The past six months have been absolutely amazing. It has been such a privilege to watch Kaiya grow and develop and take hold of our hearts in a way words can't even explain. She has changed and learned so much over the past six months. We have equally changed and learned so much over the past six months. She has grown from this tiny little seven-pounder into an eighteen pound chunky-monkey complete with the most adorable rolls and dimples. Kaiya tops the percentile charts in both height (97th percentile) and weight (90th percentile) and has hit every developmental milestone right on target. We are so proud! She babbles and "talks" so much. I can't imagine how it's going to be when those sounds turn into words and sentences. She has two teeth on the bottom and due to her excessive drooling, chewing on things and of course the crankiness lately we believe the top two are on their way. Kaiya is an incredible night sleeper (like her mom). She sleeps about twelve hours and we rarely hear a peep out of her. However, naps are a different story. She falls asleep easily, but is up anywhere from half an hour to an hour. We tried almost every trick to get her to take longer naps and eventually gave up and decided not to complain since we all get good rest at night. So, mom gets three short breaks throughout the day and Kaiya recharges just enough to get her to the next nap. She is so much fun and brings us more joy than we could have ever imagined. We thank God each day for the wonderful gift He has given us. The following are a few of Kaiya's favorite things.

Kaiya LOVES:

  1. Eating! This past month has been a blast as we are slowly introducing Kaiya to the world of solid food (well mushy food that once was solid). After the first initial shock to her taste buds and the scrunched up face wears off she opens her little mouth for more and follows each bite with an uuuuuuuummmmmmmm! Sweet potatoes seem to be her favorite as they elicit the longest uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuummmmmmmmmmm!
  2. Bath time – There is nothing like a dip in the tub for Kaiya. She will play and splash as long as we will let her. It is amazing to me that she can go from fussy crabby end-of-the-day-tired baby to happy giggly all smiles baby once she sits in that warm water.
  3. Other "little people" – At this stage she gets a kick out of people in general if they make silly faces, but she especially loves kids and other babies. She just watches them, waves her arms and cackles as they jump and run around her. She also really loves that adorable baby that giggles back at her from the mirror.
  4. Playing with her toys – It has been so much fun to watch her over the last six months go from no interest in toys to looking at them to batting at them to really playing hard with them. She sits beside her basket of toys taking each one out looking at it, beating it around and putting it in her mouth then dropping it and moving on to the next one. The toys that really get her giggling and talking are her rattling baby doll and a book that plays I’m a Little Teapot.
  5. Baby Einstein(tm) – A friend loaned us their Baby Mozart DVD a few months ago so we could see if Kaiya would be at all interested before we invested in the videos. Much to our dismay she hated it. She wouldn't even sit through 5 minutes without losing interest and wanting out of her bouncy seat. After a few tries we gave up and got over our disappointment by thinking of all the money we will save. However, at the beginning of January we were taking down our Christmas tree, and it was getting close to Kaiya's bedtime so she was quite fussy. She refused to be entertained by anything other than mama or daddy so we decided to give the video another try. We parked her in her new Bumbo seat (a Christmas gift from Uncle Paul that allows her to sit in an upright position unlike the bouncy seat) turned on the DVD and were amazed at how her eyes were glued to the tube. She laughed and interacted with all the stuffed animals and puppets by waving her arms, laughing and squealing with delight. Her favorite is this lizard (or dragon???) puppet that sticks out his tongue and says, "Baaaahhh." She is far more entertaining than the video.

There are many other things that she loves from the pictures of friends and family on the fridge to daddy playing guitar to silly songs and games. These first six months have been incredible and we look forward to the next six…and beyond.