Step One

On Thursday night, as Nate and I sat on the floor playing with Kendall, she let go of daddy took her first step and 1/2 over to mommy without holding on. And then promptly fell down. She has been walking around holding onto furniture for weeks now, but only letting go to stand. Nate and I debated if this was truly a first step.

Nate won the debate and we are calling it. Kendall walks. Kind of.

One sleepy kid

What is with the blocks?

Apparently we are a family obsessed with blocks. When I was working earlier this week, I wandered out to check on grandma and Kendall, and I found grandma trying to line up all the alphabet blocks. This was a fruitless effort as Kendall, as always, would come by and knock them away as Grandma lined them up.

I thought Grandma was joking, but when Kendall went down for a nap, she lined them all up on the coffee table. Organized in alphabetical order. I think we all play with the blocks just to annoy Kendall.

And then Kendall got up.

Only took 2 minutes to destroy. Big destruction comes in small packages. You should see my living room at the end of a day. Looks like a tornado touched down, and there is bright plastic toy carniage everywhere.

Note Kendall shows off her skills in this video. Crawling, walking holding on with only one hand, standing without holding on, clapping. Long way from the days of us getting excited about tummy time.

No explaination needed

The Gears on the Block Go Round and Round

Not sure why, but this one blew me away. Nate took this video on a morning that he let me sleep in. Kendall has a set of blocks that have items inside for each letter of the alphabet. Some shake, some squeak, and some have gears you can turn to move the items inside. For a long time Kendall would just chew on these blocks, or as you have seen in other posts, knock them over. This particular morning, she figured out how to turn the gears. What a cool trick to wake up to.

Laundry Day

Lately, Kendall has been enjoying playing in her room. Not many toys in there, we keep those in the living room for now, but there are books, and her favorite, the laundry.

Kendall really likes clothes, and shoes. Given, she likes to chew on shoes (teething bites), but still, clothes and shoes? Such a girl!

So, I tend to set her free in her room since there is not too much in there to hurt her. After she takes all the books out from the shelves, she heads over to the closet, and sorts through her clothes. Mostly she gets into the dirty laundry, but she pulls herself up and takes stock of the clothes hanging in the closet as well. Usually I will turn to find her with the laundry basket flipped over, and her sitting in there throwing clothes.

Amazing what will keep a kid happy. Now all I need is for her to learn how to sort the lights from the darks and we are in business!

Destruction tactics

Kendall has upped the ante in her destruction. We picked up a shopping cart walker for her as she learns to be mobile. She has turned it into a tool of destruction. No more need to crawl  to destroy the block towers, now she can push her cart there in style.

Oh, and did I mention that Nate and I enjoy setting up block tower obstacle courses for Kendall to destroy. Maybe we need to get out of the house more.

Kendall has come a long way with her mobility. She is definitely on the way to walking. She pulls herself up using anything she can get a grip on, sturdy or not. Every day we are seeing her do a little bit more, from pushing the cart across the room without falling over, making it around the corners of the coffee table as she hangs onto it and walks around to get the remote we don't let her play with, and even standing on her own for several seconds with objects clasped in both her hands. She has even started catching herself before falling on her face.

Before long she will master this walking thing, and she will be off running. Probably in the opposite direction from me.