Muir Woods, CA

6 Months (a few weeks late of course)

 At 6 months, Kaitlyn is 25 inches tall (14th percentile), 14 lbs 9 ounces (20th percentile), and her head was 17 1/2 inches around (91st percentile).  Her growing is all happening in her brain I guess ;)

Kaitlyn loves sitting by herself and is very proud of herself when we stand her up and she balances against the couch by herself.  She loves playing with all of her toys all at once and banging things around to make noise.  Sometimes when Kaitlyn is supposed to be sleeping or napping, I go check on her and she will be on her tummy trying to lift her stomach off the ground over and over.  She will notice I'm there and give me a huge smile.  

Kaitlyn loves watching football with Dad, she loves anything on the computer screen... even my email is extremely interesting.

She loves standing on our hands.  She is thrilled any time we do it and she knows that Dad does it a lot more than Mom because he's much stronger.

Trying on her new Stanford hat (I'll get a picture with the finished version sometime.)

We have started feeding her solid foods.  We started with rice cereal that she liked the first few mouthfuls and then decided it wasn't for her.  We tried a few more times when she was hungrier and she would attack the spoon and want it faster and faster until it was too frustrating.  Then I heard about a method of starting solids called baby led weaning.  I'm taking some of the things from it and trying them out.  It's basically letting the baby feed herself and giving them real food.  This worked pretty well with her first slice of avocado.  She loved it and made a mess but had tons of fun trying to pick it up and smash it and suck on it.  So far she likes picking it up and licking it (almost mushy carrots, watermelon, and bananas), but doesn't like eating as much.  We've tried pureed bananas and sweet potatoes from a jar and she hated those.  She is very dramatic and shows me how disgusting it is over and over.  She's pretty funny about it.  It's still an experiment, so we'll see how it goes.  Rice cereal seems to be the only thing she actually swallows on purpose still and even that isn't very much.

Kaitlyn has been having a rough time with sleeping since we moved.  She is waking up all the time at night and not taking naps very well or consistently.  We have started taking Kaitlyn on drives to get her to sleep but the transfer from the car seat to the crib is always scary.  Every time I think she's getting over it, she has a bad day so hopefully they will come less and less... I need my sleep too.

We went to the doctor for her 6 month check up and the Palo Alto Pediatric Center is pretty awesome.  It's like you walk into an aquarium with the walls painted with fish and a big fish tank and fish swimming by on the TVs.  There is also a playground outside the waiting room.  People joke that their kids would rather go to the doctor than anywhere else because it's so fun.  Kaitlyn noticed the fish tank at least.

Migrating North

Well this post is better late than never so here goes...

We loved our year at UCLA Law School and loved and miss the wonderful friends we made there.  We had so much fun and had a blast all year.  We had planned on staying there all 3 years of Law School, but Jeremy did pretty well his first year and thought he would try one more time to go to his dream school.  He applied to transfer to Stanford and got in!  We decided to move schools and head up to Stanford.  The hardest part about leaving was the great friends that we miss so much.

 (These pictures are from walking around on Stanford's campus)

We have lived in Escondido Village (On Campus Family Housing) at Stanford for the last 3 weeks.  Jeremy has been interviewing for summer internships, which turn into jobs after graduation, for the last 4 weeks and has been very busy.  We are very grateful that he has had so many interviews and call backs.  It will be a hard decision where to go.

We moved into a furnished 2 bedroom 1 bath apartment that has the kitchen and living room downstairs and the bathroom and bedrooms upstairs.  Having a furnished apartment is nice when you don't like your own furniture, but we love the few things we have, so we have smashed it all in together.  The worst thing we noticed was that there was no dishwasher.  It only took me a few days to find and buy a used portable dishwasher on Stanford's version of Craigslist.  Best $150 I've ever spent.  It makes it so I can cook again.  We also had to have my parents mail us our microwave that I thought we would never need to use again.  

(The building right behind the one with the glass pyramid is the law school.  The picture below has the stadium in it.)

 

Our back sliding door opens to a gated patio that opens to the playground.  We have a big open grassy area with the playground in the middle of it and it is full of kids and toys all of the time.  Its fun going outside and swinging Kaitlyn and meeting all the moms and kids around.

I have spent the time getting unpacked and organized and meeting new friends at the playground and in our ward.  The hardest thing about the move has been that Kaitlyn has decided she no longer needs to sleep.  She used to be a champion sleeper at UCLA, and I hope this is still just adjustment time and she'll go back to how she was before the move.

Kaitlyn loves the swing

Kaitlyn loves it outside and especially on the swing.  This video shows her laughing how she usually does, so excited that it all comes out in a single burst of a laugh.  Its nice because this swing is right outside of our door so anytime she is a little fussy, we just head to the swing and all our problems are solved.

The Many Faces of Kaitlyn

We've been busy moving up to Palo Alto for the past little while, so this is a quick update of Kaitlyn.