Illness Strikes Again, But Didn't Last Long

Last weekend Kinsey was sick - this time with a stomach thing. She didn't want to eat on Friday (barely ate lunch or dinner), but she was still acting fine. She seemed fine on Saturday morning too, but then we went out and she got sick in the car. She seemed to feel better afterwards, but still wasn't quite acting like herself. Sure enough she threw up again in the afternoon, took a long nap and held down some crackers and water that evening, but then threw up again on Sunday morning. It was a beautiful day on Sunday (nearly 70!) so I took her outside for a bit to get some warm, fresh air. She continued to be ok the rest of the day, but was only interested in water and crackers and sometimes not even that. She took another long nap and woke up extremely fussy, but settled down after a bit and steadily got better from there. She started eating again on Monday, I kept her home from school on Tuesday just to be sure she was over it and she was definitely fine - she was hungry!

I'm not surprised that she was sick - it is a new month, so she was due for it. Plus we had tickets to go to a concert Sunday night, so of course she was sick. I don't know why we continue to buy tickets for things and waste our money because these things always happen. My friend Aliy was still willing to watch her for us so we could go, but when she woke up from that long nap at 6 pm so fussy and the concert was only an hour a way, we just couldn't go.

Anyway, since she's gotten over that sickness, she's been doing great. She's been eating better than ever (making up for not eating for 4 days)! We even moved her out of her high chair and into a booster seat so she can sit right at the table with us and feed herself. This move was spurred on by the fact that she was showing a strong interest in sitting on the dinning table chairs. She saw me sit down on Tuesday and after I got up, she went over to my chair and was trying to put her leg up on it so she could slide on and sit down (like she does at preschool, but those chairs are much lower to the ground!). Here's a video.

So we got out the booster seat and put it on her chair instead of the high chair and she's been eating at the table ever since. She's also been doing really well with the fork - we still have to put the food on it for her, but she gets the food to her mouth most of the time.

As I mentioned, Spring is finally here and we've had some really nice days lately (still some occasional cold and snowy ones too), but we've been able to get outside and play! I bought her a little play kitchen for outside at a recent consignment sale (love those things!) so we set it up in the yard this week:

We also spent some time checking out our new BIG toy: a camper travel trailer! We've decided we're going to do our family vacations with a camper from now on instead of flying. It will be so much easier on all of us since this will allow us to bring all of Kinsey's things with us (toys, medicines/equipment, etc.) and we can travel short distances at a time so she's not trapped in the car/car seat all day like when we fly, plus she can be "home" to play with all her things. The trailer has 2 slide outs - one in the living room and one in Kinsey's room, which currently has 2 bunk beds (upper) and a Cub Couch (lower). We're removing the couch and putting in a crib for her so she'll be able to sleep like she's at home too. We are planning a weekend trip to Colorado Springs in May to test it out and get used to it, then a week-long trip to Yellowstone in late June! We're really excited about this and hope it works out well for us. Plus there are so many places we can drive to from here to explore (I felt like we had exhausted the East Coast living there my whole life, but now we have a whole new world to explore).

Here's a picture of the trailer. I'll get some pictures of the inside and post them next week:

And here's Kinsey playing while sitting on the steps:

She's handing me a rock she picked up

Kinsey's really displaying an understanding of things a lot more lately. At school, they use an iPad app to show her pictures of things and have her choose an item - they use this at snack time to have her pick her milk or yogurt pouch, etc. and she's been doing a great job with it. She's also been doing a good job of identifying an object if you show her a picture of multiple things and ask her to find one of them. And she's been getting better at color matching too.

Plus, I think she's making car sounds when she plays with her vehicles. The other day she emerged from her bedroom pushing her Farmall tractor with her baby doll sitting in the driver's seat and she was making a sound like a kid would do when playing with a car. Here's a video (she's really just talking in this video, but she was making a different sound before I got the camera) and a picture:

I think that's it for this week. Just a couple more pictures and videos:

Pushing her chair across the floor while sitting in it: video
Waving at herself: video

Picking out some new clothes from the Osh Kosh catalog

Doing some laundry?