Family Time

Here are a few more pics from General Conference weekend.

She started getting restless but wouldn't go down for her nap so we put her in her activity center and she was soon fast asleep.

I picked her up and brought her to bed.  It's so funny to watch her fall asleep in that thing.

Later that night Allan buried her in her toys. She was too sleepy to really think anything of it.

It's cooled down here in the mornings so we can go outside again.  A loves to be outside and feel the wind on her skin; it makes her giggle.  We try to go out every morning when we still have some shade in the back yard.

Playing with her toys outside.

I washed up this walker that we got from a friend.  Unfortunately it's a little crooked for some reason, so when she sits in it she's a bit crooked. A likes to play with the toys, but she hasn't really figured out how to push herself around at all.  She much prefers the activity center.

 A has been teething like crazy lately, but nothing has popped through.  It looked like there was one just on the verge of cutting through, but it decided to go back down.

Allan had to take one of our cars in to get worked on so I was without a car for a week.  So, in lieu of belly dancing, we took a walk to the library and went to story time.  She did much better than last time.  She loved the songs and enjoyed sitting and looking at all of the other kids.  There was a little girl there who was about 3 years old who decided she wanted to be my helper.  She played with little A and helped her sing along to the songs and listen to the story and got A a mat to sit on.  She was a very good little helper.  A really liked her.

This bow cracks me up, it's as big as her head!

We went to the county fair a couple of weeks ago.  We had a lot of fun and enjoyed going on a family outing.  I was hoping to take Little A on the merry-go-round, but she is still too little.

Allan dressed her up for our family day.  He's such a cute daddy.

We saw all the animals first.  A wasn't very impressed or very interested.  She was tired.  Allan loves to look at the pigs though, and I managed to not almost get run over by any pigs this year. :)

Allan and A waiting for the rooster to crow.

They always have a display teaching about what cotton is used for and how much can be made out of a bale of cotton.  I read it every year and am always so amazed.  There are actually a lot of things that I didn't realize were made from cotton.

Me and A looking at the produce.

We always enjoy looking at all of the booths and arts and crafts.  We walked through the children's art again and saw that one of our friends daughters got a ribbon for some of her art.  She did a really good job, and we were very impressed.

We decided to skip the elephant ears this year because the honey got every where last year.  We went for funnel cake instead.  It tasted delicious, but it was kind of windy outside, and we both ended up covered in powdered sugar.  My dark jeans were speckled in little white dots from the top to the bottom as were my shirt, arms, legs, and shoes.  Allan didn't get it quite so bad, but he was still pretty covered.  We forgot to take a picture before we brushed ourselves off though.

Little A looking around.

Tired after a long day at the fair.  She fell asleep watching daddy do the dishes while listening to a football game.

Allan has been working hard on the yard.  He pulled out all the rock and brick and tilled up the grass in the last two weeks.  He needs to do some grading work this week, and then we'll be ready to lay rock down.  It already looks better than it did.

Putting A to bed.

Allan gave a talk about his mission last week.  The youth get together once a month to learn about different missions.  They have guest speakers come and tell them their experiences.  They try to keep it more informative rather than spiritual.  They mostly tell them about the cultures they experienced and share fun stories and yummy food.  Allan made crepes with Nutella.  They really enjoyed them.

Allan going through his mission stuff in preparation for the mission night.  Little A decided she needed to help too.  She loved pulling things out of the tub.

Little A had her 9 month appointment.  She screamed at the doctor the whole time.  I think she's starting to remember the doctors office.  She weighed 17 lbs 10 oz and was 27 in long, although they didn't stretch her out like normal because she was screaming so much so I think she is really around 28 inches.  We had to go back another day to get her lab work done because the lab was closed.  I went back two days later so they could draw blood (they were checking for anemia and lead poisoning).  A has such chubby little arms that they couldn't find her veins.  They did finally find one and stuck her, but it rolled, and they couldn't get it.  A cried pretty hard but they got her calmed down pretty fast by shaking a rattle for her.  She actually started giggling!  When she giggles hard she bounces up and down, that made it pretty difficult to find any veins and stick her again, lol.  They ended up asking me to feed her extra liquids over the weekend and bring her back again.

