15 months.

Kale at 15 months....

What Kale loves: 

• the outdoors. The outdoors still tops the list of 'what Kale loves' this month. Nothing proved this more than spending five full days camping, complete with chasing bugs and chipmunks, having a diaper full of sand, a face covered in mud and all the freedom a little person with endless energy to burn could ask for. Back at home we continue to spend the bulk of our days outdoor, doing laps around the block, visiting the neighbours chickens and digging holes in the sandbox at the park. Kale is the happiest when he is outdoors and spends 99.9% of his time indoors trying to convince us to go out. 
• animals. While our cat Bub Bub remains Kale's all time favourite, dogs come in a close second and birds, chickens and ducks all tie for third. After our camping trip he's added chipmunks and raccoons to furry creatures he can't wait to hug and kiss. 
• water. The lake, the water table, the pool, a cup of water, the splash pad - whatever. Kale absolutely loves playing in the water. 
• garbage. This month Kale started to insist that he be the one to throw his dirty diaper in the garbage. We get him changed, set him on the floor and then give him the diaper. He then walks to the bin, opens the lid, throws it out, closes the lid and claps like he's just won the Pulitzer Prize. His fascination with throwing things out quickly expanded and he now feels the need to be the guard of the garbage. No one else in this house is allowed to throw things out. You must give them to Kale so he can throw them out. Our city has a somewhat complicated sorting system, but I swear that Kale has figured it out. We went to a birthday party for his friend Casey and he spent most of the party standing my the garbage throwing things out for people and clapping up a storm. Some people even pretended they thought it was cute. 
• where is it? This is perhaps Kale's cutest new trick that he's picked up. When I ask where something is, he shrugs his little shoulders and faces his palms up and says "eh?" And then I die from cuteness overload. 

What Kale hates: 

• confinement. Since he was a baby, Kale has always hated being confined by anything but a sling. He's hated the car seat and stroller since day one (although he's warmed to both over time from "hate" to "dislike"), but now we can add walls to the list of things that restrict Kale's freedom that he downright hates. This means staying in the house for more than two minutes can be tough, but going to the grocery store or running an errand is pretty much out of the question. I should have known that giving my kid a name that means "free man" or "free spirit" would result in this. Kid #2 will have a name that means "laid back," "good sleeper" or "easy to entertain." 
• wet clothes. It's tough being Kale when you love water so much, but hate when your clothes get wet. While he's playing at his water table or in a puddle, he's enjoying the water so much that he doesn't notice how wet he's getting. But the second he walks away and feels the damp fabric against his skin, he looses his mind. 

Things to celebrate/milestones/big events: 

• sleeping. We've been working on night weaning Kale and it's been going better than we expected. We've simultaneously transitioned him to a floor bed in his own room. Yeah, this is pretty big news that I haven't blogged about because I (a) don't want to jinx anything, and (b) want to wait until we're a bit further along. All of our hard work has paid off though, since is now sleeping from 9pm - 4am on most nights. He nurses on and off from 4am - 7am and sometimes he's up for the day at 6am, but it's a huge improvement from waking every two hours like we had been doing for the past 14 months. 
• camping. We survived our first family camping trip and had an incredible time. It was the perfect vacation destination for all of us and I'm so happy we took the time to get away. I'll blog more about it this week. 
• utensils and cups. Last month I was worried that Kale might be the only kid in his class come September still eating like a savage so we started offering him a fork with his dinner. He actually took to it surprisingly well and shows a big preference for real forks like mama and papa, opposed to the plastic baby ones. We also started offering him a regular cup instead of his sippy since his school doesn't do sippy cups. When he's thirsty, he's very good at it. Much better than we expected. But once he's quenched his thirst, he enjoys spilling the rest down his front and on the floor. This we need to work on.  
• car seat. We've had some big improvements with the car seat this month. He actually slept most of the two hour trip to our campsite and the trip home and took several air conditioned naps in northern Ontario when the tent was too hot. We've even stopped sitting in the backseat with him and he's been able to amuse himself with my wallet and looking at the "gucks" (trucks) out the window. This doesn't mean we're going to set out on an eight hour road trip, but at least we're able to get to the grocery store now without a major meltdown. 

According to Kale: 

sippy cup and pointed at it. Genius? I think so. 

New words: 

• truck (sounds like "guck"). Everything with a loud engine is a "guck" but when he sees a real truck, he gets really, really excited and yells "GUCK! GUCK!" Let's hope he doesn't master the F sound anytime soon. 
• caw caw! The sound a bird makes. Does this count as a word? I guess it's more of a sound. Regardless, he loves to point out birds and yell "caw! caw!" 

Some of my favourite pictures from the past month: