For love of the park

So we had GORGEOUS weather this weekend in Wisconsin and we took full advantage with trips to the park. Kiya likes to play outdoors.

She went down the slides and played on the swings and bounced on a fire truck and a crocodile. She had a blast. Sorry forgot the camera so you will have to take my word for it. We will bring in next time.

It would be one trip down the slide and a very emphatic point and "dat" or that to do it again. And again and yet again. Saturday was all about the slide and not a little bitty slide but a pretty big slide. She loved it. Daddy got her up there and she came sliding down to Mom all with a HUGE grin.

Sunday it was all about the swings. Oh my I never knew a kid could love swings this much. Sure she went down the slides a few times and did some other things but she always wanted to go back to the swings. If she wasn't going fast enough she got mad. We at first thought her madness was an indication she was all done but we tried to stop the swing and that led to a meltdown in the park. She wanted more.

I swear she would have slept in the swing had we let her. She kind of lost it for a little bit when it was time to leave. She wanted to be on the swings and she was sure to let us and everyone else at the park know it.

Overall we had a great sunshine filled weekend outdoors. I see many more trips to the park in our future.

In other fabulous Kiya news, she has learned to stand up in her crib. Daddy saw it. I haven't yet. She has also learned how to climb into her chair and is getting quite good and pulling herself up to a stand on just about anything and everything. She even grabs your pant legs and uses them to pull herself up. And scooting is taking a backseat to crawling. She is crawling a lot more now and a lot faster. She will still scoot too just not as much which is good as the scooting was tearing up the skin on her ankles. She is also becoming a master of feeding herself with a fork and a spoon though sometimes she will throw silverware so we need to work on that. She has also learned how to drink from a straw. She is such a big girl now.

Then there is timeout. Well, time in really. She still loves to hit mommy and she thinks it is funny when I say "no hitting or we don't hit". I tried to say ow that hurts or fake cry and neither of those worked. One day she was just hitting and laughing and I had had enough so I went with Super Nanny's advice. I gave Kiya a warning. I said "this is your warning, if you hit Mommy again we are going to sit it time out." She laughed and hit me again. So I picked her up and sat her down behind the couch away from all toys, etc and said "we are going to sit here because you kept hitting mommy and we don't hit." I sat next to her for about 1 minute. After that I explained to her again why she had to sit there and asked her for a hug and a kiss. She wouldn't give me a kiss but gave me a hug and we went on to read a book.

We had one more incident of hitting later that afternoon. This time she tried to get up from timeout so I placed her back and started the time over. She tried twice. The third time she sat there and was quiet. At the end I asked for a hug and a kiss and I got both and we went on to playing again.

She understands so much more than I thought she did which has its pros and cons. I would think 16 months is too young for timeout/in but I had run out of options.