Memorial Day Weekend

Hey Everyone!

Cade has been in New York City which means that my tail is going ANYWHERE that will help me take care of the kido. :) Thus, we pull into Denison for a relaxing weekend. We spent some time sleeping... (me, not Lyla. Ha.), playing in the baby pool, and eating. I can feel the summer coming. It's SO close!!

On a side note, letting a 10 month old eat an entire child's lasgna is NOT a good idea, despite their begging. Just saying.

Here are some pictures from the weekend. :)

Happy Memorial Day everyone. Hang in there teacher friends. 8 days. :)

9 Months Old!

Well, we made it to 9 months and I don't think we've caused too much damage. :)

Stat's:
You are almost 24 pounds. I have no idea how long you are. I do know that you are the cutest chunk in the world. :)

Eat:
You eat what we eat. Sometimes if we are having something that you can't have... hot wings, etc, you eat baby food. You are much more interested in what we are having though. You take 4, 7 oz bottles a day still and have lots of water from your sippy cup... every now and then, I put a little splash of apple juice in it.

Wear:
You wear size 4 diapers... barely. You wear 18 month cloths comfortably but Momma still try's to squeeze those thunda thighs into 12 month old clothes. Haha

Likes:
You are OBSESSED with cords. You show a preference for ones that are plugged into a wall because you like to give Mom and Dad heart attacks. You also enjoy looking at yourself in the mirror, you just laugh and kick those legs around. You also, surprisingly, LOVE anytime you get to eat. You last big time fav is any kind of remote and chewing the railing on your crib. Your Dad and I just love cleaning little spec's of paint out of your mouth. :) Oh and you think Olivia, our dog, is THE FUNNIEST THING EVER. You two are starting to play a lot now. It's funny to watch you two play and listen to you giggle.

Dislikes:
You don't like going to bed. You cry, cry, cry... snooze. :) You don't like to lay on your back voluntarily...  You squirm to get up, especially when we change your diaper. Changing your diaper has turned in to a serious ordeal which usually ends up with me chasing your naked butt down.

New:
You cut two more teeth. You are up to 6 now. Geez. You grit them together and it sounds terrible. uhhhhhhhh. We are trying to break you of that. You also have had to learn to cry at night when you sleep. It got to the point where you were waking up every 2 hours and Mom and Dad were d.y.i.n.g. We took you to the doctor to make sure you weren't crying for a reason. You were healthy as a could be so, we decided to let you cry. Now, you sleep from about 8 to 6:30 or so. SO much better on everyone involved. :)

I love her. :)

Sweet tooth. 

Her hair (actually those front 8 pieces) just randomly started to grow. 

This was when Momma was about 10 weeks pregnant with your brother or sister and she was tirrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrred. Can you tell?

- Amanda

I know, where's the 9 month?

My bad.... Lyla's month old post is SO LATE. Sorry guys. It's coming!

To side track Lyla's monthly post, our family has been experiencing A LOT of changes, some wonderful and others scary. Most of you probably know that I am pregnant with little bit number 2. We are almost 13 weeks. REALLY EXCITED doesn't even begin to describe it. We had no idea how much Lyla would fill our lives with joy and happiness... now that we know what's at the end of this journey we are PUMPED to do it again. :) Some of the less glamorous things happening in our lives... we are in the middle of trying to sell our house. If you've never sold a house before, DON'T DO IT. RUN. Run fast because it sucksssssss. Hard. We have to leave the house spotless, everyday... way harder than it sounds when you have an infant tearing apart every thing in sight. (So cute though...) Plus we can't be here when the house shows... so that looks something like Lyla and I sitting in the Kroger parking lot at 6:30 at night eating cookies waiting on the hour to pass. :/ LUCKILY we are currently under contract and pretty close to having the house sold. THANK THE LORD.

You all know that I love to blog... and it seems that I bare my feelings about everything on here because... well I do... just about everything. I trust that if you are taking the time to read this then you care, so, I'd like to keep you posted on my family and what we've been doing lately. I read lot's of blogs and one lady at Enjoying the Small Things said "There is truth in acknowledging feelings"... amen sister. Amen. So here goes a whole buncha acknowledging. I am reallllly close to my family. They are very important to my life, they help make me who I am.  Well, my Dad was diagnosed with cancer late last year. It seemed to be a simple diagnosis and treatment. Unfortunately, the type of cancer that he has is very aggressive and in a matter of weeks, it metastasized to the bone, in turn, bone cancer. Due to the aggressive nature of his cancer, Dad is currently undergoing chemotherapy and other treatments to try and send this shit, sorry, into remission. All my cards on the table, it's scary. It makes you question a lot about your life and the way you live. There is nothing on this planet more disheartening than seeing your Daddy, your rock, debilitate and weakened. It just breaks my heart. This has been so, so hard on him and on our family. All of us. We pray like warriors that time and medicine will heal, but, no promises. I could sit here, typing all night about how much my Dad means to me, how important that space is in my heart that he keeps but, I won't. You all have daddy's so I'm sure you can imagine. So, we are currently waiting. Just waiting to see. I am finding  more and more in life that there is a lot of waiting. That not everything can be done when we are ready, right then. Damn it, that is SO FRUSTRATING! GRR!

Anyway, that's our life right now. We're selling, we're waiting for life to be renewed, we've created life, and we are raising life. This crazy life. Welcome. :)

I am working on Lyla's post, it's coming soon. :) We welcome prayers of any kind. My Dad's name is Mike or if you want to just call him Dad, that's ok too. Night y'all.

- Amanda 

Lyla's 8 Month Post

Hey Everyone!

Here is a run down of LJ at about 8 months:

She weights about 23 pounds. 23 pounds of ridiculous, uncontrollable cuteness. I have no idea how long she is. In the late 20's??  I feel like somewhere around 26 or 27 sounds right. She wear size 4 diapiers and 12 month old clothes. Every now and again I can get those THUNDA THIGHS in a 9 month old onsie. :)

Lyla eats about 5 bottles a day, 7 oz each. She eats breakfast (food, food) at daycare, 'picks' at lunch (food, food) at daycare, has a jar of baby food in the early afternoon and a jar of baby food at night. BAM. Hungry baby. :) RIGHT NOW, however, she is going through a phase where she just will not eat... she is so uninterested in her bottles at daycare but fine with me at home? I've concluded that there is just too much fun stuff at daycare to ignore so she's more interested in playing than eating. Here at home, it's just boring enough to get in an entire bottle. Who knows, either way, she's not hurting for food. :)

Lost of firsts with her this month!

• She CRAWLEDDDDD! Finally! It's more like what my mom calls it: inch worming it. It looks like she's doing the worm across the floor. Hey, whatever it takes. She can absolutely get from point A to her momma's phone point B in no time. :)
• She cut one of her top center teeth. I'm not sure of the technical term for these teeth. Her ped says we should start brushing them but she enjoys eating the tooth paste too much. Hahaha. She's also on a trip where she grinds her top two and bottom two teeth. Ugggggggh. Like nails on a chalk board. She does it SO hard. Everyone I talk to says this is normal. Just a 'getting used to them' phase. We'll see. 
• Yet another ear infection. Dear Runny Nose, You can go ANYDAY NOW. Thanks. 
• She switched from a nebulizer to an inhaler and she hasn't had to use the inhaler in several weeks!!! :) Maybe she's finally shaken all this JUNK.
• She says MOMAMOMAMOAMOAMOMOOMaaaaa. This is baby gibberish for Momma. I know this because usually the only time she says my name is when she is complete and irrefutably pissed. :)
• She can pick up small things with her  thumb and her pointer but, she's not quite perfect at actually getting it in her mouth. She can get it in there, it just takes some time. 
• You're sleeping terribly. What can we say. You'll get there eventually. For now, we just roll with it. :)

Alright, that's about it. :) I just cannot believe she's 8 months old. Seems like I was just writing about tummy time and holding up her head and now I'm blogging about crawling? Man, time really does fly. 

Jeremy's Birthday. Soprano's themed. :)

Spring break with the Butler/Pilcher Fam's!

Spring Break cruising

Cade, Dale, and LJ

Lyla's new thing is book covers... 

Exhibt A

Loving her baby. :) 

:)

Hehehe. 

I know I'm biased but I am obsessed with how gorgeous she is. 

