So much to be thankful for!

We have so much to be thankkful for this year. Sam is obviously the biggest and best. She did great on Thanksgiving, eating both pureed food and some real turkey and of course puffs. She had a great time playing and the biggest news of the day is that Sam is now officially a toddler. She has been taking steps between chairs or the chair and exersaucer, but Thanksgiving was her first day to basically set off in a direction and she took 10 steps. She has been doing great, but she still sometimes crawls to get places faster. I will try to get walking video soon.

Peace and love to all our faithful readers. We are thankful for all of you!

Almost walking

It is hard to believe how quickly time passes. My baby will be a year old before we know it. She is quite a little lady. She definitely has her likes and dislikes, and quite a temper at times. She loves being outside, loves the dogs and being active. She loves yogurt and cheese and puffs. She is not too good about veggies, but will tolerate them. Same with egg yolks and pasta. So far she has spit out any beef or tuna that I have gotten in her mouth.

She also likes to wave and talk. She says dada a lot, but only says mama when she is in her high chair, generally after a mmmm, which I suppose means tasty. When I ask her to say mama, she says dada, which makes for a fun game when I say who loves mama. Not sure if she thinks she is saying mama, or if she is trying to rename me, but I am currently resisting the name change. She also says wolf because my mom shows her our pictures and Nick has a big wolf one, which Sam likes looking at. Although Sam says it more like "woffffff." She also says car, but it sounds a bit like she is from Boston. And she has now been crawling 2 months. She is super fast at it and cruises all around, too. She has taken a few steps between things, with the longest run being 4. She also walks behind her really cool truck, as shown in the video below. Sorry it is grainy, bad lighting.

Happy (almost) Thanksgiving!

hope all is well with all my faithful readers and a big apology for my lack of posts. You know how life can be. I finally finished editing my thesis, so I am officially "Dr. Kelling." I will be graduating on December 12th! It is so nice to be done. Of course, I have to catch up with everything that slipped through the cracks while I was so insane, hence the lack of postings. Well, enough excuses, here are some pictures. The pack and play ones illustrate that even our amazing baby has her moments of displeasure. Today we went all out and put on shoes!

Happy (belated) Halloween!

So I have not posted in a while. Things have been crazy. I defended on Tuesday, and that went well. I passed my oral defense. I have just had to edit my paper the last few days in trying to get it to my committee for final approval and then submitted to Tech on November 17th. I am getting close, thanks mostly to Nick and my mom for picking up the slack.

So here are some recent photos. Sam thought the box of clothes was just too organized. She really enjoyed making a mess. Here are the pictures of Sam on Halloween. Isn't she a cute pumpkin? We had a great time walking around out neighborhood with our neighbors, Keegan and Kinsley. And when we stopped at the house of the newest member of our neighborhood, Sophia who is 5 weeks old, she was a pumpkin, too! I was a cubs fan and Nick was an ND fan. And the last one is another silly hair shot!

Send good editing vibes and hopefully I will be able to post more often once life calms down a bit. Hopefully I will never have another semester this insane. Teaching full time, taking care of an infant, and finalizing my dissertation have not been easy. Thanks for all the support. it means so much!

Quick Sam update

So Sam had her 9 month check up today. Mostly things were good. She got her flu shot, which was not fun. We had a bit of a challenge ahead for us. It seems our once ahead of the curve baby is not keeping up in weight. She is only 17 lbs, 1 ounce, (25th percentile), which means she did not gain the hoped for quarter ounce per day. So we have a follow up in a month for a weight check. She has been okay on solids, but now we need to work on getting her to eat more. But we do get to add in more fun things. Maybe mush is not her thing. Anyone who has been through this, we would welcome advice. It was also suggested that we work on getting her down to two naps a day, which may mean an earlier bed time, which will be rough for the next few weeks since I do not get home until late 3 days a week.
Also, I have confirmed the 4th at 9 am as my defense date. So if all goes well I will be a fake doctor as of that day, but I will have to do my edits by November 17th, so life will be hectic still and graduation will not be until December 12th.

9 months old!

Samantha is 9 months old today! As you can see, getting the monthly giant panda picture was a bit more challenging. So here is the process. At nine months, she is a super crawler and can easily pull up on things. She can stand for about 30 seconds at a time and has taken a few mini-steps. She has two bottom teeth. And the strange thing is that although she grew into the 3-6 month clothes early, she still can wear them, although the pants are often capris. She is tall and skinny, so nothing stays on her tiny waist. In fact the outfit in these photos is a 0-3 month, although it was large during that phase, so I am not sure what 0-3 month old baby they based it on.

In good news, I have officially scheduled my defense for November 4th. Yep, election day. So hopefully things will turn out well for me and the country.

In sad news, one of my subjects, the elephant who was actually pregnant passed away last night. She had been sick, but nothing that seemed too life threatening. It is a very sad day for Zoo Atlanta and will be strange to defend my data and talk about her. Dottie will be sorely missed.

October updates

So a lot has been going on. Special shout outs to all our new friends, Noah Frentzel, Mirah Lindsay, and Izzy Wood. Welcome to the world. Things have been crazy, sorry for the lack of posts. Teaching full time and taking care of Sam and working on finishing my dissertation has

been rough, but hopefully will be easier soon. I have a tentative date set for November 4th to defend. I welcome any thoughts and prayers to help me through that day, it will not be easy.

Here are the latest pictures. First is Sam with her new toy. It is a ride on, walk behind, and pull toy. Plus it has 3 sounds. Pretty awesome and she likes it. Next is her with a silly hair do she ended up with. Notice the sock in her hand. Lately she has taken to crawling with things in her hands. All these toys we buy her and she plays a lot with her socks, the dog toys, or paper. Silly baby! The next one is just cute. The last two show off her two front teeth. She was not happy, obviously, but that has been the best I can do. The panda hat by the way is supposed to fit 3-6 month heads. Not sure where they came up with that number, but it will be cute when it finally fits.

Love and hugs to all.