On the second of July, McKenna turned nine months old. Where have these past nine months gone? In three, well now 2.5 short months our little girl will be a year old already! It has been so fun to be home with her these past six weeks, we do a lot of playing, reading, and mess making around here :) just in time to get it all cleaned up for daddy to come home.
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| McKenna's hair is finally too long for her little curl unless I work really hard to get it to stand up (lots of product) so we tried pigtails for the first time here, she looks pretty darn cute! |
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| Trying a tootsie pop for the first time, from dad, she loved it! |
This little busy body loves food, and is always coming over to share what you have. She loves to nibble on little pieces of bread, fruit, and cheese as we are eating. Her all time favorite foods are avocado, broccoli, and butternut squash comes in at a close third place. She has started liking her lunchtime fruit a lot more, as well as yogurt for breakfast, but she has started playing with her treats lately, pulling them out of her mouth and not really wanting to eat them.. Maybe she will kick out of it, but for now we watch her close, or they end up anywhere in a goopy, spitty mess.
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| Kenna loves the water and loved/loves her pool, this was her first time. |
It wasn't long after the crawling thing, maybe two weeks, that she started wanting to be walked everywhere. She would grab on to our hands and want to be led around, she would constantly crawl around right under your feet until you grabbed her hands to help her walk. Now she is to the pint where she will walk very well along the coffee table and couches, and actually stands for short periods on time on her own, and she loves to get behind her little walking toy and push it up and down and up and down the hall, all over the front room.. She is trying to learn how to steer it so she doesn't get stuck. We are thinking by 10 or 10.5 months she will have the walking thing down perfect at the rate she is going. Then she will be unstoppable! She already is though, she has finally learned how to open the cupboards and pull things out, time to get locks on them! And she loves to play with the refrigerator magnets, pushing them all over the floor, as well as her favorite spot in the kitchen is the first shelf in the fridge. She could stand and bang on it for hours if I let her I think ;)
It is neat to see how quickly she grows and develops, she has for a few weeks now recognized her kitty, "ki" that progressed into the sound "kit". And now sometimes your can hear an "e" on the end of it. She recognizes picture of fish and the pop, pop, pop of the lips that they make. She also will say "moo", more like a "maoh" if she sees a picture or her little finger puppet of a cow. She is so smart, and still loves to read books, her page turning skills are so fun and flourishful (if that is a real word). She will hollar for dada in the mornings and mama when she needs something she can't get. She is getting louder and louder, there are times when I run downstairs to change a load of laundry and leave her right at the top by the baby gate so she can see me and I can see her, she loves it, she will just start yelling as loud as she can until I respond. Her little laugh is contagious, and her smile with those cute little teeth are so fun!
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| Tried to rotate this picture, so funny, it is so hard to take pictures of her now - she moves all over, and this is a funny face I caught "I'm done mom, just let me play!" |
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| Playing in rain puddles with dad |
She still just has the two teeth, but has been working on her top four. They are so close to coming in. The weekend of the fourth we took our first road trip and McKenna stayed away from home for two nights for the first time in her life, it was fun, but we slept horribly! There was about a space of 5 days or so that she would wake up and just be inconsolable and finally sooth herself, in my arms, back to sleep, but if put back in her crib would wake right back up. Her teeth were really inflamed and bugging her, I'm sure that was the main problem. Here is hoping they come through soon, but for now we are getting a little more sleep around here.
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| We had a downpour in Price a few weeks ago and McKenna loved the puddles, and threw a fit when we brought her in. |
This past week I went to Girls Camp for the day on Thursday, and when I got back McKenna was already asleep. The next morning I noticed a little red dot/ blister looking thing on her heel and thought she had just gotten a bug bite on the walk that Jared and Gaby took her on the night before. But they she started to get more. Being worried, we took her in to Dr. Madsen, luckily he had an opening on Saturday, and he said it looked a lot like hand/foot/mouth disease which is where children mostly from 0-5 years old develop blisters on the bottoms and tops of their Handsand feet, and can get sores in her mouth. He gave an ointment that is working wonders and her blisters are healing really
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| Photo op with Grandma while Dad, Grandpa, and Uncle Chantz are putting the tree in. |
well. Luckily she didn't have it really bad, but who would have ever thought... You get it through the dirt or saliva, so we stayed home from church so as to not share it with anyone else cause it just doesn't look fun :( luckily she isn't full on walking yet or it would have hurt a lot more.
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| Putting the tree in - Autumn Blaze Maple Tree |
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| Kenna loves to play her new little piano! |
Next up for new things around here is the news that I have a new job. I am now employed with the " Stay At Home Mom Agency" we are so happy and blessed that we have planned and planned and lived our lives in such a way that I have the opportunity to do this. It was not an easy decision to leave my school kids, I know I will miss being a teacher, but I didn't want to be unfair to my students or McKenna since I wanted to be the best possible mom and the best possible teacher. I couldn't do both, and one is more important in the long run than the other. So I turned in my letter of resignation to my principal, and have been packing up my classroom. My principal was very supportive and that helped, and a lot of my colleges, friends, and family have expressed how happy they are that we are able to. For that support I am grateful. I will continue to sub and volunteer so as to get points to keep my license current, but I am so glad and relieved that I won't have to worry about McKenna choking on something, or getting shocked by the cords she loves to play with so much, she is such a busy little girl, and you can't let her out of your sight. I have everything in storage from my classroom as, one day, after my kids are in school, I will probably go back to teaching. Right now I'm glad I can be a teacher and mom to my sweet little girl.
Daniel- better update on him. He is a great worker and a wonderful guy, I'm so blessed to have him around. He was supportive from the get go with me talking about quitting my job. He has been working on making some positive improvements to Washington Park, new parking lot, new basketball court, new horseshoe pits, and really nice landscaping. He is doing great when it comes to managing the jobs, I don't know how he handles the added stress of that sometimes, but he loves it, and he does a great job and is a great leader to his guys. It has been neat to see him grow into the manager he has become the past two years, we are grateful that Nielson Comstruction has given him the opportunities they have. We sure have loved having daddy so close to home that he can come home for lunch most days!
Life is good, and it is the small things that matter most- we are living by that and enjoying the sweet joys of parenthood.
