Andrej, Jessica, Kaiya and Tobi

And just like that, Kaiya turned 2!

I still find it hard to believe that the little newborn we brought home from the hospital, with her rosy skin and deep blue eyes and little round head with nothing more than peach fuzz on top is now two years old. The baby girl who just a day before her birthday last year started walking and began to communicate with actual words, now runs, jumps, climbs, dances and speaks in colorful sentences. The baby girl who wouldn't wear a birthday hat last year or even taste her birthday cake, picked out her party hats this year and knew exactly what kind of birthday cake she wanted. I blinked and my sweet baby girl turned two! (Read more …)

Every night before singing Kaiya her final song and saying goodnight, I pray for her. I've done this pretty much every night since she was born. A few months ago, in an attempt to rush through our bedtime routine due to the late hour, I forgot to say the prayer. She looked up at me and said, "Mama, say payer." I was disappointed that of all the things she had to remind me of it was the prayer, but in the process realized that maybe she would like to start saying her own prayers. (Read more …)

Since my Kaiya updates tend to be a wee bit on the long side, I decided to write Kaiya at 21 Months number style. To keep my points to a minimum, I'm writing only 12 facts about our sweet little 21 month old. It will still probably be long, as are all my posts, but hopefully this will keep my thoughts on track.

1. Kaiya has successfully transitioned into her big girl bed and loves it! She still asks every once in a while to sleep (or get into) the crib and our response is always the same. We tell her no in a playful way and then ask her who sleeps in cribs. She smiles and says, "Babies seep in criby." Then we ask her where she sleeps and she replies, "Kaiya seep in big bedy." (Read more …)

(Warning: This post is EXTREMELY long. I wanted to document in detail (mainly for myself) the past week and a half as we transitioned our little Kaiya to her new bed.)

Many months ago, after finding out that baby number two would be arriving at the end of May, we decided that Kaiya would need to move out of her crib sometime in early April. We thought that would give her plenty of transition time to a new bed before the baby arrived and took over her beloved crib. It was a relatively easy decision at the time, and one that other parents who had been in a similar situation highly recommended. (Read more …)

Last weekend, Andrej and I were navigating our way through new parental territory. Kaiya had the stomach flu. Last Saturday morning I should have known that something was going on when Kaiya didn't eat very much breakfast. It was also a busy morning in the Ciho household because the next day our house, which we rent and is also for sale, was scheduled for an open house. After breakfast all three of us got to work cleaning and readying the house for potential buyers to walk through. About an hour into our cleaning frenzy, we were all in the living room where Andrej and I had just finished giving our living room rug the best cleaning it has ever received in the year we've owned it. Andrej and Kaiya were sitting on the couch and I was in the recliner and we all were admiring how clean and fuzz free our rug was when Kaiya out of the blue started whining and rubbing her eyes as if she was ready for a nap. Andrej tried comforting her and then put her down so she could come over to me. Just as he was about to release her, I commented the she sure looked sick when "it" happened.  (Read more …)

It is so hard to believe that our little baby is already over a year and a half old. She is growing up so fast and well on her way to the big 2! It was right at a year ago that I made my first contribution to our family website by writing, Kaiya at 6 Months. A lot has changed since then, but one thing remains the same, I have so much I want to document about Kaiya. In fact, this Kaiya update will need to be split into three separate posts because I can’t stop thinking of things I want to share. This post is a general update of Kaiya at 18 months and the following post is about the language explosion that happened just over the last month. The third post is found here, as I thought it would be best to backdate it to December when one of our scariest moments with Kaiya so far actually occurred; our little girl obtained a snaggle tooth. (Read more …)

Over the last month or so Kaiya’s vocabulary has really taken off. I don’t think I will be able to even list all of her new words because it seems like each day she says something new and then uses it over and over again. She also just recently started repeating a lot of what we say. It’s really cute as Andrej and I have a conversation and every couple of words Kaiya will repeat something that caught her ear. She has also started to put two words together and form somewhat of a sentence. Her latest was the other day when Andrej had finished changing her diaper and was getting her dressed. Kaiya looked up at him and exclaimed, “Pants, On!” Andrej and I were both amazed and praised her for creating a sentence, and then Andrej quickly got her pants on so she would know that we understand her. (Read more …)