365 days

I started this thing.."A Photo a Day". I posted a few on facebook, but then decided I didn't want to do that anymore, but I kept going with taking a favorite picture every day of each kid. I've really enjoyed doing it and I think I may make a book of each day of the year for my kids to see how much they've learned and grown throughout the year. So far I haven't missed any days (I hope I can continue that!) Here are a few of my favorites:

 Katelyn excited about the Roadrunner and Coyote characters mom drew for her

 Jacob snuggling with mommy

 Katelyn singing on her karaoke machine, we love listening, dancing, and singing to music everyday.

 Jacob peeking out from under a blanket

 Katelyn giving Leila a birthday kiss after Leila opened her birthday present from her and Jacob

 Jacob being silly by squealing and laughing to himself, and closing his eyes while do so

 Katelyn loves her little bro, she wanted to share her stickers with him, so she put one on each their foreheads

Katelyn using her binoculars she made on our nature walk

Pictures can bring back so many wonderful memories. It's amazing how fast kids learn and grow and I just can't help but try and capture all of these things.

5 Months!!

Jacob is five months old! Every month I think, "How is time flying by so fast?" and I probably write it on here every month too so you guys are probably tired of that. But really, how does time fly by so fast!?

He is such a cutie. He is so happy and is always trying to grab every thing I have. Yesterday he was playing with my mirror and I took it away and he got MAD! I kind of was in shock because Katelyn never threw fits like that until she was older like 15 or 18 months old and now this was coming from my 5 month old! Ha, maybe that's the difference between my boys and girls. Actually, I know it is, when Jacob wants something, he wants something, and he let's us know. He is rolling all over the place now. He still needs help sitting up, but he's getting there. He just gets so excited and like throws himself backwards so he falls down.

 

 His new thing is sucking on his hands and fingers. He does it ALL THE TIME.

 He giggles a lot when we tickle him. Especially his back.

 He has deep dark blue eyes and I just love them! Katelyn's are much lighter now, but they kind of started out the same way.

Jacob is a little chunker. People ask me if he's 9 months old and I laugh. Katelyn was always so little so it's kind of fun to have the opposite now. I've told my mom and siblings I have the best of both worlds. My kids are so similar, but in many ways they are complete opposite, starting with one is a girl and one is a boy. I have had a big chunky baby and a skinny delicate baby. Jacob has always slept SO well and Katelyn, well not as well. One has brown hair, the other blonde. One is super sweet and always nice and Jacob demands when he wants something. It's actually quite fun comparing the two. I Love them both so much.

Jacob loves it when I slowly say MOMMA or DADDA or KATELYN or JACOB. He loves watching me talk and watching my mouth move. It makes him smile and laugh. He likes to watch Katelyn and he's just so curious as to who this crazy little girl is jumping up and down next to him all the time.

He hasn't started rice cereal or anything like that yet, but I'm thinking I might start it soon.

His hair on the sides is getting pretty long again, so he may be needing his 3rd hair cut soon.

He scratches his legs up SO much. He is like always scratching. I'm not sure if it's because they itch or he just doesn't know what he's doing.

He wakes up happy and talking to himself in the morning and then when he's bored and wants to get out he starts screaming until one of us gets him.

He drinks mostly formula now. I was hoping to go longer with breastfeeding, but I feel like it's just not working with watching every thing I have to eat and wondering if he's getting enough or wondering if something I eat makes him break out. So I just feed him morning and night now. Good thing both my kids love bottles.

He takes 3 naps a day.

And I don't think he'll be trying to crawl this month. Katelyn took her first crawling movements forward at 5 1/2 months..Jacob can't even hold himself up on his hands and knees yet, haha. That's alright though, I like my immobile baby, it gives me more time to do things like dishes, getting ready, cleaning, etc.

Colorado!

During our break we spent some time in Colorado. It was, and always is, nice to visit there. Nick loves Colorado and he takes me to do fun things outside. I think my favorite thing was trying to fly Katelyn's kite outside. It was SUPER windy at his parents house and every time the kite would go up, it would dive straight back down. Katelyn and I would run away from it and scream. I love being outside with my little family, we have so much fun!

Here's some things we did: we went to parks, Katelyn and Nick rode horses with Papa, we got to visit with Hayley, Pierce, and Sydney, and we played games late at night. It was a lot of fun. The best thing we did was go see the Avengers. Both Nick and I love all of those super hero movies and so we LOVED the Avengers.

I don't know who's fault it is that we never get pictures on our camera while we're in Colorado, but I'm going to throw it onto Nick ;) I will leave you with this picture of us traveling back home to Oklahoma though. It was a LOT of driving. We calculated we did 3,000 miles of driving this trip. We were glad to be back home and the kids did great on each trip.

