Look who's growing up

Kiersa is getting so old without me even realizing it. She's such a happy baby, and people constantly comment on her good temper and how she smiles more than any baby they've ever seen. She really only gets fussy if she's hungry or needs a diaper change or is super tired (which is the opposite of how Talea was...she was my crier). Oh, if she's sick, you'll see her at her crankiest, but it's still not very bad. Oh, hang on, she's not a fan of being in her car seat either.

But really, I promise, you won't hear her fuss very much or for very long compared to other babies.

All my kids were smiley babies, but Kiersa takes the cake. Today, Hyrum was holding Kiersa and she was smiling at his employees like she does at everyone. He handed Kiersa to Jeremy (his head installer) while he cut some stuff and suddenly she started crying. She did NOT want to be held by him since he was a stranger to her. I didn't see this, but I heard about it. Later on, I brought Kiersa outside with me while I checked on the house progress and Hyrum told me to hand Kiersa to Jeremy. Her smile immediately evaporated into a blank expression, then a worried one, then she about started to cry so he handed her back. They had me hand her to Greg to see if she was only scared of Jeremy, but her reaction with Greg was the same. Her smile was quickly overcome by concern, then crying. It was so cute to see that she's finally old enough to have a reaction of fear toward strangers, but then I realized that that only means it'll start to be hard to leave her with babysitters. Darn.

Shortly after Kiersa was born, our dogs got sprayed by a skunk. They stunk so bad that we had to ban them from the house and they had to start sleeping in our big house, drafts and all. They had blankets to sleep under, so we didn't feel too bad, and it was actually really nice to have their noise outside and not to have any dog hair anywhere in the house. We decided it was pretty nice to have our house back to humans and all the animals outside. The other day we let the dogs in the house for a few minutes since they've been banned from the house for so long. Kiersa was on the floor and about had a panic attack when she saw them. They scared her so bad when she was at their level. This is our first child to be afraid of our dogs, and I felt really bad that I hadn't thought to expose her to them more often. We've been letting them in for a little while each evening now so Kiersa will learn not to be afraid of dogs. It's been about 3 or 4 days now, and she still lets out a little pout if they get too close to her, but her curiosity is getting the better of her and she's not crying hard anymore. She's still not a fan yet though. She treats them like strangers. They're fine from a distance, but if they get too close or try to touch her, she's not having it.

Kiersa has a funny way of communicating that she's full. If she's done eating, and you try to offer her a bottle or food again, she'll look at it and gag. This never fails. She does it all the time. The problem is, every time she does it and I have a camera close by and grab it to catch it on video, she stops doing it. I've tried about 10 times to catch it, and so far, this is the best I have, but it's still not a good representation. I'll keep trying to catch it.