Waterlogged

We've had A LOT of rain here the past few days. This bucket was empty last Friday:

I know that this may not seem like much to some of you, but for us, this is sometimes all the rain we get in an entire year!!

Santa told Kendall he was putting her on his "naughty" list...

Our trip to see Santa went about as well as I thought it would.

Honestly though, I love this picture.

I'm 11 Months Old!!

Once again I'm a couple of weeks late with this post as time seems to just fly by. The fact that I'm working two jobs, trying to get ready for Kendall's first Christmas and her birthday party all at the same time doesn't help. I really don't want to complain though because we're so lucky and I really try to remind my self of that this time of year. We're all doing well and looking forward to the upcoming weeks!!

At 11 months old, Kendall continues to grow and change every week. As you can see, we've had to resort to using props during our month photo sessions. A bear in one hand and an animal cracker in the other allowed us to get a couple of shots in without Kendall ripping up our sign or attempting to jump off the couch. She's all over the place and into everything.

She now has 7 teeth, which has been great for eating and trying new solid foods, but not so great on mom and dad's sleeping schedules. For the past month she's been up in the middle of the night at least one or two nights a week, and wants either Dan or I to hold her. She must be completely asleep when putting her back in her crib, or she'll start crying and you have to start the whole process over again. We let her cry herself to sleep some nights, but there are some nights when she just won't go back to sleep without us comforting her. I know that her teeth are bothering her - her gums are inflamed and many nights she refuses to eat anything solid. Some nights she won't even finish her bottles, which is very unlike her.

Despite the pain she must be in, she's usually a very happy and playful baby. She's getting a lot better at playing on her own, and LOVES to play with her stuffed animals. She hugs them, kisses them, and has conversations with them. One of her favorites is the pink bear seen in the above photo. The bear was a gift from my friend Carla, and Kendall has kept the bear with her as much as possible since she received it. If pink bear is on the floor in her room, and Kendall is in her crib, you'll walk in to her pointing at the bear and saying, "that".

Speaking of talking, Kendall is working on learning new words. "That" and "boom" are two of the latest. She's also SO close to walking. She cruises around furniture with ease and is standing on her own for longer periods of time. At times, she's also crawling with her butt in the air, or one leg out to the side.

Here she is over the past month:

44 Weeks Old

46 Weeks Old

47 Weeks Old

Future class clown

Our Happy Thanksgiving

The Weatherbys had a great Thanksgiving. For the 6th year in a row, we hosted the big day at our house. It's always such a fun day, but I think it was even more special this time around because Dan and I have so many things to be thankful for this year:

the birth of our beautiful baby girl

having made it through a complicated pregnancy in one piece

a happy and healthy baby

our loving and supportive families

great friends

visits from Caleb and Nick

each other

I could go on and on, but you get the idea.

Kendall had a great time on her first Thanksgiving, despite having had a flu shot the night before (she didn't even cry) and battling a slight fever and rash that's gone on for a couple of days now. We'll be back to the doctor on Monday if she's not better, but we spent the day not thinking about it.

Her first Thanksgiving feast consisted of turkey, ham, sweet potatoes, jello, mashed potatoes and biscuits!

She loved it!

Happy Thanksgiving from the Weatherbys! We hope that you had a great day as well!

I'm 10 Months Old!

I know it's no surprise that I'm late again this month with our monthly update. It's getting harder and harder (check that - nearly impossible) to get the little girl to sit still for our monthly photo session. You can see it in her eyes in the above photo. She's ready to pounce. I even had to enlist Dan's help this month, which I thought would make things easier, but Kendall found it to be even more of a game once Daddy was involved. We have many photos that look like this:

Or this:

Enough about my failed photo sessions, let's talk about Kendall! Time is still flying by and I can't believe she's 10 months old. I'll have a 1 year old in a matter of weeks. She's still growing like crazy and is now in 12 month, 12-18 month, and even some 18 month clothes.

Over the past couple of months, Kendall's personality has really started to come through. She is the goofiest, funniest baby that you can get to laugh at just about anything. She also has a very sweet side. She's started to give hugs and kisses without any prompting, and there are days when I come home from work and she crawls over to give me hugs. She says, "mom, mom, mom" as she crawls over. It melts my heart.

With that said, she's also come to know what she wants, and isn't afraid to let you know. Once you put her in her highchair to eat, she wants her food right then! She has five big teeth to eat with! If you take something from her that she has found during one of her exploring sessions, she gets very angry. She is very interested in our food, and isn't happy when she doesn't get to try what we're eating.

In addition to being interested in food, she's interested in just about everything else in the house. Sometimes this can be a good thing, although sometimes this can be a bad thing. It's neat to watch her play with the plastic bags (don't judge) and try to hold them all in one hand. It also amazes me to watch her solve problems. If she can't reach something, she'll figure out how to get to it. On the other hand, it's a bit scary to watch her pull wine bottles off the rack at my parent's house. She tries to climb everything and has started opening cabinets and drawers.

