Brett, Heather, Kayla, and Tyson

Brett, Heather, Kayla, and Tyson
Brett, Heather, Kayla, and Tyson

Thursday, October 24, 2013

Kayla 9 Months

Last week, Kayla hit the 9 month mark! Its awesome to think that Kayla has now been with us as long as she was inside my belly! Kayla is a busy-body bundle of joy.
Her 9 month stats are:
Height: 27.6 in.
Weight: 18 lb 14 oz.
Head 44 cm
Kayla is measuring in the 25-50 percentile on all measurements. She actually lost an ounce from a month ago when I took her to get her flu shot. The doctor said she's perfectly healthy though and to attribute it to her constant movement.
 She's crawling everywhere and pulling herself on everything, from the walls, the fridge, our legs, and the couch. She's getting brave enough to lean from one item to the other if they are only a couple feet apart. 
She's clapping all the time. And I LOVE it.
She has good rhythm and bounces or waves her arms whenever she hears music or a beat or any kind. 
Kayla loves riding on our shoulders and exudes total joy from that vantage point.
Kayla stood up on her own the other day from a sitting position, stood for about half a minute and sat back down.
She chews on everything! Half of our board books are already damaged.
She loves Iosepa and follows him all over the house. He'll run back and forth through the house with her crawling along behind.
She's eating everything we give her now, as long as the greens are mixed with carrots. Her favorite thing is feeding herself though. She eats bananas, cherrios, and little pieces of meat that we put in front of her. 
She still only has her bottom 2 teeth, but the doctor said it looks like the top 2 are close.
She's very loud! She hollars, babbles, and shrieks all the time.
Kayla was sleeping like a champ, averaging 11 hours a night, sleeping 8 pm-7am. But the past week or so, she's been waking up around 4 or 5 to eat. I, of course, don't mind feeding her if she's hungry, but I wish she would go back to sleep after! Usually, she's ready to be awake for the day, and I am not! She developed her early morning side from Brett, who unfortunately seems to be losing his morning person personality, thus I've been a bit more tired lately. 
When she takes baths, she prefers to be standing up along the side of the tub than sitting in the water, though she loves bathtime.
She's gotten into everything and we've had to do some rearranging and baby proofing. She loves the door jams and flings them constantly. She is always trying to get into the pantry, fridge, or dishwasher whenever the opportunity presents itself.
She's learning the word "NO" as it is yelled at her quite often! We do a lot of redirecting and distracting her these days. She'll turn and look at us when we say no and sometimes she says "Ya, ya ya". Its pretty funny!
We are trying to teach Kayla some basic sign language for things such as food, water, milk, etc. Hopefully it catches on soon. Iosepa has picked them all up very well!
We have a cheap and lightweight table from Ikea that Kayla will crawl up on and push throughout the house (the entire thing is tile). Who needs a walker!?
We love our little lady and feel so grateful to have her in our family!



Kayla and Mommy

Nap time with Papi!

Love that toothy grin


She may only have 2 teeth, but maybe she'll be a dentist someday!
 She loves Brett's mouth

Crawling lessons from Iosepa

Best buds!
Such a pretty little lady! Look at her personality!

She walks along everything!
She's starting to get attitude about these photos! Haha

Pumpkin Patch! 


Friday, October 11, 2013

A Trip to the Zoo

I feel like we've done a lot of staying at home lately. That may be partly because its so hot in the summer, but Brett suggested to drive to Brownsville to go to the Zoo the other day and I was all for it! Brett got free tickets when Zoo employees came on the morning show one day. (I seriously love all the free tickets he gets!) We took Iosepa with us and made a day of it. We had a great time and both kids did great!

In front of the Gorilla enclosure. They were so active!
Iosepa loved it because we watched Tarzan this week. 



No shame.  Haha!

Kayla loved the flamingos!



Brett and I both thought these turtles looked like
Little Foot from Land Before Time.


Kayla had no fear! She wanted to grab this little bird so badly!


There was a really cute baby kangaroo!


Kayla loved the Giraffes

Even more so, she LOVES riding on Brett's shoulders!
She kicks her feet and squeals in total joy whenever she gets up there!


Kayla really loved the seahorses! She kept slapping the glass.




Kayla showing a little love to Iosepa. :)

Kayla's face here kills me! Its so funny!


When Brett put Kayla down on the ground, the pig backed away.....haha!

The kids got to brush the goat's fur. 

Kayla wanted to do a bit more than brush it. She loves animals!


We had a great day! We topped it off by stopping at Chic-Fil-A on the way home. I've never looked at their kid's meal options before, but was really impressed! Iosepa also loved the play area. I love how much he's warming up to us and I'm grateful for how well-behaved he always is. We will definitely have to head back to the zoo one of these days!
We also stopped at Brett's station on the way home. Its so wonderful how much Brett's co-worker's love Kayla. It really makes us feel a part of the Action 4 Family. We're loving our time here in South Texas!

Tuesday, October 1, 2013

The Hendricks Visit......and now for the rest of the story.

And here's to chronicling the rest of our awesome trip with Mark, Emily and Noah!
We spent a day at the beach and took a dolphin watch cruise. I've done this a few times now and its always pretty fun. This time took the longest to see the dolphins, but we did see some and it was great! The weather was perfect as well.
Kayla and Mama waiting to get on the boat.
These two! 

Look at that beautiful weather! Perfect day!

A view of South Padre Island
A few of us got bored waiting for the dolphins to make their appearance. :)

Noah loved the boat!

I thought this looked like a scene out of Titanic. :)



The Hendricks family

Our whole group

Us girls and our babies!
That was a great shot!
And then, Mark got pooped on by some bird! Haha!

We rode next to this shrimping boat for quite sometime
and the dolphins were riding in the waves the entire time. It was great!

 And then we headed to the beach! Brett and I were talking about how we wish we went to the beach more often. Its interesting how often people don't take advantage of the great things in their own backyard. Or maybe that's just us?
Eating watermelon!


We got pedicures while Emily was here. Mine turned out pretty ugly! Haha!



Mark found this cool crab




Kayla loved playing in the sand and was loving eating it - gross! When we took her out to the water though, she cried quite a bit. Even when we were in the wet sand at the water's edge, she didn't like it.


"Pick me up now, Mom"
Sand faces!


Nothing quite like flying kites at the beach!
We love South Padre!

We played some Just Dance to work off all the delicious
 food we ate while they were here.

Kayla has really been loving music lately and shakes her little
 bum whenever she hears it. Its precious!




We got an ice cream maker for our wedding and used it quite a bit at first. We haven't used it since we moved to Texas so we decided to bust it out and try a new ice cream recipe. We made extreme dark chocolate custard. It was really good but REALLY rich and definitely dark chocolaty. It was interesting getting it to the right level of "frozen" but once it was done, we added frozen raspberries and it was AMAZING!


Mark was great with Kayla! She loved having more people to entertain her!




We had a great time with the Hendricks! Before we left the island, we ate a great seafood place there on the island. I love getting delicious shrimp! It was also friend to have friends here to play games with and watch movies with. We're grateful for such good friends!