Who's counting anyways?

We're spending this month celebrating Kayla's 21st month of being in our lives. And how does our 21-month old spend her time? Giving out lots of kisses, yelling "Boo!" and "Roar!" to try and scare anyone who's paying attention, playing with her baby dolls, helping clean, watching videos of Baby Cassidy on youtube, and getting the hang of playing hide-and-seek.

We've also mastered all of our colors and we're still working on our ABC's (she can get most of the beginning of the alphabet out) but right now we're focusing on our numbers, or rather re-focusing on them. Kayla used to know all of her numbers, but we seem to have regressed a bit because she's stuck on "two" and "nine" - her two favorite numbers at the moment. You can hear her going up and down the stairs saying "Two, nine. Two, nine. Two, nine" over and over.

Kayla's hearing is exceptional, it always has been, which I know seems like such an odd thing to bring up. In fact I remember my mom commenting on how exceptional her hearing seemed even as an infant. Kayla will be totally engrossed in an activity completely oblivious to anything going on around her, noises everywhere, and in the far, far distance she'll hear a faint train whistle. She'll immediately stop what she's doing, put her hand to her ear to listen and say "Choo-choo"! The same goes for airplanes too. It always amazes me that she was even aware of anything else besides the activity she's focused on right in front of her, and I'll have to stop what I'm doing, listen, and agree with her, "You're right Kayla, that is a train"!

Something we started just recently, and its not the most pleasant of subjects, but worth mentioning is Time Outs. Not that they are needed very often, but Kayla is at the age where she is perfectly capable of understanding right from wrong, knowing when she's done something she's not supposed to, and knowing when she's pushed her limits with Mama and Dada. Her most frequent crime? Hitting. As soon as the crime's been committed she knows that she has to go sit in a chair and say "sorry" and give the plantiff a hug or a kiss. And if she's not ready to do both of those things she sits in the chair until she's ready. Usually that's just a matter of seconds and she's ready to move on.

I tried another discipline tactic lately that I realized she is not quite ready for and that is the "I'm going to count to three" technique. I thought, Well, she knows what 'three' is so maybe this will work. We were at a friends house and Kayla was in a room that I wanted her to come out of but she wasn't coming, so from outside the room I said, "Kayla, Mommy asked you to come here. I'm going to count to three and I want you to come" and Kayla's face lit up, she smiled and yelled "YEA!!!!!!" Hmmmm, we'll just tuck that technique away until later, until counting isn't so new and fun.