Oh What Fun!

Our Christmas fun has begun! 

It started early on Saturday morning when we packed up the car and headed south to San Diego. Our first stop was to visit the Cortese family in Solana Beach. We had lunch and exchanged gifts.

The Cortese kids - Luke and Max (12 years-old) and Natalia Tru.

Natalia loves baby Kate.

Brooke sure did spoil our girl.
Check out the faux fur vest she got her. Kate, of course, was more interested in her $1 light up snowman!

Next, we were off to Nana and Papa's place. We ventured out to explore the Gaslamp District, but our tour of it was cut short by a crying Kate who was tired and wanted out of the car. We stopped and enjoyed an early Italian dinner out.

Posing in front of the poinsettia Christmas tree in Little Italy.

Sunday morning brought more special visits and presents! Jamie and her family are in San Diego for the week so Kate and I paid her a quick visit at the cute house they are renting in La Jolla.

The adorable shirt and sweater from Jamie are taste test approved.

It's never too early to start thinking about this, especially in crowded L.A.

We sure do love our Jamie (even with wet hair)!
Thank you for the great gifts.

After breakfast, Kate got to open her presents from Nana and Papa. 

Her first baby doll.

In her snazzy new shoes!

She's definitely getting the hang of Christmas gift opening.

Nana and Papa are now off to Washington to celebrate Christmas with cousins Daphne and Margot.

The weekend ended with a family Christmas lunch and cookie exchange hosted by Nici in Newport Beach. The girls and little ones decorated and exchanged (and ate) cookies while the guys started a tradition of their own: A Christmas Pub Crawl!

The cookie decorating table.

Shaney.

Emily, Ella, and Kate.

Ut oh! She got her first taste of frosting! I think she likes it!

Kevin, Paige, and Emily.

Cousin Michelle's first blog appearance.

Such cute girls! 

Amazed by Nici's snow globe collection.

Wow!

We are definitely feeling the joy of the holiday season!

Merry Christmas from the Williams.

6 months

It is hard to believe that it has already been half a year since this girl was born.

These pictures were taken on a Sunday morning while mom was away.
Steve had to dress her in her Johnny Cash onesie one last time before it no longer fits.

Time really is flying by. It seems like just yesterday we were cradling our newborn in our arms. Now she is sitting up on her own, grabbing everything in sight, and moving around by way of her army crawl.

Kate had her six month check-up on Thursday.

Checking herself out in her favorite mirror while we waited for Dr. DiMundo.

She impressed Dr. DiMundo again. This time it was with her fluid crawl to sit move that she has been working hard on the last few weeks. Dr. DiMundo said most babies don't do it until they are closer to 8 months-old.

At the appointment we learned that Kate has baby eczema. She has had a rash since Thanksgiving that has come and gone, but gets worse after she spends a day crawling around the house. We thought it was from that or maybe connected to teething (her second bottom front tooth just broke through last night). But, DiMundo said it is eczema. We are hoping that keeping her coated in special creams and Aquaphor will do the trick to keep it until control and eventually she will out grow it. There was one day last week when we were very concerned because it spread all over her body, but it is better now and so far Kate is not scratching and does not seem irritated by it.

Otherwise, she's doing great and is continuing to grow. She's tall and has a big head! Here are her latest stats:

Height: 26.5 inches - 75th percentile (2 inch gain from 2 months ago)
Weight: 16 lbs. 2 oz. - 50th percentile (almost a 2 pound gain)
Head Circumference: 43.0 centimeters - 75% percentile (1.7 cm bigger than 2 months ago)

At 6 months old, here are some of the things that Kate is up to:

She is very eager to explore everything and see how it tastes. Anything she can get her hands on goes directly in her mouth. That is, everything except solid foods. She is still not interested in eating. Last week she went from gagging and refusing to swallow during mealtime, to just refusing to open her mouth at all. Dr. Dimundo said she is not ready. She said Kate is so active and focused on mastering crawling that it's all she can probably think about right now. We are going to take a break and try again with some new food options and feeding methods in a couple of weeks. 

We are also hoping that as she gets more settled with her new movements and her teething eases up, her good nighttime sleep habits will return. The last few weeks have been rough as Kate has been up 2-4 times a night for long stretches of time. Sometimes she wants to eat, but other times she is just awake and doesn't want to be in her crib.

Happy Half Birthday Kate! 

We sure do love your fun and inquisitive personality that we are seeing more of every day.
We can't wait to see all the places you'll go.

Holiday Cheer

It's beginning to look and feel a lot like Christmas around the Williams' house.

