Kallie turned 9 months old last week, and I just can't believe it! I feel like I was just pregnant, and yet she's getting close to one! I have to say, this age is my absolute favorite so far! She is becoming such a little kid, and developing such a STRONG personality, it's just a blast being with her! She's changed a lot in the last month (just like every other month:), but it feels more dramatic this time. I think it's because it's more of her personality coming out, and it's just amazing to watch! Here's a few of the changes we've noticed:
1. Kallie has a temper! Around this age is when babies can start to respond when you take something away from them, and Kallie has definitely held true to that. When we take something away from her, or tell her 'no' (which she clearly understands) she gets quite upset. She'll throw her hands in the air, bite her fist, hit the floor, and 'yell'. I was pretty worried about it at first, but I also have to remember that at such a young age, she has a very limited ability to express her frustration. We never laugh because we don't want to a) make her feel like we're laughing at her feelings and b) encourage fits, but oh my goodness, I've almost died holding it in sometimes!
2. Kallie started waving and clapping! It's so cute and fun! I'm trying to get good videos of it, but as soon as she sees the camera, she stops whatever entertaining thing she's doing. I did manage to get a clip of her clapping (at the bottom) but the funny thing is, we were trying to get her to wave the whole time:)
3. She's started crawling on all fours. She was just dragging herself around before, but now she'll actually get up on her hands and knees. And she's also started pulling herself up onto things (just on her knees) and pretty much moves completely differently. It's amazing to see how she went from barely any movement, to being able to go from any position to another and moving all over the place. She's also very interested in the stairs, but hasn't tried to climb up at all.
4. Her eating has changed a lot. She's eating much more table food (instead of everything being totally pureed) and really loves it. Her absolute favorite food is bread (takes after mom and dad:), she just can't get enough and gets sooooo excited as soon as she sees a slice!
5. She's masterd her sippy cup. A couple months ago I started just leaving it on her tray, and she would play with it, and suck on it, but couldn't figure out how to tilt. Well, she's now a one-handed pro! And she really loves drinking her water out of it, so that's nice.
6. Kallie has started mimicking lots this past month..she'll mimic different sounds (hot, ma, da, ba), if we click our tongue in our mouth she'll do that, she'll mimic fake coughs, and she mimics different actions we do (clapping, waving, head tilting, etc.). And if I ask her for a kiss, and make kissing noises, she'll lean in and mush her open mouth against my lips:) It's definitely one of my favorites:)!
7. She plays peek-a-boo all the time. She'll grab a blanket, water bottle, toy, whatever is in her reach, cover her eyes, and then yank it down really fast and laugh when we say 'there she is!'. It's so cute...and can go on for a REALLY long time:)
I think that's everything, but I'm sure there's more~~it's amazing how much you can forget in a month! We are enjoying being parents to our little miss Kallie soooo much, it's unbelievable how much you can love someone! We're so proud of her, thanks for sharing a space with us that allows us to 'brag' and get so excited about her!!!
One of the really fun things about this age is how independent Kallie has become. She can entertain herself for so long; she loves exploring our living room, playing with all her toys, and she talks to herself and makes herself laugh all the time. I just love sitting back and watching her play and listening to her, it makes me laugh:) One of her favorite things to explore is daddy's guitar amp...there's so many knobs and buttons to play with! The other big development in our house is that Kallie can now pull herself to a stand. She first did it on the stairs (it's easier there) but will pull herself up on a table, and yesterday morning I found her standing in her crib for the first time! I posted a video of Kallie talking to herself...it's not the best (b/c of course babies rarely do what we want when we're video taping them...or anytime for that matter;) but it kind of gives you and idea of what she sounds like:) (mom, I'm sure you'll watch it a thousand times!)
Well, before anyone gets too worked up(mom:), no, we did not get a dog. We live in the city, in close quarters, and have no desire to squish a 120 lb husky into the mix! But, we did have a canine visitor for the night! Our New Year's Eve started out a little rough...Kallie was having a hard time going to sleep (it's amazing how much a disrupted schedule affects babies!) and I needed to be picking up the babysitter. Luckily, Lyndon was able to settle her down and get her to sleep while I picked up Kathleen. So off we went to Fred and Lindy's to spend New Year's with the fam...Lyndon's auntie Lorri is in town from Toronto, and Oma and Opa were there as well. We had delicious appetizers and snacks, were having a great time visiting and laughing...when the phone rang! I instantly knew who it was...Kallie's schedule has been completely thrown off by all the holiday travelling and late nights, and she's had a couple of rought nights, waking up 3-4 hours into her sleep. Plus, she just started making strange this week, so I had a feeling it would be disastrous if she woke up before we got home (she hadn't seen Kathleen for a few weeks). When I answered the phone, I could hear Kallie screaming in the background, and so headed home right away. I was home in less than ten minutes, and Kallie instantly calmed down when I held her, even laughed and smiled (little goofball). I got her back to sleep and was able to join the fun again for the rest of the night. We played Cranium Wow (one of my Christmas gifts from Lyndon's parents!) and laughed and laughed and laughed~Lyndon's Oma and Opa are hilarious...it was such a fun night! We rang in the new year with a delicious dessert a la Lindy, and headed home. Well, that's where our adventure began. About two minutes from our house, we saw a big husky on the road, barely being missed by traffic, right by the expressway. We pulled over right away, knowing the dog wasn't too far off from being hit. We weren't really sure what we were going to do, but we knew we had to get him off the road. So for about 15-20 minutes, we tried to get him in the back of our truck, FINALLY succeeding. We decided to look for the owners, driving way into the country, knocking on doors (at 1:30 in the morning...only houses with lights on:) What we learned was that people had been seeing this dog for about 3 days, no one had come looking for it, and no one could catch it. The animal shelter does not pick up animals at night, so we were left with one option...bring him home with us. We got home about 2 hours after we had left Fred and Lindy's. It was quite interesting...we had to lock our cats in our room, or they would go nuts. He's a huge dog (who threw up in the back of our truck...lovely) and we didn't know how we were going to keep him in our little townhouse. We first tried the basement, but we would have had to stay up all night with him b/c he really didn't like it down there, and just wouldn't settle, so we ended up tying him up in our backyard. I felt bad about it, but Lyndon kept reassuring me that huskies are made to withstand cold temperatures, and thankfully it wasn't too cold. We slept in the living room so we could keep an eye on him and give him some attention throughout the night, bought some dog food at the corner store, and did the best we could with the little we had. We had to keep the cats in the basement b/c they started howling when they saw him, but for the most part, the night went ok. Lyndon didn't get much sleep, b/c he just kept watching the dog. But thankfully, this morning the animal shelter came and picked him up, we're praying he'll be adopted by a loving family right away. He was such a sweet, gentle dog, and really beautiful! We both said that if we lived in the country we definitely would have kept him! Anyways, that was our adventerous New Year's Eve...quite a fun way to start 2008! And now we're just relaxing and enjoying the day together, before Lyndon has to go back to work tomorrow! May you all have a wonderfully blessed year!
Kallie and Kathleen
