8 months

Dear Kinley,

Eight months old you are today! You continue to be Mommy and Daddy's little ray of sunshine! You are about 13 lbs now and are finally starting to fit into 3-6 month clothes, yay! You still eat like a champ and never turn anything down. Let's talk about your milestones so far. You currently:

sit up
babble, all the time
clap your hands
nod your head, and
scoot backwards

We love watching you grow, even if it's very very slowly! Mommy is always reading on Facebook about other moms and their kids "growing up too fast", but I always tell your dad that I have the best of both worlds. I have you who is "growing" and hitting milestones all the time, but you are still so little that I feel I am getting all the time in the world to watch you be, well little. You are such a firecracker. We can already see a feisty side in you, which you get from your mother.

In this past month you celebrated your very first Christmas! In my opinion it was my favorite Christmas yet! When we brought home our tree you were in awe of it for days! You loved looking at the lights and the ornaments. Then, the presents came and boy did they come! About 95% of the presents under the tree were yours, but do you know what your favorite present was? WRAPPING PAPER! At one point we put one of you new toys right in front of  you and instead of showing any interest in it at all, you decided to twist all the way around to grab some wrapping paper to crumble and chew on! This Christmas was a little quieter than our previous ones, but it was so wonderful to celebrate with our new little family. Your dad and I would not have wanted it any other way.

As always, Miss K, we love you dearly. We love spending time with you and watching you laugh and play. We are so excited for your coming days and to see how you will grow.

Love, Mom

Here are some Christmas card pictures that didn't make the cut...

7 Months

Dear Kinley,

Another month has come and gone, way too quickly. I don't think time will ever be slow enough for me. So let's keep going. You are seven months old now! You weigh whopping 12 ish lbs, most people when they see you think you are three months old instead of seven. Your hair is starting to come in more. There have been some request by a certain set of grandparents for your hair to turn blond. I'm not sure what I can do about that, so we're just going to roll with whatever you get. You are beautiful either way. You are still happy as can be. You officially have two teeth now, and are not such a bad teether to be quite honest. Mommy didn't even realize you were teething until one day I saw your two bottom teeth had already cut through! You are such a champ! I hope the rest of your teething days follows suit. We're still giving you solid foods and you are trying more and more things all the time. You are so interested in what Dad and I are eating, it's fun to watch your curiosity.

Let's see, what else...? You took another plane trip to California for your first Thanksgiving with the Nunes grandparents and got a crash course in living with not one, but three dogs! The bigger dogs seemed to intimidate you a bit, but you seemed to like Grandma's dachshund, Roger, and Aunt Jenna and Uncle Dan's pitbull/basset hound mix, Tank. Tank has had some experience with a baby already, so he was the best with you. We did lots of eating and we did some Christmas shopping with you and you just went right along with it all. Daddy and I feel so lucky that you are so easy going. You still babble a lot and you now say, "ma ma, da da and ba ba". We love listening to you and laughing with you!

We are so excited for your first Christmas and can't wait to set up all the decorations and the tree and to shop for some of your presents. Hopefully, Mommy can be better about taking more pictures this next month. I don't think I busted out our camera once during Thanksgiving, or on most of the trip for that matter. Sometimes I just get caught in the moment with you. But I'll try harder next month.

As always, we love you sweet girl! So happy for another great month and we are thrilled for what's in store for the next month.

Love, Mommy.