Saturday, November 22, 2008

November 2008

Kyla's been a very busy girl! She loves to dance, play, and hit her parents. Okay. We are working on that last one. We fend off the frustration by convincing ourselves that it is just her exuberance!

In all her exuberance, she is increasing her vocabulary by the day. I started writing down all of her words so far, including often-used favorites like "goggies" (doggies), "wa" (water), "nana" (banana), and mostly "no". But every day she repeats something we say (time to watch our mouths...) and surprises us. Her list of words used more than once without prompting is up to nearly 40. Already a little chatterbox!

Okay. Now here are some recent visuals.

Fun in the tub!




Our budding acrobat:




Halloween night.
Kyla wore camouflage for a costume the day before, but on halloween itself she just doned some glamorous glasses for part of the time and chased kids down the block the other part. She was amazed that all of these people were coming to her house!






Dan's "costume" freaked out even the older kids. Clearly Kyla was baffled by it as well.





A piano lesson (from a guy who doesn't know how to play.... anyone can teach "banging" haha!) at Grandma's house.





And, yes, she is enjoying feeding herself as much as possible, even if it means pesto all over by the end of the meal. Too bad we forgot the bib this time!


Friday, August 22, 2008

The Return of Kyla G!!!

Well, it certainly has been a long time since we posted and to all you craving a little dose of images of our blossoming little QT Pi, I believe we can deliver.

One of her better moments was her 1st birthday party, which we threw a little bit late since we were out of town for her actual birthday. However, she had plenty of her friends stop by for a bite of cake, for which she took the first bite.




Here she is hanging with Tinya and Martha.




We all seem to hang out on the floor quite a bit these days. Our knees are very red from crawling around after Kyla, which she loves. She runs around and around the table laughing hysterically and we chase after her.

Eventually she slows down and sort of walks around soliciting opinions for her various theories about the universe. Here she is talking to Grandma Linda who was lured down to the floor. If I remember correctly she was trying to explain what Rachel has been teaching her class about small RNA molecules and their effect on post-expression gene regulation. She has really learned a lot from mommy while she prepares her lectures. Of course her pronunciation is not so good yet so it's hard to understand.




Some new words:
  • "Dad-O"
  • "Noonin" (means any toy animal: "What's wrong, why is she crying? I don't know...maybe she wants Noonin.)
  • "Hiiiiiii"
  • "Bye bye"
  • "Extemporaneous"
Ok, maybe not the last one...

We managed to have a fairly low key July 4th this year with our friends Ken and Corinne (who are expecting soon!!). Here we are at the beach, which by some miracle was not crowded on July 4th. She loved the water and got a real rush every time the waves hit us. I lost my glasses (this is the last photo of them) this day. Ha, I lost my wedding ring about 3 weeks later when we went to Colorado for Rockygrass (bluegrass music camping festival)...sorry we lapsed on the CO photos.



It's been quite busy since all this stuff has happened. My work has been quite a roller coaster as there has been a lot of employee turnover in my department, including my great boss who moved on to bigger and better things. Being in a headless shop hasn't been too bad, but getting my boss's replacement will have to happen eventually. It won't be easy...she was excellent and they are big shoes to fill. Good luck Jean!



Now we are thinking a little about the next step, as many of you have inquired about. Our plan is to move on to #2 starting in early 2009. So hold on to your hats and keep checking the blog!

Say bye bye Kyla!



Friday, May 30, 2008

Finally!!

After several months of standing and holding onto things she has finally let go!

Sunday, May 11, 2008

Kyla is Spot On!

Every parents nightmare.

Your child wakes up covered in spots! I was at work, minding my own business with the business of mass spectrometry when I received a mysterious email from Rachel, subject "KG is Spotty!"

A quick perusal of the contents revealed that she was covered in red splotches, what we later found out was likely to be hives. Kyla had dual ear infections the previous week and was on Amoxacillin to exterminate the devlish microbes that had invaded her aural cavity. Though not her first experimentation with this legal drug, it was clearly not as favorable to her the second time around. Something about secondary immune response being more intense than primary, etc. etc.

Kyla is still, 3 days later, a Wee Hoosier with deformed little Japanese flags all over her body. They started as little white spots with red perimeters, but graduated to all matter of crater-shaped things. Her whole body looks like Gorbachev's head. And they are evolving, too, so the fun is to try and play a memory game with the current state of her bas-relief hive map. Kyla does not participate in the fun, though. She is not a happy camper. She is hot, but feels cold. She is tired but she can't sleep. She is hungry but can't eat.

She is kind of feeling better as of later today, but still extremely uncomfortable. Though she got her mommy a card for mother's day, the real present of a glorious sun-filled day with a joyous smiling family never really came to fruition.

Happy Mother's Day anyway, mommy!