59 Steps!

This week Kinsey did something new that was pretty amazing - she took 59 steps at school (going about 20 feet and even turned a corner) without holding onto ANYTHING! The teacher didn't get it on video that day, but she did get a video of her doing it today - not quite as long though. The teachers are pulling a pedal car in front of  her and apparently trying to get to that is enough motivation to get her to go. Kinsey catches up the pedal car in this video or she probably would have gone even further.

They've seen Kinsey take a few steps between tables at school lately and I've seen her do the same at home recently (if you remember, she hadn't been willing to stand or walk on her own again recently). Every day they go for a walk around the school with her walker, but lately she hasn't wanted to hold onto the walker so this week they were trying different things like having her hold onto one end of a long stick while the teacher held the other end and she was doing really well with that. Then on Thursday she apparently took off completely on her own! And this is by far the most steps she's ever taken on her own!

Kinsey's been doing other fun things at school this week too - she loves crawling through the tunnel and one day she "went fishing" while standing all by herself.

She's been doing fun things at home too - silly things with her ladybug scooter!

She grabbed the handles of this stool and "walked" it from the kitchen all the way to the living room while straddling the ladybug.

 

She also likes to use the ladybug as a walker sometimes.

And getting into more trouble - this week she found the drawer on this little side table in the living room. We definitely need to do MORE childproofing!

And standing up from the floor is apparently a piece of cake now - she's doing it routinely and swiftly! I've tried to capture it on film, but she's always standing up by the time I can grab the camera. I'll keep trying. 

She pretty much won't let you feed her anymore, which is great, but not always a good thing since she still doesn't eat that much variety of solid things that she can pick up. She's been doing well with hot dogs and loves meatballs, frozen yogurt drops and the cheese crackers I made. Sometimes she wants to use the fork and other times she wants to use her hands. Sometimes she really wants to put food on the fork and tries really hard to stab the food with it. And other times she holds the food in one hand and the fork in the other and tries to put the food on the fork that way before putting it on her mouth. So cute!

Oh, and she has another developing skill: getting out of her carseat! She knows how to get her arms out of the straps after you unbuckle her and now she's trying to figure out how to get out of the seat too. She grabs onto the seats in front of her and can get her butt out of the seat, but hasn't managed to slide down onto the floor of the car  . . . yet!

Today Jamie went with me to drop Kinsey off at school so I took advantage of the fact that he was there and brought the camera along so I could capture something I just knew would be an adorable photo: Kinsey walking into school wearing her backpack and holding daddy's hand :) She really wants to carry her bag everyday so I've been putting her backpack on her. Today leaving school she wore her backpack and insisted on carrying her lunch bag too! Little miss independent!

Anyway, that's it for this week aside from this silly video of her on her bouncy cow.

Kinsey and her baby riding the cow together

Hot Dogs, Spaghetti & Cheese Crackers, Oh My!

Kinsey is doing so well eating these days! I finally remembered to try giving her pieces of hot dog and it turns out she really likes it! Sometimes she plays with it instead of chewing it up, but when she wants to, she gobbles it right up. This week we also gave her spaghetti and meatballs - she's had bits of spaghetti before, but this time we gave her that as her entire meal and she loved it! I've been hesitant to give her meatballs because they have egg in them, but she does just fine with them and really loves them too (who doesn't love meatballs!). And today I made her some homemade "goldfish" crackers - no preservatives or other garbage and they taste amazing (we both agree!). So she's still using her fingers a lot to move food around in her mouth to chew it, but we can also see that she is using her tongue more and trying to move the food with her tongue. Practice makes perfect and she's getting plenty of practice lately - practically everything she eats these days has to be chewed.

Bailey got to do cleanup duty afterwards

She does still really enjoy her food pouches too though - she really understands how they work and downs them in no time flat. She's been eating more at school lately too - they always do snack in the morning and Kinsey would typically eat a few bites of cracker or puffs and that would be it, but lately she's been eating an entire pouch and some of her yogurt melts or puffs. Plus she drinks a thing of milk and water at school.

