Miss Kennedy's First Halloween

As much as I tried not to like it, I have to admit that Kennedy looked pretty stinking cute in her little Longhorn cheerleader costume. Although I'm fairly certain she could have been dressed as a lump of coal and I still would have thought she looked cute. :) Oh well.

After taking it easy around the house today, we went next door for dinner with Granny Jo before the big kids went trick-or-treating. Every year she does a Halloween dinner for the kids full of spooky foods. Tonight we had eyeball (meatball) sandwiches, blood (tomato) soup, witch's fingers (breadsticks with an almond for the fingernail), brain juice (iced tea with floating cauliflower), and graveyard cake (below). She always goes all out, and the kids love it! I can't wait for Kennedy to be big enough to get it.

After dinner, Josh & Tanya (Nacho Libre & Incarnacion), and Granny Jo (witch) took Guillermo (Jason), Cameron (a scary skeleton), Catalina (a green pixie), and Noah (Chicken Little) trick-or-treating around the neighborhood, while Dave and I (Todd & Sarah Palin) hung out at the house with our very sleepy girl.

She was a trooper, though - she hung in there until the festivities were over and we made it back home, just in time for bed.

Happy Halloween everyone!!

Our little pumpkin

We took Kennedy to a pumpkin patch at a nearby church this week to take some pictures to commemorate her first Halloween. But since I kind of let time get away from me and we waited until the week of Halloween, most of the pumpkins left were ugly and/or rotten. Seriously slim pickings. So there were only a couple that were even worth photographing, and even with just the few shots that we got, I still managed to come home with rotten pumpkin goo on my sleeve. Klassy.

Special thanks to Steph & Matt for the super-cute pumpkin hat and onesie!!

Where she got the blue eyes...

So our little girl still has blue eyes, and it looks like they may stay blue. Weird, right? Both Dave and I have brown eyes, so it is only natural that we imagined our children with the same. In fact, it is still surprising sometimes to look at her and see those big blue eyes looking back. I think that other people must find it surprising as well, because we are often asked whether we have blue eyes in our families, and the answer is yes - we both do. Dave's great grandfather Quintanilla had blue eyes, and my sister Amanda has them, along with several others in my mom's family.

And for the record, I have never seen our mailman close enough to know what color his eyes are.

We got to visit with Amanda and Zak when we were in town for OU/Texas, and after one look at this picture, I think you will see where Kennedy got her blue eyes:

Hanging out with Aunt Panda and Uncle Zak

OU/Texas weekend

This year for OU/Texas weekend, we loaded up the car and headed north, along with thousands of other Austinites on their way to Dallas for the big game. Unfortunately, we were not among the lucky fairgoers with Fletcher's Corny Dogs, I mean tickets to the game, but we did get to spend some time with friends and family while we were there. And of course, Kennedy's first Red River Rivalry couldn't go by without a little wager between Mom and Dad. Usually the bet is that the loser has dish duty for a week or something along those lines, but this year we upped the ante a little bit. Let me first say that I felt pretty confident going into this year's game, which should have been a giant red flag, given my normal luck. However, I didn't heed that warning, and instead agreed that Kennedy's Halloween costume would be a cheerleader for the winning team. I was imagining the cutest little Sooner cheerleader you have ever seen when... crap. I didn't think they could do it, but those darn Longhorns won. And I had to buy this:

As if that weren't bad enough, when we got back home Sunday afternoon, I walked in from the garage and this is what I saw:

Courtesy of our next-door neighbors (aka Dave's sister and her family). Seriously, guys?? :) I guess I shouldn't be too surprised, since I am constantly getting grief from his whole Longhorn-loving family. And I have to give credit to our neice and nephews, who were responsible for this little surprise - their signs were EVERYWHERE - in cabinets, drawers, the washer & dryer, under lampshades and toilet lids, on our bedroom ceiling, and probably in some places we haven't even found yet.

Kennedy's new tricks

Wow - our girl is 3 months old today! Unbelievable! I really can't get over how quickly it has gone by, and I already feel like a broken record saying that just 3 months in. It seems like every day that passes, she is learning something new and getting so much stronger. Kennedy has discovered her hands and tongue in the last couple of weeks, and the combination of those two discoveries makes for one slobbery little girl - thank goodness for burp cloths! She also is gaining more muscle control, and she definitely prefers to be sitting or standing most of the time (except for when she is lying on her play mat looking at herself - she still loves that!). When she is lying on her back, she does these little baby crunches where she curls her back and lifts her shoulders up like a sit up, and she gets so frustrated sometimes that she can't just sit all the way up yet. I have a feeling it won't be too long though.

Tummy time - not exactly her favorite thing, but she can now lift her head to look straight in front of her, as well as side to side.

Sitting in the Bumbo unassisted - that is, until the cheeks start to weigh her down. And you'll notice she already has her "Mom, enough with the pictures" face perfected.

