Baby Proofing

Stella is becoming more and more mobile everyday.  Since we can no longer just set her where we want her to play, we've started the inevitable process of baby proofing the house.  Our first step has been to keep her wrangled into the parts of the house where we want her to be.  For this, we've deployed two walk-through gates to keep her confined to one of the living rooms and the adjoining kitchen.  So far, the cost seems to be well worth the convenience of having a swinging gate as opposed to stepping over or temporary disarming the gate.  The gate is pictured above with Stella and Ember being depressed due to their recent incarceration.

Leaving on a Jet Plane

Every year, for our anniversary (this year is our 3rd), Megan and I try to take a nice vacation.  This year was definitely different though with Stella in the picture.  It was a tough choice, but we decided to go to Mexico and leave Stella in the able bodied hands of our parents.  Megan's parents watched her for the first half and my parents watched her the second half.  We missed her a lot while we were gone, but a beach side vacation was exactly what I needed to recharge my batteries (pics from Mexico).

My mom snapped a bunch of good pictures while they had her.  You can see all of them in my picture gallery, but I've picked out my favorites from each day here:

My First Father's Day

Today is Father's Day, and Stella got me a really cool custom made travel and coffee mug with her pictures on it as well as a new pair of boxers. You might not be able to tell from the picture, but the wording on the boxers is "The Best Awesome bad A** Dad" with Homer Simpson standing off to the right.  I already know I'm awesome, but it's pretty cool to have boxers from your daughter and Homer Simpson that confirms it.

Stella also took me to my favorite Vietnamese restaurant, Vietnam Cafe, for lunch.  It was a great day.

Commando Crawl

Stella has not quite mastered the traditional and much more efficient "standard" crawl yet.  She's still in the "commando" crawl phase which is quite amusing.  My sister, Megan, took the following video on her phone demonstrating her humorous attempt at crawling:

Super-Happy-Jumping-Top-Ponytail Baby

She's come a long way from her river dancing days:

Visitors from the East

Megan's aunt, Leah, who is actually pretty close to our age, came from Missouri with her kids today to visit. We grilled out and everyone got to catch up.  Stella had a good time with her cousins once removed and her Laugh & Learn Table was popular with everyone:

First Play Date

Megan had been in recent contact with a friend from high school she hasn't seen in years.  It turns out they live nearby and have a daughter about the same age, so it was decided that a "play date" should be arranged.  I wasn't there, but it's my understanding that Stella's first social experience with someone her age went well and hopefully there will be more "dates" in the future (no actual dates with boys though since she'll be joining a convent right out of high school).

Baby Stella

Megan couldn't resist buying Stella a doll with the same name.  Here is Stella playing with Stella while somehow not ripping a hole in the space-time continuum:

Kraus Reunion

This year, Mom and a bunch of her cousins worked together to orchestrate a Kraus family reunion at Sedgwick County Park, complete with T-shirts (even Stella got one).  It was nice to have the whole family together and to meet some distance relatives I have never met before.  Of course, everyone wanted to meet Stella (or see her again).  They had a bunch of entertaining games setup too, including a very messy one where a blindfolded person would feed another person pudding.

The top picture includes four generations (left-to-right: Stella, Mom, Grandpa Kraus, myself).  All of the pictures that Mom's cousin and professional photographer, Daryl Wilson, took of the reunion are on my photo gallery here.