In other news, Kinsey is continuing to make progress with her walking skills. So far, all the push toys she has are very stable and heavy so she could put a lot of weight on them for balance and so they wouldn't take off and get away from her too easily. She's been doing so well, we decided to take it to the next level and give her a push toy that's pretty wimpy. So we bought her a new baby doll stroller that's basically a mini umbrella stroller and is really easy to pull down. And she's been doing a great job with it! No problem whatsoever (except that she purposefully pulls it down sometimes). Here's a video  and another cute one of her using the stroller to get over to her chair to sit down: video

Kinsey also continues to love school. She's getting really good at coloring, painting, gluing, and even recognizing familiar items. She does ok at color matching sometimes too. Her teacher sent me some pictures from this week:

She loves playing with the other kids!

Doing a good job putting the brush in the paint . . .

then putting it on the paper!

We had one nice day this week (actually it was fairly warm all week, but the wind was so CRAZY out of on control that only one day was nice enough to go outside) so my dad and I took Kinsey to the Farm that one afternoon. She loved all the animals as usual.

Waving at the horse

A little horsey kiss

Checking out the ducks

Say Cheese

Petting the goat

She loves pushing her wagon

Sitting in a tree

Kinsey's favorite toys at home lately have been her books. She has a new book organizer in her room (Christmas present from Pop-Pop) and she loves to go sit in front of it and pull out all her books and "read" them. She even puts them back sometimes! Here's a video of her "reading." And some pictures:

And she LOVES my ipad. Every time I sit it down, she tries to get to it!

And here are a few more pictures from our trip to the Zoo last week with Cathy & Aliy:

Isn't this picture of Kinsey and Aliy's son Jayce too cute? She was hanging

on all by herself (but I was standing just out of the picture just in case!)

She loved the carousel, as usual

This is our new favorite thing at the zoo - feeding the larakeets

And finally, we found a new photographer recently and we did a Valentine's session with her and just got the photos back this week:

This isn't the best picture of Kinsey, but you can see the dress I made for her (I embroidered the ladybug and everything!)

3.25 & 24.4

Do you know what those numbers mean? 3.25 means that Kinsey is now 3 1/4 years old! And 24.4 is her current weight! She finally passed the 24 lb mark! We think maybe because she's eating more solid foods these days.

Anyway, there's not much else to report this week, but I do have lots of pictures and videos to share:

Kinsey playing with my ipad (I love the way she's sitting with it like an adult): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-HQ3pbctQ3k


This was supposed to be a video of Kinsey waving, but she wasn't interested in that. Instead it turned into a video of her playing with her toys with standing (and without holding onto anything). We switched back to her old splints that are shorter just to see how she could do with them and she's been doing great! She's still not walking much without holding onto anything (we think because she knows she can walk so well if she is holding on that she just prefers to do that). But this is her standing and playing with her toys while wearing the shorter splints. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJUTmm5-Fk4

Last weekend we went to the Aquarium:

 

   

 

Yesterday I took Kinsey to Build A Bear to make a Valentine for herself. She had originally selected a pink elephant, but when I showed her the dogs, she immediately dropped that and grabbed the pug and hugged it tight! So cute. So she got the Bailey:

Washing Bailey off after stuffing him (she helped press the pedal to stuff him and inserted his heart herself)
 

   

   

Cuddling Bailey in bed this morning: 
 
 
 And today was a teacher planning day so the kids were out of school. Since the weather was pretty nice, Aliy and Cathy and I took the kids to the zoo:

 
I thought this bicycle with all the flowers was really pretty

   
Trying to get a picture of all the kids was like herding cats! 

   
Enjoying a valentine lollipop

   

   
Pushing the wagon. She does this really well!

   

 
 

Checking out one of the monkeys. Kinsey thought he was really cool and stood there talking to him for a few minutes.