Weekend Kat Blogging: She’s Getting To Be a Big Girl

Kat’s growth and development continue apace; she is now able to talk quite well, and she narrates everything. She also knows some of her favorite books by heart and will pretty well recite them to herself–and everyone else–at any given opportunity.

Which, fortunately, is really, really cute.

She is cruising toward potty-training on her own. I decided that considering, all of her other developmental milestones were delayed slightly, to just let her tell me when she was ready for the potty. Any attempts on my and Zak’s part to get her out of diapers before she was ready are going to be doomed to failure, because Kat has a combination of personality traits which while endearing, would make any imposition of change requiring physical readiness futile.

For one thing–she is very sensitive. She is afraid of sudden loud noises, for example–even a firm, somewhat louder than normal “No!” will garner instant tears. (This does not stop either Zak or I from imposing limits on Kat, so I know that her reaction is natural–not an attempt to manipulate us.) She is also sensitive to physical stimuli–food textures bug her a bit–not as much as they do other kids–but they do get to her.

Add to the sensitivity a strong will and thoughtful demeanor and you can see why we would hesitate to push Kat into doing something as important as potty training before she is ready. She is strong-willed, but oddly, not in a direct, confrontational way. She is just quietly willful. And her thoughtfulness–she watches everything that goes on around her, and thinks about it and absorbs it. She is very, very observant, and she loves to watch all sorts of action around her, and then she will imitate the action after time has passed and she has absorbed as much information as she can about her objective.

For example–we take her to the park a lot, since our yard is primarily a steep slope. Not good for little persons intent on running about, since it would result in little persons falling down and rolling down said slope only to stop when hitting the brick wall of our house. Ouch. So, we take her to the park. And she is not particularly interested in the play equipment. She will go down the slide a couple of times and then, that is it. She wants to go exploring. So, we take walks. She looks at all the flowers, trees, leaves, birds, rocks and any water she can get near. She will sit and quietly observe ants for the longest time. And, in this particular park, there is a large open field where barn swallows swoop and fly, just skimming the ground, about a foot up from the grass as they catch tiny flying insects.

A couple of days ago, Kat and I went to the park and she insisted on running into the field into the midst of the barn swallows. The birds got used to us, and would swoop down, at her eye-level, and whiz past only a couple of feet away. And she watched them dip and swoop, the sun shimmering violet and indigo on their feathers, and after watching them for a good five minutes, she held her arms out and started wheeling, dipping and swaying, running in a wide figure 8, imitating the swallows. When I asked what she was doing, she said, “Bird dance!”

So, as I said, she is cruising toward potty training on her own. She doesn’t like the feel of a wet diaper on her, and will insist on being changed. She also tells us when she has pooped–or is about to. And she has shown much interest in the goings-on in the bathroom.

So, it is coming, thankfully. I really didn’t want to have to fight with her over it–not only because I hate fighting with kids, but because it would have been detrimental to the task at hand.

In less scatalogical news, but equally interesting and entertaining, Kat has also learned how to string beads. We have a video of her carefully stringing plastic pony beads on an elastic cord. The first thing she made was a necklace which she insisted was for her big sister. As I tied off the ends, I asked her who the necklace was for, and she said, “Ganna!”

So, we met Morganna, James and Brittney downtown on the college green and Kat got to give her sister the first fruits of her beading.

It was so cute. Morganna even looked like she was going to cry.

She’ll be mad I told everyone, though.

9 Comments

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1. Kat is truly one in a million. I love hearing her stories!

   Comment by Cindy — May 31, 2009 #

2. That is too sweet about the beads. They are lucky to have each other for sisters!

   Comment by Josie — May 31, 2009 #

3. Bird dance …. so cute!

   Comment by JoAnn — May 31, 2009 #

4. We moved 3 times in 1.5 years, and I lived through about 1.5 years of not so subtle but well meaning hints about when was Alex going to potty train… anyway I let her go at her own pace, and about 3 months after the last move, which she understood was the last, at age 3.5, she did it in 3 days and has had no accidents since (although she wears pull ups at night–we’ve been traveling and I have not even broached the topic). I am determined that Sammy, who is Kat’s age, will potty train equally as smoothly–and that means equally on her own schedule, although presumably earlier than Alex since we are done moving, which is quite the trauma for little people. I totally agree with you.

   Comment by Laura — May 31, 2009 #

5. I have both a son and a nephew that are passively stubborn– I think it’s a genetic personality trait since they also have the same body habitus.

   Nice to hear about her 🙂

   Comment by wwjudith — June 1, 2009 #

6. Have you come across the book The Highly Sensitive Child by Elaine Aron? I haven’t read it (not having kids), but her book The Highly Sensitive Person: How To Thrive When The World Overwhelms You has been very helpful for me.

   Question #1 on the “Is your child sensitive?” questionnaire is “T/F: My child startles easily.”

   Comment by Lexica — June 1, 2009 #

7. It’s nice to see that even with an age difference the girls are close. That is such a cute story. Thank’s for the update.

   Comment by Maureen — June 1, 2009 #

8. Love the bird dance!

   Comment by Elaine at Lipstickdaily — June 1, 2009 #

9. Kat’s going to be an artist of some sort. I just bet you anything.

   When I was a very young child–7 or 8 years old, I remember drawing a picture of a tree in art class. It was an odd looking tree, but I remember trying to draw how that tree felt, not just how it looked (it was a great big maple that sat in our front yard), because I used to sit in that tree for hours.

   The teacher didn’t like it. I remember getting a frownie face on my picture. When I came home in tears, my mother stormed down to school and confronted that teacher. “Have you ever sat in a tree? Felt the bark beneath your fingertips? Observed how the sunlight hit the leaves and filtered through the branches? Well Roxanne has, and that’s what she was drawing! Leave well enough alone!”

   Mom’s still my hero for that 🙂

   Comment by Roxanne — June 1, 2009 #

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