4 months old

I am thoroughly enjoying watching my little girl grow. (Although I do wish she would slow down a bit)  I can't believe she is already 4 months old!  Over the past month she has enjoyed sitting in her bumbo chair and just sitting upright in general (she doesn't really like to be sitting down leaning against pillows she wants to be all the way upright), grabbing toys and usually taking them straight to her mouth, using her pacifier as a toy and putting it in her mouth sideways, upside down and occasionally right side up, entertaining herself in the exersaucer, laughing (she has a new one that sounds like a fake cough), and getting smothered in kisses by her mom.

Her binky is by far her favorite toy

She's started drooling a ton and sometimes just starts screaming (no, not crying, just straight screaming), I'm wondering if I'll be seeing teeth soon?  The doctor told me that 4 months is just a drooly age and that the screaming is most likely her discovering her voice.

In the past week she has decided she likes to stand, holding onto mom's hands of course, I wasn't expecting her to have such good trunk control so soon. (I'm amazed at how quickly these little people grow and progress) I was my mom's earliest walker at 9 months, I'm hoping Adalyn will wait awhile longer than I did.

She will be 17 weeks old this coming Thursday.  We had her 4 month check up last week and here are her stats:

Weight: 15 lbs exactly/ 83rd percentile
Height:  24.5 inches/65th percentile

Her doctor said that we could start giving her rice cereal, fruits and vegetables anytime now.  That night we gave her rice cereal for the first time... it really wasn't that fun. It took her a little while to get how to eat it and most of it ended up on her bib, towards the end she just started getting frustrated and kept throwing her head back.  I had made it really thin, which could have been the problem, so eventually I just ended up feeding it to her through a bottle.  I was hoping that she was maybe going to sleep a little longer after having her rice cereal before bedtime, but it made no difference, so for now I have just decided to give it to her every once in a while.  Since I don't really have any reasons to introduce fruits and veggies, besides for our entertainment, I am going to wait until she is closer to 6 months old.

Trying to get her to smile... the hands always go in front of the mouth.

 Her first San Jose Sharks (Ice Hockey) game.  She did great.  I was impressed with how well the earmuffs worked.

Our Baby Pictures

Looking through some pictures wanting to compare our baby pictures to Adalyn's.  This was all I could find for now... one of Andy and two of me.  I'm still curious to see one of Andy at Adalyn's age.

Visiting Friends in Washington

In the end of January Adalyn (2 months old)  and I went to Washington to visit some friends.  Our first stop was in Everett where we met Jackson (7 months old).  Isn't he handsome! :) He is my friend Katie's son.  Katie and I were mission companions together in Balneario Camboriu, Brazil.  We were companions when I had been out in the field for 6 weeks and she had been out for 3 months.  I'm proud of how we were committed to only speaking Portuguese together, although it would have been easier for us to speak english I know we were blessed for our efforts in learning the language.  I can still remember one of our last p-days together when we had our first conversation in english... :) our conversation lasted for quite some time, and we enjoyed seeing more of each other's personalities.

The adorable owl hats that Katie made

So cute! I loved taking pictures of him going after her bow.  Katie actually showed me how to make bows and made this bow for Adalyn. She has a box full of ribbons and flowers that she had in preparation for her little girl to be born... after finding out from the ultrasound that they were expecting a girl her and her husband were surprised on the baby's birthday with a beautiful baby boy.

Katie and I

Our sleeping babes

Next Adalyn and I went to Bellingham to visit Laura and her family.  Laura and I went to High School together and then I convinced her to move from BYU Idaho to Salt Lake City to attend the University of Utah.  We were roommates the year before I left for Brazil.  

Adalyn and I with Mason and Spencer

Laura and her boys

I had a great time getting to know her cute boys and I enjoyed watching my friend's children interact with Adalyn.  Mason was even sweet enough to share his string cheese with Adalyn. :) I'm glad she didn't try to swallow it.

Thank you Katie & Brett and Laura & David for letting me come visit!

Baby on the Way! :) (Last year)

It was this time last year (March 8th 2010), that we found out we were expecting. I can still remember the smile that beamed from ear to ear when I saw the positive sign. I couldn't have been more excited. My brother Garrett's wedding was a few days later, it was so hard to be around my family and not just shout out the secret that I was so excited about. Before getting pregnant I always thought that I had wanted to wait until I was four months along or showing until I told anyone, but once I found out I didn't know how long I was going to be able to keep it in. At our 8 week appointment I got to see the little peanut inside of me and was able to see it's heartbeat. At 12 weeks Andy was able to come to the appointment and we were able to see and hear the baby's heartbeat. Hearing her heartbeat for the first time was such an emotional experience for me, I loved it! So at 12 weeks I figured it was fairly safe to tell my family. After leaving the 12 week appointment I called my parents to see if they wanted to go out for chinese food. I figured we could put some sort of fortune in the cookie letting them know we were expecting. My mom was already making dinner so instead she invited us over. I told her that Andy was working near Dick's bakery so I would have him pick up a burnt almond cake (the cake they are famous for). When Andy brought in the cake I went over and took off the tape and peeked in and said, "that looks good". My dad then went over and peeked in and got all emotional like he does and then he called my mom over to look at it. The writing on the cake said, "Congratulations, baby on the way". For a second my dad thought that maybe we had picked up someone else's cake by accident. Needless to say they were excited to find out that a grand baby was on it's way.

One of the best reactions we got that night was from my teenage cousin, Kyle. When we told him that we were going to have a "mini armstrong" he quickly responded, "you guys are going to get a mini!" He had been wanting a mini cooper for quite sometime so when he heard mini his mind went straight to cars. We laughed pretty hard.

A few of my favorites from Adalyn's Newborn Photo Shoot

My Little Angel

Here is my sweet little angel (a week and a half old). Stephanie Cole Rich came over and did a photo shoot for us. She did a great job, I was really happy with how the pictures turned out.

I'm so frustrated with trying to Blog... I remember it being so user friendly, but lately every time I go to make a posting it takes me 45 min to an hour to finally get it to let me upload pictures! It just keeps telling me that I need to fill in my blog ID. Eventually I'll get this figured out so that it can be quick and enjoyable rather than end up being 11:30 pm on a work night with only one picture uploaded, and a grumpy me. :)

Happy Valentine's Day

Yay! It took me 45 minutes to finally figure out how to fill in my blogger id so I could post a picture! :) So here it is... One of Adalyn's first pictures on Thanksgiving Day 2010! :) I can't believe how quickly she is growing! Here's a picture of her today, Happy Valentine's Day!

The two of us have a had a great week filled with lots of walks and jogs, tummy time, mom and baby yoga, a valentines day party, and meeting her new friend Gracelyn!

Adalyn and I just started going to a mom and baby yoga class last week. We walked into a small room filled with moms and babies from 6 weeks to 6 months of age. There were approximately 25 moms there, my first thoughts were: how is this going to work? It turned out to be a great experience, the babies love the class and it is so fun to look around and see all their smiles and hear their sweet noises. They were all so surprisingly good, if you were standing outside the door you wouldn't have known there was a single baby in the room. We went back for our second class today and she giggled for the first time! :) I loved it and can't wait to hear more of her sweet giggles.

On Sunday we got to meet sweet little Gracelyn Rose who was just two days old at the time. She is so tiny and precious. It was fun to meet and hold her. Her mom, Julie, and I have been walking together throughout our pregnancies. Adalyn is just 11 weeks older than Gracelyn, it was crazy to see how much Adalyn has grown since her birth, although she was never that small to begin with.