Kayley's Blessing

Kayley's blessing day, November 2nd, turned out to be a wonderful day and we were so grateful for all of the support and help we received from family and friends. Thank you all so much for everything! We had so many people there to support us. It really meant so much to us!

Kayley started getting sick on the Wednesday before the blessing and then Thursday was the worst. She was really congested and kept coughing and sneezing. Every time that she sneezed tons of snot would come out, so I was constantly wiping her nose. I felt so bad for the poor little thing. She definitely wasn't her self. She would let out these sad little pathetic whimpers every now and then to let me know that she wasn't feeling good. It is no fun when babies are sick. The only thing that I like about it is that she wants to cuddle all the time, which I love. My first thought was that maybe it wasn't a good idea to still bless her that weekend and that we should wait for next month. But then I started thinking about all of the time my mom spent making her beautiful dress and paying the money to overnight it to us so that it would be here in time, and all of the people that were planning on coming and all those who had so willingly volunteered to help with the breakfast that we were going to have afterwards and I decided that we would just have to pray really hard that she would be able to get better by that weekend. Nate gave her a blessing on Thursday night and I know that that helped her a lot. I'm so grateful for the priesthood and especially to have such a wonderful, worthy husband in our home who can give my daughter and me blessings whenever we need them! She still isn't completely better but Heavenly Father blessed her the day of the blessing so that she didn't have a runny nose and she wasn't congested at all. It was such a blessing!!

She did so well during the actual blessing as well. It was during her nap time and she hadn't been able to fall asleep yet and so I was worried that she was going to be fussy, but she was a perfect little angel. She didn't even make a peep. For record keeping purposes, since I don't keep a journal, those that were in the circle were: Nathan, Michael, Erich, Robb, Jonathan, Trevor, Grandpa Hall, Dustin, Tyler, Uncle Ed Isaacson, Uncle Tom Dixon, Bishop Wayne Shelley, Derek Borsky and Ty Black. Nathan gave Kayley a beautiful blessing. He blessed her that she would have a keen desire to study the scriptures and share them with others. Also, that she would get sealed in the temple and if it was her desire, that she would serve a mission and spread the gospel to Heavenly Father's children. He blessed her that she would be an example to others and especially to her younger siblings. He also blessed her with health and strength throughout her life and that she will continue to develop and grow properly. Lastly, he blessed her to be a mother like the one she has, full of charity and love for others. (I told him that if he said that then I would give him a nice, long massage! JK!:) No, but in all seriousness, hearing him say that really made me want to be that kind of a mother and person and try to show more love and patience for those around me. I have soo much to learn and change, but one step at a time, right?! I'm sure that there were a few more things said, but that was all that I had time to write down during the blessing. Nathan and I also got the opportunity to share our testimonies that day. I wish that I could be like Nate and not get nervous and be able to express myself eloquently and say the things that I planned on saying before I went up to the stand, but that never happens. Even though I always get so nervous to share my testimony, I am so grateful after I am done because I truly believe that our testimony is strengthened when we share it. I am so grateful for the gospel and I know that it is true with all of my heart. I don't know how I could ever get through with being a mom without it.

We had a tasty breakfast at Robb's house after the blessing, muffins, biscuits, coffee cake, breakfast pizza, fruit and fruit dip, juice and milk. Thank you so much Robb for letting us use your house. And thank you all for helping with the breakfast. Here are a few pictures of Kayley's blessing day.

Kayley with her Uncle Johnny- Jonathan seems to have a knack for getting little babies to go to sleep. Kayley hadn't had a good nap all morning and she fell fast asleep on her Uncle Jonathan's shoulder. As you can see, she isn't wearing her blessing dress in this picture. Due to past experience, we decided that it would be best to change her so that her dress can be worn again by her sister. (No, I'm not pregnant, but I'm just assuming that hopefully, at some point, we will have another girl. :)
This was after our little photo shoot when we were changing her clothes. I love her big, blue eyes!

Kayley's sweet Grandma Hall bought her these cute little socks and booties and a beautiful white blanket. Thank you so much!! She always does so much for us.

