I thought about scaling back these monthly updates to every odd month, or every even month,
but this past month has been full of activity, so I thought I’d better get some of it down.
I’m not really sure where to begin! Kenley is like nine years old now it seems.
She continues to be a talking machine and we have full out conversations.
She is hilarious (yes, I know, every parent says that about their child…as they should).
Here are a couple snippets from this month:

Daddy: How about we do something or something (really I have no idea what he said).
Kenley: That’s a great idea Daddy!!!!!!!

[Getting dressed] Oh, this shirt is so comfy!

[In the car on the way to school] It’s ok Crosby, don’t be upset.
We’re almost here. You get your pacifier.
See Crosby, I told ya we’re almost here.

[Before every meal] We gotta pray first.
This makes my heart so happy.

[Watching the monitor (monimer) scan from room to room]
OPE! That’s my bed!!
OPE! That’s Crosby’s bed!
OPE! That’s my bed! (and so on…)
OPE = NOPE without the N

Kenley wears big girl undies, Mommy wears big girl undies,
Daddy wears big girl undies, Crosby wears diapers.

[In the car on the way to school] OPE! We’re on the bridge.
We’re off the bridge. We go down. Up and down.

I’m sure I could go on and on, but I’ll spare you.

She is both independent and indecisive at the same time, which can be exhausting.
In .2 seconds, she changes her mind five times.
I brush my teeth, no Mommy brush my teeth, no I brush my teeth!
She just. can’t. decide.
She really wants to know how to put her clothes on and take them off.
Sometimes it’s a struggle and we end up with very stretched out shirts,
but heaven forbid if you try to help her! She really wants to be able to do all things by herself.
We have been compromising a lot. We’ll put her shirt on her head, then she can do her arms.
We will brush her teeth first, then she can finish.
I wanna do it is still a commonly heard phrase in our house.

Over the last four months or so, we had been establishing some bad bedtime habits.
She was coming out of her room a lot and we were willingly going back in to put her back to bed
what felt like a million times a night. She kept finding ways to put off bedtime, mostly because she needed her “blankey on” 15 times. Try telling a two year old that if she doesn’t get up, then her blankey won’t come off.
Then we started potty training, and every noise she made, we ran in there JUST IN CASE she had to potty. This developed into even worse nighttime and (very) early morning habits. I’m talking in the 5:00am hour.
After an incredibly rough night, we were at a loss.
Our fear that the crying newborn would wake the toddler turned into the crying toddler waking the newborn.
Not good.
After a lot of research, we settled on trying the Good Nite Lite.
Apparently, we weren’t the only ones. After a week of stalking their Facebook page, to see when they were going to restock on Amazon, we finally got one!
After a night of crying it out and a couple days of the Good Nite Lite, we were back in business.
This light is seriously amazing. Kenley loves waiting for the moon to come on and as soon as it does, she knows it’s time for bed. She doesn’t get out of bed until the sun comes on the next morning.
She is also now at the point where she will get up to go potty and if the sun isn’t on yet, she’ll go back to bed. (Of course we had some accidents before we got to this milestone, but hallelujah!)
I have NO IDEA how it works, but whoever invented this is the smartest person in the world.
We also follow this checklist at night time. It really helped re-established a routine and Kenley likes to talk about what we have done and what’s next on the list.
I can see it now, she’ll be a list-maker just like her mama!

Now that we are a couple months removed from the potty training experience,
I feel like I may be able to actually talk about it.
We’re still doing very well and only having an accident here or there, nothing serious.
The three day potty training method took eight days for us.
It was a helluva long week that I am thankful is behind us!

This age continues to present great challenges for us, but this month we celebrated some sweet successes.
Just as she keeps learning, so do we. Parenting isn’t for the weak, that’s for sure!