Bottom line, we love her more and more every day! Here's a look back at the last month, although I didn't take too many pictures that you haven't already seen, so it's a quick look back:

40 Weeks

42 Weeks

Daddy's Day Off

Dan had one more vacation day that he had to use before the end of the year, so he decided to use it this past Friday. We took advantage of Daddy's day off and headed to Sea World for the afternoon to visit Shamu and the rest of his friends. Kendall and I were at Sea World just four months ago with my friend Rachel and her family, but we figured that the little girl would be a lot more interested in the animals this time around. She wasn't totally enthralled yet, but you could tell that she was more aware this time around. Especially when we were in the Penguin Encounter! She was excited to see those penguins!

Checking out the Beluga Whales

At the tide pool with Dad

Thinking about touching the starfish

Finally! The Sesame Street play area!

It's so nice to have passes to all of these great parks in San Diego! I remember growing up here and visiting all of the attractions, and I'm so thankful that Kendall will have the same experience! What a lucky girl!

Halloween 2010

Kendall had a great Halloween weekend this year! It was a great start to what will be many wonderful Halloweens to come!

We started the weekend with a Baby Halloween Costume Party, hosted by my mom's group. There were a TON of people there! It was nice to see the babies all dressed up and to even meet some new babies that we had never met before. Kendall een won a prize for one of the cutest baby costumes! And, to top it off, I even got Dan to dress up. Here's Tiger Woods and his little lady:

To complete the couples costume, I went as Elin Woods:

On Halloween night, we had a bunch of people over at our house and even did a bit of trick or treating. Gram and Dude, Aunt Jessica and Uncle Sean, as well as my friend Elizabeth and her family all joined us! Kendall seemed to like all of the decorations and people that were out trick or treating! Sadly I have no good pictures from that night. We did take some of her with the pumpkins though!

Kendall soon realized that the pumpkins' tops came off...

...and that pumpkin didn't taste too bad...

Reaching for the stars...literally

It seems as if we're still raising one of the stars of the Team USA women's basketball team. We had Kendall's nine month checkup yesterday and here are her stats:

Weight: 20 lbs. 2 oz. (74th percentile)

Height: 30 inches (99th percentile)

Head Circumference: 17 1/2 (65th percentile)

2032 summer olympics, here we come!

Happy Halloween!

We got a coupon for Picture People in the mail, so we took Kendall to get some pictures taken of her in her Halloween costume. I hadn't used Picture People before, nor was I sure about how the little bee would handle the studio setting, but she did amazingly well and the pictures turned out great. I'm just shocked by how grown up she looks!!

We also got some great pictures of her in her flower bow and zebra diaper cover:

What a cutie!!

I'm 9 Months Old!

Kendall turned 9 months old on October 6th! I suppose this is more of a 9 1/2 month post since I'm late, but not too much has changed since Kendall hit the 9 month mark, so this update wouldn't have been much different if I had posted 2 weeks ago.

As you can see from the above picture, it's hard to get this girl to sit still. She's crawling everywhere and she wants to play and investigate EVERYTHING. If you open a door or cabinet, she's right there to see what new things she can get into. We've done some baby proofing in our house, but I need to do a lot more ASAP. Rolling around on Lani's dog beds has become a favorite activity. Books are also one of her favorite things. She loves to be read to and loves to flip the pages.

In addition to crawling, Kendall is now kneeling and pulling herself to stand. She does this with ease and doesn't need a whole lot of support. She still loves music and is bopping and dancing to the beat of many commercials and television shows. For some reason though, she does not dance in the car when the music is on.

Kendall now has four teeth (two on the top and two on the bottom) and has started to eat bits and pieces of food. So far puffs, mum mums, cheerios and pieces of fruit are about the only things she'll eat, but we're trying more and more everyday. She's a great eater and is inhaling what seems like a ton of food at every sitting. I'm still making some of her food, but honestly, now that I'm working and she's eating so much, it's become really hard to keep up.

I just can't believe how quickly she's turning into a little girl. She has her own distinct personality, and is so easy to read. There's no mistaking when she is upset about something, hungry or tired. She's giving kisses and starting to give hugs, which makes the challenging times a bit easier. She's a happy baby!!

35 Weeks

36 Weeks

38 Weeks

39 Weeks

We're Back

It's only been a few weeks, but it really does seem like a lifetime since I've updated our blog. The past month has been a whirlwind and we've only barely had time to sit down and relax for a minute or two, let alone upload pictures and blog about it all.

