Singing

For your enjoyment, Kendall sings!

The Itsy Bitsy Spider

Twinkle Twinkle Little Star

Row, Row, Row Your Boat

My Baby Can Read

Not really. But she knows her letters.

Kendall loves mail, and she reads all the magazines. Like the flooring tile magazine in the video above. I was trying to capture one of the stories Kendall was telling us as she flipped the pages of the magazine - 'Once upon a time, a boy and a girl..." Not sure what happens after that, but I think they buys some pretty awesome carpet tiles.

Little Swimmer

Kendall has been in swim lessons over a year now - we started her at 6 months. Looking back, it is crazy how much Kendall has changed in the last year, and how awesome it was to take her swimming for the first time. Since that first swim lesson, Kendall's love of the water has only grown. Now when we put her in the tub she floats on her back and sings "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" to us, just like in swim class. And after we clean up all the bath toys, she lays on her belly kicking like she does in the pool and yells "SWIMMING!".

When we get up on Saturday morning, she asks "Swimming?" and on the way over to the YMCA she chants "Swimming, Swimming, Swimming". The kid loves to swim.

And now, she can do almost do it without mommy. (Videos below are on the long side)

Swim instructor told me last week that she will probably be ready for the next swim class in 6 - 8 months. What? I don't think I will be ready to give up my mommy and me swim lessons by then. How can she be getting so big already?

But then again, toddlerhood is fun. Just look at those hugs!

Draft

This is from back in April. Kendall has been missing football, and searches the house to find Daddy's football whenever she can. So when Daddy busted out his Bear's jersey again, Kendall got excited, and Mommy groaned because it meant Daddy would be sitting on the couch watching the football draft for 3 days.

Kendall used the time wisely and practiced her running and passing. With a bit more training over the summer she will be ready when the season starts in the fall.

Working on our letters

Lately Kendall has been very into her letters and numbers. Whenever we are out, she points out all the letters and numbers she sees on signs. In the grocery store, she points to the number above each aisle and announces it for us. Kendall can count to 20, sort of, but she can only identify the numbers up to 10, so when you get to aisle 12, it is 1 and 2!

She has her ABCs down pretty well, although sometimes she likes to free style the song a bit and sing them out of order. We have a set of blocks with letters on them, and inside the blocks are something to represent the letter - like in the in B there is a bunch of bananas, in N there is a nest. Her favorite is the M with a monkey in it. Why? Because of the Monkey? No, because when you turn an M upside down it is a W.

I was admittedly kind of shocked when I first saw her do this for the first time. She was sitting in the living room flipping the block right side up, then upside down, saying "M", "double" (aka "W"). Where did she learn that?

Cooking in the Kitchen with Momma

I'm on a video kick this evening. I'll set this one up for you.

Kendall has her own set of kitchen utensils. They were purchased to stop her from opening the kitchen drawers and pulling everything out. The utensils failed in their task, but they do prove to be quite entertaining while mommy makes dinner.



No More Monkey's Jumping on the Bed!

And you thought this would actually be a video of Kendall jumping on the bed.

Lots of Blocks

Whenever Kendall comes home, she makes a beeline for her toys, and immediately pulls out her blocks. We have 2 big backs of blocks - locked up tight with zippered tops. She will pick up the bag of blocks and lug it over to us, grunting the whole way, and then asks us PLEASE (both signing and saying "please"). How can you resist that? We unzip the blocks and hand them back to her, then she promptly turns the bag over, dumping the blocks on the floor, then wades through them, kicking them all over. Repeat with second bag. 

After this ritual, Kendall gets down to business building her towers of blocks. For a kid who used to be dead set against block organization, she is sure focused on building these days.

Blocks seem to be an ever present part of our living room decor these days. Nate and I just walk around them, and occasionally on them. When Nate comes home from work, the blocks start a new. Daddy is Kendall's favorite construction partner (although Grandma has been seen getting in on construction during the day lately).

