Beyond Bon Bons: Summary of the last month

So, yeah, December was insane, so I didn't take time to blog! Here's a recap of what has been happening in the Sigrah house: (if I can remember everything!)

*Kalaya is rapidly approaching 8 months! She weighed 17 lbs 8 oz last week at her doctor visit. (more about that later) She sits up for very long periods of time and loves to play with toys. She has had a variety of solid foods including rice cereal, oats/barley cereal, apples, pears, peas, carrots, sweet potatoes, squash, and avocado. She still isn't too crazy about them, although it totally depends on the day and the hour. She will chow on cereal, but not always vegetables and even less often on fruits. We discovered that she usually prefers it in a jar (of course she does, after all the time I take to make it!), but she only gets jarred when we aren't at home. I'm not too worried about it, since she's obviously not lacking calories, and breast milk is still best! She is still a great nurser and only has 1 or 2 solid meals a day. Sometimes, none at all. It doesn't seem to affect her either way. She usually wakes up once to nurse at night, and quickly falls back asleep. She's had some stretches of 7 hours straight sleeping, which technically mean she's sleeping through the night!
*We took Kalaya to meet Santa Claus! We may have traumatized her. From the second we put her on his knee, until we picked her up, she bawled. We have a very classic first Santa picture, which I haven't had a chance to scan. Just picture a giant open mouth in a cute Christmas dress and Santa hat!
*Christmas was wonderful this year, but very hectic! Which made it go by super fast and I can't believe our first Christmas as a family is over already! Ready for everything we did???
12/23 Nelson got of work at 5, came home, we drove to Salem. Stayed the night at Theo's (Nelson's brother) place. Made a stop at Nelson's dad's house.
12/24 Got up and went to get Nelson's mom for brunch. Then went to Nelson's aunt's house to say hi. Back to Grandma's house for Christmas with her. Then back to Papamatu's house for Christmas with them. Then drove back to Portland to be at the Christmas Eve service by 4:00. Then to Mom and Dad's for Christmas dinner and Christmas with them. Then drove back to Washington to spend the night.
12/25 Christmas morning as a family, but fairly rushed. Mom and Dad picked us up at 10, dropped off their dog. Drove to the airport, flew to Atlanta. Got picked up, drove another 45 min, spent the evening with Aunt, Uncle and 6 cousins. Stayed the night at another house.
12/26 Got up, drove to Alabama to see Ma Ma, Pa Pa, Uncle Colin, cousin/niece Allie, Michelle, Uncle Roy and Aunt Diane. (that's 20 family members together folks!) We were in Alabama until the 31st. We drove back to Georgia on the 31st.
1/1 Flew back to Portland, drove back to Washington, home again!

*Did I mention that on top of all of these things, my baby was totally sick??? That being said, she did absolutely amazing! She had a very bad cold. She had a fever on the 21st, but it went away quickly. But, her cough and stuffy nose kept getting worse. We had to suction her all the time and she kept gagging as she coughed stuff up. Night times were really long, she couldn't breathe through her nose for very long without being cleared out. She lost her voice and was a sick little girl. We ended up going to the doctor, but it wasn't anything that could be treated with antibiotics, so we just rode it out. She's doing much, much better now. It was actually almost less stressful that she was sick though, because both of her cousins (20 months and 14 months) were sick and I would have been so germ paranoid with toys and exposure. This way they were all full of germs and I didn't worry about it.

*The trip was wonderful! The plane rides went really smoothly. We has direct flights both ways, which helped a lot. Kalaya mostly nursed and slept. When she was awake, she just sat on laps and played with her new toys from Santa. It was nice to have grandparents on the flights with us. In all our car travel, she pretty much just slept too. Having a sick baby leads to good napping! She usually is a 45 min power napper, but we've had to wake her up after 3 hours lately!! We got to see so much family. We flew out for Ma Ma and Pa Pa's (my mom's parents) 60th wedding anniversary, which was the day after Christmas. Almost all of their children, grandchildren and all great-grandchildren were there. It was great to see everyone!