A Country Kind of Fourth…

Since fireworks were out of the question because of all of the crazy fires this year, we decided to do a couple of baby-friendly things.

First we went to the Vernal’s 4th Parade.  Amelia-Jayne wasn’t digging the sun and the noise, so I took her the back way and just walked by all of the entries waiting to go.  With all of the rig trucks and companies advertising, it was more of a diesel truck parade, but she did dig the Uettes.

 

 

Later on that night, we decided to go to a Rodeo in Neola, a town that makes Vernal look like a thriving Metropolis! It was so much fun and we loved soaking in all the patriotic feel-goods. 

On the way back, we even caught some great fireworks (at a park where it was legal to do them) with Babycakes fast asleep in the back. It was a great day to be thankful for our awesome country we live in and the people who made it that way.

 

10 Months!

 

Our Babycakes:

-Is a master Cruiser.

-She has her own cell phone to play with, but still prefers ours. ;) She can find even the most carefully hidden cell phones and remotes anywhere!

-Likes to take Mommy or Daddy’s hands and go for a “walk.”  I’m pretty sure she’ll be walking by herself sometime this month!

-Loves to chuck her bottle…off of her high chair, out of the crib and out of her car seat. 

-Kisses.  A lot.  She kisses herself in the mirror, kisses us, her dolly (she loves to drag plush toys around with her now), and just learned how to blow kisses.

-Has 3 teeth and enough hair to curl on top of her head.

-Went without Mommy for a whole 4 days so I could go to Girl’s Camp.  She was great for Grandma Hastings (thank-you so much for watching her!)  but has since been very sad (and vocal) every time I’m more than 3 feet away.  Any tips?

-Loves to play Hide-and-seek and Chase.

-This was her first time wearing big girl jeans (sniff, sniff)…She’s growing up!!!

-Can climb all the way up our very steep stairs all by herself.  She did this for the first time during her pictures for this blog, and was basically trying anything to escape the photo shoot altogether.  Haha…She temporarily channeled Jordan for this shoot and high tailed her usually camera loving face right out of there!

 

9 Months!

As of May 27th, Babycakes has been with us as long as she was in my belly!   Hard to believe, because pregnancy felt like it was forever….but on the other hand it’s hard to remember what life was like without her (I do vaguely remember sleeping more though).  She is such a sweet, happy little girl, with more than enough spunk to fit in around here, which is saying a lot ;).  She makes us laugh, feel the spirit, and work our butts off everyday…we are definitely in love with this girl!

 

New favorites for this girly:

-SHE CAN CRAWL!!!!

-Babycakes has already mastered the art of getting around most types of baby proofing.  This is how our first week of crawling went:

Day 1:  She crawled to a barely changed diaper and ate the poop right out of it before I could throw it away.

Day 2: She found her Daddy’s lunch box from the day before and dumped all of his trash out all over herself and my living room carpet.  I found her licking his empty snack-pack container with a mouth full of pickle flavored sunflower seeds.

Day 3: I was doing laundry and ran around the corner to get a few dirty towels.  In about 15 seconds she managed to find the gallon of bleach, partially open it and pour it all over her feet. 

Scary, right? You could say I basically failed as a mother that week.

-I grew up with this cat named Smokey, who loved to sneak up on you and get right under your feet wherever you went.  Half the time you wouldn’t know he was there and you’d either trip on him or accidentally step on him.  Amelia-Jayne IS that cat.  She loves to follow you around in stealth mode and pull herself up whenever she can.

-She loves to feed herself all kinds of solids now, and basically eats whatever we eat in small pieces.  Her favorite things to munch on are peaches (she’ll eat an entire peach in one setting), strawberries, and turkey slices and eggs.

-New word of the month is “Pa-pa-pa” for my Dad.

-She loves to clap and dance with music or just clap whenever she thinks it’s time to celebrate. My favorite was when she first started to crawl from one room to another, she would just make it to the doorway, collapse on the floor and clap for herself like, “I made it!”