Dan has been working just about every weekend, sometimes all weekend, and sometimes for only a half a day. Even when he does only work half a day on the weekend, it means he's up at 5 a.m. and out the door by 5:30 or 6. It's normally not that bad, but weekend after weekend with little time off has begun to take it's toll and has us both searching the internet for a weekend getaway. Luckily the weekend work should now be over with, and we can return to enjoying Dan's days off.

As for me, I've also returned to the workforce. I'm now officially one of the millions of "under employed", working three part time jobs. I looked for a full time job for a while, but it became painfully obvious within a matter of weeks that my previous field has been decimated and it was going to be hard to find something in the land use planning field. So, I started looking at other things, and think that I'm actually going to be very happy using some of my other skills. Job #1 - I'm working a bit for my dad taking care of his monthly billing. Job #2 - I'm an Area Manager for Dragonfly Designs, a company that teaches jewelry making classes throughout San Francisco, and now San Diego. The owner has focused on after school classes and birthday parties for kids, but we do hold a number of adult classes that I'll hopefully be teaching after the first of the year in San Diego! Job #3 - I'm working for my friend Tim at his seafood supply company, Jaemar. I'm going to be the squid person, working with international buyers and local suppliers. I'm only just starting this job, but think it will be pretty interesting based on the first meeting I had with Tim.

As for Kendall, she's as good as ever. With me working, she's now at a babysitter a couple of days a week. The babysitter happens to be a friend of mine from high school who has a 13 month old named Knox. So, she hangs out with the two of them while they play, and I feel very comfortable knowing that Kendall is with someone I trust. She seems to be enjoying herself so far!

Watch your back Snooki....

Kendall's practicing her fist pump....

Beach Day

I don't know what was really more strange about today, the fact that it was 100 degrees at our house at the end of September, or the fact that today was Kendall's first trip to the beach. Really, both have an explanation. We do have heat waves quite often this time of year, and the weather was so cloudy and chilly all summer long that we never made it to the beach. Well, we did go once, but forgot to check the tide charts. We lugged all our stuff (including Kendall) down three flights of stairs only to find the waves hitting the cliffs. Needless to say, there was no beach that day.

So, since Dan worked all weekend (and most of last night), he took most of today off and we made it a beach day. Kendall did pretty well and only cried a little bit when she stuck a handful of sand in her mouth to see how it tasted. We came home and played in the wading pool in the backyard to wash all the sand off. All and all a pretty good day!

I'm 8 Months Old!

Kendall turned 8 months old this past Monday! I think I'm going to have to find a new way to secure my sign for these last few months...

My how things have changed in the past month. Kendall is now a very active crawler and pulls up to her knees at any chance she gets. She's also now starting to pull up to a standing position, which makes me very nervous given that 50% of our house is travertine flooring. Now that she's mobile, she's into everything. We've started our babyproofing, but we still have some things to do. She loves the water, both the pool and her baths. Turn the bath water on in her bathroom and she comes crawling and grunting! I've never seen a baby move that fast!

In the past month, Kendall has also started to pick up and eat small bits of food. So far she loves the baby puffs, mum mums and cheerios, but I did give her a few tiny bits of kiwi recently and she ate them. We going to be trying new food over the coming weeks. She's getting plenty to eat though, I recently measured her at 29 inches in length and just over 20 pounds. Very unofficial stats, but she does continue to grow! So does her hair! It's finally growing back in, and it's a very light brown color. Surprisingly, much lighter than the hair she was born with.

Although she really has changed over the past month, a few things do remain the same. She is still chewing on EVERYTHING and drooling constantly, but we haven't yet seen any more teeth. We go through a bib or two a day. She's still a great sleeper, now sleeping about 11 straight hours at night, with two 1 1/2 - 2 hour naps per day. She still wants her dad to put her to bed, and she still thinks Lani is hilarious. Peek a boo is still her favorite game, but it's pretty easy to get her to smile and laugh. She's a happy girl!

Something new every day

For the past few weeks, Kendall has been growing and changing just about ever time we turn around. Three weeks ago, she was only scooting and rolling. Now she's crawling, pulling up on her knees, standing on her own for a couple seconds at a time, and walking with assistance. Then today, I turned around from my post at the computer and saw this:

She pulled herself to a standing position all on her own! Another first! I snapped her picture and made a mental note to tell Dan about the day's events when he got home. About 2 minutes later i heard her making noise, and she sounded like she was a lot closer to me. I turned around again, and saw this:

I'm guessing she walked herself over along the edge of the pack and play, because this whole sequence of events didn't take that long, and I didn't hear her fall or sit down. It's a possibility though. Either way, she's now pulling herself to a standing position! I love watching her grow and do new things, but lately it's all happening so fast!

What Can I Find In Here?

Now that Kendall is crawling, she's all over the place and into everything. We've captured these in the past week: