She only laughs at the dog

My mom and dad came over on Sunday after Church. Abby's Baby Dedication is this coming Sunday at our church and they aren't 100% sure that my dad can make it. He was in town this weekend, so they dropped by after church to see Little Miss.

She loved seeing her Nana and Pops.

Thank you Aunt Sarita for the little Bird Dog you gave Abby. It's the only thing that she will laugh at. We just aren't nearly as funny as this dog.

She's a little repeater!!!

Today my little helper was watching me make dinner. She was getting bored so I started making noises with my mouth to entertain her. I turned my back and walked towards the stove and heard her trying to repeat my sounds. I quickly looked at her and did it again. She again mocked me. I almost cried. It was the sweetest thing.

My little helper

Here's a little video of her repeating the bubble blowing sound.

Baby King Size Bed

or you can call it her Crib. Either way, this is where Little Miss has been sleeping for the past week. I'm so proud of her. We've gone from the cradle to the swing, to our bed, back to the swing, sometimes the cradle, to our bed, and then back again to the swing..... to now FINALLY her own Crib!

When it's bedtime, I'm just laying her down and she's eventually falling asleep on her own. Sprawling out and enjoy her own bed.

Our sleeping little angel

Now, I didn't say that she's sleeping all night long. That's still on the prayer list. But she is getting better. She only waking up to eat between one and two times per night and waking up looking for her paci between 35 and 40 times. It's the paci that's killing me. If I could only teach her to put the paci back in her mouth by herself, then we would be good!

Missing Socks

Have you ever been out and about with your baby all day long only to return home and notice one little bare chubby foot and one with a sock on it? This happens to me all the time.

What good does a sock do you if you only have one of the pair?!

I don't know either, but for some reason, I'm saving them all. I guess I'm secretly hoping that the missing sock will show up.

Here are all of our socks without pairs. If you find our missing socks, please let us know!

Dinner with Lizzy & Chris

We got together this past weekend with our dear friends Liz and Chris. It was so good to see them again. They hadn't seen Abby in person since she was born, 5 months ago!!

Sweet Lizzy!!

Abby was showing Liz how she does NOT look at the camera and smile.

I think Chris thought he could win the "stare & don't blink" game.

Boy was he wrong!

We had such a great time at dinner. We love you guys!!

Chatty-Abby

Abs has been "talking" so much lately. She doesn't really care that she's not making any sense to anyone. She just likes to hear herself talk. Who doesn't?

Here she was talking up a storm to me on Sunday as she was laying on the love-seat with her Daddy watching ESPN (her favorite channel these days).

I love....

Your smile

Your eyes

Picking you up from school

Giving you a bath

Your sneeze/toot combos

The way you look at me

Watching you sleep

How you cuddle against me

The way you stare at people you don't know

The "lip"

How you refuse to smile at a camera

Your sweet toes

Your chubby feet

How you suck on your right fist.....and now the left fist

Rocking you to sleep

How you try to hold your bottle, but it would end up in your ear if I left it to you

The way you talk to me in the mornings

Bathtime

My sweet sweet Abby:
Above are only a few of the things that I love about you these days. It's amazing watching you grow and learn and literally do new things everyday. I wish I could follow you around with a video camera to capture every sweet moment. You're growing up way too fast for me. I've been nursing you less these days. Although I've felt some freedom, it saddens me. It'll be all too soon that I'll nurse you for the last time and the bottle is all you need. This already brings so many tears to my eyes. Oh how I love you. You are my sweet little joy that I can't live without. Happy 5 month Bday my love! - love, your Mommy

I love this look on her face. She's like, "wait! - lemme kick my shoe off."

Drew and Caden

My sweet nephews. I love them so much. I call Mama usually everyday and she has a different story to tell me about what one of them did or said. Here's what I learned this morning.

They all went to eat (without me by the way) to a Mexican food place. Even though they had already finished eating, Caden wanted to go to McDonald's and was pretty upset that they weren't going to go.

Caden: "Nana, will you take me to McDonald's?"

Nana: "No. We've already eaten."

Caden: "I'll give you 20 bucks....?"

Andrea: "I gave him a dollar the other day and now he thinks he's rich."


The boys had to go to the dr this week for their yearly checkups. Drew and Caden had to both get shots and then Drew had to have his finger pricked for blood. So the nurse comes in to give Drew the shot.

Nurse: "Okay, which arm to you want it in?"

Drew: He quickly responded, "Neither!"

Then on the way home from school, Drew was telling his Nana all about the dr appt and told her that he had his finger pricked for blood.

Drew: "Nana, will I get back my blood?

Nana: "No."

Drew: "Well, what am I going to do?"

Nana: "You're fine. Your body will make more."

Drew: "How?"

Nana: sigh - "It just does."

They are both too funny!

First day of Spring Break

Yes, even at 4 1/2 months you get a Spring Break! I'll try to post random pics of little miss this week seeing how we'll be home quite a bit.

She woke up this morning from her early morning nap and begged me to wear this shirt. "Who needs a piggy bank when you have daddy?" I need one of these in a size Large and just replaced Daddy with Stan.

