One Year!

I cannot believe that it has already been an entire year since our sweet little Kaya bug joined our family.  And what a wonderful year it has been.  And it has FLOWN by WAY too fast! Kaya has been such a huge blessing to our family and our love for her grows everyday - which I didn't think was possible... when she was born, I thought I loved her with everything in me and with everything I had.  I thought, "I'll never be able to love anything or anyone more than I love this little girl."  Which was only partially true.  It's true with only Kaya, herself, being the exception.  I will be able to love her more because I DO. I love her more and more every single day.  My heart just keeps growing and growing. All of the hard times, the sleepless nights, the poopy diapers, as well as all of the good times, the snuggles, the family walks, the giggles, the "firsts" - all add to my love for her. And I am just filled to bursting!

This year has been a wild and crazy and wonderful ride that I never want to forget, but, unfortunately, I find that it's already fading.  And I haven't done very well at keeping record of things that have happened.  Kaya has just learned and grown SO much SO quickly.  But here are a few of my favorite times and things from this past year:

---Kaya’s love of books.  She’s our little bookworm.  Books were the first object to really motivate her to crawl. She is SO cute with them.  She loves to sit on your lap and be read to and wants to hold onto the book, no matter how big it is.  She loves to look at books on her own.  She loves to thumb through the hymn book at church and she’s surprisingly gentle with paper pages.  I think her favorite is a book called ‘Animally’.  She will sit and look at it FOREVER.  There’s a dog on one of the pages and she will always turn to that page and touch the dog and make a little barking noise.  She loves to look at that puppy.  Really, she loves to look at any puppy in any book.  And she has an uncanny knack of finding dogs in books.  I hope she always keeps this love of books and that it fuels a love of learning and curiosity.

---Outside adventures.  This little girl LOVES to be outside.  We’ve had fun going on walks and visiting the park and the duck pond.  We’ve had fun adventures going up the canyon and on hikes.  I hope to always help Kaya love and appreciate Heavenly Father’s beautiful creations and that we can always enjoy them together.

---She’s such an observer.  She’s already a little people watcher.  And she learns so much from observing.  It’s definitely a humbling reminder to me to be careful in how I act, because she is learning so much from just watching me.  Whenever we visit Kassie’s, Kaya always comes away having learned something from one of the kids.  About a week ago, she tried to navigate herself down the stairs after seeing Cienna do it ONE time.  She also mimics facial expressions.  You pull a face at her, you better believe she’s gonna try to do it right back.  A couple weeks ago Joseph was playing with Kaya and started blowing raspberries.  It only took her a couple of minutes to figure out how to do it herself.  Now she does it all the time.  James has some really bad allergies this Spring and has been having to blow his nose a lot.  The other day he was holding Kaya and had to blow his nose.  He grabbed a tissue and blew in to it.  Kaya started reaching for the tissue so James grabbed a new one and held it up to her face.  And she blew out her nose into the tissue!  It was so cute.  She is SO smart!

---She thinks it is so funny to be tipped upside-down.  She will smile so big and just giggle!  It’s very cute.  I can’t get enough of her contagious little giggle.

---Rocking sweet baby Kaya when she cries... Don't get me wrong, I DO NOT LIKE the crying and sad baby, but I do LOVE being her mommy.  I love being able to be the one to comfort, console, and calm her.  I love being able to help her feel safe and secure.  I love that when something is wrong I'm the one that she wants.  That she reaches for me and finds love and comfort in me.