Major Catch Up

In light of tomorrow being the first day of February (wow, where does the time go?) I decided that it's high time that I post about December and if I get really ambitious, maybe part of January. :) I'm going to post them on the dates that they actually happened, so I just wanted to give a heads-up if you want to go to my older posts to look at them. I hope you had a wonderful January! I really enjoy reading all of your blogs and am inspired by all that you do and what amazing people you are!

Kayley's 4 month appointment

Kayley had her 4 month appointment today. This appointment went so much better than her 2 month appointment. It was still awful watching them give her shots, but I don't think that will ever get easier. She only cried for a minute afterwards and then just kind of whimpered for a little bit after that. It made me so sad! This time I came prepared with Tylenol and gave it to her at the Dr.'s office right after she got her shots. She did great after that and it didn't seem to bother her. These were her 4 month measurements:

Weight: 13 lbs. 2 oz. (50%)

Length: 25.5 in. (90%)

Head: 40 cm (25%)

I can't believe my baby girl is 4 months old! She's getting so big, so fast! She gets more and more fun every day. So far this is my favorite stage. I could just play with her all day and never get sick of it. Here are a few of the things that she has done since her 2 month appointment. (This part is more for my records than anything, so don't worry about reading it.)

*She has been sleeping through the night (about 8 hrs. from feeding to feeding) since she was about 2 1/2 months old. It was hard to train her to do that, but so worth it. Now she sleeps from about 8:30 pm to 7:00 am with a dream feed at 10:00pm.
*Found a fascination with her hands and her feet and basically anything else that can make their way into her mouth.
*First real laugh/giggle when she was a little over 3 months old. She had been doing the cough laugh (if you know what I mean) for a while, but finally started laughing out loud. I love it!!*Actually plays with her toys. I would always just hold them in front of her so that she could see them, but now she holds them and plays with them herself. Her favorite toy is a little stuffed star that plays "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star." She also loves her bouncer and the play gym that Michael and Aimee let us borrow.
*First airplane ride
*Started wearing Size 2 diapers and 3-6 months clothes.
*Went one day without even pooping. That was a miracle to us all. I didn't think that would ever happen.

*She loves looking in the mirror and will just laugh, smile and coo at herself forever.

*Shown a lot of signs of teething but doesn't have any teeth yet.

*When we are in public with a lot of people around she will just stare at people and not really respond to anyone. It makes me kind of sad because she's so happy and interactive at home or when there aren't too many people.

*Is almost always so smiley and happy when she wakes up in the morning or from naps unless I take too long to get her and she's starving! :)

*She still sleeps A LOT! She usually takes a 2-3 hr. nap in the morning and is still on a 3 hour schedule where she will eat, stay up for about 1 hr 15 min to 1.5 hrs and then sleep for 1.5 hrs. I like it, but sometimes I wish that she would stay awake a little longer.

Kayley is such an angel and we love her so much!

Christmas Break in Tulsa

We had such a good time in Tulsa with my parents, Mark & Shannon and their kids, Robb, Jonathan, Trevor, Colby and Brendan. We were there from December 18th to the 26th. Our time there went by so quickly and we were sad to go home when the time came. Kayley flew on an airplane for the first time and did great. The way there she was perfect and didn't cry at all and the way back was a little bit more difficult, but she still did really well. While we were there, we went to the gym almost every morning, played walleyball (one of my favorite games), ate lots of yummy food, went to Freckle's to get frozen custard at least twice, watched movies, went shopping, played games, talked, stayed up late, went to Incredible Pizza, went bowling, went on some walks, had an adult dinner without any kids, did the Nativity with all the kids (Kayley was baby Jesus)and played with all the cute grandchildren that were there. My mom, Shannon and I also went one afternoon and got pedicures. None of us took our cameras, so I don't have any pictures of it, but it was way fun! It was also so nice to have babysitters around all the time. Thank you mom and dad for everything! They get home from their mission this July and we can't wait to be able to see them more often!!

Kayley's first time meeting her Grandpa and Grandma Seal. (Technically she did meet Grandma Seal when she was born, but the last time she had seen her she was only 3 days old at the time, so it doesn't really count! :)

This was Kayley's first time meeting Uncle Brendan too.

