McKamy – February Update

This has been a busy month and Kamy has certainly kept us on our toes lately.  =)

• Kamy is really interested in anything related to helping, especially if it is something that we do.  She is a great helper around the house — sweeping, unloading the dishwasher, and laundry.  At this point she can do almost everything for the laundry: load the clothes, run hot water to the neighboring bathroom, run the washer, move to the dryer, clean the lint screen, start the dryer, and empty it once it’s finished.  Other than accurately sorting lights and darks and putting the detergent in the dispenser, she can do it all.  We are working on learning how to fold the laundry and put it away correctly in everyone’s rooms.  If she is particularly helpful on a day I’ll give her a penny to add to her bank as a thank you for all she did.  I am so grateful that she has a helpful heart and is interested in learning how to do things around the house.  It’ll serve her well in the future, though I am sure at some point she will dislike doing laundry.  It is one of those necessary evils of life.  Lol!  She did test out a new stalling tactic for nap time … she told me she “just needed to move the laundry to the dryer before nap time.”  Right Kamy, I’ll give you that one.  Stall away!

• Potty training is going really well!  We have just about finished wearing diapers during the day; she only wears them if we are going to be out and about all day, at church, and at bedtime.  She stays dry through her quiet time and nap time.  She rarely has accidents, just when she gets involved with something and forgets.  We have transitioned to using the big girl potty all the time, so she does not need her little training potty any more.  I’m so proud of how good she is doing, though it makes me a little sad that she’s hitting this major milestone.  We have dealt with a few issues of “crying wolf” when it comes to actually using the potty and have had several talks about it.  Hopefully we have pushed past most of her false reports.

• For the most part, Kamy has a lot of privileges.  She is such a good girl and has a sweet heart which makes it easy to trust her with new responsibilities.  I’ve been taking the door knob cover off Kamy’s bedroom during the day, allowing her to close her door for privacy from Caden if she needs some space.  Because she can open the doors to go outside, we keep the knob cover on her door overnight so we do not have to worry about her getting out while we are asleep.  She seems happy with the arrangement and only rarely do I have to put it back on during the day as a consequence for not listening (usually not leaving her door closed if she is sent to her room).  She also lost all of her books for two days after she purposely destroyed her book during quiet time.  We try to be really fair and predictable with her, and we have always told her that if she doesn’t take care of her things, she can’t have them.  So away went the books until she was ready to use them correctly again.  So far so good, she has not ripped one apart again.

• Kamy’s new pastime is pretending to spell words.  Instead of asking how to spell something, she’ll just spew out random letters and laugh at the end.  Her favorites are “ceter” or “cetesesert.”  She is so silly!  She is trying to learn a few words here and there but nothing new has really stuck with her lately.

• As I mentioned last month, Kamy is learning basic addition.  She understands the function of “plus 1” and can give you the answer to “x + 1” all the way up to twelve.  Because she memorizes things so quickly, I’ve been working with her in more complicated questions to see if she actually understands what is going on as opposed to just reciting an answer.  Daddy even asked her a word problem and Kamy was able to come up with the right answer easily.  She is doing so great!  I am trying really hard not to push her beyond what she is interested in doing, but I definitely want to encourage a love of learning and curiosity.  If that means we are learning math now, I am okay with that.

• Kamy has been playing with my digital kitchen scale.  She likes to weigh empty spice jars and miscellaneous toys to see how much they weigh.  It has been a good opportunity to talk about three digit numbers and decimals when it is set to grams or ounces.  She is getting more accurate with reading numbers, though sometimes 5 and 2 and S get mixed up.

• And that said curiosity is coming out in force lately.  “Why” has picked up steam and is often tacked on to our conversations.  What’s funny is how she says it – “whhhhyyyyyyy.”  Imagine Dory from “Finding Nemo” speaking in whale and you have the general idea.  I have no idea where she heard that phrasing but she seems to like it.  Silly girl!

• One of the special things Daddy and Kamy do together is shaving.  Since Keller got an old fashioned safety razor for Christmas, he has been shaving his face at night.  Kamy has been very interested in what he was doing and sat to watch him one evening.  They ended up “shaving” her face too, just without the blade (it is the empty handle in this photo).  I am glad that Daddy and Kamy have some things they can do, just the two of them.  Kamy has been seeking out Daddy’s attention lately — it is important that they spend time together.  Before I’m ready to admit it, Caden will be ready to shave too …

• Daddy also let Kamy use his camera phone to take pictures.  187ish photos later, there were about 65 of the floor, another 80-some-odd with a finger in front of the lens, and a bunch of random ones.  As Keller put it, “Why take one photo when you can take ten?”  She enjoyed it, but I doubt she will be an award winning photographer at the ripe old age of 2.  Maybe when she’s three.  =P

• Kamy loves to sing.  While she certainly had her favorites and old standbys like “Happy Birthday” and “Jesus Loves Me,” she is now branching into remixes (sing the words to one song to the tune of another) or new creations by making them up altogether.  One I’ve heard a lot lately is “I love my Momma and my Daddy all the night before.”  =P  Sweet girl!  I love to hear her sing and see what she comes up with next.

• “I’m just” has appeared in Kamy’s vocabulary, here to test my patience.  When we tell her not to do something or remind her of a rule, she’ll reply with “I’m just …” and include whatever excuse or reason or thing she can use to justify what she is doing and why she isn’t going to listen to what we just told her.  I have gotten to the point where I will cut her off and say “I’m just nothing” to try to break that habit.  It’s nothing belligerent or aggressive, but she is definitely testing what she can and can’t get away with.

• Kamy colored Valentines pictures for several people!  She sat on my lap and chose coloring pictures to print out.  Then she colored each one and they were mailed to specific people “This one is for Payton.”  I’ve seen several of these Valentines up on fridges in DFW, so I know they are cherished.  Several times since she has told me she wants to print out more Valentines coloring pages to mail to everybody.  I told her we’d look at doing it again at the next holiday.  =)

Just a few short weeks until Miss Kamy turns three!  I love our girl and I am proud of the little person she is growing into.  She makes me laugh and smile every day and brings much joy into our family.  She makes me happy and means so much to us both.  We love you!