Karys had her 9 month check-up today. There were no shots this time, just a finger prick to test for anemia, which she did not have! She didn't even cry, she just wanted to play with the band-aid :) The doctor did all the standard tests and said she looked great. Karys kept wanting to high-five her and the doctor was laughing and so was she! It was pretty funny. She's pretty outgoing - as long as she was in Daddy's arms!

We did learn lots of fun and exciting things today though! The doctor said to start giving her more food if she is more hungry in the next few months rather than more formula. She said we can start giving her cheese in addition to the rest of the table food she already eats. She can start whole milk at 11 months too, which will be a nice relief to our pocketbook! :) We also asked if we had to wait until 1 year old to face the carseat forward because Karys doesn't really fit. She said with Karys' weight and height as high as they are (she's in the 90th percentile for both) that we can switch her NOW! We were so thrilled with that news. The poor thing literally has no more room in her seat now - especially with a winter coat on! So we went afterwards to Babies R Us to pick one out.

She weighed in at 21 lbs 1 oz but they measured her at only 29". We're pretty sure they were wrong since she had shoes on and they were trying to make up for that fact because we had her at 29.5" when she was 8 months old so we'll probably measure her ourselves and use that measurement instead.

Tonight we're going out to eat with Granny & Papa for Tim & I's birthdays. We're having pizza and since she can have cheese, Karys will be able to have some too - great first meal huh? :)

Overall, the visit was great! We learned a lot of good information and got a lot of great news. We go back in 3 months for her 1 year exam. We can't believe in only 3 more months our little girl will already be a whole year old! Time has gone by so fast!

Karys also has a tooth up top that is about to pop through her gums. We can see it and feel it. I'm not sure if it's one or two since she isn't too keen on us looking in her mouth, but it's definitely there! I'm sure it will break through this week.

She also looked like she was going to take a step the other night, but then quickly decided against it. She'll stand there on her own and bounce and clap so I'm sure her getting brave enough to take a step isn't too far off. I can only imagine how much we'll have to chase after her then! :)

We hope everyone is having a great week!

Karys had a wonderful 1st Thanksgiving! She loved getting to eat turkey, mashed potatoes, peas, corn and some of the other dressings on the table. She had two Thanksgiving dinners. She and I went to my mom's in the early afternoon for her first Thanksgiving meal of the day and then later that evening we had another meal at our house with Tim's family. I don't know what her favorite part was because she really seemed to enjoy it all. We think this might have been her favorite holiday yet :)

Besides being everywhere around the house, crawling up our walls and walking along the furniture, this past weekend she started letting go and attempting to stand alone. The most she's probably stood alone for is about 5 seconds or so but that's a long time for a little person! She's getting much more brave about letting go as the week goes on too. She's also started to sort of "bear-crawl" with her feet now too and looks like she wants to stand from that way too. So maybe within the next few weeks she'll get the standing part down. We're not sure if she'll be walking by Christmas but we're not ruling it out just yet with all her new progress! We'll keep you all posted!

We hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving and stuffed themselves as much as we did!

For the past week or more Karys has been just horrible to feed. She is no longer interested in her baby food and therefore makes feeding time not so great. After talking with a couple of my friends, Jennifer & Krystyn, with little girls just a little older than Karys, we decided maybe Karys was ready for table food.

So we gave her mixed veggies the first night off our plate and she seemed to like them and more importantly, she did not fight us on eating them as she has been with the baby food - which was great! Last night we gave her some diced ham and she loved it! She has a hard time putting it in her mouth since it sticks to her fingers but she can pick them up and wants to eat them :) The doctor said when they stop showing interest in baby food, it is a sign they may be ready for table food. She is always very interested in what we are eating so it looks like our baby girl is growing up!

I must say, I will be glad when she is on table food all the way because then she can eat dinner with us and feed herself. She looked so big last night in her highchair with her diced ham and her sippy cup. She was doing most of it by herself and I still remember how she was so tiny and I'd give her a bottle every 4 hours...it's kind of sad but at the same time, I'm so proud of her! I think Brinks is also happy about Karys eating table food now too - as he got to "clean up" all the ham that fell to the floor! :)

Today will be my last day of work until after the Thanksgiving holidays so I'm really excited about being able to spend every day with her. We're going to have so much fun!

We hope everyone has a Happy Thanksgiving!

Karys is feeling much better and was able to sleep a lot this weekend. She's still on her antibiotics for her ear infection for another couple of days and it seems to be doing the trick! She's also not as congested anymore, which is so wonderful! For the most part, this weekend was really good for relaxing but at the same time, we got a lot of stuff done!

I finally got around to packing up all her old clothes (newborn - 6/9 months) and Tim stored them up in the attic. It was so sad packing up all her little outfits and it's almost hard to imagine that she ever fit in some of those tiny clothes. At times she seems so small still but at other times, she has just grown so much and is so much bigger! Tim also packed up her swing, bouncers, playmats and a lot of other items that she just does not use anymore and put them in the attic as well. We have so much more room in our gameroom now and Karys had a lot of fun crawling all around in there last night. It was nice to have more space to spread out in.

We've discovered we have to watch her closely with the doorstoppers because she tends to pull the tip off of them and it's so tiny she could choke on it! She's much faster at crawling now and so she tends to try to get into everything. We're constantly realizing what all needs to be moved or picked up! She is definitely keeping us on our toes for sure. We're trying to work on boundaries with her right now.

