365 Days: Week 14

I am the pianist for the Primary children at church and because it was Easter Sunday they were asked to sing in front of the entire congregation which meant that I had to play in front of the entire congregation... definitely not in my comfort zone. I was super nervous.

 We went on another exploration of our neighborhood this evening. There is this random small park surrounded by woods that we pass all the time but have never bothered to explore because it looked so small. Well, it may be narrow, but it goes really far back (maybe half a mile or so). If you follow it all the way to the very back you pop out of the woods right in front of...surprise!.. our neighborhood pool! I'm sure this shortcut will get used a lot in the coming months.

I don't sew at all - until today. Scooter bought me a sewing machine a while ago and I've been meaning to learn to use it for a while, but have never been brave enough. Sewing machines intimidate me. My sister Rachelle's baby shower was a good excuse to finally get courageous and figure it out.

Lincoln was chewing on my hand and suddenly I felt something that was sharp! His first tooth broke through! I burst into tears as soon as I saw it - he's growing into such a big boy already! We suspected that he might be teething, but he is so good-natured that we weren't sure - well, now we know. Isn't it darling? We are so proud of him.

The Kansas City LDS temple is finally complete and open for tours. I'll never forget sitting in our tiny flat in England, watching General Conference and hearing the temple announced. We knew we would be moving to Kansas City for medical school and were thrilled that a temple would be built there. Since we moved here we have had to drive four hours to get to the St. Louis, Missouri temple but now that this temple is complete we will only be 25 short minutes away from our temple. We toured our temple and it is beautiful! After the dedication we'll be able to go worship there. We can't wait!

Scooter was inducted into the Gold Humanism Honor Society. It is a society not for academic achievement, but for people that have developed humanistic traits. He had to nominated by his peers. I am so proud of all the hard work Scooter does academically, but it is nice to know that he is able to do it and still be a really nice guy. On a side note, Lincoln was terrified of the applause and we realized it was the first time he had ever heard that noise before. Luckily, the doctor that delivered Lincoln was there supporting the students and she thoughtfully volunteered to take Lincoln out so I could watch Scooter be inducted. 

Lincoln used to be terrified of baths so I had to bathe with him in the big tub but lately he hasn't been as scared so we thought we'd try bathing him in his little tub in the kitchen sink. Terrible idea. Besides peeing all over me as we were putting him into the tub, he splashed water everywhere. The whole point was for me not to have to take a bath, but after he peed on me I had to anyway. At least he enjoyed himself. 

This is why we don't get anything done anymore...

365 Days: Week 13

I love the weekend of General Conference! It is so nice to stay home all weekend, spend time as a family, make yummy food (hello, homemade burgers and key lime pie!), and watch General Conference to be uplifted and inspired by our wonderful church leaders. On Sunday we decided to go on a epic walk. We were gone for hours and explored the woods and walking trails near our house that I keep mentioning. We were gone for so long that it was necessary for me to feed Lincoln before we turned around to head home. It was really warm and we didn't want our little darling to get dehydrated!

We've been working on teaching Lincoln to sit, but he is so busy and curious that he usually immediately wants to explore something that's outside of his reach so he leans too far and tips right over. He'll get it - he's even made big improvements since I took this picture. 

Feeding Lincoln solids has become a really fun part of each day. He is doing really well overall. We had a small setback when we started him on peas - he gagged on every. single. bite. After trying to a couple days and feeding him other things in between we've just decided that the hates the taste of them. Even if we mix them with other things he usually can detect them and gags, so we've just given up on them for the time being. I'd rather have eating be a fun and positive experience for him right now while he is still learning to do it.

Grandma Jody came to town for a visit this weekend. She hadn't seen Lincoln for two months and couldn't believe the changes in him. Our favorite activity for the weekend was putting Lincoln on the floor and watching him play. He is surprisingly looking like he is going to figure our how to crawl soon. I'm sure it will be a while before he actually crawls but he is getting up on his elbows and knees and rocking back and forth. He has also figured out how to roll, pull, wiggle, and gyrate (weird word choice I know, but there is no other way to describe it) in any direction he chooses which is highly entertaining.

Lincoln loves reading books, but Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? seems to be his favorite for now. He seems to be more interested in books that don't have complicated illustrations and since this one has only one big picture per page it seems to hold his attention. He also thinks it tastes pretty good too.

Lincoln had his six-month checkup and shots. He was a wild man at the doctor's office. Wild, I tell you! When we lay him on the paper he crumpled it, chewed on it, pulled on it, ripped it all up, and then slapped it for good measure. Every nurse and doctor that came near him had their stethoscope, name badge, lanyard, and in the case of his doctor, their shirt grabbed in a death grip and put into his mouth. His doctor was highly amused and said, "Well, we can see that he's doing great socially!" Lincoln did not do as well with his shots this time as in times past. He was inconsolable for a couple minutes a wouldn't even nurse until we had walked and bounced around the room and had a couple songs. Breaks my heart!