And her favorite position - standing. And I have to say, this one is pretty darn cute because she looks like such a little person standing there, rather than just a baby. And she loves it, so she is almost always smiling, which makes it worth it no matter how tired Mommy's arms get. :)

Try not to be too jealous...

but this is what I get to wake up to each morning...

And speaking of waking up in the morning, it is soooo much easier now that Miss Kennedy is sleeping through the night - that's right, it's official. For the last three weeks, she has been going down at night and sleeping for 7-8 hours straight for her first stretch, then waking up to eat and going back to sleep for about 3 more hours. And let me just say that I feel like a new woman! It makes such a difference being able to sleep longer than 2-3 hours at a time. At first I thought it was just a fluke, so I didn't want to say anything and risk jinxing it, but it appears to be a pattern. Keep up the good work, honey!

Poor little thing doesn't get any attention...

Miss Kennedy is certainly one lucky little girl. She has no idea yet just how many people love her...

Warming up with Daddy after bath time

Posing for Granny Jo
Napping with Gramps
And with Grancy
And with Great Granny Ruth
And finally, getting a little love from Mommy from behind the camera

Kennedy's Favorite Toys

Here are some pics of Kennedy with a few of her favorite things.


The bouncy seat/swing - although she appears to favor the bumble bee over the giraffe. Poor giraffe!



The Boppy definitely sees a lot of action. You gotta love a girl who knows how to relax!

Here is her favorite spot in the house. The play mat really has no competition - with a mirror, lights, music, and a dangling vibrating purple elephant, the others have no hope.

Everybody was kung-fu fighting...

Staring at herself - always exciting!


And of course, there's the Bumbo. She still needs to grow into this one a little, but she sure does look cute sitting in it. And check out the dress Granny Jo brought back from Mexico!

Newborn Photographs

When Kennedy was two weeks old, we had Mollie from Photography in Bloom come over to the house and take some photos. I am so glad that we did, because looking at these pictures now and seeing how much she has already grown and changed in the last two months is amazing! I know that I will be saying the same thing a year from now, and ten years after that, and I just want to hold on to this time as tightly as I can, knowing that my sweet girl will only be this tiny for such a brief moment. I love having this documentation of the early days of our little family. Here are some favorites.

Bringing Home Baby

So after three days in the hospital, we were very ready to get home with our girl. (And part of this is because we were especially ready to have her all to ourselves and not under bright lights or getting stuck with needles every few hours!) But the main difference between the hospital and home, besides the bed of course, is that there aren't nurses coming in all the time to answer your questions and show you how to take care of this new little person you are all of a sudden responsible for. So, while it was an incredible feeling to leave the hospital and head home just the three of us, it was also a little overwhelming. What if we didn't know how to bathe her correctly? Or if she was eating enough? Or how to make her stop crying? Or how many hours of the day she was supposed to be swaddled? Or whether she was too hot or too cold? You get the idea.

But, something happened, something I have been told happens with all new parents. You just figure it out. And you do - I'm not kidding. Maybe not right off the bat, but you get there. Of course we still have questions all the time, but you start to feel comfortable enough to trust your instincts, and then you realize that parenthood is the best. thing. ever. I mean seriously, how did we get so lucky?

Here we are leaving the hospital, after quite a while spent strapping her into the car seat that first time. :)

And here's our little angel on the next day, after her first appointment with the pediatrician. I can't believe how huge that onesie was on her then - it is now in the storage bin of things she has outgrown already!

Getting some sun with Daddy and Granny Jo. We had to make sure to give her some sunlight every day at the beginning to help with the jaundice. Luckily by her two week appointment, her levels were no longer a concern. Whew!

Another reminder of just how tiny she was - she has almost outgrown her Moses basket now, but she was just a little speck in it at first.

Okay, okay - I give up!

My wonderful friend Kristin has been trying to convince me to start a blog for a LONG time now, but I have stubbornly refused, saying I didn't have the time to keep up with it. However, I keep getting in trouble for not sharing pictures of Kennedy often enough, so I started thinking that maybe this will be better motivation for me, to actually have a vehicle for recording what is going on in our lives. So here goes. I figure that this site will be frequented mostly by Kennedy's grandparents, so I will use it primarily to post updates and pictures of her, although I will probably include occasional stories about Dave and myself as well. I will make no commitments regarding the frequency of my posts, as I'm just not sure how I'll be about keeping up - I'll try. :) So I'll start two months ago, when our lives changed forever in the most wonderful way...



On our way to the hospital. What a strange feeling knowing that we were leaving the house as a couple for the last time!




Almost time to meet Baby Q...


It's a... GIRL!!!! Miss Kennedy Clover Quintanilla, born 7/14/08 at 7:44 pm. 7 lb. 12 oz., 21 inches long, and absolutely perfect.



Just look at that sweet face!