As soon as Daddy gets home, the ritual starts again. Or, if the blocks are already out, whatever toy Kendall was playing with is forgotten, and the blocks return to focus. She continues with the blocks until dinner, and then returns to them after until bedtime. When bedtime comes, Kendall reluctantly helps pick up her blocks, placing them back into the bags, waiting for them to be zipped back up, and then placing them back onto the bookshelf. Until tomorrow when we do it all over again.

Shoes!

Kendall loves shoes. Loves them to the point that we have to hide all the shoes in the house, both hers and ours. Kendall is a shoe girl, and nothing makes her happier than a new pair. She gets positively giddy when you take her shoe shopping. The favorites are a pair of pink Wellie boots and a pair of pink Crocs, both of which she has mastered the art of putting on herself. Even if they do end up on the wrong feet from time to time. (Mom's favorites are a pair of Converse All-Stars - pink, naturally.)

Kendall seeks out shoes throughout the house, and already having a pair of shoes on does not deter her from putting on another pair over them. Nate and my shoes are generally best for the double shoe look - they fit nicely over a pair of crocks.

More often than not, Nate and I leave our shoes out when we walk in the door - and they end up on Kendall's feet walking around the house. More recently, Kendall has started putting our shoes away for us in the closet. Very helpful.

The morning from the pictures above, and the video below, Nate, Kendall, and I were all making Sunday breakfast. Kendall snuck off and put on the shoes - and continued to entertain us, as always.

Cute - even if picking up shoes from all over the house is getting old.

Catching up

Where does the time go! Been busy with a number of things around here, mostly revolving around the energy eminating from the Kendall at all times. That and all my "stories" on TV - can't miss those season finales! Thus, the blog has suffered. You would think with Kendall getting bigger we would have more downtime to blog, but somehow things don't work out that way. But never fear! I'm here to catch up on the past few months in a series of posts hitting the highlights.

To start us off, here are some miscellaneous pictures from the past few months that I don't have stories for. Just a little something to keep you busy while I work on my multimedia presentation. I'm all about the wow factor.

Reading with Daddy.



Kendall is very serious about her Sesame Street. I am clearly interrupting her.



Yes, that is a Smurfette shirt.

Words

Kendall is now 16 months. Seems like yesterday we brought her home, and now she is walking... and talking!

Kendall may not have perfect enunciation, or always even bother using words, but she is definitely saying a lot. Car, Cars, Dog, Momma, Daddy, Grover, Elmo, Ernie, Shoes, Apple, Kermit, Duck, Boat, Up, Down, Come On!, Hi'ya!, Grandma, Grandpa, Blocks, Bath, Swimming, Train, Foot, Ear, Eye, Nose, Kaboom!, Ball, Boots, Bears, Bunny, Owl, One, Six, Ten (but no other numbers), Star, Bird, Baby, Hug, Water, Milk, Book, Stuck!, Socks, Truck, Strawberry. I'm sure there are some more, she is surprising us every day using a new word that she has learned.

Besides the words we understand, Kendall is constantly talking. Most of it makes no sense, but she talks all day long. And sings. With or without the pacifier in her mouth (and we are working on quiting that habit). Quite the chatterbox we have, and she is not shy about it. When we take her out, she talks to people at the store, waves and smiles. It's great to see her being so gregarious and tuned into her world!

Can't wait to see what she comes up with next.


Kendall's favorite boots. Just like her favorite book character, Gossie the Gossling.




Songs in the Key of Muppet

We are a Muppet family.

Nate and I find Muppets fascinating. I mean, how can this NOT make you smile.

So, when we needed something to keep Kendall a little busy while we were working on something else, we turned to Sesame Street. Too wonderful results. Kendall too loves those Muppets. Especially Grover.

Grover is Kendall's constant companion. He is on the TV - we actually watch Play with Me Sesame instead of Sesame Street. Less Elmo, more Grover, win, win. Kendall has a plush Grover that she cuddles and sleeps with every night - and he goes with us everywhere. If you ask Kendall where Grover is, she will walk out of the room to retrieve him - she always knows where he is.

She knows the other Muppets as well. Elmo is becoming a bigger draw, but never as much as Grover. She also loves Ernie. Burt is dull (and I agree), but that Ernie, he is funny! Kendall can even identify them and announces when they come on screen - just in case you weren't paying attention.