My wonderful mother, Grandma Seal, made Kayley's blessing dress. It was beautiful!! These pictures don't do it justice. Her life is so busy with all of her responsibilities and so it made that much more to us that she would take time out of her crazy schedule to do this for us. Thank you Mom! We love you!

None of these pictures turned out as well as I would have liked, especially the ones that we took with all three of us. Either Nate and I look good and Kayley doesn't or vice versa. After a long morning, Kayley doesn't look super happy, but she looked beautiful. I wish that we would have been smart and taken them before we even went to church. Another lesson learned for next time!

BYU Football

Here are just a few pictures from the last two BYU Football home games. Kayley has been perfect at every single game and basically slept through the whole thing. It's amazing to me that babies are able to block out all that noise and sleep peacefully! :)

Unprepared (Kayley's 2 month appt.)

(I'll just warn you before you start reading that this is a really long post. I really won't be offended if you choose not to read it. It's more for journaling purposes than anything else.)

When thinking about Kayley's appointment today, for some strange reason, the thought never crossed my mind that she would be getting her shots. Not that you can really prepare for things like that, but I was extremely unprepared in every way and it was not a fun experience. Her appointment was at 10:30 and we got out of there by 11:00. I think that was a record for being in Dr. Savage's office. It's usually more like we wait for half an hour before we even get taken back to a room and then sometimes another half an hour before we see the doctor. So 30 minutes in and out was a nice change. That was the positive note of the morning!
Kayley fell asleep on the way to the appointment, which was a good thing because it was her nap time, but she wasn't very happy when I had to wake her up and strip her down to her diaper to be weighed and measured. I don't know how good of a prediction a 2 month old baby's measurements are for how they will be when they are older, but at least for the time being, we have a pretty long baby on our hands. She weighs 10 lbs. 3 oz. (30%). Her length is 23 1/2 in. (90%) and her head circumference is 38 cm. (30%). After the nurse was done with her measurements, I wrapped her up in her blanket and cuddled with her and she fell right asleep. She was really good for Dr. Savage but she did not like those mean nurses who gave her 3 shots!! :) They pulled her down to the end of the bed with her legs, from the knee down, hanging over the bed, and held her tight so she wouldn't move. She was not happy about that and started screaming. Then they both grabbed the needles, counted to three, and stuck them into her thigh. She let out the saddest cry I ever heard and I said something like, "Oh sweetheart, please don't cry like that. I don't know if mommy can handle that." The nurse looked at me and said in an annoyed tone, "She will be just fine." I knew that she would be just fine but I just hated seeing her in so much pain and so unhappy. My sweet little girl! To make matters worse, she is sick with a cold so I'm sure that didn't help things. The doctor told me that I could give her some tylenol every 4-6 hours for the next day or so if I wanted, but I figured that she would be just fine. Boy was I wrong! When she woke up at about 3:30 to eat, I tried to get her to eat, but she wouldn't stop crying long enough to even try to latch on. Being the rookie that I am, it took me a while before I realized that she was crying because of pain from her shots and that it hurt so badly that she wasn't interested in eating. She finally ate for like 5 minutes altogether. I just sat there in the glider holding her for like 3 hours. It was so sad because as I was holding her, she would be asleep and then move her legs a little bit, which would make her cry because it hurt and then what made matters even worse was that when she started crying she would bring her legs in towards her chest and then she would wail like she was going to die. Then I would calm her down and within 30 seconds she would do the same thing all over again. It was so awful to watch and I felt so helpless. I tried to hold her legs down so that she couldn't move them, but that didn't seem to work too well. So finally after an hour of this, I called my mom and Shannon to ask what to do and then called my sweet brother Robb and asked him if he could go and pick up some Tylenol for me. Within about 30 minutes of taking the Tylenol, she started to do a lot better. I wish that I wouldn't have been so stupid and would have just given her the tylenol right after we left the doctors office. Well, I guess some of us have to learn things the hard way! To end this on a positive note, she slept for a 7 hour stretch last night! She has done that a few other times but I hope that it starts becoming the norm!