When we went into the waiting room a little girl (who was probably around 1 year old) saw little A, squealed and reached out her arms to her.  She kept saying "my baby" over and over and trying to climb out of her mom's lap.  As we walked out the door she started crying, lol!  It cracked me up.  I wanted to keep A forever the first time I saw her too. :)

A hates all liquids except her formula.  She will take a few sips of water and then spit it out and does the same with juice.  So, we tried to feed her baby food that was more watery and give her more formula than normal.  I took her back the following Monday.  As soon as she saw the nurse she pouted and looked really nervous.  She remembered them.  They put hot packs on her arms and one of her hands.  She was nervous but was doing really well until they put her arm out to stick her.  Then she burst into tears and didn't stop until we were out of the lab.  They tried to stick the same vein as they did before but it didn't work again so they tried her hand and that one finally worked!  It was such a huge relief!  I've never heard her cry like that, it was pretty awful.  When we got out and were in the waiting room she leaned away from me to look around the room and saw a woman sitting there.  She gave that woman the most horrified look and almost burst into tears again, poor girl.  We snuggled the rest of the day.  For the next couple of days she would barely let me put her down and she woke up at night crying.  Apparently it was traumatic for her.  Hopefully we don't have to do anything like that again anytime soon.

Having a snuggle before bedtime.  Notice the oreo's. My class at church gave me a run for my money that day, lol.

We went to a Doterra meeting to find out more about oils.  We bought some Past Tense (the oil we tried at the Salsa Fest), but it hasn't come yet.  We're going to try that for a while and see how it affects Allan's head.  We're hoping that it will have a more lasting affect the longer we use it.  We'll see.

I got called to be the Relief Society Secretary.  When I got a call to meet with the Bishop I couldn't think of any callings that weren't already filled.  At church that week they had called a new Relief Society Presidency, and I thought they'd called a secretary too.  I obviously wasn't paying attention....
My first thought was - the bubble wrap was too disruptive at church last week, and I'm in trouble.  Ha!  I've enjoyed the new calling so far, but I'm really sad about leaving my primary class.  I'll really miss those kids.  I am really excited to be able to participate in Relief Society lessons again though!

Love this dress from K6!

Another fruitless attempt of getting a good picture with a bow on her head, lol.

This cute outfit is from K5

My favorite picture of A asleep in her activity center.  She is biting the seat.

We had another family outing to visit the corn maze and pick a pumpkin.  We love going through the corn maze, and it was a lot of fun taking A through and showing her everything.  We let her feel the leaves on the corn stalks, she didn't think much of them.

She loved feeling the corn though.  We found a piece on the ground that was already out of its husk.  She was completely enthralled with it.

Little A's favorite part though was when Allan would run after me.  She loved chasing mommy and loved having the stroller go fast and bumpy.  We loved hearing her giggle.  Baby giggles are the best sound ever.  We tried to take a video several times, but of course when we pulled out the camera she wouldn't laugh.  Instead she scowled.  I almost ran into some people once trying to run and take a video of her at the same time.  That video was pretty funny.  She also loved when one of us would run ahead and then jump out as she turned the corner.

Telling A about the fairy's. ;)

At one point we lost A's hat.  She hates to have things on her head so she kept taking it off.  Allan went back to find it and A and I played with the corn stalks while we waited.  She had a lot more fun than it looks like in the picture, but she got mad at me when I wouldn't let her eat the stalk.

We took some pictures on the bridge that marks the half way point.  She loved it when daddy flew her in the air.

This is my favorite picture of her and Allan.  She sure loves her dad.

After the corn maze we went and picked a pumpkin.  We picked one pretty fast because A was falling asleep, and we needed to leave so I could get to the primary program practice.  We found a really good one though and are excited to carve it.

Little A is 8 Months Old!

She is such a happy little girl and we love her so much.  She never fails to surprise us and always keeps us laughing.

She still sleeps 10-12 hours at night and has some good long naps during the day.

Her favorite toys right now are teething rings.  There is a particular one that she loves, it has a rattle in the middle.

