Update

Happy New Year!

Jon, Kira, and I are still in New West staying in Joanne and Yuet-chi's basement suite. The cleaning crew have started work in our place now, so hopefully we will be back home next week. Sounds like our place will be the cleanest place in our building. 

The restoration crew will be cleaning the ceiling, carpets, flooring, walls, baseboards, blinds, couch, electronics, and everything in between. They will repaint our walls and replace our track lighting (thankfully cause I hate the lights we have right now), I am trying to get them to repaint the doors and baseboards white, we'll see how that goes :) They also will send all our clothes and linens out to the drycleaners to get cleaned. Sweet, there goes the fear of doing 100 loads of laundry! 

Unfortunately, we will have to throw out all of Kira's toys that were in the living room - which is about 95% of her toys. So, I am sorry to everyone that got her a toy ever - even some of the Christmas toys (yes Maya, the elephant is a victim too). At least our insurance will cover getting new toys for her, and she got a lot for Christmas --- the ones that weren't in our house waiting to be opened on Christmas day. 

It's hard to believe that it will be 2009 tomorrow, even harder to believe that I will be back at work in 3 months! (If anyone has a lead on a daycare with room for a baby - let me know!!!) Kira had her 9 month birthday on Sunday, crazy how quickly time flies. She is starting to crawl properly here, no more army crawl. She is climbing everything too. Today she started climbing using only the wall as her support. She can also cruise along the furniture from one end of the room to the other. She is standing with no support for about 5 seconds or so, then she falls on her bum.  She still has not interest in using our fingers as walking support, but that will likely change soon.

We wish you all a very safe and happy new year, all the best in 2009. And Kira is very much looking forward to meeting her new friends this year Georgina and Liv!! 

Pictures of Kira's Christmas and the burn damage will be posted when we get home. 

Merry Christmas

As most of you probably know by now, we were not able to spend Kira's first Christmas at home because (in Jon's words) "I tried to burn the house down". We went out to a dinner with our friends on Monday night and returned home to our smoke alarm going off and the house filled with smoke - I had left a pot boiling on the stove. Fortunately there was no fire, just 8 melted baby bottles and a black pot. Our hood fan melted and there is some smoke damage on the cupboards. We had to move out because the melted plastic is pretty toxic and our place is covered in soot.We have moved into Joanne and Yuet-chi's basement suite, lucky for us their tenant just moved out and they have not got a new tenant, yet. 

Christmas was pretty busy with everything that is going on. We were at the Lim's house for Christmas eve dinner, then Mom and Charlies Christmas day, and at family friends for Christmas dinner. We will be heading to Victoria tomorrow morning for the LaBonte family Christmas. 

Kira has enjoyed her first Christmas, thankfully she won't remember that we weren't at home. She loves all her new toys, and Jon and I are loving all her new clothes. She has been spoiled rotten, as usual. She is such a good kid, she doesn't even really seem affected by all the different places we have been at each night. Poor kid is probably still used to it from traveling to Malaysia. 

Hope that everyone had a great Christmas and holiday season, we will post pictures of Kira's Christmas and the smoke damage if and when we get back home.

Up to no good

Here are a couple more pictures of Kira re-organizing the DVD's. Shortly after these pictures, she discovered the CD's too.

Sleeping Beauty

Kira has taken to sleeping in some pretty funny positions lately. Here are a couple of pictures I was able to take...


Also, this is a picture of her from when she fell into her toy bin (again)


And her new favorite thing to do is remove all of Daddy's DVDs from the rack. You can see her handywork on the ground behind her.

Oh yeah

I forgot to mention that Kira's second tooth is starting to come up now. So exciting! She has gone from zero teeth to two teeth in just 2 weeks! For the most part, she is handling it quite well. She wakes up occasionally during the night, but she will usually go back to sleep without Jon or I comforting her. She is a little crabby at times during the day, but for the most part, she is a happy little girl. I hope that lasts...

Pictures

Here are some pictures of Kira taken this past weekend.


This is one of her favorite places to stand, her toy bin. She loves to reach in and pull toys out. Yesterday, she fell into the bin, unfortunately, we weren't able to grab a picture of it.

Hanging out with Daddy...


Climbing in her crib - she is so proud of herself.


Playing with the baby monitor

Climbing....again!

After I posted yesterday, Kira woke up from her nap and was making noises in her crib like she was playing around. Not unusual since she is constantly playing with her Snoopy toy that's in there with her.

When I went in to her room to get her, I was greeted by her smiling face -- standing up in her crib!! This is the first time that she has managed to do it without falling. She was SO PROUD of herself too. I was proud because she climbed up the foot of the crib, where there are no bars for her to grip on to, just the solid wood.

I'll try to grab a picture of it soon, she really is learning this climbing stuff fast. I'm afraid she'll be walking before long...

Doctors + More Doctors

This past week has seen poor Kira trucked out to the Opthamologist and the family Doctors for her regular checkups.
She was at the Opthamologist last week Wednesday for her quarterly eye exam. The doctor didn't even have to put the eye drops in her eyes this time! She says that her eyes show no signs of weakening since her last check up. Kira also passed all her little "tests", the doctor was happy (not nearly as happy as I was). She will go back again in March and will get the drops again to check her prescription.
Today she went to the Doctor for her 9-month checkup. She is a few weeks ahead of schedule due to the holiday season. Her doctor likes to see the babies at 9 months so that she can have at least one visit where she doesn't have to give them shots, and also to check their progress. Kira is back down to 17lbs again, she has lost about a pound or so since she started crawling and climbing. The doctor was not concerned about this at all. We weren't able to get an accurate measurement of her height as she kept trying to eat/grab the tape measure, but I know that she has grown since her last check up as she no longer fits a lot of her clothing.
Due to our recent poor health, we decided that Kira should get her flu shot today as well (so much for a check up without a shot), she did very well and didn't even cry until we started laughing because she didn't cry. Figures. I also got my flu shot - just in case. As this was Kira's first flu shot, she has to go back for a follow-up in 4 weeks,which means another shot. Poor kid.
At home, Kira has turned into a crawling and climbing machine. It seems that everything exists for her to climb up. She is now starting to cruise a little bit too. She is one active kid. She is so proud of herself when she climbs up on her feet, everytime she breaks out into a huge smile.
Oh, and speaking of smiles - she is FINALLY getting her first tooth!! The bottom left tooth is halfway through her gum now! I'm so happy! I was beginning to think that she would be 2 years old with no teeth at all! She is handling it very well, she barely cries at night with it and when she does, a little baby Orajel usually does the trick. The best part is she has been sleeping more because of it! Woohoo! She has been sleeping until 7:00/7:30 most mornings, much better than a 6:00 wake up call!
This week I am going to try to get Kira's picture with Santa. If it works out, I will post it up here for you. Hope everyone is doing well.