The past couple of weeks have been quite eventful. Kira returned to her gymnastics, got sick, started saying "please", and started her swim lessons.

She still loves going to her gymnastics every Saturday morning with Daddy. She gets to sing and run around without fear of hurting herself. She is getting better at walking across the balance beam, and jumping by herself. It's also helping to boost her social interaction with other kids.

Thursday night we drove out to Maple Ridge to go celebrate my Uncle's 70th birthday. I picked up Kira at daycare and we began the long trek out to Maple Ridge. I'm not certain as to what happened exactly, but all of a sudden Kira began to "expel" everything that she had eaten. After a quick clean up, I determined that she was indeed fine and that she had likely just gulped too much water too quickly. We were just crossing the new Golden Ears bridge when the rest of the dinner made its way out. It was horrible, the poor kid just sat there while I struggled to figure out where I was and how the quickly get to my cousin's place. Thankfully my Aunt met us in the driveway and kindly cleaned up the car while I ran Kira up to the bath. Kira was totally fine after that, she ate more dinner and played with her cousins all night, and has been fine since. I hope that she isn't developing car sickness...

Today, Kira had her first swimming lesson. I had been dragging my feet in signing her up because everytime she goes near a pool she screams and cries, but I don't want her to turn out like me (who can't swim much at all and has developed a fear of swimming), so I dragged her out there - kicking and screaming - through her first swim lesson. She calmed down when there was singing and liked moving her free arm around in the water (the other was tightly wrapped around the back of my neck). We are going to keep taking her there, I'm hopeful that in a few weeks she'll be very comfortable there. I'm going to try to take her to drop-in swimming on Friday so that come Sunday she's got that one extra trip under her belt, and hopefully she won't disrupt everyone else.

Finally, Kira has started to say the word that Jon and I have been waiting for - Please. Of course, she says "peez", but whatever, it's close enough. It only took her about a day to realize that saying "peez" would get her most anything (within reason). She uses it a lot now, even with her grandparents. Now we just have to get her saying thank you...

Settling in...

We have unpacked the last of the boxes now and are feeling much more at home now. Today we ordered the last piece of the puzzle, our dinette set. I am so excited to finally be able to have a table with chairs in my house. It's sad that we have never had enough room in our condo's before. The table we ordered seats 6, but has a built-in leaf that will extend the table to 8, so there is enough room for us to host Thanksgiving dinner this year! Hooray! My mom is going to come over and (hopefully) let me help her cook. I think that she is excited to have 2 ovens to use.

Kira is doing very well in the new house, she has found lots of places that she can play in and around. She is growing and adding more words to her vocabulary. New additions include oh dear, no, papa, poo-poo (ha!) and ta-da. This evening she also began to attempt singing her abc's. The only way I knew this was because she was trying to sing along with me and then finished by saying "yay" like I do. It was pretty darn cute. I'll try to grab a video of it one day, but have to do it when I'm not singing, cause no one needs to hear that!

She hasn't gotten any new teeth yet, she still has the 12. I thought that she was getting her canine teeth last week, but it turns out she was only getting a cold. Poor little thing. There were a couple of sleepless nights, but she seems to have kicked the worst of it now.

Kira is back at her gymnastics on Saturday mornings again, she really does love it. This week she figured out how to jump up on her own, she does this a lot during the day - especially when she is walking from one side of the house to the other. And she has discovered her love of dancing, unfortunately, she has inherited her mom's sense of rhythm...none. Hopefully she'll improve on that as she gets older.

Here are some pictures of Kira...

Playing peek-a-boo with Mommy + the camera

Testing out Daddy's computer

Singing at the gate...

Dragging Daddy's PS3 box around the house. She pretends that it's her bag, she takes it to the front door, and then back to the TV room. I wonder where she gets her ideas...

Nap time with Daddy. She is sleeping next to her bed, on the floor. She was playing with the books, then just fell asleep. So cute.

Moved out!

We have officially moved out of our old condo, and into the basement suite. The move went very well, I think...Kira and I were over on the Island visiting family while Jon stayed home and took care of the move. On the Island, we visited with a bunch of family members. Kira had a blast visiting with her cousin Nicholas, playing on the beach at Grandpa's, and running around her Grantie Ann's place in Naniamo. Many thanks to everyone for putting us up during the weekend, and an extra special thanks to Auntie Erin for taking care of Kira pretty much the entire weekend. 

We came home and Kira made herself at home here pretty darn quickly. She has a lot more space to run around in here, and she covers every inch of it daily. She has also started sleeping in her "big girl" bed. So far she has only fallen out of it once, and she slept right through it.

We have registered Kira for gymnastics and swimming lessons for the fall. I'm sure that she will enjoy both. Kira has added a couple more words to her vocabulary, including no and diaper. Tooth #12 has almost cut through.

