I'm One Year Old Today!

For Karina's birthday, her Daddy went on a mission to find another bunny blanket...it's a tiny blanket with a bunny's upper body on one corner and Karina's favorite blanket at bedtime...and after going to three different stores he came home with three different animal blankets. Karina responded happily and hugged each one, however when it came time for bed she would only take her old bunny. Of course! One by one she actually threw the alternate blankets across the crib! We'll keep them in the crib and maybe she'll warm up to them!

On her birthday, Karina and Daddy with her new bunny blankets

Unfortunately as of Karina's birthday, she continues to not feel very good. I think this picture illustrates it well...she just looks tired. We began the switch to whole milk and tried it cold turkey (i.e. we stopped giving formula completely), but Karina began having terribly loose stool. So now we've gone to a gradual wean, combining formula and whole milk and hopefully this will work better. I'll have more information about her height, weight and other stats after her 12 month appointment on the eighth of February. They ask you to schedule the 12 month appointment after their actual birthday so you can give your baby egg whites...you're not supposed to give egg whites until they're 12 months old...because in order to get the MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) shot, your baby cannot be allergic to egg whites. If you're allergic to egg whites you may have an allergic reaction to the MMR.

Karina with her original bunny blanket...and the rosy cheeks of a baby not feeling well!

Christmas at Bonnies: Christmas #4

Every year we go to a Christmas Party at our friend, Bonnie's house, where she spoils us all with far too many presents! This was Karina's first time at Grandma Bonnie's Party!

Showing off her adorable outfit!

Checking out one of her presents while sitting with Grandma Bonnie

Helping to unwrap one of Mommy's presents

Cold #6

Karina feeling a bit under the weather

This week Karina got her sixth cold, but this one seems different...she has a cough and even had a fever for a little while. Her previous colds had been primarily nasal congestion, while this one started with a cough.

On the communication front Karina recently added "Bye" to her repertoire although she still mostly only says "Hi" and simply waves "Bye-Bye." Her crawling is getting faster and now that she can go places she gets quite irritated when we don't let her go wherever she wants to...which I imagine is going to get much worse before it gets better!

New Year's Day

For New Year's Day we were invited to Aunt Beth and Great-Grandma June's house for brunch. Karina and Elsa were both modeling their new outfits from Aunt Beth, so I took a lot of pictures. Also Opa feels that Elsa always cries when he holds her, so since she wasn't crying today, I thought I'd get a visual record of the two of them together.

The boys and their little girls

Opa holding Elsa and she's not crying!

Karina has always had a hard time keeping her hands off of Elsa's relatively big, mostly bald head...and today it was even more difficult because the sunlight on Elsa's blond hair (read white peach fuzz) made it look like her head was glowing As you can see, Grandma likes to touch it, too...that and she 's trying to protect Elsa from Karina's not always gentle contact.

"Look Grandma, it's Elsa!"

"I want to touch her glowing head"

"Okay, I 'll just watch while you rub Elsa's head"

Here's Elsa!

Here are some nice pictures of Elsa...unfortunately she's barefoot in quite a few of them because her new socks for her special outfit were too big and kept falling off!

Too Cute!

"Look at my feet Karina...they're bare!

"See...I'll shake them for you"

"I love my Opa"

"I love sitting up!"

Elsa just chillin' with her Daddy and Opa