Eating for 3!

For those of you who have wondered what has happened to me for the past 2 months, I am here to tell you that I am still alive and sorry about not posting forever. I feel like I have a pretty good excuse though. My excuse is that I have been eating for 3! No, I am not pregnant with twins, but with nursing Kayley and Baby #2 on the way, my body has been pretty busy. It's kind of pathetic how exhausted I feel all the time. If I don't take a nap while Kayley's taking her morning nap, I usually have a pretty hard time getting through the rest of the day. We are really excited and feel very blessed to have another one of Heavenly Father's precious spirits sent to our family. The baby will be here mid-December and we can't wait to find out what we're having. And I can't wait to get out of the sick stage of pregnancy. I forgot how much I hate being pregnant! :) I can usually only accomplish the top 1 or 2 things on my to-do-list every day and blogging has sadly been towards the end of that list and so I never get around to it. My main focus has just been getting through each day and trying to still be a good mom and wife, both of which I often feel like I am failing at horribly. I am so grateful for a sweet, understanding husband who has had to pick up dinner on his way home from work on more than one occasion, and who is willing to help with anything that I ask him to do around the house. And for those of you who are curious, I am 13 weeks today!

Exciting News and Then Some...

EXCITING NEWS:
My little brother Trevor just got engaged last night!!! I am so excited for them. He is marrying this cute girl Andie Robinson in July! They are so happy together and are going to make a great couple. Something else just as exciting is that my parents homecoming is the Sunday before they get married so they will be here for the wedding. This is a picture of them with Aubrey, Max and Makenzie.

AND THEN SOME:

This is the tutu I made for Kayley's photo shoot. They are seriously so easy and so fun to make! No sewing involved, which is my kind of craft!

We went to Paradise Bakery last Friday night for dinner and Kayley

loved feeling like a big kid in her high chair.

For some reason, people kept staring at us while we were eating....

Two Sundays ago we were late for church because right when we were about to leave, Kayley had a blowout that got all over her dress resulting in a change of her whole outfit. We sat out in the foyer on the couches during the sacrament, which we luckily made it in time for, and as I was looking down at Kayley, I thought, "Wow, she looks so grown up right now. " Needless to say, I got the camera and took a picture of her. I know, that's probably sacrilegious, but at least I wasn't in the chapel, right?!

When the weather was playing tricks on us during that one week of spring, which I'm praying will come back soon, we went on walks almost every day. Kayley loves being outside!

I was doing a photo shoot a couple weeks ago and finally

I just gave up because Kayley kept making faces like this.

Kayley and Scotlyn cuddling on the couch after Sunday dinner.

Pretty in Pink

My sweet friend, Amy, took some pictures of Kayley yesterday. I was worried that they might not turn out because Kayley would not cooperate. She wouldn't smile for anything at first, (surprise, surprise! :) but Amy managed to get some really cute ones of her. Kayley was really good the whole time. I love my baby girl. If it were up to me, I'd do a "photo shoot" at least once a week. It was so much fun to make her little tutu and get her all dressed up. I spent way too much time on photoshop today playing with these pictures and editing them when I should have been working on my relief society/ yw's lesson for tomorrow. I'm sorry that there are soo many, but I just couldn't choose between them.

I love her blue eyes!

And she loves that pink necklace! :)

I had to keep taking it out of her mouth.

Small and Simple Things That Make Me Happy!

I finally, thanks to Cammie, got a video of Kayley laughing! She has been laughing forever now, but as I've said before, any time I get the video camera out she stops what she's doing and just stares at the camera. Anyway, we went up to Sandy today and spent the afternoon with some of Kayley's cousins. It was really fun to see how Kayley just lights up around other little kids, especially her cousins. I put both videos on here because I couldn't decide between the two but they are about the same so you obviously don't need to watch both of them. This seriously made my day! As I was driving home I couldn't stop smiling and thinking about how it's the small and simple things of life, like my baby giggling, that bring me so much happiness!

HAPPY SAINT PATRICK'S DAY!!!