-Can’t figure out if she’s practicing for cheerleading or dance….but she loves to  throw out these moves…

She pointes pretty well!

 

We Laughed So Hard We Puked

For my First “Real” Mother’s Day, Jordan surprised me with flowers and a special card from the Babycakes…He said it was from her because he let her “pick it out at the store.” (“Oooh…this one’s Shiny!”)  She even scribbled in it for me.  Those two are the best!

     

PLUS- J surprised me with tickets to see Brian Reagan while we were down by St. George!  We have both loved Brian Reagan since before we met each other.  One of our favorite things to do is watch him on YouTube….even if we’ve already seen that act a gazillion times before.  Needless to say we were looking forward to it for a while. 

There was a big family get together for J’s Aunt’s Birthday and J was starting to get sick…we assumed it was just something he ate.  We went to the Tuachan were he was playing and we were barely in our seats before J puked in the trash can behind us…four times.  I had never seen J puke before. He’s even claimed the last time he puked was before his mission 10 years ago! 

Then, halfway through the opening act I found myself running out twice, gagging along the way (I wasn’t brave enough ralph in the trash can). But have no fear, we were NOT going to miss out on The Reagan.  And I’m so glad we didn’t, because it was AWESOME!  “I was unaware of my unihair!”  ;) We hung in and laughed through the whole thing until “You guys were great…Thank-you so much!”  Then, we literally sprinted out of the theater together to get to our car first so we wouldn’t be stuck in traffic…good thing- because we made it to Roma Ann’s house in the knick of time!

We passed out when we got home and woke the next day to half of the family there puking too.  Then, four days later, after washing everything and feeling fine my ENTIRE side of the family that came to Las Vegas got it too.  It was pretty much a solid ten days of sickies. 

Looking back, it was an even funnier show than we expected in more ways than one!

Thoughts on Motherhood…

I am not one to say that I was “born to be a mother”. Nope, I’ve had a crash course this year and still have so many lessons to learn. I definitely didn’t grow up dreaming about being a mom “when I grew up” either. I had dreams of being a professional dancer, a news anchor or a doctor. I thought that every day of my adult life would be rocked out in heels, full make-up and a faithful gym-going bod. This was my idea of glamour.

It’s funny how life has a way of sorting itself out. For the first dream, I’ve had a few too many devastating injuries, flat feet and not enough of a natural “dancer’s body” to do much past college dancing. I’m not a morning person and quite frankly, I simply changed my mind about my 10 year old dream of reporting the latest and greatest on the telly (although I did have a fun little time doing some work-related TV broadcasts in Brazil). And as for the intended MD dream, I met my husband on a blind date just two weeks after graduating with a BS in Exercise Science and the intention of grad school for a medical career the next year. We moved overseas (something we BOTH wanted to do) for work when we got married and long story short…I haven’t been to grad school. Many in the professional world might consider me a complete and total failure. And if I saw my messy hair, typical sweatpants and kangaroo pouch back then, I might have come to the same conclusion. However, my dreams have, albeit slowly, changed.

image credit

Some recent events have thrown my mind into thinking about this topic. When I was a teenager, I worked in a Physical Therapy office for a dear mentor who was a walking example of qualities I wanted in a future husband (not in a creepy way-promise!). His wife was a perfect example of qualities I needed to attain to be a good wife and mother.  She was always so nice and interested in how everything was going with everybody else. I loved their whole family, including their awesome kids. Currently, this wonderful mother is fighting a battle with the side effects of MS and other issues. She was recently put on hospice. When I found out, it seemed impossible. I had just seen her in January and she seemed like she was on the mend. I remember how optimistic she was and her excitement to meet my little girl. I’ve been devastated for them and thinking about them a lot.

