Wednesday, March 25, 2015

Emery: 3 Months


Oh my gosh this little girl just makes my heart want to burst.


She turned 3 months last week.

And her getting older is a little sad because I love her tininess and she is growing and changing so fast and I feel like I can't hold on to it.. but it's also soo awesome. 
She is more and more interactive and aware and I feel like I can have more of a relationship with her and I love it and her more than I ever thought I could.


Someone told me that the days are long but the years are short..
& Even though we haven't been through a year yet that's how I am already feeling about the months.

There are some days that I finally get her to bed and all the sudden my body just relaxes and I realize that I have been just.. clenched.

Emery is so much work. Like.. seriously way more work than I ever dreamed a baby could be.
Her emotions are very extreme either way, I would definitely not describe her as a calm relaxed baby..
But she can be just crazy sweet.

She is a BIG cuddler and always has been and I love love love that about her..
But it also can be what makes our days hard she wants someone to always be sitting with her or holding her.. and she will sure let you know.


Recently she has LOVED being rocked and sang to..
In fact if I am rocking her and not singing she has this like upset talking noise that's not really crying but you can tell she isn't happy.. and she will make it until I start singing.
It's kind of cute.

She thinks she is a big girl and doesn't really like to be held like a baby.. she has always liked to be held sitting up or standing and recently she is a lot better at it.

Yesterday at the library we went to baby time and she just sat up in my lap the whole time with her hands on my legs on either side of her watching and smiling as they sang. It kind of hurt my heart a little how big she seemed.

{She can't really sit up by herself yet she needs support.}

But something that she can do by herself now and has been doing a lot is grabbing things! She will grab at her toys now and can entertain/play by herself for little periods of time.
She loves to grab and hold your arm when you are holding her, or she will hold on to the bottle if you are feeding her from a bottle.


If she is awake it's hard to get a picture of her standing still she is constantly wiggling and kicking.. 
she has sooo much energy.

And the very very best thing about this stage is the cooing. Oh my gosh it melts my heart every single time.
She just loves talking to you and gets so excited when you talk back.

& She has been laughing.. 
Blake started playing the piano with her feet and she just died over it.. 
Just laughing and smiling like you wouldn't believe.


She has to have surgery on her belly button today because it didn't all come off and heal right.
{I have been dreading this for the last month.. poor baby}
But other than that she is happy and healthy and I think just perfect.

She is wearing 3 month old clothes, still is sleeping 7 hours a night-but isn't very good about taking naps, growing like a weed, and just a sweet social baby girl.


I feel so blessed to have this best little buddy of mine while her dad has been gone working so hard in school.

Somedays definitely go smoother than others and we are still kind of figuring things out but
all of the hard work is definitely worth it.

Saturday, March 21, 2015

Tricks of the Trade

A big new-ish thing in our life around here lately has been this diaper changing business..
{& Unfortunately so is Blake not getting home until well after the sun has set and the day is almost over}

So I figured with his Spring Break maybe we could eliminate both of those things..

And Blake seemed like he needed a little bit of a stress reliever so I thought I'd try and start the break off right.


SO I looked up how to make a marshmallow gun shooter, made a couple of  trips to Lowe's, learned how to cut PVC pipe [which let me tell you-was not as easy as those few words make it sound].. 
And then had this waiting for him at the door.
With a little Eye of the Tiger playing in the background and me hiding around the corner ready to cover him in marshmallows.



And... it really was awesome. I couldn't believe how hard we were laughing.. it made it a little bit harder aim and probably gave Blake a better fighting chance.
:)

Plus I figured that a perk of living on your own has got to be that nobody tells you not to shoot marshmallows all over the house, right?
So it makes sense to me that you probably should do it.



Then when I thought my sides were going to burst from laughing and running so much.. Blake tackled me 
[and from what I understood-admitted defeat]
and then cleaned up all of the visible marshmallows around the house!
[I am still finding one every once and a while behind things]

This man really is just my dream come true.

