Thanksgiving & Beyond

Wearing her Thanksgiving dress, handmade by Grandma Carol

Our happy little girl!

Doing her favorite thing: standing!

Playing with Grandma Linda

All ready for Christmas - another dress by Grandma Carol

Here are a couple of favorites from our holiday photo shoot.

There are so many good pictures! More will be posted soon.

Safe to say that Kyra's Mommy wants a holiday photo shoot every year!

Kyra had a wonderful first Thanksgiving a couple weeks ago. She got to try all the yummy foods, and her favorite seemed to be the stuffing. She couldn't get enough of it! We celebrated Thanksgiving, as usual, at Kyra's Grandparent's house. This was the first year that there wasn't a huge crowd, so Kyra actually had room to crawl around and play. Kyra had a special dress to wear, handmade with love by Grandma Carol. Now that Thanksgiving is over, Kyra's already wearing her Christmas clothes to get ready for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day!

Kyra's absolute favorite thing right now is to stand up. She's gotten so good at it, and it basically takes her zero effort to get up to a stand. She's constantly on the move in her play area downstairs or in her room. When she wakes up and I go into her room to get her, I often find her standing up in her crib, happily bouncing and entertaining herself. She's even started cruising a little - she can take a few steps when holding on to something. She likes to stand up between our couch and ottoman and walk herself around. We think she'll be an early walker, but only time will tell. Her uncle Jason has decided that she'll start walking on January 6th, 2011. We shall see.

Last weekend, Kyra got a visit from Jake Balice, and it was so much fun to watch them interact. They can both crawl and stand, and Jake is so fast! He's on the verge of really becoming a walker any day now. Kyra and Jake took their parents out for dinner at our favorite local Italian restaurant, and the kiddos happily enjoyed their yummy Italian dinner.

This weekend, we're going to take Kyra on Ms. Claus' Beverly Hills Christmas Trolley, which tours around Beverly Hills and then takes you directly to Santa. I really hope that Kyra likes Santa. On some of our stroller walks to our local mall, I've been walking her by the mall Santa to prepare her - she likes to smile and wave at him, so hopefully that's a good sign for her first real "sit down" with Santa. Wish us luck!

We have so many fun things we want to do with Kyra during the holidays. We're so excited to have our little girl with us this year. Last year was filled with so much excitement and anticipation of what the next Christmas would be like with Kyra around. Well, she's here and we couldn't be happier! Her Christmas stocking, purchased last year, is proudly hanging in the living room. I love the holidays! I know Kyra's only (nearly) 10 months old, but I'm already pretty convinced that everything is better with children! I just know that the holidays are going to be better than ever now that we get to share them with our little doll.

Happy holidays to you all!