One of our family Christmas traditions- making candy trains. The kids ate almost all of the candy off of them within the next 24 hours! :)

Cute little Benjamin

Kayley and Aunt Shannon

Doing tummy time on Daddy.

Peyton was Nathan's little buddy the whole trip.

Kayley was always so happy in Grandpa's arms.

I love how they both have the big wide-eyed look.

We can't go to Tulsa without going to Incredible Pizza. They actually have really good food and the kids have so much fun there.

I'll never understand how Trevor can eat so much and still be so skinny! And that was just his first trip to the buffet!

Kayley playing with Uncle Mark and Robb.

Story time after the gym.

Early Christmas in Utah

The night before we left for Tulsa to be with my parents for Christmas, we decided that we needed to get up to Salt Lake to see the lights at Temple Square. Neither of us had been in a few years, so we were really excited to go. Bryce and Kelly went with us and we had a really good time. My sweet brother Colby came over and watched Kayley so that we didn't have to take her with us. It was freezing cold and we figured she'd be a lot happier sleeping in her own warm crib at home. Because we were trying to hurry back in time for me to nurse Kayley, we didn't take a ton of pictures, but if you want to see some gorgeous pics of the lights then look here. Some daddy daughter bonding time before we went to see the lights. Kayley is definitely still a daddy's girl.

We decided that instead of taking all of our presents out to Tulsa with us, which would have been unrealistic and a huge pain, we would just have an early Christmas before we left because waiting 'til after we got back was definitely out of the question. ;) We were just going to do it the Thursday night before we left the next morning, but we were both so excited about it and were all ready by the Tuesday before, that we decided to just have it that night. I was so excited about all of Nate's gifts, that I just couldn't wait until Thursday night for him to open them! Sadly, sweet little Kayley was in bed by the time Nate got home, so she missed out on our early Christmas. We figured she wouldn't know the difference anyway. I can't wait until she gets excited about opening presents.

My sweet husband waited in line at Robert's at 5:30 in the morning on Black Friday to buy me a Cricut Machine. I am so excited about it and have used it for a few projects already!

Nate's gangsta pose with his new Xbox games and DVD. We had so much fun watching each other open things, that we completely forgot about taking pictures after the first few gifts.

One of the gifts was To: Mommy and Kayley, From: Daddy. Since Kayley was asleep, I got to do the honors of opening it. I sat there wondering what he could have bought for both of us. I was so impressed with him. He went to Baby Gap all by himself and picked out this adorable sweater dress and hat and little shirt for Kayley. I love them and Kayley looks so adorable in them! I love Baby Gap clothes but I never even go there because it's way too expensive and so it's not worth it to me to go and fall in love with something and have to walk out without buying it. We all know why he put that it was for Kayley AND me, because let's be honest, we moms care way more about dressing up our kids than they do. They wouldn't know the difference if they wore the same thing every day. Seriously, and I don't mean this in a "I'm so selfless" kind of way, but I would way rather get something for Kayley than for me. I've never had more fun than when I got to open so many cute clothes for Kayley at my friends baby shower. I was in heaven! I love baby girl clothes!

I just had to throw this picture in of our sweet little angel! She's growing way too fast.

Photoshop and the second half of November

I know that you have been in such suspense waiting for me to finally post again and this is your lucky day! JK! This is going to be a long post with a lot of pictures since I haven't posted for so long.


I have been telling Nate for a little while now that I really wanted to get photoshop because there are so many fun things that you can use it for to edit pictures and I want to start doing digital scrapbooking. Nate was in his Microeconomics class one day and got so excited about a new computer that one of his friends in the class had and came home and told me all about. It's a little Acer, Aspire One laptop that has like an 8 in. screen. He got online and started looking at them as soon as he got home to learn more about it and find out where he could get it for the best price. He kept telling me how perfect it would be for school because it's so small and convenient and it has a 7 hour battery, yada yada yada. And then he pulled the old trick where they act like it's best for you as well and said that I really needed a laptop at home, so he could leave his home for me and take this little one to school with him. He wanted to buy it right away but didn't want to be an impulsive buyer, so we decided to wait for a few days and see how he felt about it. After about 3 days he wanted it even more and as we talked about it he told me that since he was getting a little "toy", then I could go and buy photoshop. I was more than okay with that and told him to go right ahead and buy the computer. :) I'm no dummy! Anyway, needless to say, I got my photoshop and am so excited about it. I really need to take a class because there are still soo many things that I don't know how to do. I have been playing around with it though and have figured out how to do a few things. It is kind of addicting, so I try to not use it very often. I put just two pictures that I played with to show those of you who don't have it how cool it is!

