Celebrating 8 months with a new important skill!

It's so much fun to be able to move around and get to stuff! She has been super happy with her new found talent.

Here are some more pics; enjoying the sun, checking out her valentine's card, and playing guitar.

mini-miss in action

She loves to clap together her new grandpa-made blocks (that is until she hits her finger and cries.... this just happened yesterday!). See a video of it at the bottom of this post.





And here is evidence of something that parents cheer about! Baby can feed herself! Okay, just the bottle part. Now we also spoon feed her other stuff like cereals, fruits and vegis. But at least she can enjoy the lounging with bottle herself. (something that comes back around again later with adulthood ???)

Life at 7 months

How quickly they grow!






Here is a better pic of the cute teeth that are growing in:




Kyla's baby book has pages for baby's first holidays and I fear we have little to fill in! For halloween she visited her friend Laili where we carved pumpkins and the mini-folk posed amongst them (hopefully I'll get the pics soon!), so that was quite festive.
For Thanksgiving we had dinner with one set of grandparents instead of the usual two (but one is enough to write about!).
For Hanukkah we typically see the Jewish grandparents but they were on an amazing tour of Egypt and Israel so there was no dinner this year.
For Christmas, grandparents from the east coast arrived late in the day so there was a less ceremonial gift exchange (not that Kyla suffered!). And finally, we didn't properly observe Kwanzaa!
However, we dragged Kyla to a New Year's event and here is how she rang in the new year:


Of course, as soon as we went back to our room she woke up and then proceeded to spend nearly an hour playing with the noisemaker! At that point we old folks were just ready to go to bed...

A few weeks ago Kyla almost made it to her first football playoff game. I was skeptical about whether or not it was a good idea to take a baby to the game and then because it was a rainy day here in San Diego the decision was easy! Baby stayed with friends where it was warm and dry while we donned ponchos and cheered on the Chargers. Kirk is not even really a Chargers fan but he riled up his brother-in-law and was perhaps one of the rowdier fans at the stadium...




Even though Kyla didn't make it to the game, she is the only one of us with a jersey:



Note the attempt to crawl...




We never used to be such football fans, but Dan has gotten quite caught up in it now that he is back with what has always been his favorite team, the Chargers. Kirk certainly encourages this behavior. :)

Perhaps our active little girl will end up being much more athletic than her parents and happy about the early influences!!

two front teeth for Christmas

Overdue for an update, so much to tell!!

First, Kyla had her 6 month check-up on the 13th (a day after her 6 month birthday) and here are the stats:
19.1 lbs
27.5 inches tall

Yes, still in the 90-something percentile for both, so she is growing fast!

And speaking of growing fast, she is now the proud owner of 2 new teeth! Poor thing. At her 6 month check-up she had a couple of immunizations including the flu shot. That night she developed a cough and runny nose (from the flu shot or from one of the sniffly, miserable kids in the waiting room, don't know) and was not happy at all. On that Saturday morning we noticed a small white thing peeking through her gums -- first tooth! (Don't know how much of those symptoms were due to the teeth and how much was due to the flu shot or a cold -- she is finally doing better now) About a week later it's pal appeared, so there are a pair of sharp little chompers in there now.
We attempted to take a picture but the tongue keeps getting in the way. This is the best so far, and it's not the most flattering shot of her! (will try to post a better one later)




The other milestone also has to do with her mouth. We've started on solid foods, an idea she has quickly accepted! We started rice cereal a few weeks ago and just offered sweet potatoes this past week. So far she has been quite receptive and happily opens her mouth to allow the spoon feeding.
It's not the neatest process, as you can see:






Being from a mixed religion family could make for confusion, but meanwhile we'll celebrate all the holidays. Here she is celebrating two December holidays:








We've had Rachel's family here to celebrate one of the two. Here are Kyla and Kirk watching a pre-holiday Seahawks game and decked out appropriately:




Here she is with Grandpa. No, we didn't give her a rubber chicken for Christmas, but somehow she has decided it is hers. She spent a long time carefully studying each of the chicken toes... and then trying to eat it! Not something we are allowing since those little sharp teeth could help her really eat the chicken. (and we should get through a few vegis and fruit before she starts with meat!)




The original plan was to spend Christmas at Kirk's house in Seattle, but we decided not to travel in case we were able to finalize our adoption this month. Unfortunately there were hold-ups at several stages in our paperwork so we aren't going to be able to finalize until January. The finalization is really just a formality (accompanied by much paperwork and social worker meetings) that typically takes place about 6 months after placement, but it means that we apply for the revised birth certificate (to replace her birth name with the name we gave her) and means that we are pretty much done with the adoption process. It'll be nice to be done with all of this. Who needs legal mumbo jumbo when you just want to play with your baby!
We were pretty disappointed in the delay, partly for that reason, but also because a big advantage to finalizing by the end of 2007 would have been that we could have applied for the adoption tax credit. The credit is a generous reimbursement of some of the costs and would have been extremely useful to have now rather than a year from now.
Oh well. What are you going to do. More importantly, we have this beautiful little girl at home with us.

So, we are enjoying hosting for the holidays and San Diego is cooperating with beautiful warm weather.

Hope the holidays are treating you well!
(our holiday greeting cards are late, as usual, but coming!)

tennis anyone???

We're having trouble locating a small enough racket....




...no surprise this very stylish dress, with matching sandals (not shown because they are still a bit big), was chosen by auntie Nan :)

KG update

Little mini miss is getting bigger and continually developing her nutty personality. She loves to grab things and unfortunately hair is on the top of the list. Funny story from the other morning: We often bring her into bed in the morning (in attempt to get a few more minutes of sleep!) and on this occasion Kyla was lying calmly on her back and playing with her hands the first time I looked over. The next time I glanced, she had turned her head and was looking at Dan (who was asleep lying on his side facing her). She was like that for several minutes (and I was thinking, "how sweet, she's gazing at her daddy") but then she couldn't stand it any longer and attacked. She grabbed Dan's hair with both hands and attempted to get some part of his head in her mouth and woke him up and startled him! Now, this kind of behavior is not out of character for her but is usually preceded by some kind of obvious excitement to clue us in to watch out for ourselves. :)



The beautiful mass of curly hair that is just about right for barrettes:









Really big smile!



Going for a ride in the laundry basket:







Posing (literally!) in a nice embroidered dress that used to be her grandmothers. Looks like it needs a slip! We took it off quickly anyhow to avoid slobber on the antique, I mean, slightly older dress (sorry mom!!) :)




Snuggling in the blanket with mommy!

Baby's first thanksgiving

We certainly had something to be thankful for this year! How amazing to become parents (and have your life change drastically...). Last year at this time we were pretty sad about our childless state, but clearly it was worth the wait. :)

Here's the munchkin in her turkey day finery. This was before dinner so you don't see any stuffing on her face yet. Okay, so stuffing is a bit too "solid" for her just yet, but not for long. (we've about to crack open the box of rice cereal and enter the realm of not-so-simple and not-so-neat baby meals)








Those of you in places north will be jealous of the next few photos. These were taken during our burn-off-the-pie hike. Yes, short sleeves and sunglasses!

We got to the trail and realized that we had forgotten a hat for Kyla, so with some creativity sheik baby was assembled! She enjoyed the backpack (okay, well she mostly napped).


No, we didn't feed her nuts -- she made those cheeks herself !!