6 Months Old and Our New Little Eater!!

Kayley is growing up way too fast! I can't believe that she's already 6 months old. She gets more and more fun every day. I love being her mom.
At her 6 month appointment, these were her measurements:
Weight: 14 lbs. 13.5 oz. (25%)
Length: 27 in. (90%)
Head: 42 cm. (45%)
At 6 months, these are 6 of the things that Kayley is doing:
1)She loves to blow raspberries. It's hilarious. She'll just to it straight for like 5 minutes. She's pretty proud of herself too! (Anytime I try to get it or her giggle or anything for that matter on video, she immediately stops whatever she's doing and just stares at the camera.)
2)For those of you that see her, you know that she is a soccer player in the making! :) Those little legs are constantly kicking. Our doctor told us that as soon as she starts crawling, she's going to be all over the place! (I'm not quite ready for that, so it's probably a blessing that she's not very mobile yet.)
3)She talks, squeals, giggles and screams with excitement. She is ticklish too and I love it.
4)She is very close to sitting up on her own. She can do it for like 5 seconds and then topples over.
5)She loves reading books and playing peek-a-boo.
6)She loves being sung to and it is one of the only things that I can do to distract her when she is tired or fussy.
I'm taking her next week to get her 6 month pictures taken so I'll post those when we get them. Thank you all for your advice and answers to all of my questions. I really appreciated it! I was so excited to start feeding her baby food. She's doing really well so far and was definitely ready for it. She gets all excited and waves her arms in the arm in between every bit. It's so fun. Here are some pictures of her first eating experience.

This is the blank stare I get every time I pull out the camera! :) She's thinking, "So what's all the excitement about?"

"This rice cereal isn't all that bad!"We waited until lunch time to feed her so that Nate could be there for it and be the first one to feed her.

New Orleans

Kayley and I got to go to New Orleans at the end of February for a little less than a week to help watch the 5 oldest Calder kids. Mark was doing a rotation for med school in Austria (where both Mark and Shannon served their missions) and so Shannon and baby Luke went out there to visit him. I was so glad that Shannon got the opportunity to go and that she had a good time.

We were there with my mom for the first few days and then Robb came to help out for the last half of the week because my mom needed to get back to her mission. It was really fun to be with my mom and to continue to learn from her mothering skills. I was also glad that Kayley got to spend some time with her Grandma. It was really fun to have Robb there too. Robb is great with the kids and was a huge help. The only thing that he opted not to do was change poopy diapers! (Luckily Benjamin is the only one that still wears diapers besides Kayley of course, so I didn't mind that at all.:) He was also a great help with Kayley. (He called me a few days after we got home and asked if he could come and babysit Kayley for us because he missed seeing her. I thought it was so cute and was excited for another willing babysitter!)

We had a really good time and I wish that I would have taken more pictures! Kayley loved being with her cousins and was so entertained by all of them. It was definitely a big change going from one to six kids, but I really learned so much from it and had a lot of fun. I love those kids! I don't know how Shannon does it on her own! I always had my mom or Robb there to help and it was still busy the whole time. I learned so much from Shannon's organization and cleanliness. She is such a wonderful mother! It inspired me to come home and reorganize and change a lot of the things in my own house. The very last day we were there, we were finally able to meet sweet little Luke and be with Shannon. I wish that they lived closer so that we could see them more often!

We got to be in New Orleans during Mardi Gras and so we went out and bought some traditional King Cake to celebrate. They are pretty good and pretty similar to a cinnamon roll. The tradition is that whoever finds the baby in their piece has to buy the next King Cake. I served it to the kids youngest to oldest. I put the baby in Grant's piece and he was so happy when he found it. As soon as Peyton saw that Grant got it, she started crying because she wanted it in her piece and "It wasn't fair!". I told her to stop crying and to wait and see if this was maybe a special cake with 2 babies. When Grant lost excitement over the baby, I took it from him to "clean it" and hid it in Peyton's cake to make her happy. So that middle picture is of her proudly holding up her baby. They were all so happy that there were 2 babies in that "special" king cake! :)

These two were always up at least an hour after the other kids went to bed.

Friday night is movie night at the Calder house. We made a big bowl of popcorn and they all sat on the floor and ate it together while they watched the movie. I think if it was up to Robb, then every night would have been movie night! :)

We really missed Daddy and were excited to be with him again. Nathan had bought me a bouquet of roses and of tulips which were so beautiful. Nate asked me when we got home if I still wanted to have a lot of kids and I told him that surprisingly enough it made me even more excited to have a big family. There really is nothing more fulfilling than being a mother!