Christmas this year was...well...interesting. Yeah, we'll go with interesting. Let's just say I'm glad this was Kalianna's first Christmas, cause she probably won't remember it. Everything turned out fine, things just didn't exactly go as...planned.
We switch off every other year having Christmas with my family, then Matt's family. This year was with Matt's family. So we had this nice Christmas Eve dinner planned. We were all going to dress up and eat a nice meal and everything, then perhaps watch a Christmas movie before returning home. Then we planned to go back the next morning for presents, and breakfast, and visiting family, etc. Well, Matt's dad was really sick during the week and had to have a couple trips to the hospital, so his mom didn't have time to plan the dinner and it got canceled. His sister, Miranda, and I decided to make the dinner ourselves and surprise his mom with it. So Christmas Eve was back on. We got to their house around 6:00pm and enjoyed a super yummy meal together. Then we started to watch Elf, but Kalianna was pretty fussy (double ear infection) and tired, so we headed home. Around 1:00am, Kalianna started making some really strange wheezing sounds. I went in to check on her and after a couple minutes, it was obvious she was struggling breathing. She's been really sick and the doctor had told us to watch for this. So we called the on-call doctor to see what we should do. She suggested we wake Kalianna and let her catch her breath, then try putting her back to sleep and see if she regains control. If not, we were going to have to take her to the emergency room. So we woke up our poor baby who, of course, screamed and screamed. Until we called Sobaka (the miracle dog) and he kissed her better and she stopped. But then she thought it was time to play! After a little while playing with her puppies, she started breathing better. Then we snuggled in the rocking chair for awhile until she fell back asleep. Thankfully her breathing was better after that. She wheezed a couple times, but then seemed to sleep well after that. Needless to say, we got to bed REALLY late that night (or morning, rather). Then after...oh...three hours of sleep or so, I woke up to the sound of my husband puking in the bathroom. Perfect! He had food poisoning and spent the next 12 hours puking his guts out. Didn't sleep much that night. But Kalianna thankfully slept in until 8:45 because of her rough night. We called Matt's parents and told them we wouldn't be making it Christmas morning, but we'd try and get there by the afternoon sometime. We ended up opening presents around 10:30, and just waited patiently every time Matt had to run to the bathroom to "relieve" himself. We spent most of the day on our bed watching movies; both my babies sick. Kalianna's ears were really bothering her, so she was grumpy a lot of the day. She did seem to like her new toys though! By afternoon Matt was definitely not feeling up to a car ride to Salt Lake, so we called our families and let them know we wouldn't be making it for Christmas. My parents came up and visited us around 7:00 that evening, bringing dinner from my grandparent's party. That was really nice! Christmas didn't really feel much like Christmas this year. It was a pretty sad couple of days. Today, however, Matt felt fine. So we made it down to Salt Lake to open presents with his family and spend time with both our parents. Today felt a lot more like Christmas than yesterday!
As for Kalianna, she was really cute to watch opening presents! She loved tearing (and eating) the paper! And after a few presents, she seemed to figure out that there was actually something UNDER the wrapping! Super cute! Anyway, to end this post on a more positive note, here are some super cute pics of Kalianna having fun with her first taste (no pun intended) of Christmas. And a video of her playing with her super cool penguin toy from mommy and daddy. (She loves this thing!)
We went with our friends, Brian and Anna, to their cabin in Heber over the weekend. We had lots of fun! Kalianna got to experience her first time tubing (down a teeny hill) and her first time on a four-wheeler (going a whole 2 miles per hour). Mostly she enjoyed watching us get thrown around on tubes though. One person would drive the four-wheeler and pull another person on the tube behind it. The video doesn't look like we're going all that fast, but when you're the one on the tube, trust me. Its fast! 
I was wanting to do this post sooner, but I thought I would wait until after Kalianna's 9 month check-up so I could give her stats as well. She is now a little over 29 inches tall (95%) and she weighs 19.5 pounds (58%). My little girl is wearing 18 month clothes! Can you believe it?! She is just so tall! Kalianna has had a rough month, but all infections are gone and now she is back to her happy, healthy self again. She has two teeth and it looks like her top two will be making an appearance in the next few months or so. She is also crawling now! After weeks and weeks of trying, she finally figured it out and crawled for the first time on Saturday. It is so cute to watch! She is so happy that she can actually go after the things she sees and has been exploring every room since. And, of course, Sobaka and Kutse are now terrified. She can chase them! She continues to talk and giggle like crazy. She also is trying more new foods and we've discovered a love for pasta. Kalianna has also decided she is done with headbands and hair bows. I'm amazed she kept it on this long for the pictures! If you notice from her pictures, we can no longer put her and the bear on the rocking chair. She just wants to go-go-go! So after we took her 9 month pictures, she attacked the bear and then headed toward daddy and the camera. Then she saw Kutse with her rope, and crawled over to play. So I thought I would include all those pictures too. Kutse has been so cute with her! With Matt and I, she will pull our arm out of the socket playing tug-o-war. But with Kalianna, she just laid there and chewed on the rope and gently pulled it out of her hands. Then when Kalianna grabbed the rope again, she would move it again. They played like this for a long time. It was so funny to watch!