The thing about Texas Roadhouse is that between the peanuts and the rolls with cinnamon butter, you aren't even hungry by the time they bring your actual meal. Those rolls though....mmmm!

Six Months Old

Dear Lincoln,

This has been a month of big changes for you. It has been exhausting and exciting for you all at the same time. You are really taking off physically. Your dexterity is really improving and you are able to grab things much more accurately so you are starting to really enjoy your toys a lot more. You are getting really good at bringing things to your mouth. You are such a squirmy and curious baby! You refuse to recline – ever - not in our arms, on the floor, or on our bed. You want to be upright, preferably standing, at all times. We let you play on the floor a lot lately so you can perfect all of your physical skills. You roll over perfectly in both directions, push yourself up onto your elbows or hands, point your butt high in the air, get up on your knees, try to dig your toes into the ground, reach, and thrash around. You also change positions so continuously that it is hilarious! We love to watch you – it is highly entertaining and you constantly surprise and impress us. We really think you will be crawling before too long. You can already really get anywhere you want to, if you are determined enough, by thrashing, rotating, rolling, and pulling yourself. Sometimes it seems like it is difficult for you to lift your belly off the ground, but once you get onto your knees you rock forward and backward it seems like you are about to take off. Your doctor was impressed with how close you are to crawling when you showed him last week. We are so proud of you but not sure if we are ready to have you moving around that much. We’re going to have to be super careful to not let you get into everything.

You are such a busy boy and you really wear yourself out when you play.  The other day you were playing on your playmat while I was on the computer. You had been really playing hard with your toys and making all kinds of noise. Suddenly it got really quiet and I looked over at you and found you sound asleep on your tummy despite the fact that you had gotten plenty of napping done that morning. I tried to tiptoe away quietly, but you awoke with a start and looked really confused about what had happened. You are already are getting into things. Today I set you on the floor behind me long enough to wash my hands and by the time I turned back around you had somehow picked up one of my shoes and were happily chewing on it like a little puppy. You also love to try and get the junk mail if I forget and leave it in a pile by the door. You love to crumple it and put it in your mouth.

You are still hard-core in love with your fingers this month. You have them in your mouth as much as possible. You seemed to be showing a preference for your pointer and middle finger, but this month that has changed a bit. Now you have less of a preference. You will literally suck any combo of fingers on either of your hands. If we pull your left hand out of your mouth you pop your right hand in. You suck your thumb, you suck all four of your fingers, you suck just your pointer. Even in your sleep you don’t stick with the same thing. People have told us that they have never seen a baby that doesn’t develop more of a preference as they get older. We wonder how this is going to affect your handedness – will you be somewhat ambidexterous? Possibly writing with one hand and playing sports with the other? It will be interesting to see what happens as the months go on.

You are a great sleeper and we are so grateful. We have worked really hard at developing really good habits and they seem to be coming together to really pay off this month. You are still exhibiting really strong 90-minute sleep patterns which takes a lot of the guess work out of nap time. As long as I keep you on your schedule you drop off to sleep very quickly once you are laid down. You are finally napping better and longer. I consulted my trusty sleep book about a week ago and it told me not to pick you up so quickly after you wake up from your naps and, just like the book said you would, you started going back to sleep. The only bad thing about your sleeping habits lately is that you don’t stay asleep as well when we go on errands. Taking you out of the car and getting you to stay asleep is out of the question so I’ve been stuck sitting in parking lots while you finish your nap multiple times.

We've had a few challenges with nursing this month, but we’ve persevered and are doing better. You have decided to get distracted while nursing. You seem to have no patience for waiting for me to let down and unlatch really quickly. I try to give you a minute to look around to satisfy your curiosity, but I don’t have all day! You want to fling yourself back to look around or, your favorite, to hang upside down. I don’t know why you love this so much, but you love having me hold you on my lap and then hanging your shoulders and head off my lap between my legs. I have started calling you my “opossum” because it is your favorite position. One night while I was singing you to sleep you fell asleep like this! So adorable, but sort of strange, no?

