Here's a video of her trick!
We love going to the park with our friends Tricia, Steve, and their little boy Wyatt. He's 2 and Kollyn loves to play with (and tease) him. She tries to take his snacks, food (whenever we're out for dinner with them), and his toys. And when he gets mad about it, she thinks it's the funniest thing and she smiles and laughs. Then she does it again, and again, and again. She gets a huge smile and laughs when I tell her we're going to play with them. This is the first time she's been to the park, and it was a lot of fun!
Her first time in the swing. At first, she wasn't sure what to think about it, but after a few minutes, she had a lot of fun. We definitely love going to park now and we make sure we go at least once a week. We usually meet Tricia, Steve, and Wyatt there and grab a pizza for dinner. Kollyn loves pizza, breadsticks, anything with bread really, and has a blast playing with them.
These were some of her first experiences with the slide. At first, she was her usual stoic face, but after a couple slides, she seemed to be having fun.
These are the two positions that she loves to play with her tablet in. She'll lay on her tummy, play with the tablet, and kick her legs up and down. Then she'll flip over, play with her tablet, and kick her legs up and down some more.
Because the weather has been so nice, we spend as much time outside as we can. Lately, we've been having picnics outside and she has a lot of fun doing that since she loves to be outside. She probably doesn't eat as much as she usually does, but she eats enough and has a blast doing it. Plus, soon it'll be too cold and we won't be able to do stuff like this so we'll take any chance we can get.
A few weeks ago we went to Cedar City to help my sister Laura with the carnival she was in charge of putting together for the elementary school her kids go to. Kollyn met the dog, Bruiser, and really liked him. She also loved having fun with her cousins at the carnival.
Cousins Kenley and Carli riding the ponies and playing the duck racing game. Kollyn loved watching them do stuff, even though she couldn't do it, like the bounce house.
She got to actually sit on the pony, though it didn't go anywhere because none of us felt comfortable with that, and didn't really have a reaction. I like to think that she liked it since I love horses, but she didn't really show us one way or the other. I'll just keep exposing her and hopefully that'll help her get use to them and enjoy being around them.
Because we were in Texas for her 6 month visit, we opted to wait until we got back to Utah to get her 6 month vaccines so we wouldn't have to transfer shot records back and forth and having a lot of issues. We've had enough problems with her Medicaid application (first they need one thing, then they need three more things and that's all, but actually they needed two more papers, and by then I had to fill out a new application before it finally got figured out) so I didn't want to deal with stuff like that either.
When we got to her pediatrician's office (we LOVE him and so does she) we found this walking toy in the waiting room. At first, she wanted to crawl and push it, but after David showed her how to stand up and push it, she had a ton of fun pushing it around the waiting room and almost running over the other kids. She smiled and giggled the whole time.
We took her weight (19 pounds 1 ounce, 43%), her height (28 inches, 43%), and her head size (I don't remember the numbers but she's in the 20%), and then she got her vaccines. She was amazing. She only cried for a couple minutes and she was fine. They had a stuffed dolphin in the exam room and she got really interested in it so we let her play with it for a while. She also had a fun time staring at the dolphins painted on the wall. She's such a trooper when it comes to the doctor visits. We love her pediatrician. He was the one on call when she was born (since we hadn't found one we liked before that) and immediately we knew he was the right doctor. She gets really happy and smiley when he walks in and he always makes a big deal of talking to her first, then talking to us. It's really great to know that she likes her doctor.
On October 1, we went to to the Hogle Zoo in Salt Lake because it was ZAP day (a free day to encourage people to learn about the Zoos, Arts, and Parks organization and to vote for something or other) and so I got tickets for me, Kollyn, our friend Tricia and her son Wyatt. Tricia and I were roommates in college and we went to high school together. They just moved to Lehi from Logan so we are having a lot of fun getting together with them a lot more now.
Kollyn and I had fun posing with all the statues that we could find. She got really nervous when the elephant statue started making noises and then spraying water out of its trunk, but she had fun otherwise. She liked looking at all the animals and it was perfect weather. It was a little cool and overcast, which helped make the animals more active and fun to watch, and sprinkled a tiny bit, but overall it was great. We just needed jackets and all was good.
Kollyn and Wyatt had fun finding the animal statues and going to sit on them. She had a lot of fun holding my fingers and walking over to them (she would walk like that all the time if she could) then getting pictures. I love that she is now getting in the habit of looking at the camera when I tell her to and smiling, most of the time. It's really fun!
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Then we rode the little train before we left. Kollyn's ticket was free because she's under 11 months, and she had so much fun (as evidenced by the smiles). This was also her first thumb's up, and even though I'm pretty sure it was a fluke, I was so excited to get it on camera! She sat and stared at everything as we rode the rain around the animal exhibits, and the giraffe was really close to us so she got really excited about that.
We love having our friends come and hang out at our house. We watch Oliver every day for a couple hours while my friend Maddie is in class and Tricia and Wyatt sometimes come and hang out with us sometimes too. On days like that, we love to go outside and play. Oliver doesn't do much, which is nice for me, but Kollyn and Wyatt have a lot of fun chasing each other around and that gives me and Tricia some time to talk about actual things and not just repeating the sounds that Kollyn's toy tablet make all the time.
This girl is a daredevil and loves to climb things. The other day, she used me as a human ladder and climbed up to the couch we have raised up just so she could get her bag of yogurt bites. She loves her snacks and won't let anything get in the way of her obtaining those snacks. And when she climbs up stuff like that, she gets a huge smile on her face and she seems so proud of herself. She is very independent and loves to do things herself, including feed herself everything unless she knows she can't (like yogurt, grits, and soup) and get around all by herself.
Today we went to lunch at Grandma Johnson's house between General Conference sessions. Kollyn got to hang out with cousin Rocco and cousin Luke. Rocco is a few months older than her and Luke is a couple months younger so they're all pretty close in age. Luke was really excited about Kollyn and kept trying to play with her and pull on her, which is how she plays with other kids but she doesn't like it when he does it to her. She can dish it but she can't take it. She was pretty tired though, so that could've had something to do with it. :) It'll be fun to watch these three grow up together!
We have had a pretty great month. David's doing well in school and really liking his job. Working for Vivint has a lot of perks and he is definitely needed there. He likes that they have respect for what he does, something he didn't feel at Goodman this summer, and the free food is pretty great too. :) Every 8 hours he works he gets a free meal ticket to use at the cafeteria or the food truck they have come around for lunch. We had dinner there a couple days ago and it was really good. We also have tried a couple of the food trucks and they were really good too.
I'm in the process of starting a little handmade baby and toddler boutique with a friend of mine. We're getting vendors (people in the area who make baby and toddler things) and setting up a one-day preview to make sure there is an actual demand for something like this before we actually get it started. I'm hoping it works out. It's been a lot of work so far, and it'll only get more time consuming, but we are really excited about this. I'm hoping it works out. :)