I'm hoping to get more pictures from Colorado off of Nick's phone... Oh if only I had a smartphone.. :)

Utah Visit

We just got back from a nice long visit to Colorado and Utah. It was so much fun and a bit sad as I said goodbye to my home in Utah for the last time. My parents are moving and will no longer live there after July. I'm glad we got to make it out one last time! I'm looking forward to visiting California (where they will be living after this) and starting some more memories with my family there. And maybe even looking at potential places to live-- ha just kidding (kinda).

Utah was so much fun, as always, well at least in my opinion! We did a lot of fun things and even got a surprise visit from Lu & Ellie who we didn't think would be there! I love Ellie and we became good pals during the short time they were there.

 We left on Sunday and drove half way to Colorado. We decided we would get a hotel since this was the first time traveling with Jacob (more an excuse that we didn't want to drive the whole distance ;) ). And we wanted to go swimming!

 Katelyn was a little freaked out, but she got some practice in swimming on her own.

 She held on VERY tight to Nick. Normally she likes it, I think she thought Nick was going to dunk her haha. I do the same to him too, thinking he might dunk me :)

 Then she practiced floating on her back-- didn't like that either.

 We played with sidewalk chalk outside with Isaac, AJ, and Lauren. They made up this game called Hot Scotch. It was pretty fun!

 Nick tryin out Hot Scotch (Yes I know what I'm saying, it's not hop scotch, they call it hot scotch ;) ).

 Uncle Ike!

 WE (especially Katelyn) love Uncle Ike. She asks me about him every day. And I'm not lying.

 Katelyn loved being able to play outside on the grass

 Jumping around!

 Playing outside

 Me and my little girl

 We went to visit the State Capitol in Utah. It was, no joking here, the first time I've ever been. I insisted we go take pictures.

 Our little family in front of the Capitol.

 Having fun with Dad outside

 Kiddos

Riding bikes!

We also went up to the City Creek mall & Lu took some pictures of us with her awesome camera at the park.

 We spent so much time at the park. Picnics, playing, & walks.

 The grandkids love their grandparents..I promise :)

 Katelyn loves water! These were especially cool at the City Creek Mall

LOVE her! She's basically like my adopted daughter.

AJ & Lauren had their second reception while we were there. We were so glad to go and help out. All siblings are married now except Isaac; I'm waiting for the day that I can add his invitation to our fridge! I'm so happy for all of my siblings!! Married life is great and since we're the veterans at it I can give them advice right? :) Going on 5 years now and still madly in love.

We had a great time in Utah. I'm sure going to miss going to our house there and visiting. It's where I grew up.

4 months!!

Wow, I can't believe time is flying by SO fast! I feel like time with Jacob is flying by a lot faster than it did with Katelyn. Maybe because I have a toddler now too who keeps me very entertained and busy all day. It makes me sad to think that it's going by so fast and before I know it he's going to be walking around just like his big sister. We'll take our time with that though ;) I'm not even quite ready for crawling yet, those are when the real adventures begin.

 

Here are some things about Jacob at 4 months:

Jacob has been slightly getting better at sitting up. He can sit for a few seconds before he slowly starts to fall over to one side. Mostly he just likes giggling and squealing at the top of his lungs while on his back; just like his sister. 

He gives us a lot of smiles through out the day. 

He has rolled from back to stomach a few times, and sometimes from stomach to back. It's so funny watching him trying to get his chubby little legs and body to roll. 

He sleeps amazing. I ask Heavenly Father sometimes what I'm doing right to deserve such a good sleeper (so that way I can continue to do what I'm doing and get the same treatment with the rest of my kids ;) ha). He usually wakes up at 4 or 5 to eat and goes right back to sleep, and some nights he just doesn't wake up at all. He doesn't like to be rocked he likes to just be put in his crib with a blanket and binky and put himself to sleep. Although sometimes I just want to cuddle him so I make him deal with my rocking him to sleep. :)

He drools like crazy. Half of his shirt will be soaked with in 20 mins if he is sitting up. If he's on the floor on his back then we're good-- no drooling.

He just had his 4 month check up and he is in the 50th percentile for everything.

He weighs: 15 lb. 3 oz.

His height is: 25 in.

and his head is somethin else.. I never remember the head, why is that?

 Look at those chunky little legs! I just love them.

He really is a great baby. He still has some skin problems (so far only two spots on the bottom of his legs), but thank goodness it hasn't broken out as bad as it did before. We just have to keep a close eye on it and make sure to drown him in lotion and Vaseline every day. He also just started a specific kind of formula recommended by his doctor in case he has some sort of milk allergy, but I can still continue to breastfeed I just have to avoid all food-- I mean, just milk, eggs, peanut butter, soy, and nuts. That seems like everything, aren't dairy and eggs basically in everything?