When you think of your life in retrospect, I don’t think many will look back on “what you did with your life” professionally. When I think about this woman, I don’t think of her major course of study at University, her domestic “skills” we’re all so worried about getting or what she did or didn’t do for a living. I think of her four young kids. I think of how she’s been molding them into who they are…and how they are wonderful. I think of how she loves them unconditionally and gives them what they need. I think of how they adore her.

While Skyping with my parents tonight and talking about how these friends are doing, the Babycakes leaned over and kissed me on the side of my cheek without being provoked to do so. She’s never done that before. She did the new trick another two times, adding her sweet little arm and hand to the cheek each time a little later on in the conversation.

Can you believe the unconditional love of a child? Any who have experienced this sort of love in any role, be it mothers, fathers, aunts, uncles, grandparents or friends are truly blessed. I’m overwhelmed tonight by the feeling of love children come into this world with. We all were meant to be in family units. As parents, we can and should pursue other things to further ourselves in our lives, but by far the most important pursuit should be our families. I’m so glad my parent’s most important role was just that…being our parents. Maybe I was born to learn how to be a mother.

After having this reaffirmation, and checking off a quick “to-do” in another room, I came back to find Amelia-Jayne in another new situation. Sitting right next to my heels I kicked off from church, she was happily eating the poop right out of a trash-can bound diaper I had just barely changed. So, off we went, to throw all of our clothes in the washer and her in the tub. It might not be what I had in mind…But hey, this is my new version of glamorous. 

Madame Diaper Face

Hippity Hop

We celebrated Easter a week and a day after the real holiday, since J had to work on the legit day…but no fear, it satisfied all of our candy cravings for so much cheaper! I think we’re going to be doing a lot more holidays a little later from now on. :) We lucked out and got to have my mom (Nani) celebrate it with us too! 

Our first year of tulips and other bulbs decided to show up just in time for the party…Babycakes had to look through the tulips to find the eggs filled with baby puff cereal.

The Easter bunny brought some treats for the big kids, a pretty dress and bow stuff from Nani and Papi, and an adorable lamby from Grandma Hastings, all in a pink Jeep Stroller from Mommy and Daddy. How nice of him. ;)

 

Thanks to our trees and flowers, it feels like Spring and Summer have officially Sprung!

8 MONTHS!

Since Amelia-Jayne is really turning 9 months today, and I’m a little a ton behind….here are her 8 month pics and facts!

 

* I got this outfit for her long before she was born because it reminded me of Brazil…especially the little Brasileira pants!*

-The word she says most often is “Mom.”  It usually comes out sounding like “Mum,” but I credit that to her British heritage. haha.  I think she is definitely recognizing that the word “Mom” is connected to me, as she says it sometimes when first seeing me.  Not going to lie, I really love that!

-Her other current words are ba-ba, da-da (Go Dad!), and la-la, which sounds an awful lot like Lyla, her cousin who she’s been around.  We’re just going to say it’s that and call her a genius. ;)

-She is just on the verge of crawling still. The strength is there…the coordination just needs to come along.

-She eats about 3 squares a day now and usually only takes bottles when we put her to bed for naps or the night.

-We both fight over who gets to get her up from her naps…she is just so happy when she wakes up.  Her newest funny trick when she wakes up is to yell out the side of the crib.  It’s as if she thinks we can only hear her through this one spot…she lifts up the bumper pad (is that what you call it?) because she can untie that sucker and pushes her little mouth and cheeks as close as she can through the slats and yells.  The funniest part is that she closes the gap and lets the pad down to take a breath, only to open it back up again when she’s ready to yell.

-She can completely get out of her burrito now….not just arms…we’re talking down to the toes.

-Once this month I walked in on her when she didn’t escape her wrap, only to to find out that she escaped her diaper.  The little Houdini.  I don’t know how you take your diaper off in a straight jacket…I just hope I don’t find some nice “paintings” this time next month!

- I keep her little toys in a little popcorn tin.  Her favorite thing to do is dump them out, turn it upside down and play drums on the tin.  Girl’s got rhythm!

-You may have noticed, but she has 2 teeth!!