She knows what the word "no" means and will generally abide, if only for a short time. "No" does however stop her in her tracks and she will look at us when we say it. We'll show her another toy and she'll leave the other item alone. Only a few times has she looked at us and cried so we know she understands the meaning of "no". So far though the positive reinforcement has worked pretty well and she is learning :) She's so smart!

We're all doing much better and are in the process of getting ready for the holidays. We'll have a full house with Tim's dad and step-mom coming in town next Wednesday for Thanksgiving with his step-brother and nephew too. We're really excited about getting ready for everything and being able to get so much accomplished this weekend. I'll be home all next week with Karys too so I'm excited about spending some quality time with her!

I also posted a couple of videos in the movie section to show how much her crawling has improved over the last couple of weeks.

It turns out that Karys has an ear infection! She hadn't gotten any better this week so we started thinking it might be something more than just teething. The doctor was able to get her in today and she has an ear infection in her left ear and is really congested. She prescribed an antibiotic for the ear infection and some drops to help her with the congestion.

By this evening it looked like Karys was feeling better, though it might be just that she is really tired and finally is able to breathe a little bit better! The doctor said she was in a surprisingly good mood despite having an ear infection and being sick. No wonder we had no idea something more than just teething was going on! She kept trying to play with the doctors stethoscope around her neck! She also said that it was amazing she went 8 months without an ear infection in the first place - apparently they are really common. I'm just glad we got her in when we did though.

Hopefully this works and our little girl gets well soon!!

This afternoon, Karys started walking along the furniture! She apparently wanted my laptop enough to move around the couch and guide herself to get it - and she did! I was just amazed and wished Tim had been here to see it. I thought we were still a little ways off from actually moving along the furniture but apparently I thought wrong. Once she figured out she could do it, she has been glued to the couch and the coffee table. She is very proud of herself. I took a video that I will hopefully post soon. She's also figured out now that she can leave the rug in the living room and has now been getting into a lot more than she was before - she is fascinated with the magazine rack. She apparently decided to save all of this crazy stuff for when Daddy was out of town - Mommy has been running around everywhere trying to get stuff out of reach!

Other than that fun stuff, the weekend hasn't been real great. I was sick Saturday with a temperature of 101 and this afternoon Karys had a fever of 101 too. My mom was a lifesaver and came and took Karys for the afternoon yesterday so that I could rest and try and break my fever. I'm lucky to have her just down the road! Thank you, Mom!!

Between the two of us, we've had it kind of hard. I am hoping hers is just teething. It's been hours since her fever broke so hopefully she'll get a good nights sleep. She fell asleep really early tonight! Poor little thing is exhausted. The doctor called me a prescription so I should be feeling much better by tomorrow morning too. Hopefully the rest of our time is spent well and happy!

I'll be posting the video of her walking along the couch and hopefully our family portraits from last weekend sometime this week!

Yesterday our baby girl turned 8 Months Old! We still cannot believe how fast the time has gone by, yet at the same time can't figure out what we ever did without her. As of yesterday she weighed 19 lbs 5.5 oz and was 29.5" long. When I compare this to the growth chart, she is still a bit off the charts for height, but not as much as before and is now in the 75th percentile for weight. She only gained 1/2 pound this month and grew 1/2 inch - definitely a little slower progress than before! She she is basically tall and skinny like her Daddy still! We'll go to the doctor next month for her 9 month checkup so we'll see how much she grows between now and then.

Right now Karys has a runny nose during the day and a stuffy nose at night - which is not so great when you have a child who still uses a pacifier and wants to breathe out their nose! The Little Noses drops only last a few hours but since it does actually work, I can't really complain. I just feel bad for her because I know how tired she is. Usually when she has a runny nose it only lasts for a day or two and then will go away so we'll hope she gets better this weekend!

We're still waiting on our family portraits to get back but I'll post them as soon as I get them!

Today is Karys' 1st Halloween and we're planning on taking our little ladybug trick-or-treating this evening for a little while. The weather should be really nice so we're glad for that too!

For Halloween, we decided to let Karys fingerpaint her own pumpkin on Saturday for the Moyer Family Pumpkin Carving Contest. Since she can't carve yet, we figured she'd have fun doing it this way. She had a blast and it was so cute to watch her. I posted a video and some pictures of the process. She was covered in fingerpaint but it washed off really easy! She never tried to eat it or anything either, which we were very happy about!! Haha!

Now that Karys has been crawling and pulling herself up, she has also tried to step along or closer to the furniture. She seems more interested in standing up on something rather than crawling too. She gets sort of upset if she isn't able to pull up right away! I guess she comes by the impatience honestly! She's not crawling all over the place yet - she will basically just stay in the main part of the living room. I'm not sure she realizes she can leave the rug just yet! Tim told me last night not to show her she could just yet! :) I thought that was pretty funny. He wants to savor the last days of her not being all over the house. It'll be interesting to see her with the Christmas tree though! We're still working on those top teeth - some nights are much worse than others and she will just scream and it breaks our hearts to see her in so much pain. Sometimes it's hard to tell if she has the next bottom ones about to come in or the top ones. We had no idea teething could last this long though!

Tim is going out of town Saturday and won't be back until Tuesday so we'll have a lot of Mommy/Karys time! We also had our first family portraits taken on Sunday but we won't have the pictures until next Friday. We'll post them as soon as we get them though! Karys did great and gave us some huge smiles!

We hope everyone has a safe and Happy Halloween!