Czar Christmas

We opened presents with the Czar family on Christmas Eve. Kayla was spoiled even more of course. Kayla was having a great time with the presents and even stole the remote and changed the channel (she must have been sick of looking at "Yule Log Channel"). On Christmas Day, we had some extended family over for a nice turkey dinner, followed by lots of treats including Mommy's penguin cake masterpiece.

Traveling to Ohio

After celebrating Christmas in Madison we headed off to Cleveland to spend Christmas with the Czars. Suprisingly Kayla was a complete angel during the 10-hour trek but was very excited to get out of the car seat when we got there. She had a great time using her crawling skills to explore her new surroundings (especially the kitchen) and enjoyed all the attention from her grandparents and other relatives (like Lynda's cousin Scott). She especially liked playing with Grandpa and showing him who is the boss. She got pretty excited about one of her presents a few days before Christmas and fine tuned her pretzel-esque flexibility while taking her naps (not sure how she even got up after sleeping like that...)

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Schmitz Christmas

On Sunday we went over to Mike's cousin Kristina's house where Kayla got to play with her cousin Emry and second cousin Dexter. Dexter had recently recieved Kayla's favorite piano toy so she took over that toy while Dexter was practicing his sideways jumping in the jumperoo and Emry was trying to figure out the treadmill. Apparently Kayla had a very important question while playing the piano (pick me! pick me!). Later on when opening presents, Dexter became fascinated with Kayla's feets.

Ferris Christmas

On Saturday we all went to Grandma Ferris' house for a spaghetti dinner and LOTS of presents. Kayla received about 83 different outfits and some fun toys as well. Apparently that wasn't enough though as she decided to lay claim to one of her cousin's toys.

Into the Big Tub

In preparation for our trip to Cleveland, mommy gave Kayla a bath in the big tub for the first time yesterday (we can only fit so much in the Prius so the baby tub will not make the trip). Kayla loved it! She was splashing away and happy as a rubber ducky (they are happy aren't they?). Here are some of the "clean" photos...

Playing in the Snow

We got Kayla to play out in the snow on Saturday (we had tried one night earlier in the week but she was having none of it). Daddy had fun sledding down the mini hill in the backyard with her and Kayla might have had a little bit of fun as well. "We" also built a snow man and made snow angels. Unfortunately we still have some work to do on Kayla's snowball throwing form.

Holiday Breakfast

Last Saturday we took Kayla to the annual American Family holiday breakfast. In addition to a free breakfast buffet, there were all sorts of fun characters for Kayla to meet. She saw Frosty, Rudolph, a Penguin, Bucky Badger, and of course had her first meeting with Santa! I think Kayla had more fun seeing all the little kids there than seeing the characters. We are just glad she didn't freak out when she sat on Santa's lap.

Moving Around

Kayla finally figured out the whole crawling thing. She is now moving around pretty easily and also loves pulling herself up and standing against furniture, toys, and people. Of course she has that litte radar that all little kids seem to have that tells them everything they are not supposed to touch so they can go right after it. The most frequent phrase now heard around the Ferris household is "no Kayla". Kayla also has tooth number 3 coming in - her first tooth on top! I'm sure it will feel fantastic now when she decides to try to chew on Mommy or Daddy.

Thanksgiving Weekend

The day after Thanksgiving we met Grandma Ferris out at the xmas tree farm to cut down our tree for the year. We decided to go with the Frazier Fir this year to hopefully cut down on the thousands of needles we usually end up with on the floor. We finished decorating it on and off over the rest of the long weekend and discovered on Sunday night that we forgot something rather important - we never watered it!!! Luckily it still seems to be doing okay so I don't think we killed it...

In addition to the xmas tree shenanigans we also took Kayla out to another Badger Hockey game (3-0 victory over Michigan) and we got her a new car seat! She looks so cute and little in it :)

Thanksgiving Day

Mike's family came over to our house to celebrate Thanksgiving Day. Once again, daddy escaped making the turkey thanks to Grandma Ferris. Although daddy avoided the kitchen, mommy spent a lot of time there making an adorable turkey cake for dessert and was very proud of her creation. Kayla had fun playing with her cousin Emry and we even got uncle Bob to finally hold Kayla. Dinner was yummy and we played some intense games of Apples to Apples afterward that mommy kept winning!

Thanksgiving Weekend #1

This weekend started out with a lot of shopping on Friday and Saturday. Kayla helped us spend a lot of money on her and her cousins. In betwen shopping trips, Mommy made some pancakes on Saturday morning that Kayla thoroughly enjoyed.

On Sunday we went over to Grandma Ferris' house for the first Thanksgiving dinner this year. Kayla got to play with her cousins Emry and Tiara, as well as her second cousin Dexter, and there were some serious battles over the ever popular piano toy. Emry bonked Kayla on the head with another toy but Kayla got her revenge by smacking Emry's pacifier out of his mouth :) It's all in good humor, right?

More 9 Month Pictures

9 Months

Kayla turned 9 months old a few days ago! She is now doing some backwards crawling and using various other strange methods of moving around. She also loves pulling up on things, especially mommy and daddy, and has even stood on her own for a couple of seconds a few times. I think she might just skip the whole crawling thing and try to go straight to walking. Her favorite games are playing peek-a-boo and banging plastic balls together to make lots of noise. She got her first two bottom teeth at the same time and they are almost fully in now. She loves using them to eat her puffs.

On November 8th, Kayla went to her second Badger Hockey game and this time she saw her first Badger win!!! Last weekend we took Kayla on a shopping excursion to Woodfield Mall in Schaumburg, IL. It was pretty chaotic there but she did really well putting up with us dragging her all over the place in the stroller/car seat. We had dinner at Joe's Crab Shack and she got a nice bib to play with but we had to take it away when she tried to cover her face with it.

In early November when we started hearing about the threat of snow coming we couldn't resist trying on her new snowsuit. As you can see it is still a little large - I'm surprised we were able to stop laughing long enough to take the picture :)

Halloween!

Kayla celebrated her first Halloween on Friday night!!! She was a cute little ladybug and mommy dressed in her matching ladybug costume. Daddy did most of the candy distribution while the ladybugs watched all the litte trick-or-treaters from the door. It was a busy night as we had about 85 kids come to the door. Near the end of the scheduled trick-or-treating hours, we took Kayla next door to get some candy of her own - which of course mommy and daddy had to eat :)