Kitana learns to swim

Kitana's grandma (paul's mom) has been teaching her how to swim this summer. She used to teach swimming lessons and is great with kids in the water so we lucked out to get some free swimming lessons! Kitana learned really quickly and was pretty much swimming within a week. Paul took her over every morning while I stayed home with Zara. She holds her breath for forever! Joni says she can hold it longer than any kid she's ever seen before. She does get a lot of practice in our hot tub :)

 Doing the jellyfish...too cute!

 Zara's been practicing the one handed trick and is getting better at it!

She also loves books :)

Love These Girls!

Some fun things about Zara:

She still loves her binkie and sucks on her tongue while she sleeps. (something Kitana did and still does!)

She LOVES Kitana and gets very upset when she cries. So I always end up with two crying girls at the same time! Even if Kitana sounds slightly upset Zara will cry :( 

She also loves the sound of Kitana's voice and you can tell when she's listening. She likes to keep tabs on her.

 She sleeps from about 9pm-3am, and then wakes up every 2-3 hours after that to eat until about 9am. This can vary from day to day, but has been slightly consistent for the last few days. Still makes for a very sleeping Mama since Paul and I usually got to be around midnight. I just need to go to bed earlier...it's my fault!

 She spits up a TON! and has several dirty diapers a day. She always spits up while I'm changing her diaper, and poops while I'm burping her. She has the bodily functions of a boy!!

Recently she has started kind of chewing on her tongue. She's started blowing spit bubbles a little and it's sooo cute. She also has been doing lots of cooing and smiling.

She loves for me to sing to her, she always gets a big smile and I swear the other day she way trying to sing along :)

 She enjoys laying on her play mat and looking in the mirror at herself. This gets lots of smiles too, she's a lot like her daddy already!

She is surprisingly happy during tummy time for the first couple of minutes.

She's already in size 2 diapers and 3-6 month clothes.

She is a fan of having her alone time.

She gets very upset when she's tired and likes to be rocked/bounced to sleep. The harder you can bounce her the better!

 (This bouncy seat looks sooo uncomfortable! I swear she has very limited time in it)

Some fun things about Kitana:

She is doing great as a big sister and loves to mimic mommy with her baby dolls. It fun and strange to watch as she tried to nurse her baby...too cute!

She loves singing and will make up random songs singing about different things that have been happening in her life recently.

She started sleeping through the night with dry panties this last week. Her diaper has been dry for at least a month at night and we finally decided to switch to panties.

 She loves dance!

 She loves Dora even more!!

 She learned to swim this summer thanks to her grandma Koontz whom she calls her pink grandma! and my mom is her brown grammy..she's so silly :) She picked up swimming quickly and can hold her breath for a really long time under water!

 She is very excited to be baptized when she turns 8.

She can pretty much count to 30. She is very good at recognizing letters and numbers. She knows her name starts with the letter K and points it out to us all the time on signs and in stories.

She loves when her daddy makes up stories and tells them to her about her stuffed animals. She has ventured out and started making up some of her own! 

She sleeps with about 20 stuffed animals at night.
Her favorite foods are pickled beats and olives :)
She loves anything with buttons..she always says "I LOVE buttons!"

She loves to play outside...too bad it's been really hot lately, she's been missing it :(
She loves to play "talk" where she has conversations with her animals or dolls. Her favorite is when mom or dad play with her, but she's also been learning she can play talk by her self and be the voice for both of the characters involved!

She has recently starting talking back and saying "no!" when we ask her to do something. Not so fun, but we are learning how to deal with it.

 We sure do love our girls :)

Lake trip as a family of 4!

We went to Lake Havasu the first week of August. From my previous experience with a baby I just assumed we'd not make it to the lake this year. Well, Zara surprised me and is a great baby! So we decided to try it out, our hotel room was right on the lake so I knew that I had an escape from the heat for Zara. Turns out they had record highs while we were there and it got up to 120 degrees! So Zara stayed in the hotel room and came out only during the evenings and felt the water once for about 20 minutes on a not so hot day...Overall we had a great time and look forward to next year when our baby won't be a baby any more :)

Kitana is allowed to watch continuous Dora on road trips...she was in heaven!

Zara did great in the car too, she slept most of the time and we only had to stop once on the way there and back for her to eat. Thankfully she's a quick eater..10 minutes or less. I love it! Kitana would eat at least a half hour or longer.

Too cute...she loves to stick out her tongue, definitely one of her favorite past times!

Paul being Paul while he was getting his fishing license.

Have I mentioned that we got a new camera?? We love it!! It's amazing to be able to capture the moment rather than after the moment. It's a canon rebel. Although we had to send it back to get a replacement...notice the spot in the upper right corner...that's why! Oh, and this is Paul water skiing.

Kitana loved putting the pink zinc on and thought she looked like a piggy.

Zara's only water appearance...she loved it!

Paul's sister, cousin and aunt. They come from New Jersey every summer for a lake trip.

Livia!

Love this one..they are two peas in a pod :)

Zara took a liking to Shai!!

Zara loves her Aunt Nannette..she is really good at calming her down. 

Not the cutest picture...but if you look really closely you'll notice the goop in her left eye. Well, she's had this (clogged tear duct) pretty much since she was born. She had it when we left for the lake, and voila! we return home from the lake and it's gone!!

They went out fishing twice (I was in the room w/ Zara) and didn't catch anything. Kitana thought the bait was the fish, poor thing...maybe next time!

Paul wanted to make sure this was documented. Uncle Ryan was putting on Kitana's sunglasses in a moving boat and accidentally poked her in the eye with them. This is the face she made. When she sees this picture she tells me the story of how Uncle Ryan poked her in the eye...too funny!

So pretty...camera takes great pictures, spot and all. Paul took this. 

Chillin' in the air conditioned room with mommy.

Kitana got a little over tired...can you tell! She was sick for a couple days when we got home from the lack of sleep...but she had fun!

It was dark one night and Kitana was racing Livia to the stairs. Well, somehow she stepped on a piece of glass or metal. Paul said it bled a lot and she was not happy about it. Probably her worse physical injury to date. After that she refused to walk on the stairs. We had to carry her or walk around them.

View from our room.

Joni watched Zara while we had a little family swim time. 

View of our room from the water. 

This is the more mild of the cleavage shots Paul took. They were pretty bad!!

We celebrated Livia's birthday while we were there. She requested Winnie the pooh.

It was over 115 degrees outside this evening and this pizza place must have been at least 90 degrees inside...so hot!

The whole gang, minus Scott :( The photographer cut him off on the right...sad!

What I spent most of my time doing..watching the olympics! I was actually grateful to get to watch some of them since we cancelled our TV for summer.

Paul was on Kitana duty most of the time and lost the spoon I sent with them to eat her yogurt...they improvised!

Nannette watched Zara while we went on a boat ride with Kitana. I was so glad I got to see her cliff jumping with Paul. She was a little scared at first and then ended up doing it twice!

One night we were so hot and wanted a cool place to let Kitana run around. We found this mall which we were hoping was an inside mall...turns out it was outdoor...poor planning city of Lake Havasu! At least there were misters!

They also had this fun water area which was just what Kitana needed. 

We had a great family trip and look forward to many more as a family of four :)