Scavenging

Kyra loves to pull herself up on everything. Usually, she crawls to the chair in the kitchen area and pulls herself up -- here, she's decided to paint. She's also taken to scavenging for whatever she can find on the floor. She is learning how to get things that she picks up into her mouth. She has some difficulty with safe things such as Cheerios, banana chunks, etc. but seems to have mastered small items on the ground such as paper, string, grass, buttons.

Daniel wasn't really into pictures last night... but here's one anyway.

Chaos and then some

This past weekend was a bit crazy because our hard drive crashed -- fortunately, I had recently backed up most of my stuff. So Matt went out and bought a new hard drive and had to reload everything. ARGH.

In Kyra news, her first tooth peeked through yesterday and can definitely be felt today. She'd been a bit fussy around naps and sleeping. She woke up Saturday night at 1am screaming so I expect that was what was bothering her. She's also pretty much got the crawling thing down pat although still resorts to commando crawling when she wants to get somewhere fast. She is also pulling up on everything and loves to stand -- she's 'cruising' a little and will probably be walking in a couple of months. I would like to say that I will prefer that because then she may not be as needy about being higher up and need to be carried around. I might regret that statment when I've got the two of them getting into trouble left and right.

Daniel is full of funnies. Recently, I said, "I think..." and he replied, "I think not." There are others that I can't recall at the moment. He is also experimenting a lot -- he tries to tear and rip everything. It seems that toys and books get broken daily. I suppose that's part of the age... He tore up one of my favorite board books and one of the few that Kyra liked. (She still isn't into books much; evidently doesn't have the patience to sit still for it yet.)

Today we headed down to the Seattle Children's Museum and both kids were great. They both zonked on the way home and slept (at the same time) for 2 hours!! That's a good 1.5 hours for me -- and today I needed the nap (despite many other things I could have been doing).

Another odd thing... last week Daniel was looking out the window of our bedroom and said, "I see rabbits" -- we had seen a rabbit recently out there so I went to look. They weren't rabbits but a large wild cat and two cubs. I initially thought they were cougars because cougars are known to be in this area but the tail was short and they had stripes on the insides of the back legs. Turns out, they are bobcats... in our backyard. A few days later, we saw a coyote on our hill as well. I'm now a bit reluctant to let the kids play alone in the backyard. Today, Kyra was standing near one of the water toys and Daniel was in the baby pool. I had to go to the bathroom and kept thinking how quickly a wild animal could come up and grab one of the kids... that's scary... Not sure how real it is but it's scary. There have been local stories about kids getting bitten by cougars or taken by other animals...

Activity

Kyra is 7 months old today. She is still going, going. She is doing a little bit more actual crawling rather than dragging herself across the floor but dragging herself is still most effective to get from point A to point B. She also is pulling herself up and trying to do a little bit of 'cruising' on the furniture. Her vocabulary is growing -- more and more consonants everyday! Sleeping was going pretty well but she seems to have caught Daniel's cold and is waking up a bit at night again. Problem is that unless you feed her, any other kind of comforting makes her more hysterical. So you're pretty much better off letting her work through it.

We are enjoying a visit from Matt's Dad. Fortunately, he flew on Friday rather than in the midst of the chaos on Thursday. Unfortunately, his flight Friday morning was cancelled, getting him in Friday night instead. It is so nice to have an extra set of hands to help out with the kids. We took Daniel to soccer today and went to our neighborhood picnic this afternoon. Daniel is really enjoying playing with Grandpa or Papa!

Daniel made another funny the other day. I took him into the doctor because he has had an ongoing cough for about 6 weeks which recently seemed to have worsened. He walked into the doctor's office and said, "I have a cough." The doctor replied, "You do? Where did it come from?" And Daniel matter of factly answered: "My mouth." Well, of course it did... most adults wouldn't have come up with something so logical!

Busy, busy girl

I keep meaning to write and let you know all the exciting things Kyra's been up to. On July 28th, she pulled herself up to a standing position for the first time. Today, Matt found her standing in her crib after her nap, very proud of herself. She also took two real crawling steps a couple days ago. She loves to stand and walk with help and is doing a little bit of cruising while standing and holding onto a table. She really thinks that she's a very important baby with places to go and people to see. She loves to be out and about. She's growing up already!

Daniel made a funny today that had both Matt and I laughing. Kyra was crying in the car and we asked Daniel to sing to her. He began singing "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star." Kyra kept crying and Daniel said with all sincerity, "What, you don't like that song? I like that song." He is such a riot!

News

Here are the news articles about the 0/8 Seafood Grill and Twisted Cork Wine Bar. Enjoy! Seattle Times and Seattle Post-Intelligencer (scroll down to "Bellevue Buzz" section).