She's Got...Personality!

Last week our Love turned 22 months old. If I thought life with her was fun a few months ago...well, then we're just having a non-stop party now. Everyday her personality shines through more and more and most of the time, it cracks me up. Other times it makes me want to pull my hair out. She is a smart cookie and she will pull her 'cute' card in a heartbeat! She's in a phase where she likes to get sympathy. She will spend 10 minutes straight telling me that various parts of her body hurts just so I will kiss it. I play along though because I love to hear her say "thank you mommy" after I give up the kiss.

Besides her ever-growing personality, she is growing like a weed. She weighs in at 26 pounds and 33" tall. Last month I said she was 33.5" tall so either she shrunk or I measured wrong last month. I'm guessing it's the latter. Both stats put her right at average for her age but for some reason people always mistake her for being older than what she is.

Kalissa is definitely a toddler who knows what she wants....and sometimes it's not me! *lol* Case and point: Daddy usually goes to bed a few minutes before us. As soon as he kisses me goodnight, she runs right after him so she can fall asleep with him. I wait about 15 minutes for her to fall asleep and then put her in her own bed. We have yet to make her fall asleep in her own bed -- but it's coming! Anyway, Daddy invited me to come to bed with them and I was like, okay let's try it out. I climbed in to MY bed and laid my head on MY pillow and Kali threw a fit! She literally started pushing my head and saying, "Moooove Mommy!! Mommy moooooove!" Whaaat? Oh no, this is MY bed Little Bit! Al just shook his head and said, "Why are y'all arguing like you're siblings??" *lol* That went on a few times but now she allows me to come to bed with them. uhhhh...thanks.

She still repeats and imitates everything we do. It's so funny when she tries to work out with me. Or when she starts repeating things like, "oh gosh!" Good thing we are very careful with our vocabulary. Her sitter called me by my name the other day and HOURS later, Kalissa had the nerve to say, "Hi Tare-line". Ummmm...that's MOMMY to you! Every now and again she'll pull it out to try and get a reaction from me. The girl's memory is off the chain. Her new greeting for us when she wakes up is, "Hi morning Mommy (or Daddy)!" No matter how many times we correct her and say it's, "GOOD morning", she just goes back to "Hi Morning!" in the most cheerful and happy voice! So now we just roll with it because it's so cute. :)

We're letting her get a little more independence. Especially with feeding herself. On Tuesdays I usually have a night meeting at work so the family has to fend for themselves for dinner. That's all good with Daddy because Tuesday happens to be Popeye's Chicken 2-pieces-for-99-cents-day. Here's Kali getting all in to her chicken. Apparently, Daddy got her spicy instead of mild! But as you see, that didn't stop her one bit. *lol*

Of course she would like her independence given at faster intervals but she definitely can't be trusted too much yet. Case and point: On Mother's Day, I took her with me to Wal-Mart. No big deal...we go all the time. I had just come from getting her a gang of toys from Toys R Us and had to pick up a few items from Wally World. As always, I carried her from the car into the store but the whole time she kept asking me to let her walk. I told her no, that I was going to carry her. We got into the store and I put her down but continued to hold her hand. I tried to grab a shopping cart so she could ride in the front, but the carts were stuck together. I instinctively let go of her hand to pull the carts apart and in the 2 seconds that it took....Kalissa took off running. Right out the open doors of the store. At this particular Wal-Mart, the doors are 10 feet from the street. Once I heard the sound of her shoes hitting the ground running, I took off after her yelling her name. She was out the door and finally stopped TWO FEET FROM THE STREET. Cars travel about 20/25 mph in this area and it is a VERY busy street. My heart was in my feet. I snatched her up, went back in the store and put her in the cart. A woman who saw the whole thing looked at me like she wanted to say something. I shot her a look back like, "If you know what's best for you, you will keep on walking". Lucky for her, she walked away without a word. I was so upset. I hate to think about what could have happened. God is good. It's almost a month later and I'm just now able to write about it. Al told me that close call needed to happen so that I could protect her from something bigger. It taught me to keep a much closer eye on her because in a split second, tragedy can strike. Lesson learned. I made sure to tell everyone who spends time with her to NEVER let her hand go because she will take off. I never thought she would, but she did and you don't have to tell me twice!

Anyhoo....her mind is still going a mile a minute. This video was taken last month. At 21 months old, she was a pretty good counter! One month later and she has gotten better and can almost count to 10 perfectly.

She also loooooves to put together puzzles. Seriously, I can't keep up with keeping her little mind occupied! Why she always yells when she is being filmed is beyond me *lol* but that's her thing.

She loves to talk on the phone. Whenever someone calls, she asks is it Oma? No. GG? No. Nana? No!!! *lol* No matter who it is, she wants to talk and you will not be able to have a conversation until you let her talk! Right now Oma is in Alaska and she sent Kali a little Eskimo Girl (that's what Kali calls her) and Kalissa loves her, of course.


Now that the summer is upon us, we pulled her out of her Thursday morning Gymboree classes. Daddy will fill in that time with an outdoor activity. Since we have Sea World passes, I'm sure a lot of that time will be spent there. She saw her first animal show at Sea World the other day. I didn't think she was old enough to be interested yet, but I was wrong. She has a puzzle that has a bunch of sea creatures and she loves to name them all: dolphin, whale, turtle, crab, etc. So I told her we were going to see the dolphins and whale show and she seemed excited. Problem was, we were one of the first in line and by the time we were seated, the show was still 45 minutes away from starting! No way did I think she would last 45 minutes and then sit through a half-hour show. But she did it! And didn't miss a thing. She loved it!


Of course I had to let her get some energy out in the play area afterwards. Kalissa is surely not shy about jumping right on in and having a good time. She is definitely NOT a wall flower!


I can already tell that we will have a blast this summer and I'm looking forward to every minute of it!