Busy, busy, busy...

Well, you've heard it said before, toddlers are 'busy, busy, busy'... and Kiyomi is no exception. It's been a busy few weeks around here. At least that's my excuse for not posting in a while and I'm sticking to it.

Walking is the word of the day. Now that Kiyomi has figured out how to walk, it's officially the preferred mode of locomotion. She pretty much walks on her own, and has left the crawling thing behind. Crawling now is exclusively reserved for playing. She's even started to master uneven ground - preferring to walk across the sand at the park. That said, she will still reach out for a hand when she's feeling a little unsteady and still spends a great deal of time on her butt as a result of falls. Luckily, the original mode of falling (i.e., launching herself backwards) has been replaced with a rather ungraceful butt-drop, but it's better for all.

Of course, she's also had a few head bonks - some traumatic, others nonplussed. The worst was when we were rushing out the door to go to the doctor for Kiyomi's first set of shots. I turned to put on my shoes, and then heard an ominous 'clunk' behind me, followed by silence. You know that eerie silence, the one where you know that when you look, you'll see a toddler with her mouth wide open, eyes shut, face all scrunched up as she prepares to release a blood-curdling wail that is specifically designed to convey not only displeasure, but a great big huge helping of guilt for mom who could actually allow something like this to happen. Yup, that one! Of course, it took awhile to calm her down, of course, we were in a rush, and of course, when she finally started to perk up, I plopped her down on a table to have needles jabbed into each arm by a strange man in a lab coat. Needless to say, it was a multiple cookie day.

Kiyomi's fascination with books continues, which has me pleased as a peacock. She now toddles over to her pile of books, picks one out, brings in to you, and says "ah". This, of course, is Kiyomi speak for "sit down, so I can climb onto your lap, and you can read this book to me."

Her understanding of English seems to be getting better and better every day. No words - other than the oft used 'cat' - but when asked "where's mommy?", "where's daddy?" "where's the giraffe?", she'll smile and point, and usually gets in right. Although I've been occassionally confused with the giraffe. She has also picked up a few fun tricks, like putting her hands partially over her eyes and looking at you to say "peek-a-boo" and then lifting her hands away and grinning or holding out her hand when you say "gimme five".

The most useful trick she's picked up though - at least useful for her - is the whine. Yup, our darling, quiet little girl has discovered that if she squeels at just the right frequency, her wishes will be granted. It's not particualrly high pitched, but combined with the finger point, it is rather effective. When she gets tired, she's even started resorting to the cry - real tears and everything. This culminated last night in a very strategic exit last night from a Chapters. We had stayed a little later than expected - although given my love of book stores, it wasn't that unexpected - so she was getting a little tired. Kohji was entertaining her with plastic dish set on sale there that she found particularly fun. So fun, in fact, that she decided she didn't want to leave and everytime we tried to take it away, she started to whine/cry. Knowing it couldn't be avoided, I paid for our books, we put on our coats and then we quickly wrestled the toy from Kiyomi's hand and ran! The result was the ominous silence described above, as she prepared to let us know exactly what she thought of our little operation. We almost made it out of the store before the wail commenced... but not quite.

She's also learned to shake her head vigorously when she doesn't want something, usually food. This has resulted in more than one spoon full of something or another on the floor, and the subsequent wrestle with the cat to prevent KT from gobbling down what hits the floor. The cat now positions herself rather strategically under the table for just such occasions.

We've also had some fun visiting lately with family down from London (uncle Brahm, my cousin, Aleson and her family). I got to meet Aleson's little girl, Macy, for the first time and she's a real cutey, with huge, sweet eyes.

A few of the moms from our travel group also got together for a playdate last week. It was great to see the girls and find out how they're all doing. They have all changed so much in just a few months. They've all gained weight, filled out, and are really coming out of their shells. I don't think they recognized each other, but we all agreed that it'll be great to get the girls together regularly - both for them and for us.
Included in the group was Kiyomi's little buddy from China, Hailey. Of course, at their age, buddies means the toddler whose toys Kiyomi was most prone to stealing. Kiyomi and Hailey are now almost exactly the same height, weight and at very similar stages of development, and it was a blast watching them 'talk' to each other.

The last couple weeks have also seen the start of a couple of organized playgroups and swimming lessons. Kiyomi likes the play groups. There's no actual interaction with the other kids, but their presence is enough to get her going. The Glebe Community Center play group is a riot, with every conveivable toy imaginable dragged out into this huge hall, where about 30 toddlers can happily go out of their minds. Kiyomi was particularly taken with a riding toy that she would push from one end of the room to the other, yelping every time she hit a wall to get me to turn her around.

Swimming has been a little less successful, but I suspect it's because the pool is too cold for her. The first lesson was great, and worth the price of admission to see the look of utter shock on Kiyomi's face when I kept dunking my head under the water and come up laughing. She didn't know what to think, especially for the last dunk when I brought her down with me. The pool was warmer at that first lesson though, and since, she's just found it too cold to relax, so she doesn't seem to enjoy it much. However, I still like going as Kiyomi's 2nd cousin (I think it's what she'd be), Lola, goes. She's 5 months old, and has this fabulous little smile, and seems to really like the pool.

The parting shot is another of Kohji's live action photography. You'll note that these pics were taken from her crib when she was supposed to be napping.