Kara Mae is 6 months old!

Kara is becoming such a big girl.

She can roll both directions and is getting close to sitting on her own.

She also has her first tooth. Her bottom right tooth finally came through on November 20th. Phew!

She loves her excersaucer. She's figured out how to work some of the toys, but still loves to chew on them best. She'll stand all day long if we let her. When she's fussy, the best way to calm her is to let her stand on your legs facing the rest of the room.


She's a smiley and giggly one! I love how much she laughs!

She's such a happy little one! She's playing more and very much a flirt.

We're still so puzzled about her sleeping. Some days she's okay and some are a disaster. Hopefully we'll getting closer, but we'll see.

We've found a new toy that she loves. It's a rocking/bouncy horse. She loves it (if you didn't see the videos in a previous post).

Ready to watch the Hawks game with Daddy.

She seems to like her swing again, especially now that she can reach the hanging fish and restart the music and lights herself.



And lastly, we've started rice cereal. She's starting to actually eat it and not cry (that was sad!). I can't believe she's old enough to be eating real food. She loves to sit at the table when Jana eats dinner, so they can eat together.


P.S. Kara is about the 75th %ile in both height and weight at 26" and 16 lbs, 15 oz.

Happy Birthday to all!

This time of year is always busy, but especially with "Gapa's" b-day on the 13th, Daddy's on the 14th and Mama's on the 19th.

We enjoyed a quiet celebration for Daddy on his birthday and then celebrated with Gapa and Gama on Mama's birthday.

Helping Daddy blow out the candle on his birthday brownie. She picked out the confetti brownie for Daddy's birthday treat.

Stealing a huge handful of Daddy's brownie.

Finally eating off her own plate. She loved the brownie, but unfortunately she had a belly ache all night after eating all that chocolate - her first encounter with chocolate.

Kara was so kind to give Mama cuddles for her birthday.

Jana was such a big help with unwrapping gifts at Gama and Gapa's house.

"Look Mama. Daddy got something that has buttons for me to push and pretend it's a remote for the DB (tv)."

Jana taking off with the remote for J's new meat thermometer.

Helping Mama unwrap her birthday present.


All the while, little Kara Mae is enjoying her most common seat- on Grandma. It's really too bad no one likes to cuddle with this kid! :-)

Kara has fun at the indoor park

Kara is too funny!

We discovered that there is a toy that she can play on at the indoor park.

Remember those old horses we had as kids that were connected to the metal frame by springs and you could bounce up and down as well as rock back and forth? They have new ones that get their bounce from rubber bands. Well, this one has a "saddle" on it that fits like a toddler swing at the park does. She LOVES it.

Here's a video of her making it move.




She was having so much fun - she just wanted to tell everyone about it.

Jana's 21 months old!

I know I say this every time, but seriously, how is she getting this old?

She is such a delight to be around. I never knew a child could be this happy. We have our moments, that's for sure, but in general, she's so full of joy.

She's getting more and more independent. She's refusing to wear bibs and doesn't want to sit in her booster seat for her snacks - she'd rather wander around with her food, taking the chance of the dog trying to steal it. She is quite stubborn about some things: wanting people's cell phones, wanting whatever your eating, wanting to watch one of her dvds, or not wanting to get her diaper changed.

She's inconsistent in her use of the potty. Some days we'll get both poopies and peepees in the potty and some days we'll get nothing. But heck, she's not even two yet, so we're just following her lead. Hey, at least those are a few poopy diapers we don't have to change. :-)

She seems to love her "sissy" more and more each day. She doesn't want to be away from her and gets very upset if someone else is holding sissy or pushing her in the stroller.

We have some new Jana-isms. She's so funny!

DB = TV & movies
DBCs = DVDs
mants = pants
mounce = bounce

She's turned into a little monkey - she loves to climb on everything. If we don't watch her carefully, we'll find her on the couch or even the table in a blink of an eye. She also loves to climb into her hold high chair, if the tray is off. (Also notice she's wearing Daddy's sock - goof!)