After making the mistake of going to get it on a Monday after a busy weekend in West L.A., and having to go to three different lots to find it, this is Kate's first Christmas tree:

Kate loves the big tree in her living room.
She pulls herself over to it several times a day to admire the blinking lights and shiny ornaments.

We are still working on getting all our presents to go under the tree, but if no other gifts arrive, we have this special package:

The big teal box that Kate's diapers come in provided a fun photo op!

Kate has her Christmas wish list out. If Santa reads this blog, forget the toys, she really would like more of her new favorite thing -- water bottles!

And, now that our Christmas cards have been delivered, we can share these pictures of our merry little girl:

Steve researched the design, bought all the props, and set up the scene for Kate's Christmas shoot. We couldn't be happier with the results.

Happy Holidays!
xo

Yum?

I was very excited for Kate to reach the six month-old mark so she could have her first taste of solid food. Lately she chews her mouth and watches very intently when people eat in front of her, so I thought for sure that she was ready for it. I got her bibs and multiple colored spoons ready for the big event and had Steve standing by with the camera to capture her first bite. Unfortunately, this was the result:

The carrots went in and after a series of gags came right back up (sorry if you have a weak stomach). We tried a few more times, only to get more gagging and very little interest from Kate, so we called it off. The next day it was more of the same. On day three I had Steve pull her highchair out of the garage. I thought maybe her big chair would help. She seemed ready:

"Sittin' in my highchair, big chair, my chair, sittin' in my highchair bangin' my spoons!"
It's a song we learned in mommy and me class.

It went a little better, but only a little. She didn't gag, but she refused to swallow once the carrots were in her mouth. Eventually, she was blowing raspberries and spraying the carrots all over the kitchen and me.

I thought maybe it was the taste, so after four days of carrots, we moved on to sweet potatoes. 

There still is not much interest. Although, today she did grab the spoon from me and put it in her mouth and swallowed a few times.

We will keep working on it; making meal-time fun; introducing new options; and most importantly, keeping her dad away so he too doesn't gag or have to see the big mess we make!

First Flight

With everything that happened in mid-November and with Steve on the mend, we decided a girl's trip to visit Jamie in Mill Valley was in order. I figured it would be an easy hour-long first flight to take Kate on. What really could go wrong? Well, I found out!

First, our flight leaving LAX on Monday was delayed. I thought about just having Steve come back and get us, but our bags were checked and it seemed impossible to get them back, so we waited and waited for FOUR HOURS! Keeping this girl contained and content for that amount time with no place to put her down wasn't easy.

This only happened for about 30 minutes of the long wait.

Once we got on our plane, it was a smooth ride. The flight was empty, so we got our own row of seats toward the back of the plane. Kate slept for the first half of the trip on me and then we had to document her first time in the air:

"Hey, Where's my first-class upgrade?"

Getting her wings!

A first flight selfie with mom.

The next bad piece of news came when we landed. I had gate-checked Kate's stroller in order to not have to lug her and her heavy car seat through the airport. For some reason, even though Kate was the only baby on board, they didn't know who it belonged to and sent it to the baggage claim area. So, this happened:

This isn't some random guy. The steward on our flight felt bad for me and he insisted on carrying Kate part of the way through the airport to find her stroller.

Kate was a trooper through it all and loved Jamie's cute kids -- especially Miss Quincy, Jamie's 2-year old, who talks up a storm and really enjoyed helping out with baby Kate.

Jamie's husband, Scott, was out of town on a business trip, so our days were pretty hectic as single moms caring for the kids. We did still manage to squeeze in some quality time catching up with each other and some of our favorite shows (48 Hours Mystery, Dateline, and The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills) during naps and after bedtime.

On Tuesday morning, we checked Quincy and Kate into the nursery at Jamie's gym for a bootcamp workout and uninterrupted showers.  Kate was tired and crying, so we got a call right as we were finishing up that I needed to come get her. I am glad I tried it, but poor girl!

A late afternoon coffee and tea "break" with the kids.

A major rainstorm while we were there brought more travel headaches as we tried to get home on Wednesday afternoon. The freeways to the airport were a flooded mess and I kept getting flight delay notifications on my phone. We finally decided to just turn around and reschedule our return home for Thursday morning. It's a good thing we did because our original flight ended up being canceled. Kate wasn't happy to get pulled out of bed early, but she fell right back asleep on the ride to the airport. 

We faced more delays, but finally made it home safe Thursday afternoon. It wasn't the easy first flight that we envisioned, but it was worth it to visit good friends. 

Thank you for having us Kintz family!