She loves to sing songs and read stories.  Her favorite book is the New Testament Children's Book.  I read to her out of it every day as a personal scripture study for her.  She loves seeing the bright colorful pictures and especially loves it when the pictures have Jesus in them - she'll stare at those pictures longer than any others.  I started reading just one chapter a day, but she's loved it so much we're reading 4 or 5 every day now.

Waving hello.

She'll wave hello and goodbye, but it usually takes her a while to think about it.

She is eating 6 oz of milk four times a day.  She's doing really well with eating solids.  She still likes green beans and squash the best but peas are a close runner up.  She also loves eating things off of our plates.  She'll eat anything we give to her but she won't pick anything up and put it in her mouth.  She'll get it in her hands or in between her fingers, look at it, sneer in disgust, and throw it on the floor.  But, if we give it to her she'll eat it happily.

She is 28 inches long but I don't know how much she weighs.  In July when I measured her I measured her from her head to her toes, instead of her head to her heels.  (Oops, that's embarrassing.)  We realized it when we measured her a while later and got a shorter length, lol.  I fixed it in the July post.  According to that she kind of leveled out and was in the 25th percentile for both height and weight.

A Proud Daddy

Teething this time has gone a bit rougher.  I think I'm getting a dose of what it's normally like when your child is teething.  For a week she wouldn't eat and cried most of the day unless I held her. Poor little girl.  One day was so bad that I finally distracted her by turning on a movie.  We watched a half hour of Tangled, and the world was better for both of us.


Little A is so funny though.  Even when she is going through this rough time she smiles as much as she can.  She is just a naturally smiley, happy child, and I am extremely grateful for that.  It's hilarious (and sad) to watch her face go from pouty lip and watery eyes, to a big giggly smile, and then back to tears again. 

One particularly exhausting day of teething ended like this.  First time she's ever let us lay her back in the high chair without screaming.  She fell right to sleep.

Little A has also taken to chewing on her bibs.

In the middle of September Allan went on a camp out with the scouts.  He was gone Friday night until Saturday afternoon.  He left again early Monday morning for a work trip and was gone until midnight on Tuesday.  We missed him greatly.  Little A kept looking at his picture and then looking at me with a puzzled expression.  Poor girl missed her daddy.  I turned on a video he made me a while ago, and she burst into giggles.  She was so happy to see him and hear his voice.  The next day when he came home from work she was absolutely thrilled.  She couldn't get enough of him and smiled all evening long.

Little A has started getting a lot more reachy and grabby of late.  She still doesn't pull my hair much, but she sure likes to grab plates, cell phones, the computer, and anything else that strikes her fancy.  She has especially become interested in strings.  She loves to put them in her mouth and suck on them. 

Reaching for Daddy's plate.

We've been trying to get her to roll the other direction, crawl, and stand more.  The other day I laid next to her on the side that she usually rolls.  She was good and stuck on her belly.  I thought she was going to scream at me, but instead she thought it was hilarious that I was in her way.  Little A loved to bump into me.  She would do it again and again and burst into giggles every time.  I did finally get her to roll the other way.  She thought that was pretty funny too. She's rolled that way a few times since, but she still prefers the other direction. 

Love this cute ladybug outfit.

We'll also hold her up on her knees.  She hates putting her hands down and prefers to hold them straight out behind her like she's flying so we have to place them down for her.  She held herself up there the first couple times we did it and now she just belly flops as soon as we let go.  Then she'll promptly roll over and play with her toes.

I decided to stand her up by the couch one day to see what she would do.  She loved it!  Especially being able to suck on the couch cushion (funny baby).

Little A so proud to be standing up!

She is still very unwilling to do any pulling up or getting to her hands and knees herself though.  I think one day she'll just start doing stuff randomly, and we'll be amazed.


Little A said Dad!  One morning she woke up a lot earlier than she normally does so Allan took care of her while he got ready for work and read his scriptures.  He made her a bottle and then woke me up and handed her to me so I could feed her and he could go to work.  I started to feed her and he said good bye as he headed out the door.  She quickly threw aside the bottle, sat up, looked at him and said "Dad" in this sweet little voice.  It sounded like she was teasing him, lol.  Of course he hurried back to give her hugs and kisses.  He was a very proud daddy that day.