The other nursing challenge of the month was when I had a supply scare. I hadn’t started you on solids yet so you needed a ton of milk. You were really fussy in the evenings for a few days and your dad suggested that maybe you were just hungry. Soon we realized that every day I felt like I completely ran out of milk by about 4pm. We started trying to give you thawed frozen breast milk from a bottle. You wouldn’t take it at first, but for some reason if I fed you the bottle you did much better. I think you were just used to that close cuddle time with me. It was darling because you would look into my eyes the entire time you were drinking the bottle. I know it seems like that this would have been a good time to start you on solids, but I didn’t want to because I needed you to nurse more than ever to stimulate my supply. I had a consultation with the lactation specialists at the hospital and I put their plan for building my milk supply back up into action. We basically didn’t leave the house for days. All we did was feed you and then pump. I pumped a lot after I put you to bed for the night. I gave you supplemental bottles whenever you needed them and we quickly blew through almost all of our frozen milk. Thank heaven that my mom had really encouraged me to pump a lot when you were first born! I had built up quite a store. Luckily in about two weeks we were able to stop supplementing all together. Once everything was back to normal we started you on solids. The lactation consultants were mystified why my supply had dropped so suddenly but thought it was probably a combo of you needing a lot of milk and me dieting too much (which has, fortunately unfortunately, given me the excuse to start eating whatever I want again). This experience was frustrating for both of us but we have learned some good lessons - 1) you drink from a bottle now which is convenient for planes and babysitters 2) we learned how important it is to always have some frozen milk in the freezer and 3) we learned what to do if this happens again.

Starting you on solids was definitely the highlight of our month. I felt bad that we had waited so long to start you on them because you had seemed ready for weeks, but my camera was still in the shop and I wasn’t going to miss taking photos of your first solid feeding. Maybe that sounds crazy, but the photos I did get to take during the first couple of feedings are so cute and I’m going to cherish them forever, so for me, it was worth waiting. Plus, we had the milk supply scare so I needed you to keep nursing for a while anyway.

You were great at eating solids after the initial shock of the new sensation. It was absolutely hilarious to watch you during those first feedings! I’ll never forget how darling you were. We started you on sweet potatoes, moved onto carrots, then added oatmeal. You did beautifully with all of these and would open your mouth and lean forward. We tried feeding you peas, but you gagged on every single bite. We even switched back to sweet potatoes and you were still gagging. We weren’t sure if you had sort of forgotten how to eat or what the problem was. After some experimenting we figured out that you just really really don’t like peas. Even if we try to mix them with other things you can still detect them. If we make you eat them first and then switch mid-feeding it takes a while for you to decide we aren’t trying to give them to you and for you to stop gagging. We’ve decided to give up on them for now, and try them again in a few months. Now our only problem is (and has been since the beginning) your fingers! Those pesky things are always in the way. We started feeding you bite after bite in quick succession so you didn’t have time to put your fingers in your mouth, but our pediatrician has advised against that. He wants us to let you take your sweet time, suck your fingers, and feed you when you pull them out on your own. I’m sure it will lead to better habits later on, but it sure does take a long time to feed you!

Your love affair with your daddy continues. He is your favorite person and you absolutely light up when he comes home at night. He is so good at rough housing with you and you absolutely adore it. You probably “talk” more to him than to me and you both love babbling at each other. He is the best at tickling you and getting you laughing which is our favorite sound in the whole world. You don’t even mind going to his racquetball tournaments even though it is really loud and by all reckoning should probably be startling and upsetting to you. As long as you can see him you don’t mind it at all. I hope you two always have such a close connection – it is my favorite thing in the world to see you playing together.

We have spent a lot of time outside this month taking advantage of the gorgeous weather we’ve been having. You love to be outside taking walks in your stroller (or even better in daddy’s arms), sitting on the deck watching daddy mow the lawn, or sitting underneath the trees in the backyard looking up at the branches. I hope you always love to be outside. You have decided that you really don’t like us to use our power tools especially the Dremel and will cry if you are not basically out of the house. You used to not mind them, but, really, who can blame you? You are playing better than ever in your jumper – really jumping and playing with all the toys on it. You love to sit in your high chair, even if you aren’t eating, so you can feel like you’re part of the action. I put you in there when I’m cleaning the kitchen and you play really happily. You are learning to squeal and shriek even louder this month. You especially love to do it when running errands in big places like Home Depot, Costco, Target or church. You have also figured out that if we are watching daddy on an open racquetball court that you can screech really loudly and it will echo, which you now love to do. You have learned to bang on your high chair tray and seem really excited about the noise you can make. You are enjoying bath time more than ever and you even took your first shower with your dad which was a big success. You have the most infectious smile of any baby I have ever seen. You smile so big that your eyes turn into tiny slits. You smile with your whole body - you pause in whatever activity you are doing, flex your feet, and tense up. People can't help but stop what they are doing and smile back at you. When we are holding you and another adult is trying to talk to us they struggle to finish what they are saying because they are arrested by your huge contagious grins. You are getting good at receiving kisses this month. You squeeze your eyes shut really tightly while you are kissed and then flutter your eyelashes slowly as we pull away. It’s adorable. It is pretty obvious that your favorite thing is just to be held and played with which is convenient because those are our favorite activities too.

