Katherine is 6 months old!

Man, I am so slow blogging these days. It will be time to mark her 7 months before long... We've been super busy with life in general so you have to excuse me. I will also keep it brief but hopefully it will satisfy everyone.

Katherine turned 6 months old on August 19th and I am just astounded that we've had this precious little girl around for half a year already!

Stats:
Weight: 8.02kg (17.6 lb) 90%
Height: 68.5cm (27 in) 90%
Head circumference: 43.5cm (17.1in) 75%

She is a big baby! But still really well proportioned.

Eating:
Still eating every 3 hours during the day. We're sticking to the 7, 10, 1, 4, 7pm schedule with bedtime right after the 7pm feeding.
She started on solids just before turning 6 months and she did really well with carrots (her first official solid). I let her lick an apple and gave her tiny bits of banana off my finger before and she was really interested in those so we knew she was ready. Here is her first carrot experience.


Sleeping:
Nightime is still a breeze. Naps - same ole same ole... Typically 1 hour. If I'm lucky I get a 2 hour nap once a day. I've accepted the fact that she is just not a long nap taker. But as long as she sleeps all night I can live with it.

Milestones:
I call this month the month of milestones.
While we were in the US (after she turned 5 months) she started first grabbing her feet, and then within a couple of days, rolling over from back to belly. She wants to do it all the time now! She does that when she is reaching for toys and then gets stuck on her belly. She will play like that for a while and then start whining and crying because she can't get back.... hilarious!
She is also starting to pull up her knees while on her belly which look like a beginning of a crawl! Too cool!

She started "talking"! It must have been from observing us talking to so many people while we were visiting in the US. At first she was just opening and closing her mouth like a fish... it looked slightly retarded.... And then one day she added sound to it and broke out in a perfect and loud BLA BLA BLA BLA BLA!!! Oh it was awesome!! Since then she keeps going on bla bla bla, wah wah wah.... (not the whiney kind... the speaky kind). I love it! And if you respond the same way, she will talk back to you and you can go on having a little conversation with her. Too cool!

And finally: her first tooth came in! CJ found it completely by accident while we were on our Glacier Express trip. We were sitting at our hotel in St. Moritz and she was chomping on his hands and all of a sudden he says, wait what is that hard thing in there.... IT'S A TOOTH!! Her bottom left incisor made its debut.  She had absolutely no symptoms, no fever no crying or fussing. She's been drooling and chewing on everything like crazy for at least a month so we did not even consider that to be a sign... Really cool. She won't let you look in her mouth to inspect it though... haha...

I still can't get over the fact that we've been parents for over 6 months now. This little girl is a real blessing. She squeals and laughs all the time and rarely fusses. I love her so much I can't stand it. We are lucky to have her in our lives.

And here are some pictures from the month...

We had a cookout with friends and here are some of them with their babies.
From left: Claire with Catherine (6 weeks older than Katherine), Kali with Emalyn (18 months), me with Katherine, and Bethany with Angie's little boy - John.

 Angie with little John (3 days older than Katherine)
 Ahhh those carrots are glorious!

 What's up?

You want to take a picture of me?

Ok I'm gonna smile!

 Haha!

 You still taking pictures of me?...

 All dressed up with Daddy

 Mmmmmm tasty!

 Zonked out in her stroller

 Zonked out in mom and dad's bed

 Flexi-baby!

 Smiley!

 In her new big girl stroller (we got a Baby Jogger City Mini GT and I LOVE it!!)

 Listening to some music on the computer

 Avocado? Hmmm I don't know...

 Whoooppsss... a little came out...

 Sophie is the best!!!

And her official 6 month shot:

Golden Pass panoramic train

One weekend back in July we decided to go on a spurt of a moment trip on one of the Swiss panoramic trains called the Golden Pass.

