Kyla's Birthday

     To celebrate Kyla turning one the girls and I made a little birthday cake. They helped me decorate it so it had lots of sprinkles and pink frosting. After dinner we ate the cake and ice cream. My parents and grandma came as well as Heather and her family. Before the party started Kyla practiced blowing and Kyla blew several times but she didn't even try to blow out her candles. We sang to her and then she just stared at the candle and the fire until someone else blew it out for her.

     Kyla ate her entire piece of cake and all of her ice cream. She even picked up her plate and tried to lick it off. This girl likes cake and ice cream.

     After the cake we had Kyla open her presents. She figured out how to open them pretty well but she is a slow opener so she got a little help. Aunt Lora got her a cute little electronic bear toy and my mom got her some bath toys and a dress. My sister and grandma also got her some cute outfits. We got her a "kitty surprise" toy. I took the girls with me to pick out her present and I told them that I had one of those when I was a little girl and they fell in love with it and both insisted on getting it for Kyla. It is a pink cat that has kittens inside of her. The surprise is finding out how many kittens you will get. (There were three.) The girls couldn't wait to open that thing. I had to wrap it right away because Annalyn almost had that thing opened as soon as we brought it home. She promised to act surprised when Kyla opened it. Those girls took off with that gift as soon as it was opened, Kyla did get to hold it for a few seconds. Jakobee and Remi kept fighting over the bear toy and Remi kept taking it away from Kyla. When Kyla tried to play with her bath toys everyone tried to play with them too. She didn't seem to mind too much and when she got to play with them later she had lots of fun. Brynlee loves that cat and she even slept with it for a few nights but she knows it is Kyla's and she keep giving it to her to play with.

We sure do love our Kyla girl and we had so much fun celebrating her first birthday with her.

Kyla is One

     I am still having a hard time believing that my sweet little baby is already a year old. I still want her to be my little baby. She sure is starting to act like a toddler though. She has even started to throw mini temper tantrums by laying herself down and crying when she is mad. She has grown so much these last few month. She weighs 20.4 lbs. (59.7%) and she is 29.9 in. (75.6%) long with a head circumference of 17.9 in. (65.7%). I think she has less hair now than when she was born. I am not sure how that happened. She has four teeth and she is looking big. She did not want her picture taken this month so I had a hard time getting her to stay still long enough for my picture. Here is a look at her through the months.

     As soon as Kyla overcame her colic from her newborn days, she has been my easiest and most easy going baby. She is mostly content to just let me hold her or to sit back and watch things. She will get really mad and start to cry, and then she just sticks her thumb in her mouth and is magically happy again. She is usually pretty happy and doesn't get upset too easily. If she does get upset it doesn't last for very long.

     Kyla is super observant and very smart. I think she likes to just watch what others are doing and she soaks it all in and tries to figure things out. Then when I put her down she wastes no time about doing things. She is a climber and she has been getting into all kinds of things lately. Her two favorite places are the bathroom and the kitchen. She loves to empty the drawers in the kitchen and then climb in them. She figured out how to open all the drawers; those baby latches we bought don't work at all. She also figured out how to pull out the bottom drawer in our kitchen and she will stand on it to reach the top drawer. In the bathroom she loves the toilet brush, the toilet paper, and the water in the toilet. If the girls leave the bathroom door open I can guarantee that Kyla is headed for that room and if the toilet lid is open she will be playing in the water. Yuck. She even used her toothbrush to play in the water one day so I had to throw her toothbrush away. That girl loves to brush her teeth so I was sad about having to do that. She learned how to flush the toilet the other day so if I hear the toilet flush over and over again, I know Kyla is in the bathroom. Annalyn is good at helping Kyla play in the bathroom too because Anna likes to play in the water in there. One day I found Anna in the bathroom covering Kyla with lipstick.

Kyla climbs on all kinds of things. She loves to climb on Brynlee's bed and then stand on the edge of the bed so she can look out the window. She keeps trying to stand on the top of the couch to look out the window as well. She keeps trying to climb on the trampoline and I have caught her on top of my kitchen table a few times. She can climb into boxes but she sometimes has a hard time getting out. If I hear her whining for me I will often find her stuck up high somewhere trying to get down, or else she is stuck in some kind of container.

     Kyla has a deep love for her daddy. As soon as she sees him she flaps her little arms and starts smiling and reaching for her dad. He loves to hold her for a few minutes and she usually puts her head right on his shoulder and starts to suck her thumb. She also loves her sisters and her mom. A few times she has cried for other people but she seems to warm up to them after a while. She is still scared of my parent's dog Gunnar but she isn't scared of my brother Josh anymore.