This adorable outfit came from AG.  She is our wish come true for sure!

Little A has really grown in the last couple of weeks.  I had to change out her clothes from 3-6 and some 6 month clothes to 6-9 and some 12 month clothes! 

Cute outfit from K5.

At her last baby shower K2 and K6 gave her this awesome cabbage patch crocheted hat.  I finally got around to taking some pictures with her in it.  I can't wait for winter to come so she can wear it!

Mamma's little cabbage patch.  :)

Allan and I had a fun date in September.  We try to alternate weekends staying in and going out for our dates.  This time we went to dinner, frozen yogurt, and the children's play.  We dropped A off to be babysat by her favorite people.  She loves them and has a ball every time she goes there.  Dinner was delicious.  We took our time and had some really good conversation.  Then we went out for frozen yogurt, my favorite.  The play was really cute.  It was written by some locals and was based on the story "Treasure Island".  The kids did great, and we had a lot of good laughs.   We love date night!

Allan decided to give Little A her first drink out of a cup.  She and Allan got completely soaked.  She loved it though and always asks for drinks out of our cups now.

Love this picture of Allan and Little A.

Little A has always been a good sleeper.  Lately she has been trying to space her naps out longer.  This just makes her very tired in the evenings.  One day she decided she wanted to skip her evening nap entirely.  I set her next to Allan, who was doing some work for his church calling on the computer, and came back to find this,

She had slowly leaned over further and further until she was sound asleep on the couch.  Haha! Poor girl.  She woke up to eat her last bottle and went right back to sleep for the night.

AG also gave her this cute onsie.  It says "Superman was adopted too"  Love it!

One of my friends started teaching Belly Dancing and I have been going.  It's a lot of fun.  FYI - belly dancing is not exotic dancing.  It was created by women to prepare for pregnancy and labor and can be done completely modestly.  It is actually really technical and kind of difficult.  And a great abdominal workout.  So don't worry, I'm not doing anything crazy here.  My friends little boy was sick the last time so we didn't go, but hopefully we'll be able to go this week.

We have been practicing how to roll a ball.  She mostly loves to lick it.

Little A has started a new thing on her play gym.  She'll bite the seat, bounce, and then lift her feet in the air and hang until it stops bouncing, then do it over again.  It's pretty cute to watch.  She'll often rock herself to sleep this way.  I'll look over and she'll be sound asleep hanging in the air and biting her seat, lol!

She has also started jabbering more and more.  My favorite sound that she makes is "yukyukyukyukyuk".  It reminds me of Goofy's "ha-yuck".

The thing in her hand is her new favorite toy.  It's one of those things that makes a crinkly, crunchy noise.

Little A has always been a calm, easy going, sensitive baby.  She jumps and startles pretty easily and still doesn't like deep voices.  We watched my friends baby the other day while she was at the hospital with her older child.  A loves other kids and at first her and the baby (who is about a month and a half younger than A) were having a blast.  I fed A, then fed the baby, and we were all happy.  Then the baby got tired and started to cry.  She wanted her momma, and I was not the right person.  As soon as the baby started to cry A looked at her with this concerned look on her face.  Then her bottom lip popped out, and she started whimpering.  Pretty soon she was in tears too.  She does this every time she hears a child crying.

This didn't make it very easy for me because they both just kept crying harder and harder because the other one was crying.  I was very relieved when Allan came home and took Little A. I took the baby outside and walked her until she fell asleep.  Little A became even more upset when I walked away from her holding another baby.  She was so distraught.  It all ended well when the baby went to sleep, and A got her momma back. :)

Little A has never liked to wear bows and has always tried to get them off of her head, but the amount of time she'll wear them has shortened significantly in the last couple of weeks.  Here is an example for you:

Yes, she did let go and get smacked in the head, lol.

I've started trying to distract her with toys after I put one on.  It lasts long enough to take a picture.