As you have by now realized, this country abounds in gorgeous vistas. You can't make a step in any direction without being completely amazed by the beauty of local landscapes, lakes, mountains,valleys, vineyards, etc. The Swiss take full advantage of that and offer tourists and locals, rides on these glass ceiling trains where you can relax all day and take in the beauty of the Swiss countryside.
That's exactly what the Golden Pass does.
We bought tickets to go from Geneva to a Swiss German town of Zweisimmen. Nothing special about our destination, it just seemed like a good stopping and turnaround point.
We got up early, hopped on a regional train to Montreux where the Golden Pass was picking up. That day the train was all sold out - at least that's what we were told - and I could not reserve seats for up ahead of time, so when we showed up we were told to go sit wherever there were openings. So we proceeded to sit in 1st class and actually stayed there the whole time on the way out! It was great.

The weather was gorgeous and Katherine behaved so it was a super fun day from start to finish.

We had lunch in Zweisimmen, walked around town and hopped back on the train back.



You think these people have enough gnomes in their garden?..



One advantage of the Golden Pass line is the fact that you can hop on and hop off in any town along the route and spend some time there. Then you pick up the next train about 2 hours later. We took advantage of that and got off in Chateau D'Oex. If you know anything about french, you'll know that the word "chateau" means "castle". Contrary to the name, there is NO castle in Chateau D'Oex. It is however a very cute little town which has a panoramic funicular taking visitors to the top of an overlooking moutain. The same funicular is used by skiiers in the winter.

We had no idea what we were going to do in Chateau D'Oex ahead of time, it just sounded cool, so the fact that we found the cable car and the cool mountain was a super bonus. Check out the views!!

We went on a crazy little hike scrambling up a mountain with Katherine in the BabyBjorn. It was super steep! I thought I was going to fall off the side of the hill haha....

After exploring the hill for a while we hopped back on the train and headed home.

Overall the trip took the majority of the day and it was well worth the ticket price (which by the way was really reasonable for Switzerland). Fun times!

Majorca vacation - Days 3 and 4

Ok back to our vacation story...

On day 3 we got up fairly early again - crazy to do that while on vacay right?... - but we wanted to get going before it got super hot.

We headed to the nearby town of Alcudia as that day was a big street market day.

We walked around the old town...

We also climbed the crumbling walls of the oldest part of Alcudia and walked around the fortification and looked out the shooting holes (where town guards would shoot from if the town was being invaded).

We wandered around the market and had fun checking out the stands with all the different knick knacks for sale. A lot of the stands were packed with items made in Morocco which I guess is not far from there.

Finally it was time for Katherine to eat so we stopped in one of the little local tapas places. Check out this feast we got served. Not like the tiny tapas portions you get in the US!

We were hoping to see an equestrian show called Passion Cavalli but when we came to the arena where it was being held it turned out there was absolutely no covered seating and since the show was right in the middle of the day when the sun is the strongest, it was just not safe to do with little Katherine. But we saw some pretty horses and a lady in a lovely traditional dress inviting people to attend. Makes you wonder though - how do the poor horses handle performing in such opressive heat??

After we had enough of Alcudia we went back to the hotel for a little cool down and a siesta.

Later on, CJ went back to town to get a rental car for us again. We were planning to do a similar thing we did when we arrived and use the rental to see another part of the island and then return it at the airport the next morning.

We used the car to drive across the island towards the town of Porto Cristo to see super old and super cool caves with amazing rock formations (stalactites and stalagmites). No flash photography is allowed there so the quality of the pictures is iffy. When you get to the caves area the first thing you do is watch a movie about Jules Verne and how odd underground places like this inspired him and other people's imagination and then the guided tour starts. The link between the caves and Verne still seems kind of unclear to me but who cares. It was really cool down there and Katherine took a little nap as the caves were pretty dark.

Then we drove back to the hotel and spent the evening chillaxing on our cool porch.

And the next morning it was time to take the last dip in the pool, pack and head to the airport.

It was a really cool little vacation. I would highly recommend Majorca to anyone who  is coming to Europe.