And Emery was sweet and slept through the whole escapade.. 
Maybe we should have marshmallow fights every night before bed because I am just not quite sure rocking works as well.

& This little moment was definitely one of the many reasons I cried when Blake had to go back to school.

Only 6 more weeks until he is out for summer.. but who is counting.

Tuesday, March 17, 2015

Just Look What I Found




Oh man..
 I was cleaning out my phone and found quite the gem that I figured probably needed to be shared/documented.

 Blake just thought he was HILARIOUS at this time in our life. 
Every time we went any where he would park in the VERY last back spot of the parking lot so that I would have to waddle all the way to the store, and to justify these radical actions he just explained he was helping me go into labor.
This particular experience was probably the worst though..  he wasn't settling for the back of the parking lot when there were better options.
Somehow we ended up in the very last parking spot in the back of the parking lot BEHIND Target's parking lot.


Oh boy was he pretty proud of himself and it probably only took us, I don't know, twenty minutes to get up to the entrance of Target if you were curious


And then the BEST thing happened.

We found THE perfect toy box for Emery's room and somehow it had to get back to our car.
And clearly the 9 month along pregnant lady couldn't waddle with it, right?

So that left only one option.

I will just let you envision this walk of satisfaction on my part. Although I don't think this deterred Blake from his obscenely far parking.. this one moment of tear bringing laughter was enough for me.



So {back to the present} last week was Blake's spring break.. 
oh was it wonderful
it's so nice to have him home.
In fact there was a brief conversation about skipping Optometry school and him working from home.

But after all of our partying last week I have lots of catching up to do with pretty much everything
so I thought I would share this favorite little experience of mine today really fast and will catch up on more recent events just as soon as our baby figures out how to survive on her own and the cupboards figure out how to refill themselves. 

Hope everyone's been loving spring {and breaks} as much as we have over here!

Sunday, March 8, 2015

Good Thing I Really Like These People..


What kind of face is this?!



Recently all of the sudden it has been much harder to get all of the things done that I feel like I want to/need to
[in the house that is.. for some reason, probably because I hold her in her front carrier, she is a dream errand runner]..
And this my friends may very well be why.

I tried to have her play by herself on her play mat for a minute while I did the laundry.
[[ &If you were wondering the laundry did not get finished for a little while longer.]]

She wasn't even crying..
she just kept looking over at me with this face like she was about to cry but she was giving me a couple of minutes to come to my senses and get my act together..

My little pouty faced Emery is two months old?! How does she already have such persuasive abilities...?!
I believe that I may be in trouble...

Therefore we will not even begin to discuss who won this battle.


And THEN there is the other protester of organized folded laundry in my life..


 It's probably not his fault though.. I feel like I may be leaving him too subtle of hints..
 
:)


[Just Kidding.. I actually feel a little bad even giving Blake a hard time because he studies so hard in school and still finds time to help me SO much around the house and I'm sure he could find lots of things lately to tease me about .. he just gets the closet and floor confused. Easy Mistake :) ]

But boy.. how cute are these two..

[If you will hold her/cuddle her she is happy as a clam so Blake is nice and lets her be his little study partner]



And I keep telling myself she probably wont want to cuddle this much for long so I should just enjoy how much I love it right now..


And even if the laundry doesn't get folded right away anymore..

I feel so lucky that these people like ME.

There is so much love in our house lately.. and even if this phase of our life has a lot of things that seem hard.. there are a lot of sweet things too and I've been feeling pretty blessed.

And boy does that pouty face make for some pretty good laughs right now.

Wednesday, March 4, 2015

A Few of My Favorite Things



You want to know what I love more than brown paper packages tied up with strings?
This sweet perfect baby girl of ours.

Oh my GOSH I love this girl
 [even though right now I AM having to type with just my right hand because she wont sleep when I put her down]


This picture was taken right after this sweet girl got us kicked of an optometry presentation at Blake's school.
How can you even get upset at this face?

Emery just loves.. loves.. loves attention. She is so funny while Blake will be studying she will just sit there and stare at him until he looks at her and then as soon as he looks over she will SMILE and wiggle and move just every part of her body and even giggle sometimes. It's seriously the cutest.

