Lessons learned

Some lessons learned lately around our house have been by Kylie. She continues to amaze me with her comprehension of spoken language! She now will "step into" her shorts and pants and will maneuver her arms through her sleeves when I ask her to, "help Mommy put your clothes on." That totally happened overnight and she surprised her daddy with this new skill that she developed while he was at CCC.

She has also learned that dog means any dog, but Maya means her doggie! She will play with (throw a ball for), pet, and hug Maya these days when you make a verbal suggestion for her to do so. Of course she really does listen and when we jokingly said that she should give Maya kisses...

(Yes, I know that my first reaction should have been to stop Kylie from kissing Maya instead of grabbing the camera, but it was too cute! Besides, they share sippy cups ~ also mastered within the last week ~ when I'm not looking...)

She's learned that she can sit on Daddy and that he won't get up until she is ready to move on.


One other cool connection that she's made is that "more" works on things other than food. Her current favorite "non-toy" ~ which means that she can't be bothered to play with her real toys right now ~ is a large cardboard box that I got on a recent trip to Aldi. She likes to sit inside it and have one of us push her around. The other day I asked her if she wanted me to push her some more and I guess she realized that word sounded familiar. So she now walks into the box and signs for us.

Who can resist that cute little face? Not me, so my arms are getting a double work out pushing and pulling her around in the box!

Some of the lessons recently learned were by Kylie's parents. Take today while I was at preschool for instance! Ian learned why I don't go to the bathroom by myself anymore. Give the girl a few minutes of freedom and here's what happens... (click on the picture to enlarge it if you can't see what I'm talking about!)

Yep, she can locate the diaper bag, get the crayons reserved for meals out, open the ziplock, draw a near perfect 4 (along with other scribbles) on the wall, and then unload the Tupperware cabinet ~ as a diversion we think! ~ before you know it! When I got home I sat her in front of her handiwork, looks rather like a mugshot, doesn't it? Maybe the graffiti on the Jesus van at staff training wasn't such a good idea for her. Oh well, it's not like I never wrote on the walls when I was a kid, and these days there are Mr. Clean Magic Erasers! (Check out a wall cleaning before Kylie came home)