She’s growing up so fast.  She can walk while holding onto things, sit up and crawl, pull up to standing…all in the past month.  She’s got six teeth now and is really good at munching on things, including you, if you don’t get out of the way fast enough.  She jabbers all the time, making all sorts of cute noises and “words”.  She imitates things that you do, which is really fun.  She just gets more and more exciting as the days go by.

Kira was a Tennessee Volunteers cheerleader for Halloween.  Joseph was a good sport and took her to several houses to get candy so I could snap some pictures.  Then we bundled her into the stroller with warm blankets for the rest of the evening.  She had fun though, giggling at all the activity and even stayed pretty good-natured being out past her bedtime.  Grama knitted her warm booties and a hat and made her some mittens to keep her from being too cold.

Our wonderful visit from Auntie Simone came and went.  We had a great time, took a small vacation, and just hung out and enjoyed each other’s company.  She and my mom hit it right off.  It was very sad when she had to go back to New Zealand.  We’re really hoping to make it out there next year for a visit (while Kira can still fly for free!)

In other news, we’re buying a new house!  Yay!  It’s just finishing being built and it’s only about a mile away from where we live now, so it’s a nice convenient move.  We’re doing all the mortgage paperwork and red tape, inspections, etc. and if all goes well, by December 1st we’ll be tucked away in our new house.  I can’t wait!  More to come in pictures and news about the house.  Below is a quick photo I snapped of the outside…landscaping just went in and there’s a few finishing touches still to be done, but it shows the general idea…

Tonight she gets to meet her Auntie Simone from New Zealand for the first time!

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Summer is nearing an end already and soon it will be time to break out the fall wardrobe.  That’s a good thing in this household, as Kira has almost outgrown every summer outfit she’s got and I don’t want to pay for anything new this late in the year.  Life is pretty routine for us, working during the week and resting on the weekends.  We’re trying to sell our house in New Zealand so we can pay off our house here, then hopefully be in a new place next spring. 

On an awesome news note:  In just over a month, Joseph’s sister from New Zealand will be here for a nice visit.  It’s been over 2 years since we’ve seen her (when we left New Zealand) and Kira can’t wait to meet her Auntie Simone.  Hopefully she’ll have gotten over her stranger anxiety by then, because right now she cries at most strangers who try to hold her (Kira, not Simone)

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Seven months have come and gone.  Sigh.  My awesome little baby is definitely growing up.  I love watching her develop and learn new things.  You can actually watch her face when she’s doing something and see her slowly catching onto something new.

STANDING UP!! Yes, indeed.  She is standing up, by herself, and playing at her little activity table.  She’s still very wobbly and can’t pull herself up, but once I put her in position, she’ll stand and play for quite a bit before she either drops to the floor or lets me know that she’s ready to sit for a bit.  She stands very flat-footed though, instead of on her toes, so it won’t be long before she’s doing this herself.

 TEETH! Kira cut her first two teeth. The bottom left came through on July 31 and the bottom right one came through on August 2. So far, aside from a bit more dribble and a bit more spitting up, teething has been very easy. 

 BATHTIME.  She loves her nightly bath.  I usually put her in the kitchen sink so I can get some tidying done at the same time, but she’s almost getting too big for it.  She also has now learned how fun it is to kick water out, which makes quite the mess.  I tried her one night in the big tub with her bath seat, but she didn’t like it at all.

PARTY! Last week at work they had a surprise birthday party/luncheon for three of us supervisors whose birthdays were in June & July.  Part of the surprise was that they had our children brought in to participate, so when I walked into the room, there was Kira sitting in a cute party dress with a party hat on her head.She did so good with all the strangers at the party.  She occasionally cries at strangers (mostly white-haired ladies), but most of the time she just fixes a serious Joseph-stare on them and watches them intently.   She’s just in the beginning stages of stranger and separation anxiety, but so far it hasn’t been too bad.

SOUTH HAVEN. This past Saturday we went with my mom & dad over to South Haven, a little town on Lake Michigan.  Basically it’s just a nice little day trip, where we get coffee, wander the shops and canal, walk out to the pier and on the beach.  Kira was all dressed and ready for her first trip to the beach.

Well, that was optimistic.  Sigh.  Even the end of July/beginning of August in Michigan cannot be counted on to be warm and sunny.  The day was slightly overcast, but by the time we got to South Haven it was raining, windy, and chilly.  So we bundled Kira up into a sweatsuit (winter clothes!) and went for dinner.  After a nice meal of perch and shrimp, the rain had finally stopped.  It was still REALLY windy though.  When we walked to the beach, the sand stung our legs and faces.  Kira did really well, she liked to try to eat the sand and seemed to enjoy the wind whipping through her hair.  It was a nice day, but unfortunate the weather didn’t cooperate.  I guess she won’t get to dip her toes in Lake Michigan until the next trip.

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Update on her milestones:  she’s sitting up better and better every day but her arms are still a bit too limp to catch herself when she tips over.  It’s kind of cute to watch her tip over and just fall on her face…although that’s always just an accident because I didn’t catch her in time.  Usually I grab her and set her upright before she topples over all the way.  She’s eating 1st and 2nd foods and moving on to 3rd foods next.  After a few weeks of 3rd foods I’ll start introducing table foods.  She does really well eating rice biscuits by herself, although a lot of biscuit falls back out of the mouth and all over the place.  She can roll over but doesn’t really want to bother with it.  She hates being on her tummy, so she has no desire to roll over and put herself in that position.

She had her first official swim this weekend.  We put her in her cute little swimsuit and dipped her in the pool.  She did not like it.  I think it was her frame of mind – she’d just got up from a nap and was ready for her bottle, so getting plopped into some water outside was not really going over too well in her little head.  We got some pictures and video and that the was the end of that “first”.

Don't have a playpen yet	Takin' a bath

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Kira is 10 weeks old now. She is really getting interactive; she smiles and “talks” a lot now. She’s still really good about sleeping at night; not so much during the day, but I’ll take what I can get. Her hair is starting to lighten up a lot since birth. I think she’ll be a light brown/dark blond color rather than really dark like Joseph’s. She’s still very good and easy-going most of the time, but she’s starting to develop a little temperamental side as well.

Here’s her 2 month Sheep Photos that I didn’t get a chance to post last week:

And here are just some random shots:

Cuddling with Grandpa

Smiling

Why am I sitting here and not eating?

Playing in cousin Isaac's car

I like Auntie Marianne

She refused to be happy in the photo for her "I love my Auntie" jammies

This was the only position she'd be happy in

Guys - there are bunnies on my feet!

Guess bunnies aren't so bad

She is starting to smile for real now, although not very consistently yet.  Her smiles are so pretty, I can’t wait until she does it all the time.

My dad is a semi-professional photographer (i.e., he worked for a studio doing weddings and has all the equipment), so he and my mom came over the other night for Joseph’s birthday dinner armed with cameras and backdrops to do Kira’s one month pictures.  They are always doing photo shoots of their grandchildren, so she’ll have to get used to it.

Here are a few of them.  I think they turned out beautiful, but I’m a little biased   Those sheep are going to be featured in at least one photo on her month birthdays so that I can see a progression of how she grows in relation to them.  We did the same thing (with a giant stuffed Eyeore toy) with my sister’s kids and it makes for a cute photo collage at the end of the first year.