Summer Fun

Here's a video I took of Weston recently. It's not even that special but I just love watching his little legs and his face-breaking grin. You get a glimpse of his chattering too which has recently begun to take place from sun up to sun down. He really thinks I know every word he's saying. I love it.

  

The other day my sisters and their kids came over in the afternoon and played on Amy's slip 'n slide. I broke down and went a put my swimming suit on so I could demonstrate a good run down the slide. Let's just say slip 'n slides are not the nursing mother's best friend! I only went down a few times before I started losing my nerve and not running quite so fast. =) Weston wasn't too excited by it but of course after I got him dressed he discovered there were still puddles of water to play in and got himself totally wet. Silly boy.

Mark's niece Stephanie is here again for a little while and has been a big help. I actually got to take a bath yesterday! She's going camping this weekend with Mark and Wes and the Carlson/Pack side of the family. Since Saydi is still waking up so much at night we felt like it would be rude to keep the whole family up! I'll be grateful for the extra eyes on Weston since, let's face it, Mark tends to become a Fussy-watching slacker around all his family!

Saydi got her pictures taken yesterday and they are INCREDIBLE. I can hardly wait to get them and post them. I took her in for a weight check today (9 lbs!!) and also had her belly button looked at. It sticks out about an inch and sure enough - she has a hernia. The doctor said most babies that get them reabsorb them within the first 12 months so she should be fine. Mark's devastated we have to wait that long though because belly buttons make him sick to begin with but Saydi's puts him over the edge! He says he's not changing her diapers till it goes away...uh huh. We'll see about that! 

Life is becoming normal again and I am so thankful every day for my beautiful family. They mean everything to me!

One Month Old - and Other Shannanigans

I can hardly believe Saydi is already a month old. This is a picture of her I took today.

The sad thing is she's about as big as Weston is when he was born and she's already four weeks old! We're catching up though and she's gaining almost a pound a week so hopefully she'll keep doing well and get big soon. But not too soon! This weekend I put a bow on her and it actually didn't look too big. I also painted her toenails and it's adorable! I'm loving having a little girl.

I swear my child doesn't spend her whole life in her car seat but that seems to be the only time I have enough hands to break out the camera and take pictures of her. I had to post these though because my kids are the silliest little sleepers ever. 

I took this picture of Saydi sleeping and then walked away to go put the camera back. When I came back to get her she had then changed her position to this:

I just think she's so adorable. =) This week we went to Blackfoot and had dinner with Mark and then went to a baseball game. Weston stayed up way past his bed time and he held out almost all the way home. I was letting him play with my broken sunglasses and when we got home this is how I found him:

That is a piece of my sunglasses. I seriously had to pry his jaw open to get it out. He's so funny. He loves sunglasses and will play with them any way he can get them. So things are going good around our joint. I am SO ready for fall and winter already. I like the things you can do in the summer but I HATE being hot and always have. Thank goodness for basements!

Family Pictures

My best friend Jackie did some family pictures for us this morning. This is just a sneak peek. There will be more to come but I'm so in love with them that I wanted to post what she gave me already. She is so talented and we really appreciate her doing this for us. Her blog is on my blog list - Photography by Jaclyn. Thanks Jackie! You're the best!

Little Lady Saydi

We are still getting to know our sweet little girl but here are some things we've discovered so far:

Unfortunately she inherited my loudness. Her cry is honestly deafening. The good thing is she doesn't cry for no reason like Weston did when he was her age. She calms down pretty easy and only throws big fits when I change her bum. Another thing she got from me is my ridiculously long tongue.  It doesn't quite fit in her mouth yet. She'll probably be able to touch her nose with her tongue like me. =)

She still doesn't really know the difference between day and night and I'm averaging about three hours of sleep a night. Luckily Mark doesn't have to be in to work until noon so I get to get some sleep in the morning when she finally starts to sleep better. Mark remembers it being like this with Weston but somehow that memory was erased from my mind and I have felt a little unprepared for this whole thing. Must be a trick to get me to keep having kids! She sleeps just like every other member of our little family...with her arms above her head. Both Mark and I sleep that way and both Weston and Saydi were that way when I got my ultrasounds. They both sleep that way still. I have to pin her arms down with her blanket most of the time though because when she wakes up she smacks herself in the face with them and then gets mad.