Happy April!!

- Amanda

GO TO SLEEEEEEEEEP!

Holy cow. I'm a zombie... Lyla has officially stopped sleeping through the night. She stopped about 2 weeks ago and we hit our breaking point tonight. Cade and I are SO tired. We've not had to deal with her waking up this frequently since she was a few months old.

Tonight, Lyla was in hysterics, screaming 'momamomoma' from her room, I was sitting on the floor outside her room bawling and Cade was trying to make me feel better, just a confused about what was happening as I was. Poor Olivia even seemed uneasy.

Once we got Lyla to calm down and to sleep, Cade and I had a discussion. We've both done an absolute TON of research about babies and their sleeping method and made a decision tonight. I felt like sharing the out come (for right now) of our talk because I've got lots of other Momma friends who may be going through this, or will go through it eventually.  So here it goes:

CALM THE HECK DOWN. We both decided that we were panicking about such a small part of her day. After reading all the research, blogs, discussion boards, etc, we decided what we already knew but were blinded by emotions, babies can be extremely inconsistent. They usually won't do the EXACT same thing for more than a few weeks. If they do, its because they are young and not super active yet-- they really don't have a choice about what their body does. Lyla won't sleep like this forever. She's not sick (we took her to the ped.). She's just going through a phase. The main thing we've decided was to not be so hard on ourselves. Everything will work out. :) We will do what we need to do in order to get sleep and feel comfortable!

Anywho. We've just really been struggling with this and I wanted to share. It probably doesn't help at all because it's no sure fire answer to solve the problem but, hopefully you can take a breath, wipe away the tears, and wait for it to pass. :)

This is what we need more of... :)

7 Months and Things

Hey hey! We have arrived at 7 months (tomorrow) :) Lyla is about 22 pounds. Quite the growing girl! You have been in the 99th percentile since you were about 5 months old... cute lil' chunk-a-monk.

Lyla is still eating about the same as last month-- 5 bottles with baby food at lunch and dinner. We've started to give her soft foods from out plate-- like macaroni and cheese, which she slams and then grunts in demand for more. So cute.

Lyla, you have been such a trooper over the past 3 months. When you got RSV last October, you've been unable to shake your respiratory problems. Your pediatrician decided that it was time you saw a specialist. You are on a nebulizer 4 times a day right now. We find it difficult to sit you down and keep you from squirming but you think its hilarious. It's a  game to see if you can get your nebby mask inside your mouth. Oh, how much fun that is for us. :)

GOOD GRIEF if you don't just crawl I'm going to be crazy! You are up on ALL FOURS rocking back and forth super quick. Your daddy and I just watch you thinking we're going to miss you crawling. Right now you are just frustrated and I completely understand. You want to be mobile so darn bad! So soon baby girl. So soon. For now, you're just rolling, rollling, rolling. When you get on the wood floor, you go all octopus and suck the floor. Weirdo. :)

Here are some pictures!

Lets see how far I can streeeeeeeetch with out crawling...

Far enough I guess.

I cannot even stand this. I love her. 

MUAH!

Lyla and Papaw

Lyla loves to watch the puppies play!

Playing piano. Daddy says she's gonna be an artist. :)

Tony and Megan and there new puppy, Abbi.

Abbi

Hahaha... something about this picture isn't right. :)

Well, 8 months, we're a-coming!

--Amanda 

Veronica's Shower

Hi Everyone!

My teaching partner, Veronica is expecting their first baby girl at the end on March! YAY! I'm so darn excited to meet her... and KNOW HER NAME. :)

Some of us girls at school threw her a baby shower last week and it was so fun! It fit her personality perfectly. Here are some pictures-- the hostesses rocked it!

Candy Bar for the guests!

Decore-- so cute!

Some of the food-- I'm usually not a 'shower food' person but holy cow, the food we had was AMAZING. 

Melissa and Angie-- a few of the hostesses.

:)

Cupcakes. Yum!

The Momma-to-be!

Good Lord, I think pregnant women are so beautiful! 

Gifts

Mrs. Collins- a hostess

The hostesses 

Love baby showers. I cannot get enough of teeny-tiny cloths and bath products. I have no control. :)

-Amanda