syllable words! Her best efforts at the moment are "position" and "abacus". She speaks proper sentences with correct grammar in English and in Mandarin. She is still a bit confused about You and I, for example, sometimes she will say "mummy feeds you" when she meant "mummy feeds me." She actually knows she is not getting those right, so to get around it, she substitutes any references to herself with her name, it's quite cute really.

She apparently has a thinking sound/gesture. At night, we go through flashcards of objects and nursery rhymes with her, and sometimes when we ask her to tell us what something is, she taps on the card when she thinks. She knows all the words in the flashcards and most of her books now. I think it may be time to buy her different cards (maybe numbers and alphabet?) She can repeat the entire alphabet after you, i.e. you say A, she will say A etc. and besides W, she says all alphabets correctly. She actually counts without prompting now, and does 1-5 in Mandarin very well. Actually, she counts to 10, except most of the time, she forgets 4 and 6... LOL

She is phasing out her afternoon nap, which is making life a little harder on my parents as dad needs to do more work after he gets home, so can't take care of her if she's up, and mum has to cook. Good thing I am on maternity leave, so hopefully can look after her a bit more

Oh, she started posing for the camera. Whenever she sees the camera, she gives a huge grin where you see her teeth but can't see much of her eyes, and she wrinkles her nose when she smiles.

Her hair is getting a little longer too. I don't know if I would take her to get it cut. She was bald for SOOOOO long, I just don't have the heart to even shorten it now that she has SOME hair. It's still a pale brown colour. Her eyebrows are starting to be more visible now, and have changed from very blonde to light brown.

The BIGGEST news of the month though is that she FINALLY reached TEN KILOGRAMS as of tonight! I thought it'd take another few months seeing how she gains a couple hundred grams and loses a few hundred grams from week to week... But the last 2 weeks, she's done quite a bit of growing, gained about 500 grams and gotten a little taller too. 10 KILOs! I think a celebration dance is in order LOL...

She popped SIX teeth in a week, so was a bit of a little terror last week and didn't eat very well. I am very relieved that she made 10 KILOs though.

Her tantrums are still more or less under control. She does whine and cry when things don't go her way, but she calms down in a couple of minutes when everyone just ignores her. She sometimes throws things, which annoys me. When she does that, she gets a loud "No" from us, and she runs off to whoever in the house that didn't "yell" at her, and cries for a couple of minutes and gives the "yeller" dirty looks. She behaves very well generally when there's only one adult in the house watching her. But she plays us against each other when there are more than one person in the house. She especially know how to have my father do the dirty work for her and get him to yell at anyone else that had been "mean" to her. It's amazing how manipulative little toddlers are...

She's very creative/artistic. She loves to draw, particularly fascinated with rabbits, cars and little people. She draws lines very well now. She likes orange coloured pens. She also sings quite well. :)

Kaitlyn seems to think I could fix anything. The other day, she picked a flower from our garden. She accidentally broke one of the pedals off the flower. She walked up to me, holding both the flower and the fallen pedal and looked at me expectantly, "flower is broken" and handed me the flower and pedal. It was sort of a "aww" moment for me... to know how the kid things we could pretty much do anything, and also know that there are and always be things that breaks that no matter how much we want to help, still wouldn't be able to fix...

4 more sleeps until baby #2 joins us... We have most things ready and have been trying to prep Kaitlyn as much as possible about the new arrival. I think she sort of understands, but she really wouldn't "get it" until the new baby comes home and then she'd have to share our attention. I worry and don't know how she would react. I do hope the kids will get along and Kaitlyn wouldn't be too traumatised.

Christmas this year has been very low key because I am so hugely pregnant and we have so much to do to get ready for baby #2. It was still wonderful to watch Kaitlyn open the presents and how her whole face lights up. We kept some of the presents we bought for her birthday because we thought 5 pieces were more than enough. She got the following for Christmas:

* An wooden abacus
* A doll that she can dress/undress and would open/close the eyes. She loves the doll and carries it everyone, kisses it, hugs it and pretty much just mothers it.
* A tea set, she likes to pretend she's drinking tea and making tea (with tiny stuff animals LOL)
* A toy frying pan with toy foods and spatula, bottle of "oil" and bottle of tomato sauce. She actually knows to put in oil first before putting the food in.
* A very large coloring-in activity book.

She handled Christmas and crowds very well. I took her to work Christmas Eve and we took her to a BBQ Christmas night. She didn't throw any tantrums at all. She just acted stand-off-ish, which is her norm outside of the home anyways.