We've had lots of company and help. Aunt Bea came for a while and Weston had lots of fun playing with her. She helped me lots too and it was very appreciated. We also made a bunch of bracelets for Saydi and I'm obsessed with them now. She wears one every day no matter what! 

I can't wait until she gets a little bigger and I can start putting her cute bows and head bands on. Her head is way too little still so it just looks ridiculous. Anyway, one night while Becky was here she was holding Saydi while I was bathing Weston. She came into the bathroom to pull her hair up. She started to giggle and I turned around and she wasn't holding Saydi anymore and was pulling her hair up. I was a little confused and then she pointed out to me what she had done with Saydi in the mean time. 

Can you believe her?! Only Aunt Bea. Saydi didn't move a muscle and that was Becky's argument of why it was okay...because she was comfortable. =) It IS pretty adorable. Mark's niece Stephanie also came and stayed for a few days. Weston loves her and it's hard to remember they are cousins and not aunt/nephew. They had lots of fun playing and it was nice to have some help at night when things get a little hectic. 

We're all still adjusting to life with two kids under two but we love it and we know we're so blessed to have such special little people in our lives. Mark has been so great and really helps me a lot. He's good at making sure I don't overdo things. We're waiting for Saydi to gain more weight. She was having a hard time of it and so I'm still feeding her every two hours during the day. This is a new experience for me since Weston has always been such a heavy weight! I love my little family and despite the exhausted fog I'm in I feel so blessed to have them in my life.

My Beautiful Babies

Here are some recent pictures I've taken (admittedly not as many as I should have taken or as many as I took with Weston...terrible, I know). I know I'm probably biased but I just think my kids are so beautiful. I love to look at them and memorize their little features because they change so much. I hope when Weston is Mark's age I will remember him how he is now. And the same goes for Saydi. I love them so much already and can not even imagine my life without them despite the fact that they have been in my life for such a short amount of time.

Weston trying to calm Saydi down.

I couldn't resist posting this one. Mark loves this dumb hat he got in Mexico on our cruise and he wears it when he does lawn work. Weston loves it now too!

I love to watch my kids sleep. I took this picture of Saydi the other day in her crib. I just think she's precious!

Apparently life is just exhausting when you're 10 days old.

This cracks me up. Weston loves to peek in at Saydi but he always climbs up there and forgets that he's not comfortable getting down on his own. So he'll just hang there and fuss until we come get him. Fussy Britches.

My life seems to be flying by and standing still all at the same time now that I've got two little ones. Saydi had really bad jaundice and for the first nine days of her life I was feeding her every two hours. Jaundice makes them really sleepy too so it wasn't an easy task to wake her and that alone would sometimes take a half an hour. She's finally over it though and has started eating just about every three to four hours which is such a nice change. I still feel like a zombie most of the time but I also have periods where I feel so great so that's nice. She is a good baby and we are falling more and more in love with her every day. The other night I finished nursing her and sat her up. Her hair was a total mess, she had milk dripping all over her chin and was smacking her lips and I just absolutely fell in love with her at that moment. Only a mother I suppose. =) Weston is being so incredible with her. He constantly wants to hold her. He used to randomly say Ma Ma and Da Da throughout the day and now he has included Be Be which is Baby. He can't quite figure out how to say Saydi yet. I wanted to post this video of the first time he saw her though. He was more impressed with my squeaky bed. 

But then I took this video today and you can see that he has been won over by her. He always wants to help her when she cries and he loves to put his face as close to hers as possible when he holds her.

So we're adjusting to life with two kids slowly but surely. The days seem to all run together. But of course, whenever you have big life events you also have to have problems come up. Mark and I found wet carpet in our spare bedroom this last weekend and it rapidly turned into the entire room being wet including outside the bathroom in the hallway. So we had to call a company to come dry it and we found out that there was mold in the walls because the previous owners had apparently had the same problem and only taken care of one wall and not the other two as well. The water leaked in from the window well after that terrible rain storm so now we have to find a way to fix it so that we don't have to deal with this again. Sometimes being grown up is just nothing but a hassle!