Over this past week Kylie has been crawling around a lot more, well not necessarily crawling, more like pulling herself around with her arms and pushing with her feet. She has even gotten very good and pretty quick at it. Well this week she started pulling herself up to a standing position. She has become fairly decent at this in a short period of time, and seems to get frustrated when she can’t get up. At the moment it is easiest for her if she crawls over something that kind of lifts her a little and then she grab on to something else, like the couch, to pull herself up. She doesn’t walk anywhere, she just stands their, but she is clearly pleased with herself. I know I am very proud of her for accomplishing this, as is Tiffany. We have been letting her pull herself up using our hands, and then when she is standing, having her walk around while holding our hands. She is a little unsteady and her legs don’t allows seem to want to cooperate, but she really likes to walk around.

I can’t believe it has been six months already since Kylie blessed my life. The time has gone by so fast! She continues to grow and learn and change right before my eyes on a daily basis.

She is now almost crawling and can maintain a sitting position all on her own, well if someone helps her sit up anyway. As for the almost crawling phase, she has finally figured out how to pull her knees up underneath her when she pushes up on her hands, and she will now rock in this position. Occasionally her knees will slide forward together from the rocking, and then she usually falls down to her tummy as opposed to moving her hands forward. I expect that she will figure out how to crawl any day now, and some people are even saying it will happen before the New Year. I think that would be great, I would just need to start “baby proofing” the house, as this is something I have not worried about yet do to her inability to move to other rooms on her own.

She also continues to show early signs of teething. She drools a lot more now than she used to and she seems to enjoy sticking her finger in her mouth more than before as well. Tiffany says she can feel a tooth coming in as well, I have not quite been able to feel it yet, but I am sure Tiffany can, she seems to be more in tune to those things.

Kylie is still having issues with her right eye as well. We have an appointment to go see a pediatric ophthalmologist on the 27th to take care of her blocked tear duct. Some days this issue seems to clear up and others it seems to be really bad. When I post the past months pictures up tomorrow night at work, you can see in it the pictures. Some days the outside of her right eye looks really red and irritated and other days it seems to be fine. The only good thing is that this redness does not seem to bother her, and she is still always really happy.

Also this past month Kylie had her very first picture taken with Santa. This was such a fun occasion, and everyone at the store commented on how beautiful she was, and that she was such a happy baby. The people taking the picture were exceptionally amazed as she only needed one picture taken because she gave such a good smile on the first take. This picture will also be in with this past months pictures as soon as I get them up.

This past month also marked Kylie’s first adventures with stage 1 baby food. On Thanksgiving she had sweet potatoes for dinner, and seemed to enjoy them. Since then she has had sweet potatoes on a number of occasions and does in fact like them, and she has also started on green beans. This now complete out her current menu at: milk, rice cereal, stage one sweet potatoes, and stage one green beans. Soon we will add more to the list and find out what else she likes.

I have come to learn that one of the most beautiful sounds I have ever heard is that of my daughter’s laughter. When she laughs, it does not matter how tired I am or how bad of a day I am having, I can not help but feel better and smile. I now also cherish nap time, not just because I get to get some much needed sleep, but because Kylie naps next to me. This can be seen in at least one picture that will be uploaded as well. Kylie and I spend a lot of time together, and nap time has become a sort of tradition, I guess working midnights has some advantages in this case.

On a non medical related note; Kylie is progressing along very well. She now pulls herself around on the floor in an “army crawl” fashion, or at least that is how Tiffany describes it. She will roll onto her belly and then pull herself forward with her arms; she does this in combination with rolling and tends to move around the living room floor a lot. She also seems to move in my general direction when I am home alone watching her.

For instance, I will lay her on the floor on her play mat and then go around the love seat to work on the computer and in a few seconds Kylie will have turned herself around so she is facing in my direction on her stomach, and will have moved towards the love seat. If I then proceed to come back into the living room and sit on the couch, she will hold herself up on her arms and watch me, and then proceed to angle herself towards the couch.

She also has a habit of looking for me when she hears my voice, no matter what is going on; she could be being changed, or even fed, but when she hears my voice she looks for me. Then when she finally sees me she is all smiles. It makes me feel really good to know this is a sign of love from my daughter, and I hope that she will always be all smiles when she sees me.

