Well, it’s official – our little baby isn’t so little
anymore…Kassiah turned 1 year old last week! It almost caught us off guard since she is much more of a
‘baby’ than Rya was at 1 year. By
now Rya had a handful of small words and even started walking on her 1st
birthday. Kassiah on the other
hand…she likes to take her time.
She’s got quite a bit of weight to carry around and it seems like that’s
easier to do horizontally than vertically, so she avoids taking steps at all
costs. We had started to think she
was saying ‘dada’ and ‘Rya’ a couple of months ago, but now wonder if it was
just babbling since she can’t seem to produce them anymore. Instead she has one multi-purpose word
that she uses all day long: ‘hi’!
When a person walks into the room, ‘hi’, when she wants something ‘hi’,
in response to questions ‘hi’…not much of a vocabulary, but she seems quite
proud of herself. She says it in
such a cute high voice, and sometimes in close repetition, that it’s hard not
to laugh at her strong effort. To
compensate, Kassiah also seems to be inventing her own sign language (as the
second born, she did not have the privilege of attending signing classes like
her sister!)…for ‘all done’ she brings her sausage arms up to her head and uses
her hands to cover her ears.
1 year later also means the end of our shared parental
leave. I was home for the first 6
months and Ivan has been home for these last 6 months. Like any normal stay-at-home parent, I
think he had a bit of a love-hate relationship with it. He brought lots of his kindergarten
teaching skills into our home with ‘centers’ and homemade games for the girls
to play with. Some days the three
of them stayed in their p.j.’s all day, other days he ventured with them to
playgroups (a.k.a. mommy groups).
Rya tested his limits with her picky eating and baby with her
clinginess, but in the end, the 3 of them have developed a pretty amazing
bond. Some days I would come home
to find them all piled on top of each other napping! Rya, especially, has become much more of a daddy’s girl,
often preferring Ivan over mommy when she’s sleepy or has a boo-boo. The experience has also been important
for our relationship, and I would highly recommend it to other brave couples. We each got a turn to walk in the other
person’s shoes and have had some interesting gender norm challenging
arguments.
Thanks to my impeccable pregnancy timing, we now get to
enjoy a family summer vacation together before Ivan and I head back to work and
the girls start daycare. Fingers
crossed that the transition goes smoothly – I’m sure you’ll hear about it
either way!
