It's Fall!!

Today at 3:18 pm it is officially Fall!! I'm so happy. It's cool outside and I see orange leaves in the mountains! YES!!

Gretta is now 6 months old!! Holy cow! Her stats have improved a bit which is great. Last appointment: Weight-15.8 lbs= 50% percentile!! Whoo hoo Gretta!! Height-50% like always. And head circumference...drum roll please...5% percentile!!!!!! Yeah! She went up in two categories!! Hooray for my cute bug!! I'm so pleased! She's a sweetheart and I couldn't ask for a better baby.

But alas, teething is here and it's here with a vengence. I thought we had been teething for months now because of the constant buckets of drool. But that was nothing to the irritability, fevers, no sleeping, constant chewing that we're encountering now. So I've said a sad farewell to my wonderful schedule and cried a silent tear in farewell of the sleep-filled nights that used to be mine...She no longer falls asleep by herself, but demands to be rocked. Which is actually okay because I missed it...a lot... But sometimes, I miss the ease in which we floated through our days. But we're happy to get teeth and to grow up! Hooray for progress! It is funny though, she could be growing up a little too fast. Instantly she hates her crib, swing anything she used to sleep in and now will opt for our bed. I must say, it is VERY comfortable and so Gretta feels she's entitled to a comfortable nights sleep on a pillow-top. I hope this phase ends too, otherwise I'm in trouble. ;) But at 3am it's so much easier to just bring her to my bed where she falls instantly, deeply, wonderfully asleep, than fight it all night. I'm not too worried. I know once we get past these teeth we'll get back. I love this baby!!

It's dark, but you can see she's out, on my bed!

Speaking of babies, my oldest brother and his wife just had their baby last night! only 6 months and 1 day younger than Gretta! His name is Thomas Rex! I think that's so cute! So that's 9 grandchildren on my side with one more currently on the way! I love our family and we're so excited to welcome cute Thomas to it! Congratulations guys!! I don't have a picture, actually I haven't even seen him yet so I can't post one. Sorry.

Why am I so Lucky?

I feel so grateful. I’ve been blessed with the sweetest baby. She is just wonderful. I love this age. I love to see her grow up and look more and more like a little person. Sitting up and playing with toys and eating real food. It’s just so fun! I don’t ever rock her to sleep before her naps. She has completely taught herself to go to sleep. I start her music, give her a hug and kiss, lay her in her crib with her binky and put a blanket on her and she goes right to sleep. Not only that but for the last little while she’s slept all through the night without a peep. I have gotten up in the middle of the night and worried because I remembered that I hadn’t heard her that cry the whole night. So I literally ripped the covers off and ran into her room, only to find her sleeping peacefully.

The other night I did take the opportunity and time to rock her to sleep even though she doesn’t need it. I was so overwhelmed with love for my little baby. She is so precious. I was tired but I remember thinking, I am so lucky to be able to rock my little baby to sleep. I am so lucky that I get to have this uninterrupted, special time with her. I am so lucky that I was blessed with a baby to rock. I thought back to those years of infertility when Marc and I cried and prayed every night that we would be blessed with children and I felt tears sting my eyes and I thanked my Father in Heaven for sending me this perfect, special spirit. I continued to rock her and sing softly in her ear and at that moment I couldn’t have asked for anything else in the world. Marc was sitting on the floor of the nursery watching me rock our little girl and smiling softly at me and I could see the unconditional love in his eyes. I was looking back and forth between my dearest friend, my husband and eternal companion and my beautiful little baby and it felt like my heart could hold no more love.

Motherhood, for me, has truly been the absolute most fulfilling, amazing blessing that my Heavenly Father could ever give me. It has built an amazingly strong bond between Marc and me, between God and me and between me and my little Gretta bug. I cannot ask for more. My Heavenly Father is truly so merciful and loving and blesses me more than I know I deserve and more than I could ever imagine possible. Why am I so lucky?

Check out this link...

If you have a minute, check out this link. This is my cousin's daughter, Taylie who has just been diagnosed with leukemia. If you can spare a minute, say a prayer for her. She's fighting so hard.

www.tayliebug.com

Thanks

The Autumn Leaves...

I am really excited for Fall. I use to say that Fall was my favorite season because everyone in school always said Summer was their favorite season and I wanted to be different. But now as I've gotten older, I realized that I really do LOVE Fall. About mid-july I've really had enough of Summer and I'm ready to move on. I know that sounds crazy but I just look forward to cooler days, the smell of fall in the air, maybe even seeing smoke come out of somebody's chimney... I love the sweatshirts, the new socks, waking up to the smell of rain and being so excited to bring an umbrella. I love coming inside and seeing light pink cheeks and red noses, and I love that the sun goes down at 6 and just savoring an evening at home and knowing it's an evening that lasts a lot longer now. I love seeing the leaves change and looking out the window and watching them fall off of the trees. I love turning off the swamp cooler and turning on the heater for the first time. When I was little I would get a blanket and sit on a vent in the living room and wrap the blanket around me so there were no holes and just sit in a balloon of warm air as the heat filled my blanket. It bubbled around me and kept me warm. I remember coming home from school, making myself hot chocolate and grabbing my favorite blanket and "sitting on the heater" to do my homework. I love Fall. So I decided even though there's still officially 3 weeks of Summer left that I'd change my background to fall colored flowers and just bide out the time joyfully looking forward. I always make my own backgrounds but this year for fall, I wanted something that I knew I couldn't make and so that's why I've kind of "sold out" and opted to use a pre-made background. I must say, it's easy, fun and fast so I might resort to this more often in the future. We'll see. Hurry and come September 22nd, I've missed you so much!!

