Thursday, September 26, 2019

Lydia - 6 Months

Lydia is 6 months old! She is trying new kinds of food, and although it took some practice to get a hang of the whole open-your-mouth-there-is-food-on-this-contraption bit, she's getting it down and so far has not gagged on anything. Woohoo!


She's a tiny little squirt, weighing in at 12 lb 11 oz (2%) and 25 inches (13%). What can I say, we make small babies.


Lydia is starting to sit on her own for (very) short periods of time, rolls both directions, puts everything in her mouth, and is a self proclaimed mommy's girl. If I set her down, even if I don't leave, the water works start. If I set her down and then leave you might think that an alligator was biting her pinky toe. It's a little ridiculous, but I love her anyway.


She wakes once to eat at night, usually around 4 AM, and is up between 6 and 7 AM for the day. I always hope it ends up being closer to 7 AM. After trying to night wean her for a couple of weeks, once I got down to only feeding her for two minutes on each side, she would wake up again after an hour or so wanting to eat again. I decided she wasn't quite ready for that step, so we are back to where we started. Oh well.


After naps, and at other random times of the day, she is very excited to see me. She opens her mouth really big, her whole body shakes, and she grabs my face as she clenches on for a great big hug. Those moments bring me great joy! She loves her blankie, my singing to her, anything made out of rubber or plastic, and going on walks. We love having her!

Lydia's Blessing Weekend

Lydia Elise was given a name and a blessing by Ryan on September 1. We had a lot of family and friends join us for the occasion. We made a fun weekend out of it, and we had a wonderful time.

Day #1: We went to the zoo! Our crowd included our family, Papa (my dad), Sessie, the Brownings, Ben and Sarah, and Holly and Garrett. It was a really fun day and I'm so glad we all got to go together.



Let it be known that Dallin is a runner. Onlookers, judge all you want, this kid requires a leash!














Day #2: The blessing day! Our group took up a good three pews at church. On top of the zoo crowd we had Berne and Cindy, David and Ashley's family, Brady and Erin's family, my grandma, Aunt Roxanne, Nana (my mom), Jared Kempton, and the Cooks. 
The blessing was beautiful. Lydia fussed a little bit, but overall it was a perfect five minutes.






After sacrament meeting everyone came back to our house for lunch. We did a taco bar that was superbly executed, if I do say so myself (I had help, and overall I was quite impressed by how smoothly everything went and how not stressed out I was).

Lydia was loved by all!










Day #3: A bit more relaxed. My grandma made this blanket for Dallin and he was in love! 

I went antiquing with my dad, Roxanne, and Grandma. 



At about 3 PM the Brownings got to our house and we headed to the pool. We stayed until  5 PM and then came home and had a hot dog and burger BBQ (it was Labor Day, after all!) for dinner.




It was an amazing weekend, full of wonderful memories. 

August Antics

It might be nearly the end of September, but that doesn't mean we didn't experience August at our house! Here are some fun updates from the month. 

I threw a grape, aiming for the sink, and it landed here. Of course I had to document this miracle.


We have seen a lot of dragonflies this year! They're so pretty.


One of the items on our summer bucket list was to go to an ice cream shop. One hot afternoon we met our friends Camille and Emma at Ben and Jerry's in Old Town Square. We got our ice cream and then the kids played in the pop fountains for a while. It was a really fun afternoon!





Lunch in front of the TV. I love these kids.


Another bucket list item was painting. The girls had fun creating masterpieces.


My two littles. Warms my mommy heart!


Brianna ran into a door knob and got a black eye. Whoops!


As Ryan finishes our basement he is awakening some creatures of the darkness. This spider crawled out from the depths of the underworld into our basement. Ryan put on his man-sized panties and caught it! After ooo-ing and ahh-ing and ewww-ing for a while he released it in the field behind our house. It is definitely the biggest spider I have ever seen in the wild!




Dallin loves spending time with Maya. They enjoyed looking at books together one morning.


We had dinner at a friends' house from the ward, and the girls got to gather chicken eggs from their back yard! This couple has a lot of chickens and two horses. After dinner Tony took them on a ride around their property in a trailer thing. The kids loved our visit with them!


August was full of completing items on our bucket list. Another one was a trip to Scheel's. They're ultimately a really big sport equipment store but have some fun things to look at and do. We had some fun bowling and looking at stuffed animals.





Ryan and I watched an amazing lightning storm one night! It went on for hours. We didn't watch it for hours. It wasn't THAT cool.


Maya and Brianna helped shred chicken for a salad one night. I don't remember what I was doing that required their help with this, but I appreciated it!


We started reading the Harry Potter series and finished the first book right before school started. It is very fun to share this snip bit of my "childhood" (if you count being a teenager and young adult as part of your childhood) with them.


On the Friday before school started I took all four kids to the pool by myself. We only stayed for about an hour, but everyone had a good time, and *BONUS* no one cried when it was time to go. Mommy Level: Expert. At least for this one day.



I pickled some banana peppers from our garden. We have since eaten almost all of these and they turned out quite yummy! I think I will plant them again next year.


Daddy time is always the best.


Brianna was home sick from school. Dallin didn't quite get that she needed to rest and therefore be left alone. He wanted to be right by her all day.


Oh look! One hair do for the month! Honestly, I do stuff slightly more often than I document, but I don't take pictures like I used to. Probably because I don't get to do as fancy of stuff anymore. They won't let me. *sniffle*


One glorious thing about having both girls in school all day is getting to run errands with just two kids instead of four. There is something magical about having one kid in the cart and one kid strapped to me and zero kids touching everything, asking to buy everything, not paying attention and getting left behind. Ahh yes. I do bask in this.

I took Dallin and Lydia to Hobby Lobby one day and afterwards we went to Cafe Rio for lunch. They were both very well behaved and I loved my time with them!