She's such a sweet and wonderful little girl. I'm so excited to see the person she's going to grow up to be because she certainly seems to be an absolute sweetheart now.

Look at how much hair she has now.


One of the funniest things is that she's obsessed with Kara's toys.
Eating lunch in the exersaucer no less!

She's getting more and more into dressing herself up in whatever she can find. Here she's in her pjs still with a pair of mittens, Lowe's apron, and her new hat (Thanks Jody!).

Still insisting on wearing her new hat while playing on her swing set that's in the garage now.

This cracked me up today. Here she's pulled herself up to the table and was looking through the toys r us flier.
Here is a clip of Jana and her animal sounds.



Her newest thing is if you ask her to say "Kara" she will always respond with "sissy."




Here is Jana and her baby signs

Auntie Kaley's surprise visit

My cell phone rang at 7:30 yesterday morning. Figuring my friend had forgotten that I wasn't going to church and since I was in the middle of feeding Kara, I let it go to voice mail. When I heard the chime of my voicemail, I was a little surprised.

As soon as I could, I checked my voicemail and to my happy surprise, it was my sister - she had a 10 hour layover here in town and was hoping we could get together. With the long layover, I was able to drive up and bring her back here for the day. We had perfect timing, because when we arrived, Jana had just finished lunch and Kara was up from her nap. Oh, it was so wonderful to spend time with her!

Jana and Kara had a wonderful time with her. Kara just snuggled right in and drooled all over Kaley! Hee, hee! And Jana was performing her finest for her!

She was able to play with the girls until they both went down for a nap and then Kaley and I stole away for some girl-time (and a little grocery shopping).

When we returned home, Jana was going in full force again. She showed off her animal sounds, and baby sign language. She ran from room to room at full speed and climbed on everything she could.

Kaley even spoiled us and made dinner for us. MMMMM, it was fabulous!

I think the highlight for me was seeing Jana climb up into Kaley's lap and give her a kiss! I think there is no greater joy as a parent than watching your kids love the people that mean the most to you.

I just wish I had pulled out the camera. Especially since Jana was walking around in her "I don't do pink" black t-shirt and her pink Dora pullups (with purple socks).

Thanks for visiting Kales!

The Best Big Sister

Oh my, Jana melted my heart today.

Kara woke up from her nap early and was screaming. So we came downstairs to play before Jana went down for her nap. I was sitting on the floor with Kara standing in front of me. Jana came over to us, wrapped her arms around Kara and gave her the biggest hug, then a kiss on the forehead. Then she leaned in again and put her arms on my shoulders and "skeeeeze"ed.

(Back ground: When J and I put Jana to bed, we always do a big "family hug" where one of us is holding her and we hug with her in the middle "squeezing" her. She giggles and loves it.)

So she "skeeze"d Kara and gave her another kiss.

I almost cried, it was the sweetest thing.

I can't even put into words how happy I am that Jana loves Kara this much. One of my biggest fears is that she'll resent Kara. (An irrational fear I've had since I found out I was pregnant again.) I know there will be times when they'll fight, but I hope this love keeps going - it's so precious.

Halloween 2007

This was another quiet Halloween. I worked in the morning, went shopping with my mom in the afternoon and the girls napped late. J wasn't feeling too great, so we just visited "Ga-ma and Ga-pa."

I feel rather badly because we had a zillion pictures of Jana in her Halloween costume last year and here are our two pictures of Kara in her costume.

She was overheating in this thing, so she really didn't spend a lot of time in it. But she was one cute "sissy mun-gy" as Jana calls her.

And here is our little "Roar" or lion as the rest of us call it.

"Roar" and "Ga-pa" answering the door for some trick or treaters.


Jana decided to follow a group of trick or treaters down the street and visited the neighbor across the street.



Back in the house Jana once again found the piano.

Mama gave in and allowed her to have some candy. The one problem is that she doesn't know what to do with all the extra spit as a result of the candy, so she's drooling down the front of her.