Last Tuesday (Nov. 29th) Kylie had an impromptu doctor’s appointment. This was due to her right eye. For the last few weeks her eye has been producing a lot of mucus, you now the stuff that we all find crusted in our eye when we wake up in the morning. Well the doctor had given us some drops to place in her eye and we had been doing that, however, it does not seem to be helping it as much as it should. So Tiffany took her back to the doctor to have it look at again, because around the outside of Kylie’s eye is all red due to the mucus and the constant wiping (as can be seen in some of her pictures). The doctor gave us another prescription for more of the drops but told us that we will have to make an appointment to take Kylie to a pediatric ophthalmologist (eye doctor) because it seems like she has a blocked tear duct. This is evidently something that happens very rarely, because the doctor told Tiffany that in 25 years of performing pediatric medicine she has only had 3 cases of it, but that it is not something serious or anything major to worry about. So now we get to take Kylie to the pediatric ophthalmologist on December 27 for an exam and to see what they say. In other news Kylie is doing very well and is quite healthy. She now measures 27 inches long and weighs in at 17.03 pounds and her head is no 17 inches in circumference.

So today was Kylie’s first Thanksgiving. It was a good night for her, as she got to try some new food. Well a new food at any rate. Tonight, in honor of Thanksgiving, we gave her some Sweet Potatoes. She seems to like them, and so that officially begins her introduction to “jar food”. Before this all she has had is milk and rice cereal. She still loves the rice cereal so we now have two things that she can switch to instead of having milk all the time. I have some really nice pictures of her eating the sweet potatoes in her Babee Tenda feeding table, and as soon as I can get caught up on getting pictures into the gallery they will be there. Some of the pictures are of me feeding her and some are of Tiffany feeding her. At any rate I hope to be caught up with the pictures by the end of the month.

Kylie is 5 months old today! It has been an exciting month as we have watched her develop even more. As I had mentioned in a previous post she has started to talk, and unlike the previous post, we know now that she has some knowledge of what she is saying, as opposed to just mimicking sounds. She now says “Da-da” almost every time she sees me, thus re-enforcing the idea that she actually knows what she is saying. She also seems to like the sound of my voice as she will almost always look around for me when she hears my voice, which makes me very happy. In addition to the talking she is now eating rice cereal. It took a few tries to find the right consistency and preparation method for her, but we have it pretty much figured out now. There is no real science to it, she seems to like it to be a little on the thicker side, almost like chunky apple sauce, preferably made with water and then warmed in the microwave for 10 seconds. Not only does she seem to like this, but she literally grabs for the spoon and brings it to her mouth on her own. On another note, earlier today Tiffany told me that Kylie pulled herself to a standing position while playing with one of her toys at Grammy Bev’s house, so this appears to be the early stages of her standing on her own as well. As far as locomotion goes, she is not quite crawling yet, but she has become rather adept at slowly pulling herself across the floor to get to where she wants to be. Sometimes she gets her knees under her though and shows great potential for crawling. I see no reason why she wouldn’t be crawling by Christmas if not sooner, then the real fun begins, or so I am told. All in all she is doing very well and is still a very happy baby. Her next doctors appointment is scheduled for early January, so we will have height and weight updates then.

The following is taken from an email that Tiffany gets every week from a place called Baby Center:

Want a foolproof way to make your baby laugh? Mimic his facial expressions and sounds. Not only will he be tickled pink, but he’ll also learn something about communication, since imitation and repetition are key ingredients in early brain development. If he hears you say the same words often enough, he may even begin to make some almost recognizable noises, including ones that sound suspiciously like “Ma-ma” and “Da-da.”

That being said…Thursday 11-3-2005 Kylie said her first word. She said “Ma-ma” while sitting on her Uncle Chris’s (K) lap while he, Aunt Tracey and Tiffany were all sitting around talking. I am not certain if she actually understands the meaning behind the word and knew what she was saying or not, but it is still rather exciting. Not to mention that Tiffany is thrilled that she said “Ma-ma” as her first word.