5 months old and what we've been up to...

Just a warning, Lots of pictures (in no particular order) since I'm way behind on the updates.



Hanging out, (not the best picture)

Hanging out with Dad, and learning to hold her own bottle!!

Loving sitting in her high chair!!

Hanging out with Mom! Our favorite!

Mastering holding her bottle!!

Eating rice cereal and loving it!!

Realizing the spoon is almost as good as the rice!

Grabbing on to all of her toys!!

Smiling on tummy-time.

Learning how to sit all by herself!! She's getting so good at it!

Eating everything that gets in her hands!

Warming mom's heart with moments like this!

Finding where her toes are and loving it!!

Finally sleeping in her crib all night for 10 hours. (This is still shaky and some days it's better than others)

Just being so dang cute!

Sitting up in her bath. She absolutely loves sitting up which only makes our already enjoyable bathtime, even more enjoyable!!

Cutest, I love those little rolls!



We have the most fun time. This is right out of the bath looking in the mirror! She loves the mirror!

She's mastering the mini push-up!

Kickin' back and relaxing. She always puts this hand up behind her head. It's so funny and too cute!

Enjoying the outdoors and the last days of summer!

Sporting our favorite 0-3 month outfit. Yes she's still wearing some 0-3 month clothes even though she's 5 months old. She's still only 50th percentile for height, 25th for weight and 3 percent for head. She's a cutie!

This is priceless. I love those eyes!!

This smile is the cutest smile I've ever seen! It's usually so hard to get a good smile cause she doesn't hold still but I happened to catch this one and I absolutely love it!!

This is my favorite little girl!! I love this face, beautiful eyes, cutest cheeks...Being Gretta's mom is the best thing in the world. I love every single day. Yes, there are hard days (and nights) but in the end, everything is worth it. When I hold this baby close to me and sing softly in her ear while I rock her to sleep, the spirit hits me so strongly and my heart is filled with more love than I thought possible. I'm so grateful to be Gretta's mom! Marc and I are so lucky. We love you, Gretta Bug!

Gretta's 4 month update...

Well, it has been a wonderful 4 months with our little baby. I can't believe how much she's grown up and developed in the last 4 months but specifically the last month! I know how clichè that sounds but it's true. She's rolling over from stomach to back as well as back to stomach. She's scooting forward, she's laughing out loud, she's reaching out and grasping things so much more. It's so fun to see her learn new things. I am loving it! So anyway, here are the stats:



Birth: 7 lbs. 3 oz.
19.5 in.
can't find the head measurement



2 weeks: 7 lbs. 13 oz. 45% percentile
20 in. 50% percentile
34 cm 12% percentile



2 months: 11 lbs. 3.5 oz. 50% percentile
22.75 in. 50% percentile
37.8 cm. 25% percentile



4 months: 12.12 lbs. 27% percentile
24.5 in. 52% percentile
38.5 cm. 3% percentile



She's a little peanut. I was worried about her weight a lot but they said she's just fine because they tend to see the weight gain drop around 4 months. What they are concerned about is her head circumference. Well, they are not really worried because all her developmental milestones are right on track and some a little advanced but they do want to watch it. So I have an appointment in a month to see how her head is. If it hasn't grown enough then we will have to get a CT scan to ensure that her skull hasn't been prematurely fused. I personally think that the nurse did the 2 month measurement wrong but what do I know... We're just suppose to watch her development and if anything seems slow or weird we're suppose to take her in. The doctor was going to do a few lab tests at her appointment but since she got her second round of shots he decided not to torture her too much in one day, to which I replied with a HUGE sigh of relief. So we'll see what happens in a month. Until then we're just loving her and loving watching her grow. She is just the best baby. She is already kind of partial to Marc and me and resists being held by strangers, but despite being extra clingy, she is a happy girl.

I haven't started solid food yet but I plan to by about her 5th month birthday so we'll see how that goes. I'm reluctant only because I love nursing and I'm not sure I'm fully ready to move to the next phase just yet. So I guess I'm just going to live up this next month of exclusive nursing and just really appreciate all the time I get to bond with my little girl.

She's started getting out of her sleeping schedule. She use to go to bed anywhere between 9:30-10:30 and sleep for 8-10 hours but then one night I put her down at 10:30 and 45 minutes later she was up, wired and awake from that great nap... So getting back on some sort of schedule has been a challenge but really, I don't care that much right now. I don't work and so besides just being tired when she wakes up at 3 I am just fine to catch up on sleep during her naps during the day. So I can't complain, but to all you veteran mothers out there, I would love some input on how to instigate a schedule that is not insanely strict but rigid enough for some consistency. I'm not really worried about setting an exact schedule this early but I'd love some input on how to ease into a schedule maybe by 6 months. Thank you in advance!

So all in all we're doing good. I'm anxious to see her weight and head circumference in a month so that my mind can be put at ease.

I haven't posted about our fun trip to Lake Powell but that's next on my list, and to keep you all interested and in suspense, here's a little preview of Gretta in one of her cute swimming suits and a sun hat. I love that face. I could kiss those cheeks til the end of the world.

Our weight loss plans...

Both Marc and I are unhappy with our current health and weight so we have started watching what we eat and exercising. I don't know if anyone wants the details but I am SO excited about my program so far! I have decided to be positive and watch my success on a ticker so that I can stay motivated! So that ticker is mostly for me...but I wouldn't shun any praise that comes my way...