First Christmas

We had a wonderful first Christmas with Kiera. A full day starting at home, then to MawMaw and PawPaw's, then to Nonna and Pops and then back home to celebrate with Killian.

Kiera under the tree Christmas morning

Kiera with the adorable pig, Petunia, that MawMaw made for her
The Christmas chaos at Nonna and Pops' house

Cousins Jordan and Kiera with Nonna

Pops and Kiera

Back home - Killian opening his telescope from MawMaw and PawPaw

Killian opening his Harry Potter walking stick from Nonna and Pops

Chris taking a nap on Petunia

Holiday Trip to Missouri

We took a 4-day trip to Kansas City the weekend before Christmas. There was no snow this year, but we had a wonderful time with my stepmom and my brother and his family.

We have a tradition to eat at the same restaurant on the Plaza for family outings, Figlio. Yum, yum.

Kevin, Ava, Karla, Maya, Karen, Kiera, Chris, Killian and Barb

The babies - all within a month of each other - Grayson, Olivia and Kiera

Kiera opening her first Christmas present

My friend Leah drove over from St. Louis

Killian opening the Harry Potter movies he needed to complete his collection...until the next one comes out.

My neices Ava and Maya visiting Santa at Crown Center

Cousins - Maya and Kiera

My friend Brandi came over for a visit. This is her son Ryan playing with Kiera.

Kiera in her adorable Christmas outfit (hand-me-down from her cousins) with matching doll from John and Becky.

Visiting Santa

Chris and I took Kiera to the mall to visit Santa. This is the same Santa Killian visited when he was younger.

Santa knows Kiera has been a good girl.

She got a little bored while we were waiting in line.

Ten Months Old

Kiera is getting so big! Here are few of the things she's been up to:


- She plays peek a boo by herself, pulling a blanket over her face to hide and then putting it down again
- She wants to eat more table food so we have started giving her pieces of meat and bread. Yummm, she loves bread. She still doesn't have teeth, but she gums everything well.
- I'm pretty sure she is letting us know when she is "all done". She doesn't quite do the sign for it, but it's close. A few times it's even sounded like she says "ah da".
- Her eyes are no longer goopy! Turns out she had blocked ducts and massaging them several times a day for a week or so cleared them all up!


I have to back track to talk about what her teachers told us when we went to her parent/teacher conference at the end of October:
- The teacher in her waddler room told us that she can tell that Kiera is intelligent. Of course we already thought that (as most parents do), but it was nice to hear from a less biased person!
- The teacher in her newborn room cracked us up because the main thing she talked about was how Kiera likes to eat. They have a 4-baby table there, so the kids sit in it and they can feed them all at the same time. She says usually they feed the kids a bite, in order, and then start again at the first baby. Kiera does not like this idea. She thinks the baby next to her is getting her food. They have to feed Kiera all of her food first and then give her the empty container to play with. She also said that Kiera likes to play by herself. If another child cries or starts to make a bunch of noise, Kiera will look at the teacher with a concerned look and the teacher has to tell her it's okay.

Ready for Christmas!
On December 4th we got a bit of snow! It was fun to watch the big flakes coming down, such a rare occurance in Houston. It melted later in the afternoon.

Our neighbor Christi let us borrow this Winnie the Pooh walk behind. As you can see from her face, Kiera loves it.

Happy Thanksgiving

We had a great Thanksgiving. We spent the day at Nonna and Pops’ house. It was the first time that all six of the grand kids on Chris’ side of the family got together (there were three new babies this year). It was a little difficult to get a picture with all of them together. Here is the best one!

(front row - Cooper and Killian, back row - Ryker, Pops, Kiera, Nonna, Chase and Jordan)

Chris did a great job this year on our outside Christmas lights this year.
A couple of weekends before Thanksgiving Chris and I went to the Renaissance Festival with our neighbors Bo and Kasia. It was our first time to dress up.

Nine Months Old

Well, Kiera has almost outgrown her rug! It's so much fun to look back at how little she was in each previous month's picture on the rug.

But (no pun intended) you can see that it's much harder to get her to lay still for her monthly picture. This is how some of the pics turn out now as she quickly flips over and crawls away.

Max doesn't always allow Kiera to lay so close to him. We were surprised to see them get so entwined. She was having fun playing with Dad and Max on the floor.

Kiera's recent milestones:

- pulls up on everything and cruises around the furniture
- continues to eat well - everything we've fed her without complaint. She has learned to feed herself puffs and loves them
- went for her first swing ride at the park
- learned to clap :)
- moved from the infant room at daycare to the waddler room
- the cutest thing she has been doing lately...tilting her head to the side (ear to shoulder) and smiling. Seriously, how do babies and dogs know when they look adorable? It's like she is posing. When we imitate her she tilts her head to the other side and holds it there. We call it her "so cute" look.

Just Playing

I bought this block set for Kiera, but Killian made several impressive designs on it recently (all she wants to do is eat the blocks). We documented each one and posted them on his Facebook profile. I think this is a great example of how creative and intelligent he is.

Kiera's Great Aunt Kendra made her some frogs and lizards. She was really happy with her new toys.

Halloween 2009

Our Little Lamb

Kiera was an adorable lamb for Halloween. She really didn't mind her costume at all. As you can see she is still holding her special pumpkin.

If I haven't mentioned before, Killian has an obsession with putting things on Kiera's head. We have to keep an eye on him! ;)

For the few weeks leading up to Halloween Killian said he did not want to go trick o' treating. He hasn't been going the last couple of years. However, as Kiera and I got ready, he changed his mind. So we grabbed his staff and one of Chris' jackets. We said he was a wizard, but I wish we would have said he was a shepherd because that would have made more sense - ha!

I love this picture of Kiera. She looks very determined to steal the candy stash! Don't worry, we didn't allow her to eat any of it.

We also went to the Wings Over Houston airshow on Halloween day. Kiera didn't mind her earmuffs. Killian and Chris enjoyed their first airshow. We got discount tickets because my office is at Ellington Field where the event was held.

Fall Fun!

The weather has been so awesome lately. We enjoyed it a lot last weekend.

On Friday Kiera and I went to the park with our neighbor, Christi, and her son, Christian aka Nemo. We went to the duck pond, but the ducks weren't too interested in eating our bread. We did see a couple of cool crabs though.


On Saturday, our family went to the park for a picnic. Chris and Killian flew a Star Wars kite that Killian got for Christmas.

Kiera enjoyed watching the kite. She enjoys everything that Killian says or does. He makes her laugh almost as much as Max does!

Tuesday we went to the pumpkin patch at Clear Lake United Methodist Church. Christi, David and Nemo met us there and we got some great pictures.




We got a couple of pumpkins too. Including this one that Kiera is holding. Once she picked it up, she did not want to put it back down.

Eight Months Old

Kiera turned 8 months old on October 5th!

Chris turned 39 years old on October 12th!

Kiera's milestones:
- makes smacking noise for fun
- still loves to eat whatever we feed her. so far it's been all homemade fruits and veggies. she's never turned away from any food - not even lima beans!
- her first word was MaMa! Instead of just babbling, she seemed to be saying it and looking around for me. Now we think she says it when she hungry.
- crawls really well now
- you may notice that the skin around her eyes is often red/pink lately. Her eyes have been goopy and she's been congested since she started going to day care. We think it might have started as a cold, but now it seems like it may be caused by allergies.