4 Month Check-Up

Weight: 13 lb. 7 oz (75 percentile)
Height: 24 in (50 percentile)
Head Circumference: 39.5 cm (10-25 percentile)

The doctor said she is doing great and was very impressed with how cute she is. Kenna kept trying to grab her fingers and hands during the check-up and the doctor kept saying, "I just can't get over how sweet you are!" It's nice to know we aren't the only ones who think so. We can start giving her rice cereal now, so I'm sure there will be plenty of funny pictures and videos of that in the next few weeks.

Kenna is getting to be more and more fun every day and we are really enjoying her. She has recently discovered a new noise that she can make...she growls. It's a very deep throated "AHHHHHH." It's pretty funny because she likes it when we growl back at her, so she growls, then we growl, then she growls, then we growl, then she laughs! She is so much fun!

Now, here is what everyone really wants...Pictures!

Waking up...

My absolute favorite face...

We went to Babies "R" Us for mittens and daddy decided she had to have this...

She finally fits into one of the hats they gave us at the hospital...

Her new Exersaucer...

There's No Place Like Home

We heard that Kristi and Jolie were flying in for Emma's wedding this weekend and we couldn't stay away. Up to Delaware we went. We got there late Thursday night and watched Jenna while Lix and the crew all went to the actual wedding in DC. And thus began Baby Wars.......

We went to the reception on Friday night and the rest of the weekend was full of wonderful events that the Winn clan is notorious for. Sitting around. I even managed to talk Kristi in to showing off her new skills of cutting hair on my wife.

A scene from "Barbershop" if it was starring a white cast ....

There was lots of food, lots of smiles, lots of babies, and lots of fun. It was a wonderful weekend.

And I even learned where Kenna gets her napping power

My mom gave us my captains bed and some other furniture that we packed into the excursion and drove back to Richmond. We have a busy week ahead of us now. We have to unpack all the furniture, set up the guest room which we painted 2 weeks ago, and then go and get our kitchen cabinets. Our guest room will be completely done when we set up the furniture in it. We have been in the house for quite a while now and only recently have "finished" a couple rooms. Soon I guess the whole house will be up to snuff. I am sure that we will post some pictures when we get the guest room completed. Then it is on to the kitchen.....

Alien Arm Syndrome

Today Kenna figured out that when she moves her arm she can make something happen. We put her in her Bumbo chair with this farris wheel looking toy attached to the tray. She started flailing her arm and bumped it which made it sing. She thought this was just great and started flailing again and again. Interestingly, she does get frustrated when she can't manage to hit the toy. Its funny cause she still has absolutely no control over it, so she just flaps waiting for something to happen. I think she might have alien arm syndrome.



In other news the weather has turned quite cold. We took Kenna shopping for a winter coat today. We found a very cute one at the Children's Place and brought it home to try it on (she slept through the shopping trip). I looked at the coat, looked at her and thought the coat might be just a little too big. I thought I'd try it on her before I took the tags off. It's a good thing I did too because we couldn't get her buckled in her carseat with the coat on. Fortunately we bought a back-up. It is a black pea coat and it fits much better.

All Smiles

A Date.... What's a date?

Lets face it, kids ruin your mojo. I had not been on a date with my wife for a long time. I think our last date was to Red Robin the hour before Kenzie was admitted to the hospital to remove her parasite that had moved into her tummy. A mere 3 and a half months later I decided that enough was enough. We got our nanny (who is the best nanny ever by the way, except she has some quirks. She left this big bag at our house that has umbrellas in it and all kinds of other stuff and now some guy named Bert lives up on our roof and is all the time singing about a chimney or something) to watch our kid for the night and I surprised Kenzie by taking her out to this great local authentic Chinese place called PF Changs. If you are ever in Richmond you have got to try it! We went with our friends Sara and Ben who also started real life in Richmond about 5 months after we did. Sara was in Kenzies program at JMU. It was a splendid night of sitting around chatting and a wonderful date!

Our weeks have been flying by. We have settled into a rhythm with Kenzie working. She seems to like it quite a bit. We have managed to make it down to Charlottesville quite a few times to go see Tyler and his new Mrs, Amy. Jansen (another friend from BYU at UVA law) also has been coming up to eat our food and enjoy a break from studying. Our life is lots of fun as we enjoy the rhythm and watch Kenna grow.

Now onto the meat of this post. Those faithful followers of my life will remember that I conquered the living room floor upon moving in to the house. It was quite an undertaking and tested my lack of handiman skills to the max. Since that time I have also managed to prune trees with a sawzall, build a ladder for a tree fort, and skillfully avoid cutting myself while using the dangerous tools involved in painting (paintbrushes and rollers mostly, but I did have to scrape something off the wall with a razor). This is not good enough for McKenzie. She demands more from me. We set aside a big chunk of money when we got married for stuff when we got a house. We decided to be 1/2 fiscally conservative and put half toward our student loans but the rest is finally going to be spent after 4 years of inactivity. We are going to tackle the kitchen cabinets. The old ones were probably nice 19 years ago, but they have been painted over, beaten up, and a just plain gross. I am in the beginning phase of negotiation to acquire conscripted help (Kenzies dad) because the only thing I know how to do with cabinets is to get food and dishes out of them. My skills will be tested again...... My father is a genius for always "pretending" to not know how to do stuff like this. I am only now beginning to see his wisdom. Thus far, my efforts are restricted to graph paper, but sometime soon they will be a reality.

Also my book is being printed this week and will be available at Deseret Book soon. Here is the final cover. It is a huge PDF file so I just screenshotted it so you get a sense of it. This is getting exciting as it has been a life-long dream of mine to publish something that adds to the religious literature of Mormondom. It is cool to achieve a dream and I am very lucky and blessed to have been given the chance to do so.


The next weeks are busy with a trip down to C-Ville for Tylers birthday this weekend, a trip to DC and Delaware the following weekend for Emma's wedding, another trip to Delaware the next weekend for my grandparents coming to visit, then some time off for Thanksgiving. Busy busy.

Pictures and Stuff

This has been a very eventful week for little Miss Kenna. On Sunday she learned how to roll from front to back. This is an especially useful trick since she hates being put on her tummy. Today she learned to roll from back to side (she can't quite make it all the way to her tummy), and between Sunday and today she discovered her knees. On occasion, she catches a glimpse of her toes, but hasn't quite figured out how to get them in her hands yet. They are very slippery. She has started grabbing for toys, putting things in her mouth and loves to talk! She loves to be naked and Nate tickles her every night before we put her jammie on. One final, very cool trick...she has learned how to read (or at least look at pictures in books) and will spend quite a while looking at books while someone turns the pages for her.

Reading...

Working out...