You’ll never know, dear, how much we love you,

Your mama

For the record:

Weight: 15 pounds 15 ounces, 15^th percentile

Length: 26 ½ inches, 41^st percentile

Head Circumference: 16 ½ inches, 5^th percentile

We love spring!

Spring has been absolutely gorgeous here in Kansas City! I have never liked living here as much as I have the past few weeks. It has been nice and warm which normally here means humidity and tons of bugs but because it is so early in the year there aren't any bugs yet. It is heavenly!

Every day I have been taking super long walks with Lincoln. I don't know how it has taken me so long to discover them, but there are tons of walking trails all around our neighborhood. They go through the woods and run next to a stream, neither or which I knew existed. Sometimes I'm in the woods for so long before I meet a road that I am completely turned around until I find a road sign. I obviously need a smartphone (hint, hint, Scooter!). It is so beautiful with all of the blooming trees around here. Red blossom trees are native to the area and are mixed into the landscape. Everywhere you look the green forest is broken up with pops of bright purple. There are tons of little pansy-like flowers that are mixed into the ground-cover of the woods.

We have been using our attic fan whole-house fan (I just looked it up and wiki has corrected me and informed me that I have a "whole-house fan") instead of our air conditioner which has been really nice. For those of you that don't know what they are, it is a huge fan in the ceiling of your house that draws air from outside the house into the house. It is really powerful and when you have a window open on each end of the house there is a breeze through the house. It brings in all the scents of spring which is wonderful for us super lucky allergy-free people. The picture above is of the lilac bush that it right outside our bedroom window. It is in full bloom right now and smells amazing! The attic fan draws the scent into our bedroom. I can't tell you how nice it is to wake up to the overpowering scent of lilacs. Heavenly!

Anyone else having an amazing spring?

A Good Reminder

This hasn't happened to me (thankfully!) but I have seen it happen so often - people leave mean/catty/critical anonymous comments (even not-so-anonymous) on someone else's blog or website. The person gets so discouraged and it really affects them. I thought this little video was a good reminder of why we need to be nicer to each other, even on the internet. Just because we can't see the person to whom our words are directed doesn't mean our words don't affect them. Let's build each other up, right?

found here

365 Days: Week 12

I got my camera back from the service center this past Monday. Thank heaven! I'm so happy to be reunited with and have never been more grateful for it. You only have to suffer through one poor quality picture this week. 

I gave Scooter a badly needed haircut before church. I hate cutting his hair and I have no idea what I'm doing and it always looks very imperfect when I'm done. When we started dating he told me that he never pays for his haircuts and that I would have to learn how to do it. His brother came over and showed me how to do it and I've been doing it ever since. It is so weird how his hair looks blond on his head but brown on the floor.

We fed Lincoln solids for his first time. It was absolutely hilarious and so much fun! He made tons of faces but he wanted more. At times he was both pushing the spoon away and grabbing it to put it into his mouth. It must be so weird to be a baby experiencing everything for the first time.

Yes, this is a picture of a movie screen. I went to see The Hunger Games with some girlfriends. This was the best shot I could get without distracting the people around me. Did my friends think I was weird for taking a picture of the screen in the middle of the movie? Yes, yes they did. I wasn't even sure if I was zoomed in or out, so you get a picture of just part of Clove. 

A common sight in our house. Scooter just ran to Home Depot for "a couple of things" and came back with the car stuffed. We LOVE our little Pontiac Vibe. It seems small and gets good gas mileage, but we have always been able to fit anything we want into it. We've even been able to fit this many boards plus Lincoln, Scooter, and me all in it quite comfortably. 

Lincoln has been loving his high chair. We sit him in it all the time now, even when he is not eating. We just give him a couple toys (or clementines) to play with. He loves to be high enough to see what is going on above the counters and sitting next to us while we are eating dinner. It makes him seem like such a big boy!

We have been loving the gorgeous summer-like weather. I think that spring is just gorgeous here in Kansas. There are SO many flowering trees. They are indigenous to the area and grow naturally all over the place. These purple blossoms are my favorite. You can see a least some hint of these blossoms literally anywhere you look right now. I love how on some trees the blossoms grow right out of the big limbs of the tree, no branches needed. It's like the tree was so excited to be beautiful that it ran out of places to put all the blooms.

Scooter had a racquetball tournament again this weekend. I love going to support him during these events. Lincoln even likes going and watching all the people and matches. Scooter always really enjoys himself and it is fun for all of us.