Eleven Months

Well, once again, it has been a bit long since our last update. Perhaps we should just be honest with ourselves and admit that, unless something special happens, monthly updates are about as good as it is going to get. We do have some great excuses for the delay and I think you will agree that we have had very little blogging time available over the last month.

In our last post, we promised a post with Bora Bora pics. J is a little behind on getting those up, but here is a little teaser. We took this picture on the balcony of our overwater bungalow. It was an incredible vacation and we can't wait to share the pics with you. (Hint, Hint J!) And yes, that water color is real. No photoshopping here.

We arrived home and passed out the lovely gifts we picked up in the Papeete marketplace. Unfortunately, we don't think Kate was very happy with her gift.

We think she is saying, "My parents went to Bora Bora and all I got was this lousy t-shirt!"
"Hey, Kate. It was pretty expensive so you better like it!"

A few days after getting settled back into home and life with a 10 month old, we had a few visitors. My high school friend Kelly came to stay for a few days with her husband Chris and their adorable baby/Kate's boyfriend Cole. We had a great time visiting with our favorite Arizona couple and letting the kids get reacquainted. Cole has gotten so big since we saw him last and is a super-hunky-muscle-man baby.

J's parents and cousin G came to visit for Fourth of July. J and I aren't really big Fourth of July celebrators, but we spent a nice evening visiting with some family friends at their ocean- front rental condo. Yet again, we didn't really see any fireworks, except for a few blasts on our drive home.

Once our first batch of summer visitors left, we joined my parents and my brother and his lovely girlfriend for extended weekend in Mammoth. Check out our separate post with some pictures of our Mammoth trip.

When we got back, we picked up J's Alabama parents and Chico grandparents at the airport for a week of Kate bonding. Later in the week J's LA parents and Victorville grandparents came to visit as well. It was so nice to be able to spend some quality time with J's family and was wonderful to watch Grandpa T get to hang out with his first granddaughter. The Alabama and Chico relatives haven't seen Kate since she was about a month old. We think they had a great time getting to know our little girl.

Grandpa T and Grandma L gave Kate a great book that had a lion finger puppet sticking up through the middle of the book as well as the two cute stuffed animals sitting next to her on the couch. She thought they were really funny.

Kate continues to grow and change at an incredible rate. It may be our imagination, but she really seems to understand what we say to her and what is going on around her. It all seemed to click around the time we went to Mammoth. Out of the blue, she started identifying objects. She picks out rabbits in her books and points out the window to birds. It doesn't matter if the object is a picture or the actual item, she consistently identifies dogs, birds, rabbits, fish, ducks, and her toes. Overall, she seems less frustrated as she is able to communicate a little better with us and understands us a little better. This makes for a happier Kate as well as mommy and daddy.

Kate has also learned how to climb stairs. She has climbed up Willow's stairs a few times and has tackled the entire set of stairs in our house twice. Don't worry about her safety. I followed closely behind her and we have the stairs blocked off with a gate so there won't be any non-supervised stair-climbing.

One of Kate's favorite pastimes is standing at the baby gate and shaking it. It is like she is in little baby jail.

As Kate approaches her first birthday, she is starting to work on some very important milestones. She is getting better at standing unassisted and stands alone for a few seconds at a time. She doesn't seem to be quite ready to walk alone, but she is making good progress towards greater mobility. We also think that that she is starting to work on her communication skills a bit more. We think she is signing a few things like eat and maybe a sign we made up for Willow. J also thinks she said ba-ba this morning. Now she says this a lot but he was sure she said it to tell us she wanted her bottle which she was pointing at while she said ba-ba. We'll be paying close attention to those cute little baby words coming out of her mouth. Kate has also become a finger-food-eating fool. She can pretty much pick up anything at this point and shove it in her mouth.

Though we haven't weighed Kate lately, we are pretty sure she is still up there in the 100th percentile. She is comfortably wearing her 18 month summer clothes and we are now focusing on buying her 24 month fall/winter wardrobe. Yes, our 11 month old wears 18 month clothes. She's a big girl. We figure we have a volleyball player in the making.

On a final note, Willow gave me a little scare this week and took another nice chunk out of our bank account. This time it was totally my fault. Willow is a bit of a food thief and she took advantage of my absentmindedness and stole an undetermined amount of trail mix. Well, silly me was worried about the chocolate when I should have been worried about the raisins which are apparently very toxic to dogs. I figured this out the next morning after Willow vomited for about 45 minutes. I rushed her to the vet sure that she was in kidney failure (the effects of raisins). She looked pretty bad, but after $500.00 worth of tests and medications, she came home fine with no signs of raisin poisoning. So lesson learned: keep raisins away from your dog!

As we head into the final month of Kate's first year we still have an incredibly busy summer. J has made me a Comic-Con widow this weekend but has some awesome pics and great stories to show for it. My step mom and I are planning a wonderful 71st birthday party for my dad and Kate (they have the same birthday) and we still have some family coming to visit. I only have a few weeks left before school starts up again, but I am looking forward to spending my last few weeks watching Kate learn and grow.

Oh...and we will get those Bora Bora pics up soon... ahem ahem J!