Kaelia's 1st Birthday

Kaelia had a lovely 1st birthday at her Grandma and Grandpa Pepera's house. We started off the day with a BBQ and went right in to presents and birthday cake. Kaelia had no problem trying to unwrap her presents - she enjoyed the wrapping quite a bit actually. Then the birthday cake provided an interesting experience for her. This was her first real "sweet" and she wasn't quite sure what to do with the cake. She ended up taking of layers of the frosting and cake and smooshing it off to the side. But once she had a taste of the cake, she couldn't get enough. She even went back to her smooshed pile and starting eating that part of the cake!

Thank you to everyone who came to the party and to everyone who thought of Kaelia on her special day!

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Kaelia - 1 Year

Kaelia is quite the big girl now at one year! Her vocabulary and communication has increased tremendously. She will often point to something and say a word to tell us what she wants. When she wants to go out of the room, for example, she will point to the door and says "doe" (door). And she will say "ba ba" and point to the kitchen when she wants her bottle. Kaelia also has learned some farm animals. She says "hay" for a horse, "moo" for a cow, and "baa" for a sheep. Body parts are her latest thrill as she learns parts of the face. So far she knows nose, eyes, and mouth, and she attempts to say nose but it sounds more like "doe."

Kaelia has also been very busy this month with teething. She finally got her top teeth - all four of the middle ones in fact! The outside teeth actually came in first, so she had a pretty comical smile without the middle top teeth. And when she closed her jaw, her bottom teeth (the middle two) fit in between her top teeth!

Kaelia's measurements are right on track at the year at 20.5 lbs. in weight,33.6 inches in height, and with a head circumference of 18 inches.

Here are some of the great moments we have captured with our little girl during her first year.

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Mother's Day

I had a wonderful Mother’s Day this year with my family. We first went out to breakfast at a restaurant filled with playground equipment and a petting zoo. Justin and the girls had a nice time playing while I sat back and relaxed. Then we were off to the mall for a Winnie the Pooh extravaganza. The girls LOVED this part of the day. The Hundred Acre Wood was set up next to the food court where a lady came out and read Pooh Bear stories to the crowd and then Pooh and Tigger came out to meet everyone. Kaelia was intrigued just to see so many other kids and crawled around them all during the performance. Taelyn instantly darted to the front of the crowd to be a part of the action. Then when the lady started reading the stories, Taelyn would not sit down with all of the other kids and insisted on standing right next to the lady so she could see the book too. After quite a bit of bouncing to the Tigger song, Taelyn was ready to meet Pooh and Tigger. She got up on stage with them after the show and gave them each a hug; and she fit in very well while wearing her Eeyore jacket. To finish the fun, Kaelia and Taelyn sat at a table together to color an Eeyore coloring sheet.

The second half of my Mother's Day was quite a change from the first half. The girls stayed behind with our nanny while Justin and I went out with some friends to an And-1 basketball tournament in Soweto. We first hung out at a shebeen (a bar that preserves much of the South African cultural heritage) for a local experience and then headed over to the game. It was a lot of fun, and it brought about some South African culture that I was reminded that I am living in a foreign country as this is so easy to forget in our day-to-day lives.

The day was a perfect mixture of time with family and friends, and I am so fortunate to have wonderful people in my life!

Kaelia - 11 Months

Kaelia is now 11 months and has jumped up quite a bit in her measurements. She weighs 20.3 lbs., is 33.1 inches tall, and has a head circumference of 17.5 inches. This puts her in the 50th percentile for her weight and head measurements and the 95th percentile for her height.

Developmentally, Kaelia has made some physical and mental leaps as well. She has been perfecting her walking and attempts to walk at every chance she can get. She has made it about halfway across a room so far before either falling or choosing to crawl the rest of the way. Each time she takes a step, though, she is so proud of herself. And when she does crawl around the house, it is usually a bear crawl where her legs are straight so that her knees do not touch the ground. This type of crawl is just another indicator that she would rather walk than crawl.