With the astounding success of Sesame Street Muppets, Nate and I decided to introduce The Muppet Show at Christmas. We picked up the first 3 seasons to watch with Kendall. She totally digs it.

Nate and I are finding how out dated The Muppet Show seems, but at the same time, it is totally awesome. We have no idea who half the guests are, but we giggle like kids when we see those Muppets. And Kendall? If you mention putting Muppets on she immediately gets giddy, then she hums the theme and dances around while all those Muppet's dance with her, points and announces when Kermit comes on screen. Then she looses interest for most of the 25 min of the show (unless Kermit or the Swedish Chef come on), until the credits, where she gets excited to see Rolf the dog playing the piano.

Those Muppets, they really are for all ages. And totally entertaining.

My Big Girl

Something about those pigtails. That and the mischief in her eyes. She is not a baby anymore!

Future Quarterback

A little late, but here is our highlight from the Bears' loss to Green Bay.

The Best Time of Day - Bath Time

I may be raising a neat freak. Kendall loves to stack things, put things into baskets, and organize her little people into people vs animals. A far cry from the child who would seek and destroy if you built a block tower. Although she still gets messy, and we have to scrub her down as she screams after a good meal of mac and cheese, the kid loves being clean.

The uber-messiness that is a 16 month old leads to Kendall's favorite thing. More than Sesame Street, Grover, Mommy, Daddy, swimming, even more than snow, Kendall loves bath time.

She is actually tired in this video - she usually moves to that tub even quicker. That kid loves a good bath! No matter how grumpy or tired she is, she runs in, helps me get the tub ready. She checks water temperature, adds the mat to the bottom of the tub, dumps in the toys - it is as if she is going through a check list. And then she giggles and splashes until I pull her out. Bath time is the best!

SNOW!!!!

Turns out, Kendall LOVES snow.

Can you believe that is the same tree?

Yes, it has snowed earlier this season, and I had invested in an adorable snow suit, but we had yet to make it out into the snow. So today after the 19 inches that fell on our little piece of the world last night, we ventured out into the white stuff. Pictures and video were taken for posterity, not only since this was the first time out in the snow, but that sure was a lot of snow.





The storm raged all night, and we awoke to a winter wonderland outside our windows. Kendall was beyond thrilled, and immediately went to investigate.

This kid likes her snow.

And then she checked it out, again. Just in case all that snow had suddenly disappeared.

Kendall seemed very interested, so we thought we would venture out and take it all in. After all, it was a snow day, and what better way to spend a snow day than playing in the snow!

So, we all got bundled up and headed out to check it out first hand. This is a video of Kendall's first venture into the snow.

We didn't spend a ton of time out there, it was pretty cold, but Kendall sure had a ball. She was running up and down the sidewalks throwing herself into snow piles, grabbing and throwing chunks of snow, and giggling up a storm.

Here Kendall is trying to instigate a snow ball fight.

More snowy video. She is having fun until she kicks snow on her face. COLD! Funny thing is she doesn't know that word yet - everything is HOT!



Kendall had such a wonderful time, she actually cried when we took her in. She wanted to stay out in the snow. Hopefully we'll have another chance to get outside again when it isn't too cold. But then again, Spring brings us into the playground, and the snow will be forgotten.

December (and now January) round up

** Disclaimer: I started this post on New Year's Day, and I am now just getting back to finishing and posting it. I'm doing an awesome job on my New Year's resolution to keep the blog up-to-date. Need to work on that.**

Happy New Year!

Now that Christmas and New Year's is behind us, I realized I haven't touched the blog in over a month. We have had a very busy month, and there is so much I could have written about! So, to catch everyone up, this will be a little recap of December 2010 as we roll into a new year.

When we last left you, it was right before Thanksgiving, and Kendall was emptying all my cabinets onto the kitchen floor - this has not stopped. We had a fun Very Greaney Thanksgiving at our house with some of the Greaney family stopping by to join us for turkey and the fixings. Yum!

