Kendall's First Thanksgiving!

We had an absolutely wonderful Thanksgiving with absolutely FABULOUS food made by Grandmother! Grandmother and Pops hosted not only Kendall and her 'rents but also Brian, Amy, Mason, Maya and my folks. It was a houseful and we all had a great time! Kendall was a champ. She played for a little over an hour when we first got there and then took a nice 2.5 hour nap so I could actually eat my meal with both hands! Then she played a bit more after the nap and came home and ate almost as much as I had eaten earlier! She must have worked up an appetite during all the festivities. I am still full but the leftovers in the fridge are starting to call my name. :)

Here she is in her Thanksgiving outfit with Nana. Chris doesn't like the hat, but I think she's adorable in it!

And here she is with Grandmother. As you can see, Kendall was quite the fashion plate that day. This was outfit #3 .... outfit #2 being jammies during naptime.

Kendall and Saba. "How big is Kendall?" Ummmm ... I think this picture says enough.

She found her cousin, Maya (pictured below), to be quite funny and laughed a lot with her!

Here is Kendall entertaining Daddy, Pops and Grandmother.

And here she is entertaining Saba and Nana. There was no shortage of people for her majesty to entertain!

This is the best picture I have of Kendall with Mason and Maya. If Amy has a better one, I'll steal it from her blog and replace this one. I think between the two of us we took a good hundred pictures during this 20 second photo shoot. Seriously, how hard can it be to get a picture that's good of ALL three kids?? :)

Brian and Amy ALWAYS look good in pictures. So not fair!

Kendall and Mommy.

Kendall is giving Daddy a kiss ... or a "smoosh" as we call them because she literally uses all of her strength to smoosh her face into the face of the lucky recipient! This smoosh appeared to be with tongue.

And here is our Thanksgiving family photo. Sigh. It appears to be as difficult to get a decent shot of the three of us as it is to get a good shot of 3 small children in the same picture!

Turkey coma #1.

Turkey coma #2.

Turkey coma #3.

Kendall's "less serious" side

She is SO going to hate me for publicizing this picture when she's older!

The Spawn of Gumby Videos!

ALL Smiles, Waves and Wiggles!

I realize that I been horrible about updating this blog lately. But I have a good excuse - really! Every single moment of spare time I have has been dedicated to finishing the Twilight books. For those of you who don't know, these books are teeny-bopper books about teenage vampires. Judge me if you must, but I'm sure I will not be the only 30-something mom in the movie theatre squirming with excitement over the new Twilight movie!

Let's see - what's new with Kendall? She claps her hands now ... and is still waving at everyone. And everything. Trips to the grocery store have nearly doubled in length due to her overly social nature. No one can pass us without becoming the unsuspecting recipient of a smile and a wave. And the occasional (and high pitched) verbal reprimand if they don't immediately turn their attention to my little social butterfly. Of course, the temporary object of her affection then has to stop and talk to us (or maybe they just feel obligated to do so, I don't know.) It is fortunate for Kendall that I am a relatively social person or her trips to the store would be limited to those rare times that her father can take her.

We have a new bedtime around here now. 7:30 or 8PM, rather than 9PM, is significantly more convenient for me. Chris and I can actually eat at the same time (albeit a little bit later than I like to eat) instead of alternating entertaining her highness and throwing our food down at the speed of light. So she has two real naps a day now instead of 1 pseudo nap, 1 (sometimes) decent nap, and a catnap. AND she still doesn't wake up until 7:30 or 8AM so she sleeps a good 12 hours at night without interruption! Have I mentioned lately how grateful I am that she seems to have inherited my affinity for sleep?

She is still not crawling, but she gets around on her tummy doing this strange movement that closely resembles a slither. I don't know how to describe it any other way. I experienced a slight heart attack the other day when she sat in a perfect split ("seated second position" for you dancers out there), folded herself over so her tummy was on the floor, and then gracefully rotated her legs back behind her, winding up lying down on her tummy in the slither-ready position. It did not bother her at all, although my legs ached for hours after witnessing the contortion of her body. I have a video of a variation of it (though it's not as freakish looking as the first time she did it) and will post it if I can figure out how.

Kendall now dances whenever music is played or someone is singing to her. It's an odd little all-body sort of wiggle that she appears to have picked it up from this stuffed Christmas toy I acquired last year called a "rappin' rodent." It dances as it sings/raps "Joy to the World" and is so obnoxious that it's funny! It makes an appearance in the video.