     Kyla loves to eat and has discovered sweets and loves them. She is definitely related to us. Haha. Most of the time I let her feed herself and she is good at that. She attempts to use her spoons when she starts eating but she usually abandons them after a while. If we are in a hurry and I don't want her to get messy, she has no problem letting me feed her. The high chair we have has these holes on the edges and Kyla likes to stick all of her leftover food in those holes. I can't figure out what they are for but I need a way to cover them up. As much as Kyla likes to eat and she loves sweet, she gets the most excited about cups and getting drinks. She loves water and juice  (although she hasn't had much juice). She can drink out of a big person cup all on her own, although she likes to stick her hand in your cup and if you have ice she will take it; but her favorite is cups with straws. She has been drinking out of a straw for months now and she is good at it.

     Kyla is such an expressive baby. She "talks" babbles and responds to me every time I talk to her. She babbles a lot and I love it. She can say dada, mama, what, and when she pets something soft she says Ahhhh. I have been trying to teach her sign language but usually when I try to get her to do them, she just babbles at me and tries to say the word. She did sign "more" once. I looked at her while she was eating and asked her if she was all done or if she wanted more and she immediately signed more and ate all the food I gave her. She has also signed "please" and "all done" a few times. I taught her how to blow and she got pretty good at it. I asked her if she could blow the other day and she did it before I even showed her what I meant. She is starting to understand what we are saying to her.

     Kyla is slowly starting to walk. She can stand up without holding onto anything and she is getting braver and taking more and more steps. On the day she turned one she stood up and took at least 8 good steps to me. She starts out really slow when she starts walking but then goes really quickly at the end until she dives into my arms. She is now trying to walk all the time and she is really good when something is close by. If she falls, she is most likely to crawl the rest of the way to her destination. She keeps trying to walk with stuff in her hands and she will often have some kind of toy hanging out of her mouth. She likes to use her mouth to carry things but that makes me nervous and it throws off her balance so I wish she wouldn't do that.

     Kyla loves playing outside, playing with other kids, and playing in the water. She loves exploring and eating strawberries at grandma's house. She hates it when I put her down when she is tired and she hates getting her nails cut and will not let me cut them. I have been cutting them while she sleeps but lately she seems to know when I am trying to cut them and she wakes up and cries. She doesn't like getting her face wiped off or her diaper changed but she puts up with it pretty well. She hated shoes for a while but now that she knows she gets to go outside after I put on her shoes she seems to like them. I think she is starting to get used to them.

     This baby girl sure is a joy to have around. It sure is amazing how fast babies grow and how much they learn in their first year and I feel so blessed to have been able to witness and be a part of all of Kyla's accomplishments. It has been a huge blessing to be her mom. Happy Birthday little Kyla. I sure am glad you were born into our family.

Fabulous May

     Another month has come and gone. We enjoyed the warm weather and we have been busy helping Grandma put in her garden and working on our new house. Grandma and my aunt Lora found a little kitten that they rescued and my girls love going over there to hold that kitten and feed the neighbors goats. We have been keeping busy. Music class at the library ended so now we are looking forward to the summer reading program at the library. We are also done with preschool for the year. The girls have been playing with their dress-up clothes a lot lately. They can play for hours and keep themselves entertained really well. It has been a great month.

     We went to a park with my sister Heather and her kids and the kids had a blast playing on the playground equipment, eating a picnic lunch and playing in the splash pad. Even Kyla liked playing in the water. It took Anna a while to get in the water. She seemed to prefer to watch or to play on the slides. I can't blame her since that water was cold.

     Since Joel has been so busy with the house I have had to take over the job of looking after the chickens so we have all been spending lots more time outside. The kids love to play on the trampoline, swing, and dig in the dirt for worms. Brynlee learned how to swing on her own and she has been swinging all the time. I love that she can do it by herself. We had lots of cotton from our cottonwood trees that kept blowing on our trampoline so it looked like there was snow on it for a while. The kids loved jumping on it then but Kyla kept trying to eat all the cotton and the sticks.

      At  our new house, we just finished pouring the foundation and will begin framing sometime this week. There were lots of hard lava rocks that Joel had to dig out of the way and he had to drive all the way to Post Fall, Idaho to pick up the foam blocks he wanted to use for our foundation. That is a 7 hour drive one way so he left at 3am on a Friday morning, loaded up the blocks and then drove home and unloaded them around 7:30 that night. It was a long day of driving. Someone from the ward volunteered to watch my girls so I could go and help him put the blocks together the next day. It was kind of fun; almost like putting together legos. The kids were all happy and the baby fell asleep so Joel took me on a drive in his truck (this was the first time I ever got to ride in it. It is a windy ride.) so we could get home more parts that we needed. Then he bought me some ice cream and made it like an official date. I had lots of fun. I even got to help him pour concrete, but we had several other people come over to help so I don't think her really needed my help. Our new neighbor even came over and helped. The kids and I have been over there a lot in the evenings helping Joel to pick up garbage and keep things cleaned up. It has been hard to have all of Joel's free time spent at the house but it should be worth it in the end.