First Steps, crawling, copycats, daycare and poo

So in the past month or so Kaitlyn has done a number of things.

First Steps
She took her first steps... She's had been cruising around furniture and walls for quite some time and had gotten to the point where hitomi and I could sit a foot or so apart and she'd fall/stumble 2 or 3 steps to our outreached arms. She thought this was hilarious and would laugh like crazy as we caught her.

Then one day a Hitomi's parents place she started standing on her own. She had also been doing this for awhile and was also make a great game of it. To the point where she'd respond to "Kaitlyn No hands!!" (followed by an arms up gesture) she'd mimic that and let go of whatever she was holding onto and make fun squealling noises as she attempted to balance herself.

Anyhoo, so she was practising standing and had progress to dancing at the same time when she took 2 or 3 very deliberate steps. Hitomi said that they were very different to her stubling steps.

We haven't seen her take deliberate steps again, but now she's cruising around at breakneck speeds and can walk with you quite confidently while just holding 1 hand. Actually just this weekend it progressed to her holding onto your finger, rather than you holding her hand.

So I think we are calling the age at which kaitlyn first walked to be at 10 1/2 months and she walked for... um dancing? LOL

Crawling
Funnily enough, the same day that Kaitlyn took her first steps she started crawling. Previous to this kaitlyn just did the tummy drag thing. We were concerned that she'd skip crawling and just start walking. But now she barely tummy surfs and instead crawls to a nearby wall or piece of furniture and walks the rest of the way... LOL

Poops
Something that we may have forgotton to mention is that we now catch around 50% of kaitlyns poo in the toilet. She usually gives us fair warning that one is on the way. When we see this its a mad rush to the bathroom. Usually the excitement of us rushing around makes her back off a tad... sometimes not. We then sit her on her little toilet seat and tell her to push (along with scrunched up faces) she usually copies us and we've been praising her like crazy when she gets it right. However we are worried we are about to loose 2 months of work because of ....

Daycare
So kaitlyn has been to her two test daycare days. She starts this week on fulltime daycare. So far the results are good, she likes her daycarer (teacher? carer?) and seems to cry less than the 3 other kids there.

We have kaitlyn in Family Daycare (a registered daycare run out of someones home) and not in the Capilano College Group Daycare. I'm not uber happy about using family daycare, but we got screwed by Capilano College group daycare and didn't find out until a 2 months ago (which is way too late to get into a decent group daycare facility) Grrr!

However kaitlyn seems happy and always wants to play with the other kids there. The other kids are all 2 year olds and there is 1 girl and 2 boys. Her Daycarer was surprised how easily kaitlyn would go and want to play with the other kids.

So yeah kaitlyn is really growing up. She's showing us that she learns quickly, is socialiable and loves to have fun. Yeah.... she's a pretty cool kid.

Weigh in update

So Kaitlyn is still a small kid. At 10 months old she only wieghs 7.4kg (16.3lbs) which puts her in the 5th percentile for weight. Height wise she is 69cm (27in) tall which puts her in the 15th - 20th percentile for height.

We are not too concerned (as our Dr is not concerned) and I think it's because
a) we are asian and these charts are generally for caucasian babies

b) kaitlyn is really active. Always wriggling, crawling/dragging her self everywhere and walking (with assistance) when ever she can.

Just last night she chased me around our Ottoman for a good 10 mins. She also a really good eater. Honestly the amount of food that she consumes is amazing.

So pehaps she's going to be one of those girls who is petite and can eat anything they want... i was kinda like that (except I wasn't a girl, LOL) until i stopped growing... around the same time I started uni. Well the rest is history (and a spare tire and man boobs)

First words

So just this sunday morning past kaitlyn said her first word. She's been playing with sounds alot lately. She's started with dadadaada and then bababababa then moved onto mumumumumum. However none of it was on context.

for a couple of weeks we've been wondering if she's been saying elsa. However it sounded like "elda" or sometimes we think she'd call elsa Eh!

However on sunday morning the word elsa came out clear as day. It wasn't an elda, it was definitely a very cute high pitched "elsa!" It was in context as well as elsa had just walked by and grabbed her attention.

Later that morning we realized that she might think that all dogs are elsa as hitomi was holding her near the fridge. On the fridge we have a dog calendar. She reached forward to the calendar and said "elsa" again.

Though again we are not sure that she can recognize dogs from other furry animals, so perhaps all small furry things are elsa.

Anyhoo we are definitely calling "elsa" her first word :)