We went to the Salsa Fest for a family outing last weekend.  We haven't been doing very good about remembering our camera lately, so we don't have any pictures.  It was a lot of fun though.  We saw some hot air balloons from our kitchen window before we left.  We stopped at the car show and looked at the cars.  My favorite was one that had heart shaped seats.  I would never want to drive that thing, but it was pretty awesome.  Wish I had a picture.  We walked through all the booths and got a sample of an oil that was supposed to help Allan's headache.  Miraculously it actually did!  It didn't take it away, but it helped.  That an improvement from anything else we've tried.  We're hoping to go to a class and learn more so we can try some more things.  We also watched the Karate school perform, which is always fun, and, of course, tried all of the salsa.  There was so much salsa this year that we ended up taking most of it home.  We gave little A a taste of the most mild one, she really liked it.  I was surprised.  I thought she would be disgusted.

Allan did take this awesome pic with his phone while we were there.

I also went to the General Relief Society Broadcast.  It is always very uplifting.  I especially enjoyed the talk about covenant making from Sister Burton.  She commented that we do expect our young children to keep the covenants they make to God when they are 8 years old.  She then went on to give an example of how a child in her family kept his covenants by serving his grandmother.  I thought during her talk that children are often the best covenant keepers.  The Lord told us that we need to be like little children and emulate their meekness, humility, and desire to love.  All of these qualities make them good covenant keepers.  There is so much we can learn from our children.

I put Little A in these cute overalls for the first time.  Allan loves overalls on her and I knew he was going to love her in these.  They lasted about a half hour before she peed through them.  Every time I put her in overalls she leaks or has a blow out.  Seriously every time.  It's a curse. 

Love the sweet expression on her face.

 A loves to play with puppets.  I usually take them out one at a time and sing songs and talk to her with them.  This last week I needed to get a few things done so I gave her the whole basket.  It was a huge success.  She thoroughly enjoyed taking them out and tossing them.  Her favorite part though was untying the strings on the basket liner.  She was very pleased with herself.  Once she got them untied she promptly took her pacifier out and stuck one end in her mouth.

We really enjoyed watching General Conference this weekend.  We always look forward to conference weekend.  It's so nice to slow down and spend some time as a family listening to the words of the Prophet and Apostles.  Little A was enthralled.  She rarely gets to watch anything so she couldn't take her eyes off of it.

Watching the Saturday morning session.

We went to the family BBQ that Allan's company puts on every year in between conference sessions on Saturday.  We rode on a golf cart (A got a huge kick out of that and giggled about it for quite a while.  She cried when we got off.), ate some yummy food, let A have her first taste of ice cream (which she loved), took A down one of the bouncy slides and to the petting zoo where she petted two tiny baby pigs, a calf, and a sheep, and talked to several of Allan's friends from work.  There was also a zip line that we wanted to go down but the line was too long.  We wouldn't have made it back in time to catch the next conference session.  We had a lot of fun.  We completely exhausted little A.  On the golf cart ride back to our car she cried the entire way.  As soon as she was in her car seat she fell asleep.  Here are some pics:

Going down the slide.  She had no expression until about 3 minutes afterward at which point she burst into giggles.  Delayed reaction, lol.

Petting the baby pigs.

Petting the calf.

Petting the sheep.  She burst into giggles about 3 minutes after this too.  I guess she has to think about things for a while before she can react to them.

She woke up in the middle of the afternoon session and played really well through the hole thing.  We were so grateful because it enabled us to focus better on the messages and actually get something out of them.  Little A and I also listened to the Priesthood session while Allan viewed it at the chapel.  I really enjoyed listening to it and being able to talk about it with Allan when he got home.

Today she was exhausted but didn't want to go to sleep.  I laid her down on the blanket in the living room, and she wiggled and groaned alternately trying to stay awake and go to sleep.

Little A trying to go to sleep.

After a while she insisted on sitting up.  We sat her up and gave her some toys.  She grabbed her stuffed cow and gave it a big snuggle.

Snuggling the cow.

After a while I decided to try and put her to bed again.  She screamed at me when I left the room but then pulled the blanket over her head and went to sleep. 

Taking Little A to bed.