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Decorating our small Christmas tree.  We love it but will be happy when we have the room to get a full size tree.

Such a cute Santa!

Lucas all dressed up for church.  This is an outfit I wore when I was his age.

We love Christmas time!  Lucas is old enough this year that it will be even more fun, I think.  He is so excited and will every once in a while, just through his hands in the air and yell, “Christmas time! Yeah!”  He loves our Christmas decorations and watching Christmas movies.  We saw Santa at the mall, but he was too scared to go actually see him.  But we then saw him at another store and Lucas actually stood by him and we got some pictures (on my phone though so I haven’t got it off yet).  He is most interested in Santa’s reindeer.  After seeing Santa at the mall, he wanted to know where his reindeer where and he wanted to see them.  He’s also said a few times that what he wants for Christmas are reindeer.

We really have been enjoying the Christmas season and all the decorations and Christmas lights.  I finished the semester on Friday so I’ll have more time now to spend time with family and enjoy the season even more.

I think we have two of the cutest kids in the world!  McKinley just gets cuter and cuter every day.  She smiles a lot more now, especially in the morning when she must be happiest.  She is also starting to get more vocal.  She loves when you talk to her, and she tries so hard to say things back.  She now weighs 10 lbs. 11 oz. so she is close to doubling her birth weight, which is a lot quicker then Lucas did it.  So we are glad she isn’t having weight issues like Lucas.

She also sleeps really good at night.  She likes staying up late, some nights until 1 or 2 in the morning, but usually once she is out, she sleeps great.  She has already had a few nights where she slept 8 hours straight, and most nights she does at least 4 hours in a row.  So again, she is sleeping a lot better then Lucas ever did.

We feel so blessed as a family this year.  We were able to go through the Temple and then be sealed as a family for time and all eternity.  Then we were able to welcome McKinley into our family and she has brought us so much joy.  Plus we still have Lucas, who continues to amaze me every day with how smart he is and he has really helped remind me the joy of seeing the world through a child’s eyes.  We are so happy for all our blessings and can’t wait to see what the next year will bring.

Well it is hard to believe but McKinley is two months old already!  She had her two month appointment today and she wasn’t too happy to get her shots.  She now weighs 10lbs. 7ozs.  So she has been gaining weight pretty good.  Hopefully she keeps it up, because it was after this point that Lucas started to slow down on his weight gain.  So far she has out gained him though.  He weighed more at birth and less at two months then she did.

After getting home from Utah, Lucas got to take a bath.  He thought he was so funny by putting bubbles on his head, until they ran into his eyes.

Well last week was really nice weather, and I mentioned how we went to feed the ducks on Saturday (when it was 60+ degrees) because the weather was supposed to turn.  Well, for once the forecasters got it right.  It snowed all day on Monday, and by the news that night, they said we had anywhere from 3-5″ of snow.  It has snowed some today but not much, and I think we’re supposed to get more later this week.

But we had a nice warm Fall so I guess we can’t complain too much.  Lucas loves the snow and we had a small snowball fight.  It would have been bigger but he didn’t have any gloves and he froze his hands pretty fast.  We were at the mall the other day and they had Christmas decorations up and Christmas music playing and now with the snow, it feels like Christmas is already here!

Well things are going good in the Kotter household, just busy as usual.  McKinley has continued to grow.  Her next doctors appointment isn’t until the end of this month so we decided to weigh her on my postage scale and she was 9 lbs. 1 oz.  So she is gaining weight really well, a lot better than Lucas ever did.  She isn’t the best sleeper at night but it could be a lot worse.  She usually likes to be up late, around 1 or 2 am.  She then sleeps really good the rest of the night.  The last few nights have been better so hopefully it is a sign of things to come.

We were finally able to get Lucas off of his pacifier.  It actually wasn’t that hard once Kryssi and I actually buckled down and stopped being pushovers.  He cried for maybe an hour or so the first day, during nap time, and then about an hour that night, and since then hasn’t needed it.  So now we need to work on potty training.

Lucas still loves McKinley a lot.  He always wants to hold her or lay with her, and he is always giving her kisses.  Too much love for one little girl!

We have to be extra careful whenever she is on the floor, as Lucas is constantly running around, jumping, diving to the ground, basically always in motion.  He has hit her a few times, on accident, and she hasn’t complained much.  I think she is already used to being the little sister.

