Faces of Kayla

Little Miss Kayla sometimes likes to ham it up for the camera.  Even when there isn't a camera around. Lucky for us there often is one nearby in our house, although sometimes in the form of a phone.

Kayla has gotten so expressive lately. Little things will cause her to make the most surprised face -- complete with the perfect little oval-shaped open mouth and wide eyes, frozen just long enough to make it more comical.

She's absolutely adorable when she does it!  It's hard to catch her in full-surprised-mode, though.
She's turned into quite the climber, too!  I keep calling her my little monkey girl.  If we take the tray off the high chair, she'll climb up into it all by herself!

But sometimes, she just wants to lay in a chair and watch Dora or Diego.  She does suck her thumb -- usually only when she's tired, though.  We haven't tried to stop her yet -- figure we'll give it some time and let her be a kid for a while.

Hugging is fun!  And sometimes -- she gets overzealous and hugging becomes near-strangling.  But even strangling can be cute when it's a stuffed animal.  When she's excited she'll run at you and throw herself into your arms for a big hug!

She thinks watermelon is fabulous.  She makes an awful mess with it, with juice going everywhere.  Especially when she smooshes it in front of her.  Here she's actually showing me her mouth, in response to my request that she put it in her mouth instead of smooshing it on her tray.

 And she doesn't care what she looks like eating playing with it.  Here she's quite proud of her accomplishment of getting her finger stabbed through it without it breaking into multiple pieces.  I was actually pretty impressed!

She's the ultimate girly-girl.

Okay, maybe this was a rare moment caught with a bow in her hair.  She left the bow in her hair for quite a bit that morning, probably because she found it on the dresser and wanted to wear it.  Everything's better if its not mommy's idea, right?

She's almost always the helper girl.  If we leave something within her reach, she'll pick it up -- and if we scold her, she doesn't stop -- she just proudly brings it to us so we can put it up.  She's pretty good at sharing things with her sister -- if you give her two sippies, she'll take one to Megan.  If Megan puts her sippy down, Kayla will often pick it up and take it, giving Megan hers.  Any opportunity to trade -- after all, Megan's might have something better!

And she'd would love to be Mommy's little kitchen helper if we'd let her!

Always a cutie, even when she isn't doing anything special.  Here she's showing us the buttons on her top and telling us what they are.  Over and over. She doesn't have many outfits with buttons on them, being a choking hazard and all, so this was pretty special to her--the buttons on her top, instead of mommy's or daddy's!

She's definitely a daddy's girl.  His hat is a much-loved toy, although she hasn't quite got the hang of it yet. In her defense, it is a tad big for her still.

She is absolutely precious to me.   I cannot even imagine what life would be like now if she weren't a part of it. She's got me by the heart.

She's pretty good at making other people smile, too.  After all, who could resist this face?