These are a few of my favorite things....

Our sweet Kayley Mei is two months old today. It is so fun to see her grow and learn new things. She brings such a wonderful spirit into our home and has both of us wrapped around her little finger. I'm stealing this cute idea from my friend Sara who listed her favorite things about her little daughter Annabelle when she turned 2 months old. I loved reading it and decided that I wanted to do one for Kayley.

You might want to click on this collage so that you can see the pictures better. I'm new to this whole thing and I couldn't figure out how to change the size of the pictures. The ones on the far right are especially small.

"These are a few of my favorite things"

*More than anything, I love when I am holding you and you look up at me and smile. It just melts my heart and makes everything that I do as your mommy so worth it.
*How precious and peaceful you look when you sleep. I could just stare at you all the time and never get bored.
*How you always manage to get your hands free when we swaddle you so we don't even try to put them in anymore.
*Your big, dark blue eyes
*How you look when you are wrapped up in your towel right after a bath
*You love taking baths and are always so good as soon as we put you in the water.
*You love your daddy and always calm down to his voice and look straight up in his eyes.
*You sleep with your arms up over your head.
*How strong your neck is and the times that you hold your head up the longest is when you are fussy. It's almost as if you want to show us how frustrated you are.
*After you've held your head up for a while and then get tired, your head starts bopping up and down like you are dancing to the beat of music.
*When you yawn- it's so cute!
*Your long eyelashes
*When you calm down to my voice.
*You have long, skinny fingers just like me.
*Your feet look just like mine too. (That's not necessarily a good thing for either of us but it makes me happy to know you got a few things from me since you looked like a clone of your daddy when you were born. I am the one who did all the hard work to get you here! You have to get something from me:)
*How you grunt and stretch your arms and legs when you are waking up.
*How you pucker your lips after you are done nursing on one side
*How for the first month and a half of your life you seriously pooped more than is humanly possible. There was one day that you had 3 blowouts! At least we know that you are getting enough to eat. :)
*How you make me want to be a better mom every day
*How I feel so bad for you when you get the hiccups even after I've burped you and it doesn't seem to bother you at all.
*You love music and it always seems to calm you down and help you to fall asleep. I especially love when you calm down to my singing. It makes me feel like I must not sound that bad!
*When you wrap your fingers around mine when I am nursing you. I can't wait until you can hold my hand!
*When you smile in your sleep. I hope you are having sweet dreams!
*When you are exhausted and your eyes are so heavy but you keep fighting it because you don't want to miss anything that's going on around you. You try so hard not to let your eyes close.
*You make all sorts of grunts and noises and sometimes even cry in your sleep amd when I go in to check on you thinking you might be waking up, you are fast asleep.
*You love being outside.
*When you cuddle with me or daddy when you aren't tired.
*When you wake up from your nap and are crying because you are hungry and then as soon as I get you in the position to eat, you make this little excited cry/pant before you latch on to let me know that you are so glad that I finally got the point and you can't wait to fill that empty tummy of yours! It's so funny!

I love you so much Kayley and I love being your mommy! You have taught me so much and helped me to become so much closer to our Heavenly Father. We are so glad to have you in our family. I love you with all my heart my sweet little princess!

