Kaylee at 17 Months

I didn't get to spend a lot of time with Kaylee over the last month because we spent three weeks apart when Karamea and I returned home from Alaska so I could get back into my responsibilities as a teacher. Mark stayed to help out at the fishing site and kept Kaylee with him in part so my transition here would be easier (but also because having a kid around camp keeps things so joyful.) When I got to see her and Mark again a little over a week ago, it was exciting to see how much change happens in three little weeks.

Since their return, we've had a lot of fun as a family, even though I've been super busy with the beginning of the school year. We went to the Corn Roast Festival, played at the splash park, and went to a bike parade. We've also spent a lot of time hanging out in our backyard and playing in the sprinkler and kiddie pool (It's been super hot here--in the 90s and just cooled down this weekend; three cheers for fall weather!)

She's added some new words to her vocabulary*: gentle, flower (sometimes flowie), purple, strawberry, blueberry, cat, bird, sister, Dandy (our bird), Bear (our dog), have, hungry, food, eat, bite, please, sorry, thank you, slide, fall, taste, play, draw, throw, fly, bird...

*Note: Most of these words are only clear to us, but they have some semblance of the real word, so I'm counting them since she uses them in context, and mostly unprompted (Sorry being the big exception there.)

Here's a cute video of her saying 'gentle' and 'flower'

We no longer have to have a barricade set up in our living room to keep her from the stairs; she is doing really well navigating them and so we're pretty much letting her go. She likes to explore and is also quite determined, so she would likely foil any attempts we made at keeping her penned in. Our stairs (seen here with a picture of Karamea from December 2009-which happens to be the exact same age Kaylee is now!) don't really work with any kind of baby gate.

Well, that's about it for now. Oh, wait, how could I forget!?! She's sleeping through the night most nights now and that is a huge improvement since she was waking at least once a night all summer long.