14 Months and Kaden

Mr. Kaden turned 14 months on October 16th.  He has quite the little personality and is getting a lot better at understanding us when we talk to him or ask him to do something.  We are also getting better at understanding him because for the first time since I started teaching him Baby Signs (since he was 7 months old,) he'll actually use Baby Signs on occasion to tell me what he wants.

Some of Kaden's favorite things right now are...

His tongue- he loves to spit.  No idea where he picked this up but it's kind of funny. (In a bad manners kind of way.)

Putting his finger in places where there are holes or openings- his ears, his nose, your mouth.  Hopefully not in that order.  I often take pictures thinking they are cute, only to look back at them later and realize Kaden had his finger in his nose for all of them.  Take this last week for example when my parents came to visit.

The slide- this boy is fearless.  He doesn't care that certain parts of the playground are designed for different ages: 2-5 and 6-12 year olds.  No sir, he's not going down the "toddler slide." He wants to go down the biggest one there is.  He especially thinks it's fun face first.  Let's be honest, parks in general and playgrounds of all kinds keep this boy happy for hours.  No matter how much he has climbed, how many times he's gone on the slides, the swings, the rock wall, you name it, it is a guarantee that he will kick and scream when we leave because he's still not done playing.

Leaves and sticks. He loves to collect them, eat them, hold them, look at them, carry them.  Good thing we live in Rochester and there are a million trees everywhere, so consequently there are double the amount of leaves and twigs and sticks.  The world is his adventure.  One day he was trying to pick up leaves and push his little bike at the same time.  He couldn't seem to figure out how to keep all of the leaves in his hands and his hands simultaneously on the bar of his bike.  He was wearing overalls, so I showed him his front pocket and how to put leaves in there.  Problem solved.  The next day he went outside with Curtis and didn't have a front pocket.  I hadn't told Curtis about where I showed Kaden to put the leaves and Curtis couldn't figure out why Kaden would try and touch all the leaves to his chest and then kept trying to put them  down his shirt. :)

 

To point.  Kaden shows us what he wants and where he wants to go by pointing all day long with his right pointer finger.  He points when he wants to know the name of things or wants to hold something and goes, "ah".  It is so cute!  He loves telling us what he wants.

Kaden has the cutest gap-tooth grin.

He is a true toddler in the fact that he wants to be independent but still lacks a lot of the skills to be fully independent.  He'll often squirm out of our arms when we try to pick him up, hold him or make him sit in his high chair or carseat.

 Shaking things.  Kaden loves things that are taller than him and he especially loves to shake them- trees and lamps specifically.  We had to get rid of our floor lamp in his room since he knocked it over so many times on himself.

Stairs.  Kaden has learned to go backwards down the stairs and he's quite obsessed with his new skill.  He'll climb all the way to the top of a flight just to go back down one second later.  He'll start from 4-5 feet away from the top of the staircase to turn around and then slither on his belly to the stairs.

Food: corn, carrots, bell peppers, peas, avocado and tomatoes.  This boy loves his food, but especially his veggies.  The other day I tried to offer him strawberries and he kept pushing them away.  I finally figured out why: he wanted the peas on the table instead. He's also finally learned to like/use sippy cups and cups with a straw.  Its taken him awhile so this is big for Kaden.

We love our monkey.  He is growing up so fast but each month he becomes more and more fun!