4 months next to the baby doll

He's in 6-9 month clothes. He likes to grab things or grab your face whenever it is in reach. Last night at dinner he flung his hands out and knocked over Nick's bowl while he was eating. Luckily Nick had just taken the last bite. I think the little guy is ready for some rice cereal, but with his skin the doctor said it might make it break out worse if we start the cereal so we may just wait until 6 months and start veggies and meats.

I love that little smile.

Everyone tells me all the time how much him and Katelyn look alike. People who never even saw Katelyn as a baby tell me they look so much alike. I'm not disagreeing with them, I think they look so much alike-- both freakin adorable. :)

And they love each other so much. 

Jacob especially loves to try and grab Katelyn's hair or face and she gets freaked out and says "AH! Jacob hurt me." haha he still doesn't know what's going on and Katelyn doesn't know that he doesn't know what he's doing.

Here are some things Katelyn likes to do with Jacob:

She likes to feed him his bottle and she does very good at it and will just hold him and keep the bottle still in his mouth. 

She copies EVERYTHING I say to him. When I go pick him up in the morning she always climbs the crib to see him and I'll say something like "Hey sweetheart how are you?" and my little parrot goes "Hey sweetheart how are you?" Or I love when she copies me and says "Hey buuuuddy"

She loves to just sit in his room in the mornings. One day I went in there and she was just sitting on the rocking chair saying "Jacob, you awake?" 

I always here her on the monitor talking to him. It's one of my favorite things to listen to :)

She sometimes gets annoyed of the monitor being on or if Jacob starts crying she runs over and turns it off. It's so funny.

She still likes to inform me of things like "Mom, Jacob's crying" or "Shhh, Mom, Jacob's sleeping" or "Where did Jacob go??" when he goes down for his naps. 

I feel like she's learned a lot from him being here. She is so patient and doesn't get jealous and is very patient with me when I have to take time to help Jacob and stop playing with her or something. So I'm grateful for that.

Well, not much else is going on. He's just growing and growing; and is ready for another hair cut. Yes, ANOTHER hair cut. He would have the perfect hair if he were a girl.

We love our little man. He is growing up too fast!! Can't wait for the fun adventures ahead. :)

You've Had A Birthday, Shout Hooray!

Nick turned 27 on April 28th! I'm glad his birthday was on a Saturday because for once he wasn't out the door before I got breakfast made and we could also spend the whole day together. Katelyn helped me blow up balloons and decorate the house a little bit before he woke up. She LOVES balloons and got sad when I hung most of them up on the wall.

 We had a yummy breakfast in the morning. Katelyn loves eggs so we had some scrambled eggs for her satisfaction. Nick had requested one of our all time favorites.. Krispy Kreme donuts, can't get enough of those. I didn't request anything so I just threw in some sausage and OJ to go with it all.

I wanted to get Nick a really good gift. I wanted it to be something he actually wanted instead of me trying to think of something and throwing a shirt at him and saying "Happy birthday! You love it right??" and he responds with a crooked smile "Yeah I love it!" And really in the back of his head he's thinking "Oh, another shirt...". You know how it is shopping for a guy. You ask them what they want and they either don't respond or anything they want is over 100 dollars. Well usually that's how it is, maybe your husband is out of the norm and is satisfied with a pair of socks or something like that. Of course, Nick is satisfied with socks when he actually needs them, but who really wants socks for their birthday? Anyways, point is I have a hard time finding a good gift for him.

I had been taking notes though! I wrote down any little thing he said for about the past 6 months that he wanted and I would record it in my phone. So when April rolled around I looked in my phone and started my search. I think I succeeded. He looked pretty happy when he opened his gift :) And he still tells me every day when he comes home from school that he loves it.

 
 After that we kind of lounged around and slowly got ready. We Actually went to best buy because yes, I got the perfect gift, but it was the wrong size, and we found a similar one on Amazon for even cheaper. So I guess it was okay if he returned it. :) The gift in case you all are wondering, was a keyboard/case for his galaxy tab.


Then we did a little more shopping and went and got dinner at his favorite Thai place, Lemongrass. We love that place! They have the best yellow curry and pad kee mao. We get it EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. That's how good it is.

I didn't make a fabulous dessert, but I made something quick and easy that was still yummy. Life with a four month old and 2 year old can be a bit busy while you're trying to bake or cook, if you know what I mean.

 Jacob getting ready to sing

Katelyn wanted to help Nick blow out the candles.

I made a brownie strawberry shortcake dessert and some cake truffles. All from Pinterest of course.

I'll admit, I wasn't a huge fan of the cake truffles, but I just barely put the rest of the balls (not covered in chocolate) in the oven and baked them for 10 or so minutes and they make some pretty delicious cookies! No eggs either.

I hope Nicholas enjoyed his birthday celebration. I always try to make the most out of birthdays or holidays because I want my husband and kids to know I love them and love to have fun and celebrate with them so we can build memories.

Happy Birthday to the love of my life! Love you Nick.