This month has been quite the verbose month too. Kaelia loves to talk and has picked up more words. She will repeat words that we say such as “cat,” “cow,” and “cool,” and she definitely knows the word “dog.” Whenever we see a dog at the playground, she shouts out “dog” followed by “ooooh” (that’s what she says when she gets really excited about something). And Kaelia loves to “read” books with dogs in them. She will often sit alone and flip through her books for a little independent time. But we whenever she comes across a dog in her books, she slaps the page and says “daw” for “dog.”

Another milestone that Kaelia has recently reached is pointing and waving. While we read books to her, she likes to point at items on each page for us to say out loud to her. And when we ask her where something is on the page (like the dog), she will point to it. One day we were reading a book together that had a dog in it, and she first pointed to the dog on the page. Then she looked up at the bookshelf and pointed to another book with a dog on the cover and said “daw.” I really can’t reiterate enough how much our little pumpkin loves dogs! Kaelia also waves any time we say “bye bye” now. She has been waving for several months, but this is the first time it has occurred in context; she used to just wave for fun, but now she waves to say good-bye. Kaelia was playing with my wallet one day and found a picture of Justin in it. She pointed to him and said “da.” Then when I put the wallet a way, I saw “bye bye daddy,” and she waved good-bye to the picture.

Kaelia is such a sweetheart, and it is so fun to see her personality coming out more and more. She loves to be around her family, play outside in the sand box, climb up anything she can, swing and go down the slide at the playground, look at birds (and of course dogs!), wrestle, and give kisses.

Here is a cute little video we took of Kaelia this past month where she tries to put an object on her head.

Happy Easter!

The girls had a very nice Easter celebration this year as we got together with some friends for a potluck brunch, Easter egg decorating, and an Easter egg hunt. We started with the decorating; it’s funny how Taelyn seemed to completely understand what she was doing without having any prior experience of the activity before. She did great. She dropped a few eggs in to different bowls of colors and waited patiently for the dye to set in. She was, however, more eager to eat the hard boiled eggs than she was to color them. The task was a lot more exciting for her when the colored was complete and she got to put stickers on the eggs. While all of this was going on, Kaelia had her first experience with Easter eggs as she tried to figure out what to do with a plastic egg.

After brunch, the egg hunt began. Some of the older girls hid the plastic eggs around the yard for the younger girls to find. This task was not very easy for them, though, because Taelyn wanted to be a part of the action too, so she kept following them around as they hid the eggs. The girls eventually figured out that Taelyn was not trying to peek in on the hiding places and they continued on. During the hunt, both girls had a blast. Kaelia was still very interested in finding out more about the mysterious plastic eggs, so she did more inspecting than finding. She especially liked to pull all of the eggs out of the basket that Taelyn had already found. And Taelyn loved searching for the eggs throughout the yard. She went from place to place while the older girls followed her and carried her basket.

Once we made it home later that day, Taelyn brought back one of her decorated Easter eggs (she insisted on the “eddo” [yellow] one). This egg had to go everywhere with her; she had to hold it in her car seat during the ride home, it had to sit next to her on the couch, and she had to take a nap with it! Then when she woke up from her nap, she couldn’t find the egg and ran to us in a panic. We found it intact under her pillow, and life was good again. We topped off the day by peeling the egg for Taelyn and Kaelia to eat. Taelyn did most of the peeling herself and then enjoyed finally getting to eat her Easter egg. We’re pretty sure this is all she wanted to do the entire day, so she ended the day completely content and happy.

Weekend in Capetown

This past weekend was packed to the brim with events as we traveled over to Capetown for the Two Oceans running extravaganza. Justin ran the Two Oceans 56km - the initial reason for going to Capetown - and we decided to make a mini vacation out of the trip since we had a four-day weekend over Easter.