Before

After

(Isn't it cool how you can keep the color of something and make the rest black and white? Kelly taught me how to do that.)

Before

(This was taken during one of our photoshoots. Kayley loves them! Actually, she probably gets sick of them, I know Nate does, but she sure looks happy in this picture.)

After

After #2

(She's so sweet!)

The rest of these pictures were taken during the second half of November. It has been a fun month! Last Sunday I got to talk to the Beehives about how I feel about being a mother and the value of my daughter. As each day passes, I love being a mom more and more. Don't get me wrong, there are definite times of frustration and exhaustion, but it is such a blessing to have one of Heavenly Father's most precious daughters in our home. There have been so many times when I am nursing Kayley or just holding her or playing with her, that I look at her and am just overwhelmed with how much I love her and how precious she is to me.

Kayley loves her Daddy. Nate can always get her to smile.

These next two pictures were taken on Thanksgiving at Nate's parents house. It was the off year for everyone except us (we went to Tulsa last Thanksgiving), so it was going to be just Nate and me and his parents. Nate's parents were sweet enough to let my 4 brothers, Robb, Jonathan, Trevor and Colby join us at their house. It was really fun to have them with us and to add four more people to our numbers. We had a wonderful time and ate lots of tasty food. Nate's sister Kristel and her husband Dustin came over later on in the day. It was nice to be with family!

Uncle Trevor with Kayley

Kayley and Uncle Robb

We finally got to meet the sweet little twins Payton and Paige the Saturday after Thanksgiving. It was so fun to see the three little ones together and so nice to see Amanda, Cody and Ava too. I am so excited for when they are older. I'm sure they'll be really good friends. Kayley and Payton are about the same size and Paige is still quite a bit smaller. They are all so cute! It was funny because the twins are used to cuddling up to each other and being close to another baby, but Kayley is not used to that so at first she wasn't quite sure how to react when Payton cuddled up next to her as you can see in this picture. Kayley has those exact same pajamas and I wish that we would have taken them over there because these pictures would have been so cute if they were all wearing the same thing.

I love babies' hands! Kayley and Payton kind of linked arms for a little while as we were taking pictures.

Ava and the babies

Mark and Shannon had been in Arizona for one of Mark's rotations and Mark got the weekend off, so they decided to drive up for Thanksgiving to be with family. So the same day we met the twins, Kayley finally got to meet the Calders. We wish that they lived closer so that we could see them more.

Her beautiful Aunt Shannon is pregnant and due in January and you can't even tell. She's tiny!

Grant and me: Isn't he such a cute kid? I love the Calder kids!

Two cute little cousins

The oldest and youngest grandkids together. As you can see, Carston has started losing his teeth. It's so cute. I can't believe how fast he's growing up.

Mark and Shannon

This was at the twin's blessing.

Amanda and Cody with their 3 little girls. So cute!

Nate got to bless Paige. He did a wonderful job. The twins are so sweet!

Ava with her sisters

They looked so beautiful!

The Ultimate Blowout

How could something so cute and sweet...

do something so disgusting???

Gross, huh?! While I was nursing Kayley yesterday morning she pooped and I figured that I'd just finish nursing her and then change her diaper. But when my arm suddenly felt damp, I knew there was trouble and decided that it couldn't wait. As I was taking off her pajamas she had poop on her arm and I thought, "How in the world did she get poop on her arm?" And then I turned her over and saw this. She had pooped all the way up her back and out of her onesie on to her arm. I'm sure that you are disgusted by now but just be glad that you weren't the one that had to change her, let alone scrub her clothes afterwards. Oh, the joys of motherhood!! :)

After I changed her and got her dressed I decided to take a few pictures. This is my attempt to use Picasa to make a collage. It cut out some of the letters and I couldn't figure out how to fix it but I just thought that it was so funny because I took these four pictures in order and she'd make a funny face at me and then smile guiltily and then do it again. I love you my sweet little gir!!