Here are some recent pics:

As you can see, she still LOVES having her picture taken.

She also still really likes to eat grass and can now just sit in a split, bend over, stick her face on the ground, and graze.

Just look at the muffin-top this child has in this picture! I love it! She should embrace it now. It's the only time in her life that others are going to find her muffin-top and her state fair turkey thighs to be "cute!"

Here is the outfit Kendall wore while "helping" me get Holiday decorations put up.

And here is a sneak peek of some pictures you might see on our Holiday card this year. I was rather proud of my totally amateur photographic endeavors. It helps to have such a photogenic subject. :)

Monkey's First Halloween!

Because Kendall's nickname is "Monkey," her costume for her first Halloween was really a no-brainer. Nana made her this absolutely adorable monkey costume and I now have, oh, about a thousand pictures of my little monkey dressed as such!

Halloween night was fun! We didn't take Kendall house to house trick-or-treating because she can't have the candy yet ... and I certainly don't need it. So we sat in the driveway with our little monkey to hand out candy to the neighborhood superheroes, witches, pumpkins, cats, princesses, yoda's, etc. We also had visits from Grandmother, Pops and Nana!

I believe a good time was had by all and the monkey was her usual laid back self, even with the absence of her nap!

Just had to include this picture of the larger "ape" in my life wearing his daughter's clothes.

Mommy and Daddy's visit to our "neighbors down south!"

While Chris and I took a (wonderful) five day vacation in Playa del Carmen (thank you to Saba and Nana for the time share week!), Kendall gracefully endured her first extended period of time away from Mommy and Daddy with her Saba and Nana. She is in a major "mommy don't leave my line of sight" phase so I was a bit worried, but she handled it like a pro! My mom said she was a bit confused and looked at a lot of pictures of us, but really didn't cry or throw any fits and carried on with her daily routine. This is more than I can say for my heathen dogs. Two of them (Ralphie and Rehn) decided they would pretend they belonged to Michael Vick for a while and my mom and dad had to deal with a nasty fight that was almost impossible to break up and resulted in about $1,000 worth of vet bills. The good news is Ginger (the dog I'm typically worried about starting fights) was an angel! We owe A LOT to Saba and Nana for keeping Kendall happy and healthy as well as for keeping our idiot canine children alive!

Chris and I have officially joined the geezer club. I was awake and out of bed BY 7AM every morning (sometimes as early as 5:30AM) which enabled us to get a good front row cabana on the beach with the other old folks ... AND right next to our "favorite" (and really old) European couple. I should add that the female portion of this couple insisted on sunbathing topless and the male portion of the couple wore a ridiculously tiny weeny bikini. I should also add that neither individual was attractive and they were both quite large and hairy. SO GROSS!!

We were also in bed by 9:30 every evening and did absolutely nothing during the day except sit in the cabana, drink fruity cocktails and beer, cool off in the ocean and read. I managed to plow through the first two Twilight books in 3 days and am now an official addict. Chris managed to keep his work habit under some semblance of control but did keep the Blackberry close at all times (insert heavy sigh here).

All in all, it was a wonderful vacation and we came back tan and relaxed to a baby who, despite our fears, did not forget who we were and was thrilled to see us! In fact, I am no longer allowed to put her down without a serious protest. Mommy got away with leaving Kendall once but Kendall is going to see to it that Mommy does NOT do that again anytime soon!

Here are some pics from our vacation:

There are my very relaxed (and burning) feet on our very relaxing cabana!

Resort snack bar

The friendly resort raccoons. I insisted on feeding them while Chris insisted on calling them rabid varmints and fantasizing about playing an active role in their demise. They really were cute, though!

I was NOT as thrilled with the giant lizards on the resort as I was with the raccoons, and the lizards were not nearly as friendly!

And, of course, a trip to Mexico is not complete without a concert from a Mariachi band!

Beach cabanas ... be thankful I managed to get this picture sans fat, naked, hairy Europeans (there were a lot of them there!)

This is now my "happy place," to which I have already had to go several times since returning home!

Here is Kendall "missing" (???) her parents!

This expression now very regularly appears on Kendall's otherwise cute little face, typically as a protest of some sort. I call it her "John Belushi face."

And I am now thoroughly convinced that EVERY baby needs a set of maracas in her toy collection. Kendall was FAR more thrilled with her $2 maracas than she was with her $20 teddy bear we brought back for her. Go figure! Lesson learned = cheap toys from now on!