And any time you walk in to go get her out of her crib her HUGE smiles make you feel like you are the best person she could ever see in the world.

And my very very very VERY favorite thing right now is how talkative she is.
She just sits there and jabbers and goo's and aw's and if you will make baby noises and talk back she gets so excited and seriously will just sit there and talk with you for at least 15 minutes.
I cant believe how much I love it and how warm she makes my heart.

We keep trying to record it though and it seems like if she sees you pull the camera out she either gets distracted or feels like you aren't paying attention to her and all bets are off. So we have lots of really cool videos of our one sided baby talk.. which I'm sure would impress everyone.
:)
But I'm praying that we can get a good video before she stops doing it.. It does hurt me a little how fast she changes.



Our little Emery girl is 2 1/2 months old now and even though people told me she would..
(and seriously I didn't believe them because you keep thinking HOW could I love how this perfect baby is any more?)
She really does keep getting better and better.

At her last doctors appointment ((2/23/15)) She weighed 11 lbs and 9 oz and was 23 inches tall..
Which apparently is in the 73rd percentile for height!
She better enjoy this being tall thing now because I am just not sure she has the genetics to keep this up.. haha

She still is the absolute most cuddly baby ever. Emery absolutely loves to be held and cuddled.. to the point where I don't understand how it's comfortable.. sometimes she won't fall asleep unless her face is smashed against my face.. which, don't get me wrong, sometimes I absolutely adore because I love to cuddle too. 
And it sounds cute until I need to eat.. or accomplish absolutely anything.

Then it can be a little bit hard.
She is still a little bit young and there is just no reasoning with this little girl.

[baby carriers have become a little bit of a lifesaver... they have bumped productivity around the house from 0% to probably.. 25%.. feel free to be impressed. haha]]


I love how she absolutely ADORES the mirror. It's so funny. She will be crying so Blake will take her to go look at herself in the mirror and all will be right in the world again.
This particular mirror was definitely in a public bathroom but it was definitely her favorite part of our shopping experience so I spent WAY too long in this public bathroom making faces and sharing smiles with my sweet girl.
Now that is how you know it's true love.


This picture she is quite a bit younger in.. definitely only a month .. she was still sleeping in her bassinet and I looked over one night and she was just staring at me like this.
She kills me. She kills us.. Blake actually tells her this daily.

[[You're just so sweet.. & cute my little love bug.]]

But I wanted to address the fact that yesterday and last night she has slept 7 hours straight! 
We are new people over here..
[hence the catching up of the blog..]


Definitely in life with our Emery girl.. 
Nights feel a little longer.. and if I don't get up before she does mornings start a little slower.. and although I was joking a little earlier with my productivity comment I definitely don't accomplish the same things I used to in a day when it comes to daily chores and life organization..
BUT my heart feels SO full.. and even when  I am exhausted I feel so grateful.

I have seen a few comments lately about infertility and just wanted to add a little by saying that trying to have our sweet girl definitely was an emotional journey for us.. complete with miscarriage and months and months of negative pregnancy tests and not knowing why I wasn't getting pregnant.
[don't get me wrong I know that people have it far worse than we did.. but it still hurt going through it]
But I just wanted to say that I feel like it has made me SO much more grateful for Emery. It's made me want to savor every minute and helped me to find joy when I am covered in spit up or baby poop or any other bodily fluid.
It's all so worth it.

& I know that there is a reason for everything even if it's hard to see it while we are going through it.

But anyway I just wanted to also put down for the record.. things are getting easier.
People tell you it will but.. it's REAL. It really happens
I seriously thought I might die for a few weeks.. having a newborn was still happy but definitely hard.

I don't know if it's that we are sleeping more or that my sweet girl is more interactive and happy and we are getting used to each other.. or what it is.. but for some reason it's getting easier.
And really it's absolutely blissful. I just feel like I have so much to be grateful for everyday.

Being a mom is my very favorite thing.