We got to go home from the hospital on Thursday morning, so we’ve been on our own now for a few days.  Everything has been going really good.  We’ve had to take McKinley back to the doctor a few times already to check her weight and jaundice.  Luckily she checked out better for jaundice the second time.  Both times she had gained weight, so hopefully she’ll keep doing that.

Lucas has been great with her.  I keep expecting him to have issues but so far he has been great.  He loves giving her kisses and hugs, and he loves looking at her.  He is a great help with whatever we need done.  There’s only been a few incidents: he hit her with a ball, that I guess was more my fault since I pitched it to him and he hit it.  He licked her after she was sticking her tongue out so I guess he decided to show her his tongue.  And he tried to get her out of her bassinet, so grandma had to explain to him that only mom or dad gets her out.  But all in all he’s adjusted great so far.

Getting her pajamas on.  Nothing fits her very well, since she is so small. But she’ll grow into them!

Lucas checking out his little sister.  He loves looking at her and every time she opens her eyes, he has to tell her “Hi, I’m Lucas.”

Her first smile caught on camera.  She smiles a lot when she is sleeping.  She has even laughed a few times.  So she must have good dreams.

Brother and sister hanging out.

She sleeps a lot, like most newborns, but when she is awake, she is wide-eyed and loves looking around.  She seems to have a pretty strong neck and she’ll look from side to side.

Well for those that haven’t heard, we welcomed a new baby girl into our family on Tuesday at 6:22 am.  We chose McKinley as her name with Colleen as her middle name.  She was small, only 5lbs. 7oz. but after how small Lucas was, and being 3 weeks early, we figured she would be small.  But she was healthy and everything went great.

Lucas checking out his new sister with two happy grandmas!

After getting her first bath.  All nice and clean!

Lucas has been a great big brother.  He loves give her kisses and he loves telling everyone about his little sister kinley

She has more hair then Lucas did and it is dark.  She has even more hair on the back of her head but it will probably wear off.

After being born, she was wide-eyed for at least an hour.  Now every once in awhile she wakes up and is wide-eyed and loves just looking around.  She is so amazing!

Well we’ve had a rather interesting last few days.  On Tuesday, Kryssi was having some pains so she went to the doctor and found out she was in early labor.  This was rather unexpected for us both, and it definitely got my heart racing.  They told her it could be any day, or it could stop on its own, but they thought it would happen within a few days based on how far along she was.

Well on Wednesday morning she was having worse contractions and they were pretty consistent so we went back to the doctor.  We should have just gone to the hospital as we waited at the doctors for probably an hour before getting in and then waited some more in the office.  But she wasn’t any farther along then the day before so they sent us home.

Now today she is feeling a lot better with not nearly as much pain so I don’t know what will happen at this point.  I wish this little girl would just make up her mind!  But before all this happened, Kryssi was having a lot of dreams about the baby coming and I think on Friday or Saturday she dreamed the baby was born on a Sunday so maybe that will be the day.

So I went from feeling unprepared, thinking I had stuff to still get done and what not, and now we just wait and wait so it would be nice to have resolution one way or the other.  But Lucas has been great with it all.  He knows he gets to go play with Grandma when baby sister comes, so he is way excited for that.

Lucas got this awesome BYU jersey from Grandma Kotter and he loves it.  He wants to wear it all the time.

Both of us dressed for the game.  I thought it would be lucky but they lost anyway.  Oh well.

Kryssi thought this was pretty funny so she had to take a picture of both of us reading at the table, waiting for lunch.

A couple weeks ago, Julie and Julisa threw a baby shower for Kryssi.  I wasn’t there (except at the end for some pie, which was great) but Kryssi had a great time and was very thankful to both Julie and Julisa for the time and effort put into the shower.  We got a bunch of nice clothes, as well as a lot of blankets.

This was the “cake” they had at the shower.  Julie made it out of a bunch of different baby items.  Most of it was made up of diapers, but there are wash clothes, a pacifier, bottles, toys, etc. that make up the rest of it.

Here are the various clothes that we got.  Kryssi was happy to get some nice girl baby clothes.

The blankets that Kryssi got.  There is a lot of them, and we got a lot with Lucas, but they are all nice.  I believe most, if not all of them are homemade, or handmade, however you want to look at it.

The baby blessing dress that Kryssi’s sister Katie made for her.