Happy (Late) Easter!

I figured it was about time to share some Easter pics since it has been two weeks already. Here's Kelsey decked out in her Easter outfit. She's not one to smile for the camera these days since she thinks it is a big toy you are waving in her face and not letting her have/eat/play with, but I thought this was a cute picture anyway =).
And here are a couple attempts at a family pic. The second one is the closest thing to a smile we got. It was hard enough for me and Ross to have a picture taken of us we both liked before Kelsey, so it will probably take a lot of practice to get one we like all 3 of us in. (Sorry Ross!)
And here she is on her first Easter egg hunt. Really not digging the cold grass. But at least it didn't take her too long to find them...since we didn't really hide them.And finally a good close up shot after about 20 of them with her grabbing the camera.We also started her on solid foods! Yum yum! (I'm not sure if she liked the rice cereal better or the spoon- which she had to hold herself, of course!)And at the end of the day, I imagine the caption for these pictures goes something like this: "Hey mom, this is more like it! These are the kinds of solid foods I'm talking about!" All in all, it was a great first Easter for our little girl!

Our Little Stander!

So just a couple days after we got back from LA, Kelsey added pulling herself up to standing to her resume! And now she is getting so solid at it and walking along things and everything! Here she is the very first time she stood straight up, supporting herself on a laundry basket of all things! (And then falling to her bum of course!) And then the first time she did it in her crib...
...she ended up like this:
But at least it made for some cute shots like this one:

Crawling & Sitting & High Chairs, oh my!

Our sweet little girl is changing so rapidly! Just in the past week and a half she has learned to crawl and sit up and had her first time in a high chair too! My mom and I are in LA (with Kelsey) so her daddy is missing her I'm sure. Luckily she crawled just a little and went from all fours to sitting up once before we left to come. But now, she is a total crawling and sitting pro! She is such a quick learner and I am so proud of her! Here are a few pics of her new skills. We love you daddy and we miss you!!!






Oh yeah, and her first top tooth poked through today too! She was working really hard on getting it out last night and this morning. Good job sweets!

Does it make me a bad mom...

...that I just had to get a shot of this?
I promise she wasn't screaming when I went to get the camera!

TEETH!!!

So our life seems to be revolving around teeth lately...Kelsey got her first tooth at 5 1/2 months! And her second one poked through on Monday (her 6 month birthday)! Here is a pic of me trying to show off her bottom right front, the first one that came in. I don't really think you can see it, but it's the best I can do for now. She likes to shut her mouth or stick her tongue out over them when I try to take pics or video.


And while Kelsey is getting teeth...her mommy might be losing one. Here is a picture I took of an x-ray of my tooth, or what's left of it I suppose...
Yes...that black area is infection...and apparently it is eating away at my jaw bone. Sad. Shocking. SAD. And according to my dentist's office, there is nothing I could have done about it. That's all I'm going to say about that...

But Kelsey is as cute as ever and reminds me every day that luckily there are more important things than teeth! (Since she is happy as can be and this was taken before she had any!)

My husband the EMT!

I can't believe it's been over a month since we updated our blog, but since my husband has been missing in action here on the blog for quite a while, I will have to do a little bragging for him. I had been meaning to write about this a while ago, and now that classes have started up again I finally remembered! This past fall he took all the EMT courses required to certify as an EMT-Basic as part of his training to be a firefighter. He did great in all his classes and then he passed the National Registry test to officially be an EMT with flying colors! Way to go Ross!!!

Kelsey's First Christmas

Well, I have really been wanting to get out some sort of Christmas card or letter for the past few years. Especially this year with the new baby and all. But since it is January now, and that hasn't happened, this year this blog post will have to be enough. Maybe next year =)... So here are some pictures of Kelsey's first Christmas activities. She definitely loved getting to see new things and have lots of people around. She would try so hard to stay awake because she didn't want to miss out on anything! Here are a couple pictures from her first time meeting Santa:
And here she is in her "Christmas best" (what can I say? I'm a casual kind of girl!) before church on the Sunday before Christmas:

Here are a couple pictures of her modeling her first Christmas present she got to open on Christmas eve (PJs of course!) You can't really see in the first picture, but there are reindeer on her feet and she was totally loving playing with them!
In these pictures taken later you can see at least one of the reindeer, and see how much she liked to grab them!














And here she is on Christmas morning and afternoon opening presents. These series of pictures really made me laugh- I had trouble picking only a few to post!
Yes, she really was as excited as she looks in that picture! And then of course the first place every present goes...in her mouth!
"My cow is awesome!" (says Kelsey, of course!)
"Oh my goodness...what do I do with a present this big?!?" (says Kelsey again)

And of course after all of the presents and excitement of the day, her most favorite toy of all... the ribbon from one of her presents! =)





She also got to go see the city of Bethlehem (she loved the animals!), a reenactment of the Christmas story by a church near where we live. It is pretty cool!

And she got to go to Christmas in the Park in downtown San Jose- a whole strip of land decorated with Christmas trees and moving displays and such. She really seemed entertained by them!

I don't know if you can tell, but behind her right shoulder is a merry-go-round of penguins and she was really loving watching them go around!

So as you can see it was a packed first holiday season for our little girl! She is so much fun and we are so grateful to have been able to share this time of year with her for her first time. I was going to take a couple pictures of her celebrating her first New Year too...but after all the Christmas excitement, she wasn't even awake to see it..she had zonked out on her daddy on the couch. Oh well, maybe next year =)!