The Week Off


Alright.. you want to know what is the worst?
When San Antonio is COLD..

What in the world.. I thought after enduring an extremely hot summer we were off the hook for the rest of year?
Further more that is why we moved here?!
Does that mean nothing to you Texas.

And the audacity to be cold while we have visitors.. the AUDACITY.

Alright.. well now that I have gotten that out of the way.. you want to know what is the best?

 


Visitors.. and visitors that just happen to be really good friends.
My old roommate {{For I think 8 semesters.. my whole college experience not married}} and one of my very best friends, Shelby, flew all the way to Texas to meet baby Emery and see us for a week.


 

Besides for the cold weather the week was just a dream.
Shelby is a nurse at Primary Children's Hospital in Utah so she taught me a baby trick or two.. AND she sweetly played the role of our first non relative babysitter so that after I don't even want to talk about how long  I could go get my hair done.

& Lately in this life of mine with a newborn these things are definitely noteworthy life accomplishments,

 

And even though it was cold we agreed to embrace our inner Idaho survival instincts and showed Texas that we weren't going to let it bring us down.
Which thank goodness Shelby was there because this little companion of mine couldn't even open her eyes when we were 2 feet away from a carnivorous leopard... so it was probably in the best interest of everyone to have a little more interested third party.


 We also decided that we all needed to get into the Texas spirit while Shelby was here and since it was in town we
{or maybe I.. & everyone was at least nice and humored me}
concluded whats more Texan than the RODEO..

{{And from the following reactions I will say that I think that  
my little family may need to work a little bit on our being Texan still..  
maybe next year..}}



Clearly Emery really enjoys all of the fun things that we bring her to do.
Oh my sweet child. 




Also I would like to please note that Blake would not listen to a country song willingly when we first started dating.. nonetheless wear a cowboy hat.

We have come a long way in our lives.




[You never know what kind of pictures you are going to get when you have those strangers that just happen to be in the right place at the right time take your picture..
In fact I have to be honest and say that I am always slightly worried that they will take the camera/phone and run or drop it.. or I don't know.. the possibilities are endless.. ]

But some days if everyone is in the picture we count "the stranger shot" as a success.



We spent an afternoon doing the traditional Alamo and then having such a fun dinner and desert listening to live music at the Riverwalk.

And it was perfect.. San Antonio felt even more like home with Shelby here. 

There was a lot more fun that we didn't get pictures of.. Shelby came and explored the busy farmers market with me down town.. and we had lots of talking and eating and much needed girl time.

Sweet Shelby I absolutely love you and don't how I was blessed enough to have such  a good friend, thank you for coming to see us and letting us take a week off of real life to just play.. it meant the world!

Tuesday, March 3, 2015

And Then She Grew Up..

It's was kind of a tough weekend over here for this momma..
Thursday our little Emery baby had her first out of the house babysitting experience so that we could go to the temple..
{which was wonderful and what I really needed}
But it's so funny that even though I was feeling relaxed.. I also kept feeling like a longing and just emptiness missing my baby.
I don't know why they give you all of this advice because they don't want your baby to get "too attached" (which side note.. I don't think you can love your baby too much)
But why is no one ever concerned about the too attached mother. Haha That's more our issue over here.
She handled everything just perfectly.

And THEN last night this little sweet pea of ours spent her first night in her nursery!



And it was time.. She loves her crib and sleeps better.. And everyone over here has been pretty sleep deprived.
But even knowing all of this I still wanted to cry a little bit before going to bed.

But the craziest thing happened... we actually experiences this crazy sensation I think some people refer to as.... Sleep?




Emery slept a straight 6 hours last night.. which around these parts is absolutely REMARKABLE.
And the weirdest thing.. even though I have been tired.. I have felt like I have gotten used to not sleeping.. {which who knew that was possible}





After about 5 hours I woke up and had to make sure she was alive and when she didn't seem to want to wake up or eat yet I had to give myself a pep talk about sleeping for a little bit longer.

So we see who is the REAL problem here.
:)




We are only a little bit obsessed around here..