Pictures will be posted as soon as we can.

Fun Kira pictures

Kira has started to play hide and seek in our house. Some of her favorite places to hide include the kitchen, shower, and closet. Here are a couple of pictures...

Now you see me...

...now you don't!

Ha! I'm so funny!

Hiding in the shower

Blowing kisses on the door

Hiding in the pots + pans cupboard

Hiding in Daddy's scotch + cigar cupboard, recently cleaned out in preparation for the move next weekend.

She's starting to learn what pointing means too...

This week Kira has added uh-huh, and oh-no to her vocabulary. She is trying to say puppy and diaper as well. She has also cut 2 more teeth, bringing her total count to 12. She finally got more bottom teeth!! She's now even at the top + bottom for the first time ever.

This past week Kira was kept very busy with our trip to Harrison, then visits from her cousins Marcus and Isabelle, and wrapping with her gymnastics and a birthday party for her friend Balin.

Kissing her new cousin, Isabelle

This week it's just Kira and I as Daddy has to go back to work. We will be visiting our friends Wendy and Eliana, then Grandma Tracy, my work, Grandma Rose + Grandpa Eric, and then off to the Island for the weekend to visit Grandpa Randy, Grandma Pam, Grauntie Ann and Uncle Les, and hopefully Auntie Christina, Uncle Clinton, and cousin Nicholas. Phew. She will likely be exhausted, but it will be another fun week!

Also, we have successfully gotten her off the soother! Hooray!

Peek a Boo Kira

This is a funny video Jon took of Kira. Notice how she plays peek a boo with herself...

Warning - this is loud!!

Road Trip

We have just returned back from our first family road trip. We were supposed to go camping this week, but, the weather finally decided to change, and the rain forced us indoors. We headed up to Harrison with some friends and their 2 children. 

On the way there, we decided to stop off at the Vancouver Aquarium. Kira had never been there before, so it was fun to see her reactions to some of the exhibits. She was a little bit young for many of the items, but she really enjoyed the jellyfish. She kept saying "oh wow!", too cute. It was incredibly busy at the aquarium, so we didn't stick around too long. We headed out and went up to Harrison. Kira borrowed a pair of rubber boots from her new friend, Paulina, and discovered a new love - jumping in puddles. She was SOAKED! And she loved every minute of it. 

On the way home we stopped off at the Vancouver Zoo, it was our first time there (all 3 of us). We enjoyed it for sure, it was a good day weather-wise, not too hot, not too cold. Kira kept saying hi to everyone and calling all the animals baby. I think that we will take her back there again when she is a little bit older.

All and all, it was an incredible couple of days. Kira is exhausted and will hopefully sleep well. Now, it's back to reality and time to begin packing for the move next weekend. 

I have added a new feature to the blog, I copied it from Maya's blog. It allows you to leave thoughts, without making a comment. And like she said, I do like comments and I do read them! Feel free to leave thoughts and comments, it's always nice to know that I'm not just writing this for myself.

Packing up + moving out!

We managed to find a great rental place in East Vancouver, much further West than we currently are. It's in the Kensington Park area, very close to a huge park and community centre, plus the house is right on a bike road, so it's quiet and easy for us to take Kira out on bike rides. We'll be moving in August 22, I'm very much looking forward to it. We decided to rent for at least the next 12 - 15 months, in that time we'll keep saving our pennies and hope that the market comes back down again, and with any luck, we'll be able to get our dream house.

Today is the first day of our mini-vacation. Daycare is closed for 2 weeks, so we are looking forward to spending the next two weeks with Kira, it will be a lot of fun. We will be heading up to Harrison Hot Springs on Monday for an overnight trip with some friends and their two children; we were originally going to go camping, but mother nature had other plans for us. No worries, the mini-getaway will be nice.

Yesterday, we decided to stop giving Kira her soother. We had previously taken it away from her during the day with great success, so we thought now would be a good time to take it away at night too --- especially since she still has a short-term memory. Last night had 2 very tough moments of her screaming and grabbing for it, but she fell back asleep after about 10 minutes and slept through to 6:15. She actually woke up and started chatting with her stuffies in the crib, she hasn't done that in a while. She's down for her first nap without it now, she went down without any troubles. Hopefully the transition is quick and easy!

Kira is almost done with her gymnastics for the summer, she has been enjoying it a lot, so we decided to sign her up again for the fall. She started jumping this week and is still attempting to figure out how to push her body forward to somersault. It's pretty cute. She's added a few more words to her vocabulary - uh-oh, hello, bye-bye, and baby. She can say these words very clearly now. Yesterday, we were walkign to the park and we passed a mom with a stroller, Kira pointed and said "baaay-bee" and then "hi!", when they walked past she said "bye!". Too cute. I was very proud as she said these things without any encouragement from me.