The day after Thanksgiving we attended the annual lighting of the Christmas Tree in Arlington Heights. The park downtown has all sorts of Christmas displays and a giant tree. The park district puts on a little program and at dusk they light the tree. It was pretty cool - but darn cold! Kendall's face lit up as soon as all those lights came on - so it was definitely worth standing out in the cold to see.

We, of course, had the annual lighting of our Christmas tree as well. Decorating took much longer than usual this year - it took us a week as opposed to the couple of hours it had taken us in the past. Kendall did participate in the decorating of the tree, and did a great job of getting ornaments on. Problem was the concept of keeping the ornaments on the tree. Our decorations also included a new accessory, a giant gate around the tree to keep out small Kendall's. Sadly, this gate did not keep out the Kendall's and through-out the month of December we found ornaments with chew marks strewn throughout the house.

Kendall also got to spend some time with her new friend Charlie Quaid. Charlie is getting bigger every time we see him, but Kendall still points to him and says what sounds like baby. She is pretty good with him, but really likes to pat him on the head. He is going to catch up to her quickly, and then I think we are all in for some trouble. Here are the two chilling on the couch, probably discussing how lame their parents are for making them take pictures. The definitely look bored.

We, of course, kept up with our swimming. Kendall is getting better at it every week, and is swimming with very little help from me. I am just a prop in the water one she gets going. When we got back to it in January, Kendall could not contain her excitement about going in the pool, she dove right in and kicked up a storm. When she is not swimming, Kendall practices by laying on the kitchen floor and "running" - kicking her legs as fast as she can. As she does this, she repeats "run, run, run, run, JUMP!" and lifts her legs straight into the air. This keeps her in tip-top shape for her Saturday swim classes.

Before Christmas I had it with Kendall's hair, and I broke down for that first haircut. I thought I would be more emotional (no idea why) when I took her for the haircut, but I was just so darned happy to get that hair out of her eyes! We hit up to local KidSnips, which was super cheesy and all about selling you toys with your haircut, but worked out well. They sat her in a race car chair and put on some Backyardigans DVD for her. The haircut was over before they made it through the theme song - and there were no tears from Kendall or Mommy. One thing this did prove is that Kendall has inherited Daddy's hair - it has only been a month, and the haircut has almost grown out.

After we got that haircut out of the way, I was finally able to get a decent photo session for the holiday card. I say decent, because a 14 month old does not sit still for long enough to take a holiday picture. You either get eyes closed, crying, turning head, waving, or if you are lucky, a decent picture. Here is the original collage I put together for the Christmas card before I forgot to order it and had to go with a different layout.

We spent Christmas Eve here at home with the Gormans'. Had a big meal and shared some presents while watching the Gorman family staple - A Christmas Story. Kendall had a ball unwrapping presents, and received the coveted Muppet DVDs (more on those in another post). After my parent's left, Nate and I did the parent thing and put the tree together for the next day. With Kendall being older now, there sure were a lot of presents under the tree!

On Christmas morning Kendall got up to behold all that Santa had brought her - and it was very good.

After spending a quiet morning at home we split our time at Aunt Mares' and the Grandparents Greaney's on Christmas day. Kendall made off with a haul of new toys, and a fancy chair just for Kendall that she has since had her privileges for revoked (that chair is a whole other story). Kendall met her new cousin Nora on Christmas Day - Nora is just too cute, and such a doll! Kendall put on quite a show for all in her fancy boots! She kept them on all day and stomped around.

We spent a nice quiet New Years at home as well. Kendall went to bed well before the ball dropped, and Nate and I enjoyed a decadent dinner of cheese fondue with chocolate fondue for dessert while watching a movie. Yum!

January has been pretty quiet. Kendall has been filling her days with Muppet's and breaking in all those new toys as well as a return to swim lessons in early January. Nate has been busy with all the football on - and how about those Bears! I am working on a new recipe every week, but I am now behind on my plan after a trip in the snow to Connecticut last week (for work, not skiing).

I think that catches up on everything - I'll try to update more often to keep these posts smaller! If you made it this far I think you deserve a cookie! I hear it is Girl Scout Cookie Time - and now I have Troop Beverly Hills stuck in my head.