Ok?

I know. It's so bad. It's one of the things that you're not supposed to say to toddlers and young children. But I have found myself, in spite of my knowledge and resolve not to, ending sentences, requests and commands with "ok?". Lest you think me an inadequate parent, this habit is not so bad that I throw it on the ends of sentences or commands which are meant to keep Kalin out of harm's way or about rules which are set in stone. You won't hear me saying, "Kalin! That's hot! Don't touch, ok?" or "Do not throw food on the floor, ok?". It's more the small, seemingly insignificant things that the "ok?" gets tacked onto. "We're not going outside now. We'll go outside later, ok?" "Eat one more bite of veggies before you have another piece of bread, ok?" Thankfully, he has yet to catch on that my words are implying that he has a say in the matter. I realize that sometimes the "ok?" could be used to make sure the words are being understood by the listener, but I have a feeling that, the majority of the time, this won't be the way it gets interpreted by a young child. Sometimes, even as I'm saying the sentence I'm telling myself, "Don't do it, Lindsey. Don't let that word slip out.", and then I hear myself saying "ok?". It's frustrating :-) Don't worry, I'm not really beating myself up about this. I realize that it's just one of those habits that most people have and Kalin is just going to have to learn that even if it sounds like I'm asking for his "ok" about a situation, I'm probably not.

It seems like Kalin has been picking up more words in his vocabulary in just the past week. I may not be able to remember them all as I sit here. He definitely LOVES to say "mama" now. Although, I'm afraid that with all the hugs and kisses he gets awarded with for saying "mama" so much, he might back off for fear of getting smothered :-). He tweets when he sees a bird and says his version of "bird". I think I mentioned in the last post how so many objects in his world start with "b" so lots of things sound the same coming out of his mouth. He points to the window and says "tee" which means "see" as in "I would like to see what is out the window, please.". He's becoming better at saying "up" and "down" and is starting to imitate us more. I even get him to say "poo poo" and "pee pee". I'm not sure if he connects the meaning of the words yet but we're working on it. I figured now would be a good time to get him used to those words in preparation for potty training. He likes to pull the handle that makes the recliner on the love seat pop up and when he does it I yell "pop!!" and he copies me. He has found that having the recliner part up helps him get onto the couch all by himself. I am much more confident in his abilities now to get down from the couch or chair properly that I will actually walk away to get something from the kitchen or to check my e-mail while he hangs out on the furniture. When he wants your nose to make a funny noise (a fun game of ours) he'll now reach out his hand to push your nose and say "beep!". Just yesterday, while we were hanging out in Kasey's office waiting for him to get off work, a car alarm started going off in the parking lot and Kalin imitated the beeping.

Since Kalin received his little car from my parents for Christmas, it has stayed inside since we don't have a real yard to go play in. But this weekend we decided to take it down to the parking lot and see how it would do out on the road. Kalin had a blast! It's a much bigger area to ride in than inside the house and, since he can push himself on it now, had so much fun rolling around. For those who have been to our parking lot, you know that it's on a bit of a slope, so we decided that it would be fun to let Kalin go downhill with somebody just a few yards away to catch him. He had so much fun!! It went a lot faster than either Kasey or I had expected and we both realized that if we ever do that again, Kalin needs a helmet. One little bump in the road and he would have taken a rough tumble onto the asphalt. We have video but Kasey doesn't want me to post it online for fear that somebody will come across it and call CPS on us because of Kalin's lack of a helmet :-)

Kalin has started pretending like he's cooking. We gave him a spatula to play with and he'll grab one of my pots and start stirring. Then he'll take a lid and put it on the pot, then take the lid off and stir some more. It keeps him entertained for quite awhile.

He's been waking up earlier than usual for the last week. We thought we had the problem fixed but that lasted for only a day. He'll wake up around 6 now which is too early for us. I'm wondering if maybe we do need to try a one-nap-a-day schedule. Maybe he's getting too much sleep during the day so his nights end up shorter. I don't know. We'll see how this week goes. We try putting him down again after he wakes up and sometimes it works - for about 20 minutes. A couple mornings ago Kasey got up with Kalin at 5:56 and put him back down with his pacifiers and came back to bed. I had slept through this and didn't know that Kalin had already been awake, so when I heard him at 6:25 I went in and did the same thing. I'm surprised now that he didn't cry since this had already happened to him once before that morning. He managed to stay quiet (I don't know if he slept) until 6:45 when Kasey's alarm was about to go off. It's so reminiscent of Kalin's first 10 months of life when it seemed like this is what we did all night long. Then even after he finally started sleeping through the night, he would wake up at 5am and we would be trying to get him down again for another couple of hours. So either we need to cut out a daytime nap or I need to learn how to become a morning person. I'm not really sure which option sounds better to me right now.