We started our time in Capetown at Boulders Beach, home to hundreds of penguins. We had no idea what to expect and were just hoping that we would see a penguin. That wish was granted before we could even get out of our car as a penguin was standing in the middle of our parking spot! At this point, we knew we were going to enjoy the experience. As soon as we headed down the walkway to the beach, several penguins shared the sidewalk with us, and Taelyn ran over to them to say hello. Both parties seemed to like one another. Once we got on to the beach, Kaelia walked over to a penguin while Taelyn continued to chase others. We could walk right up to them before they decided to waddle off and take a dip in the ocean. Next we walked along a path, heading towards a second beach. During our walk, penguins were nested everywhere. Both girls were so excited to see them every couple of steps, and Taelyn decided to stop and talk to a couple of them. Just as she knelt down and said "Nice penguin," one of the penguins gave her a little peck on the nose! Taelyn thought is was hilarious and kept telling us that the "penguin eat Taenyn nose!" We actually videotaped this too (see Smilebox below).

At the second beach, we saw even more penguins than before. Kaelia even started dancing by kicking her little legs because she was so excited. Once Taelyn saw this, she started spinning in circles to add to the dance. It was pretty cute. Then Justin tried to teach Taelyn how to waddle like a penguin, but Taelyn had her own way to doing in. She squatted down, tipping back and forth and she yelled "waddle waddle" and then usually fell backwards because she couldn't balance for too long. We then left the beach laughing and with good spirits.

The next day was the kick-off for the Two Oceans races where I hopped in a 5K fun run and Taelyn made her running debut at the 56m Nappy Dash! She had so much fun. First, we put on her number, and she was so interested in it, that she wouldn't take hand off of it - even when she ran. Then hundreds of 1-3 year-olds and their parents lined up 56m before the finish line and took off when the announcer yelled "GO!" Taelyn paced herself until she saw her daddy at the finish line and then took off to get to him. As we walked through the finish shoot, she was awarded with a medal and a track bag filled with goodies. We sat off to the side so Taelyn and Kaelia could open the goody bag and play. Kaelia was so eager to be a part of the race that she eventually made a mad dash of a crawl while another little baby tried to chase her. Kaelia kept looking back to make sure the other baby was still there and then kept darting away. After we got back to our place, the girls played "Run a Race" over and over again for the rest of the weekend where they took turns wearing Taelyn's medal and then crawled around the room, chasing each other. The medal kept getting caught under their legs until the ribbon was so frayed that it ripped right off. A quick tie held it together, though, so the game could go on.

After Justin's race (for his full story, please see his running blog), we ventured over to the Capetown Aquarium where the girls got to see many different kinds of sea life. They got to pet a starfish in the petting pond and crawl in to the middle of the clown fish aquarium so that they were surrounded by little Nemo's everywhere. Taelyn loved anything there that reminded her of Finding Nemo, and Kaelia loved everything that moved!

We ended our trip with a nice scenic drive along the coast where Justin had run a good portion of his race. The area was breath-taking with the combination of tall trees, enormous rock formations, and crashing ocean tides. Capetown is a beautiful city, and we had the perfect family weekend.

Since we were gone over Easter, we did not get a chance to fully celebrate the holiday, so we plan on doing so next weekend. Stay tuned for pics of that event.

This photo album made with Smilebox

Silly Sisters

The girls have had so many great moments together over the past month that I wanted to display a few that we managed to get on camera. They absolutely adore one another - and they fight like sisters will do too.

This free digital scrapbook customized with Smilebox

Taelyn has her own little games that she has been playing with us as well. Sleep & Awake is a huge favorite where she makes us pretend to be asleep and tuck us in bed. After piling on blankets, toys, puzzles, books, and anything else in sight that she wants us to sleep with, she will then close the door and say, "Sweet dreams, I'll see you in the morning." After a little wait time, she will run back in to the room and scream, "Awake!"

Another game that she recently started playing is Happy Birthday. She likes to stack things on top of each other to represent a birthday cake, give it to one of us, and then sing the happy birthday song. Then she will take a toy or book, wrap it up in a blanket, and give us a birthday present. Taelyn has also kept her birthday cards from February and continues to read them and present them during her little birthday party games.