I put in one of her Baby Einstein videos to see if she would watch it and she did! All of it! It was so cute to watch her watch TV. She would even yell at the TV every once in a while.

Wish me luck as I try to creatively come up with things for her to do on her Spring Break and get my house cleaned all at the same time. Which by the way, I think someone broke into our house and threw all of our stuff all over the place. I know we couldn't have caused this disaster.

Abby, please smile.

After church today, I wanted to take Abby's picture in her little jeans mini skirt. She looked so precious. Her daddy was a bit concerned that the skirt was too short and the boys in her class at church would be staring at her. I assured him that we should be fine at this age.

My only problem with trying to take the picture is getting her to SMILE for the camera. UGH! She's is something else. You bring the camera out and she just stares at you!

Here's the first try. Her usual camera pose.

So I decided to try and make her laugh by utilizing some of her new friends.

First, I tried the dog.

She decides to eat his ear.

Then I tried her duck. (look at those sweet cheeks)

And again she eats it.

still eating..

I gave up but she still wanted to eat. Here's her latest, she's moved on to her left hand now. The right hand is old news.

Still eating...

Finally, right before I gave up, she felt sorry for me and decided she would smile. I think she just wanted me to quit begging. Here's our little SMILING angel. :)

I took a video of Abby laughing again. Stan and I were just talking today that we haven't heard her laugh since Drew got her to laugh a while ago. Well, she laughs again!! Enjoy!

My new Bible Study

My friend Karen and I are going to start this new little Bible Study together on Monday. I'm really looking forward to it. I hope I can stick with it. Here lately, I'll start something and for some little cute reason with big blue eyes and a little swirl on her head, I never finish. Wish me luck!

Stan, will you watch the baby for me?

I'm not sure who's taking care of who here.......

Thank you Jess!

Today when I got off work at 2pm (Yes, I know the hard life of working 10am-2pm), I went over to Jessica's. She let me take a nap while she watched Abby. It was wonderful. Although I woke up to not one but TWO screaming babies, I enjoyed every minute of my 1 1/2 hour nap! Thank you Jess!! I love you!! Next time, it's your turn!

Bathtime is definitely different these days

Here she was so tiny at two weeks. She was so slippery and would sleep through the whole thing. Bathtime was much different then.

Here she is now at 4 1/2 months old (sorry the pic is fuzzy). She LOVES her bath. She kicks the water all over the place. I was trying to get a picture of her licking her shoulders like a little puppy as I poured the water on her, but I couldn't capture it. Trust me though, it's hilarious!

This is Abby's classic "get that camera out of my face" look. This makes me laugh so hard.

Daddy, she's had a bad day

Last night was a rough night. Little Miss did not want to sleep. I just don't understand it. Who wouldn't want to sleep?! She would start the scream cry and would NOT let me put her down. Nothing could convince her to go to sleep. No paci, no matter what color. No food, she wouldn't take me or a bottle. She didn't care about blankets. Nothing would work. -sigh-

Finally, after 30 minutes of crying in the swing, she fell asleep and we both got 4 hours of sweet sweet sleep. We made it through somehow and off to school and work we had to go.

As I picked Abby up from school today, her teacher greets me and says, "She's had a bad day." Oh dear, I thought. "She screamed all day long. We thought about calling you, but decided to see if we could make it." "We think she's sleepy, but for some reason, she will not go to sleep."

Uhhh, ya think?!! I KNOW she's sleepy. I'm sleepy too! Look at her little sleepy face. :)

Here I am talking to Abby about her "bad" day.

Nana's iPhone pictures

I feel like I'm the only person in the whole world that doesn't have an iPhone. Here's lots of pictures my mom took the other day when she came to help me. All iPhone pics!

Rice Cereal, yuck!

Abby had her 4 month check up and Dr. G suggested that we go ahead and start Abby on rice cereal. Her recent stats were weight 11 pounds and 7 ounces (10-25% percentile), height 24 inches long (50 percentile) and her head was 15.5 inches around (25% percentile). She's still such a little petite thing that maybe the rice cereal will help her put some weight on and HOPEFULLY we'll start sleeping through the night! Please Lord.

So we tried what the dr ordered.

YUCK!

She wasn't exactly thrilled of this new dinner choice with a spoon. So we are just going to have to slowly work on it. I've been putting a little bit of this in her bottles at night. She's not complaining, so I'm going to keep on giving it to her.

I will try the bowl and spoon method again this week, but I'm not expecting success. Just her best effort! Which may be the same as last week, but oh well. We will try.

We already Miss you!

Guess who loves who?

The countdown starts now...only 8 more days to go!

They came back!!!

I can't believe it!! I planted these flowers last year and the flower label said they would come back every year, but I never dreamed they REALLY would. Trust me, I do not have a green thumb. For some reason, every time I plant something it doesn't ever seem to last long. But I must have done something right this time. Here they are one year later!

I was so proud of them that I tried to get a close-up. Not only do I not have a green thumb, I'm not a great photographer either. Sorry it's blurry. ;)

Of course, I had to show Abs my accomplishment. She's wasn't too thrilled. It was hot the day I took the pictures and she only wanted to go back inside.

She refused to open her eyes!