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.

September Cuteness

No big events in September but a few cute pictures.

This is Kiera "reading" a letter from Grandma. I thought it was cute that it looks like she's reading it, but really I think she wanted to grab the paper and eat it!

Kiera can get around the living room really well by scooting on her bottom or rolling. She rolled over to her basket and dumped out all of the toys.

How can you say no to that smile?

Busted! Sitting up in her crib. We promptly lowered her crib mattress!

Helping with the laundry.

Seven Months Old - Labor Day Weekend

Kiera turned 7 months old on Labor Day weekend. On that Friday she started getting a fever. It got worse as the night went on, even up to 104.3! Yikes! We gave her several cool baths and infant Tylenol throughout the sleep-deprived night and went to the pediatrician's office on Saturday morning. They didn't really know what was wrong with her, but gave her an antibiotic and swabbed a sample from her nose. She seemed to be feeling fine, so we went to Chris' family reunion.
Here she is swimming with her cousin Jordan.

Here are Jordan, Nonna and Killian doing a hula dance at the family reunion

Here's the big 7 month old!

Kiera's Milestones:
- sits up really well now
- does a lot of scooting
- clicks her tongue, so cute
- babbles all of the time - bababa, mamama, dadada
- can sit up from lying down; we found her sitting up in her crib for the first time

One final note - the doctor's office called on the Friday after Labor Day weekend and told us that Kiera's lab results showed that she had swine flu! We were shocked and we felt horrible that we took her to the family reunion. Killian came down with the swine flu that weekend after Labor Day, and Chris didn't feel very well either. Luckily we didn't infect anyone outside of our household.

Catching Up

Well, I knew I wouldn't be able to keep up with everything when I went back to work! Guess the blog was one of those things!

Before Killian started 6th grade we asked him what he wanted to do the last weekend of summer vacation. He chose Space Center Houston because they were having a Star Wars / George Lucas exhibit.

Here is Killian with R2D2 and C3PO

Here is Kiera trying on an astronaut's helmet

Six Months Old

I love the beach!

Okay, so I'm a little late…as of August 5th Kiera is 6 months old! We celebrated by taking her on her first trip to the beach in Galveston. Usually when we go to the beach we try to head out early and spend most of the day there. We found out that going around 3pm and staying until sunset was a really nice. We took our small grill and made hamburgers for dinner. The waves were really calm. Killian had fun catching hermit crabs and playing with the seagulls.


Kiera went for her 6 month checkup. She is in the 75th percentile in everything – height (26.25 inches), weight (16 lbs 11 oz) and head circumference. I decided to delay a couple of the shots for a month so that she would only get two shots instead of four this visit. It worked well – she didn’t even cry!

Milestones
-She has been very vocal lately – squealing, screaming, talking, etc. If someone on the phone hears her I have to explain that the screams are happy screams because sometimes they are so loud. She has lots to say!
-Rolling over – flipping and flopping from back to front and also rolling continuously in one direction. I’m so glad that she is finally happy up on her arms on her tummy!
-Slow motion crawl – very slow motion, but she can inch forward towards a toy
-Learning the meaning of certain words like Max (our dog), fish (in the fish tank) and even her own name.
-Baby sign language – I’ve started to use some sign language for some of the basic words
-Max our dog is very good with Kiera. He protects her from the vacuum cleaner and is getting used to her grabbing a handful of fur.
-Sometimes she seems to squeeze back/snuggle deeper when we’re giving her hugs. It’s too cute that she’s hugging us back now.
-Of course starting solid foods on July 29th was a big milestone!

Funny story – A little background, my hair has been “fake” red for 8 years or so. My friend Rhonda has been doing my hair for a few years and I took Kiera with me to my last hair appointment. When Rhonda was all finished and I was holding Kiera on my lap, Rhonda thought to herself (and told me), “I can’t believe that baby doesn’t have red hair like her momma”. Now that’s a good hairdresser, even tricked herself into believing my color was natural!!