Goodbye South Carolina

The move is on. With the grandparents coming and going, truck drives across the country, and airplane flights, it's going to be a busy couple of weeks! Whew! Hopefully life will settle down a bit once we get to Louisville.

This afternoon, our neighbors, Glenn and Shirley, had us over for an ice cream social. They were very kind and gave us some heavy winter clothes for Kara (including a fur coat!) and a picture of us from Christmas (when Kara was just 5 weeks old).

In Kara news, Kara has made several break-throughs. She's getting really, really close to walking. She'll take a couple of steps by herself and is getting pretty good at walking around the house holding onto someone's hands. She's also getting close to talking. She babbles quite a bit, and we think she's said a couple of words and meant it: "Da-da" and "hey". She also did her first sign a couple days of ago. She signed "milk" to Mommy when it was time for her bottle. In addition, Kara waved for the first time. She waved to Mommy and Grandma when they were leaving to go shopping one day. Kara also figured out how to open the "child-proof" cabinet locks in the kitchen. Guess we'll have to get something a little more complicated for next time. Sorry to sound like I'm bragging, but I think Kara's pretty cool.

We're moving!

Daddy got a job working for Vestas Technology R&D in Louisville, CO, so our little family is moving out West! Daddy starts work on Sept 20th, so we're working through the logistics of how to get us out there. We've rented a nice townhouse in Louisville to live in until we can sell our house. Grandma H. has come up to visit and hang out with Kara while Mommy gets the house cleaned up.

In Kara news, she is getting more and more comfortable standing everyday. She'll be standing up and will suddenly just let go and stand there. Grandma also says she's seen Kara take single steps a couple of times. She's also getting really close to talking. Kara greeted Daddy with a "Hey Daddy" when he walked in the door yesterday. It was pretty awesome, but she calls most everything Da-da. We might give her credit for the "Daddy", though.

Happy 9 Months!

It is hard to believe that Kara is 9 months old already. It seems like just yesterday we were bringing her home from the hospital. She's grown so much, and I can't possibly imagine my life without her.

Kara is getting closer and closer to walking (Heather, I think you might owe me a Coke soon!).  She'll pull herself up and then just let go and stand there for a while.  Daddy counted her standing up for 15 seconds all by herself!  She also took one step yesterday - she was trying to move about three feet from the toy bin to the bookshelf, and instead of getting down and crawling, she just took a step.  It was pretty cool, but we're not ready to declare her a walker just yet!

Kara's still working on the talking thing.  Mommy swears Kara said "Hey" to her when she walked into the room once, but she's not consistent with it.  She also seems to call everyone "Dada".  She calls Mommy, Daddy, herself, and her toys "Dada".  We're really looking forward to getting to hear what's going on inside her head!

Kara's a very active little girl these days, so it's hard to get the whole picture of her in just still pictures.  Keep scrolling down to check out some cute videos of our little girl.

Where's Kara? There she is!

Kara's starting to enjoy playing peek-a-boo. She seems to really enjoy peeking around corners to see Mommy. It brings a huge smile to her face (and Mommy's). See the video below.

Other than that, there's not much else to report. We just wanted to share some of the cute pictures we had of Kara.

We were fortunate to stumble upon a link to some pictures from Trey's adventure in Africa. These aren't his pictures, but we're pretty sure the girl that took him is in his group. Here's a link.

Link to our pictures

Goodbye Nap #3

Kara's been a pretty good sleeper for the last few months. For the most part, she's been very good about sleeping through the night and taking about three naps during the day (though the 3rd naps always been kind of hit or miss). However, for the last week, Kara has refused to take her third nap. So far it's been working out pretty well. We haven't seen much of a change in Kara's temperament, and she's actually been going to sleep easier at bedtime (less crying, which makes everyone happy).

Kara's kind of funny with her eating. She still relies on bottles for most of her nutrition, but she's eating more and more solids. She's not a big fan of Mommy and Daddy feeding her. Instead, she really seems to like finger foods and being able to feed herself. In particular, she's a big fan of puffs (kind of like Cheerios, but they dissolve a little easier). We've been experimenting with different solid foods. Yesterday, Mommy gave Kara some couscous with feta cheese and chicken. Kara seemed to really enjoy it, and we think she might have gotten about 10% of the food into her mouth. Tonight we had ground turkey, mashed french fries, and cooked green beans. It went quite well, so that's encouraging.

On another front, Kara's second tooth is coming in.  So now she's got both of her bottom front teeth.  We're trying to get a picture of her cute little teeth, but no luck so far.

Link to pictures