Our sweet little pumpkin

I have never been a big fan of Halloween in the past, but I was so excited for this year to have a little one to dress up and celebrate with and I decided that I want to try hard to make my kids like Halloween. I have been inspired by Shannon and all of the way cute things that she has done with her children this month to celebrate Halloween and I want to steal some of her ideas to do with my children in the future. I told Nate several weeks ago that I wanted to get Kayley a costume and that Cammie had told me that they had some cheap, cute ones at Walmart. He didn't seem to understand the necessity of a baby having a costume when they don't even know the difference. After explaining to him that I wanted to be able to take pictures and show the grandparents, etc. he shared what he thought was a wonderful idea with me. He suggested that we just go to Walmart, put a costume on her, take a picture, and then go home. Great idea, huh!? :) Anyway, I wasn't a huge fan of his idea and so I went on a search, the Friday before Halloween, for a costume. After going to Target, Walmart, and this Halloween USA store up the street from us, I started to realize that everything was pretty much picked over. The only 0-3 month costume that I found was an ugly monkey costume at Walmart and it was 0-9 months, so it was huge. (If your child was a monkey for Halloween and you liked that costume, then I'm really sorry. I'm sure your child looked adorable in it!) Anyway, so then I remembered that I had noticed that Babies R Us had some costumes last time I was there and I figured that it would have to have a costume in her size since it is a baby store and all. After searching through all of their costumes, the only one that they had in a 0-3 months size was this little pumpkin costume that you see below. I couldn't decide if I should get it or not because it definitely wasn't my favorite but I didn't want to return home empty-handed when Nathan had so sweetly volunteered to stay home with Kayley so I could go and it was 40% off which is always a good thing! I asked a fellow shopper lady standing next to me what she thought about it and she said that she thought it was adorable. That's all I needed to hear and I walked over to stand in line to buy it. When I got home and pulled it out to show Nate, he just kind of stared at it for a bit and then asked me if I liked it. Haha! I have been married to him long enough to know what that means! :) I would have taken it back, but by that point, I didn't even care anymore. It's a good thing too because Kayley was sick on Halloween and so we didn't even go anywhere anyway. Although it wasn't my favorite costume in the world, she ended up being a pretty cute little pumpkin!

MIA

So I've definitely been MIA when it comes to the blogging world for about the past month. I don't really have any legitimate excuses, except for the fact that Nate takes his computer with him every day and then when he gets home (usually 8:15 or later, sometimes 10:00), we eat dinner, feed Kayley, give her a bath and put her to bed. I'm sorry to say, but by that time, blogging is the last thing that I want to do. I will try really hard to work on an update of the past month throughout this week. Now that wasn't a promise Aimee, it was an "I'll try really hard", so we'll see what happens! :) This is just a heads up that as I add posts I'm going to post them on the actual dates that they happened, so if you want to read about the last month then you'll just have to scroll down and keep a look out for recent updates.

An awesome photographer

We finally got some professional pictures taken of Kayley. Our sweet friend Sherry Ward, who is in YW's with me and is one of Nate's home teaching families, is an amazing photographer and offered to take some pictures of Kayley for us. I was so happy with how they turned out and would recommend her to anyone. She is really talented and it was really fun! As soon as I lose some of this baby weight, we are going to have her take some family pictures of us.
I was so glad that Nate was able to take a little break from work so that he could be there for the pictures. I need to publicly apologize to Sherry for what happened during the photo shoot. Although it was somewhat humorous, I feel so bad!! So this is what happened... we decided that it would be fun to take some naked pictures of Kayley and Sherry had a cute back drop all set up that would be perfect. She told us to take off Kayley's diaper and lay her down on the pillow that she had underneath the black back drop. She said that she used their king size pillows that they have on their bed. I warned her that without fail, almost every time we take off Kayley's diaper for more than a few seconds, we end up regretting it because she will decide to poop or pee all over the place. I'm sure you can imagine what happened. Everything was going well until we turned her over on her back after having taken several pictures in the fetal position. She let gas and Nate looked down and told me that a little tiny bit of poop had come out. As I was in the process of quickly grabbing a wipe from the diaper bag to clean up the little spot, I looked over and Kayley was peeing everywhere!! It shot out like a little geyser all over the back drop and yes, all over Sherry's pillow! We tried to clean it up the best that we could but the pillow was totally soiled in the middle. Sherry was so sweet about it. She said, "Well, I guess that's Jory's pillow now!" I can deal with Kayley pooping or peeing or spitting up all over me because I'm definitely used to it by now but I feel bad when it's on someone else or on someone else's things. She's so sweet though that you just have to laugh. You never know what sweet little babies are going to do. Anyway, I posted a bunch of the pictures because it was hard for me to just choose a few of my favorites. I still have to decide which ones to print, so if you have any favorites, then let me know.