Blake is 4 Months old now!!!

My baby is getting older! (Funny how that happens, huh?) He turned 4 months on Saturday, and on Monday we took him in for his well check. I knew he was big - MUCH bigger than Sophie - but I was still a little shocked by his numbers! Here they are:

• Weight: 16.5 lbs, in the 75%
• Height: 25 1/2 inches, in the 70%
• Head: 16 1/2 inches, in the 35%

Yep. Big, tall, and has a tiny head. :) Just for a comparison, here are Sophie's numbers at that age:

• Weight: 13lbs 11 oz - 50%
• Height: 24.7 inches - 60%
• Head: 15.7 inches - 15%

It may not seem like a huge difference, but when you're the size of a small yip-yap dog then it's pretty big. Here are Sophie and Blake at 4 months:

 

They are so similar, but you can tell some differences. Their noses are slightly different, hairlines are vastly different, lol, but overall you can tell that they're siblings! :) Anyway, to see more of Sophie between birth and 4 months, click here. 

And here is a quick update of Blake form birth until now!

1 day old

Just under 1 week old

3 weeks old

4 weeks old

6 weeks old

2 Months old

9 Weeks old

3 Months old

My little guy is sure growing up fast! As of right now he can roll tummy to back and can almost roll all the way over back to tummy, but he doesn't know how to get his arm out of the way. He is grasping everything he can, he plays with his carseat toy and the floor mat with the hanging toys over him really well, he's eating about 6 oz of formula every feeding, still sleeps all night (usually give him a bottle anywhere between 8 and 10 and then he's down for the night until about 7:30 or 8 the next morning - bliss!), loves to coo and giggle but still working on getting a big belly laugh out of him, is starting to want to go to sleep independently (no rocking to sleep anymore, sad day for me!) and is already weaning himself off of a binky! Anyway, that's our update now, be sure to leave a comment saying how cute he is! ;)

Back to the Grind

Don't you just love summer? The vacations, the freedom, the swimming, the sunshine, and best of all - no school for Jon! Okay so *technically* speaking, he was still in school, but it was rotations so it was really like more of a 9-5 job than school. So basically, since having Blake I have had my husband here to help me. And since we were in Utah all summer, if Jon wasn't around then there were family members everywhere to help me out too! I fear I became a bit of a lazy mother, but since I will never get to be a lazy mother again with these two kids, I figured it's alright.

This morning I had to send Jon back to school. It wasn't a big procession - I just hung his lunch on the doorknob to the garage and, since I was wrestling kids, we just called out "Bye! Love you, have a fun day!" and that was that. But now I'm realizing that it's kind of lonely here without him. I love hanging out with Sophie (especially when she makes me imaginary cupcakes every 5 minutes and watches while I eat said imaginary cupcakes, and then turns around and rubs milk into her hair - ah fun) and Blake is just as cute as ever, but we definitely feel it when Jon is away. Anyway, enough of the sappy stuff.

I still can't believe that Jon has already gone through over a year of school, and that there is LESS THAN 2 YEARS LEFT!!! Holy smokes! And it has just flown by! Seriously, I was looking at the curriculum for PharmD, and he has the fall, winter, spring, and summer quarters left of classroom study, then he has next fall, winter and spring for advanced rotations. AND THEN HE'S DONE!!! (Do you like my overuse of caps? I'm a little excited!) It's just so freaking close already! Then hopefully he can find a nice job here for a few years, we'll pay off a buttload of our student loans, and eventually return to my beautiful mountains in Utah. (Sigh) It's all so close now...so long as there's no more surprise pregnancies (love you, Blake) then I think we can definitely survive!

Morning

As I sit here perusing Facebook and Pinterest, and now writing in my blog, I take a deep breath and relish in the scene next to me. My darling daughter at the table, wearing her pearls, feet swinging back and forth happily as she sits at the table eating her cereal, not a care in the world except her cereal, her pink bowl and her pink spoon. My handsome son in his cradle swing, batting carelessly at the mobile above his head as the swing emits it's calming music to help lull babies to sleep. The sound of the washing machine as it washes the pee covered bath mat...

Oh, you noticed that the bath mat was pee covered, did you? Well, let's just say that the rest of the morning wasn't quite as peaceful as the scene that is here now. It all started when I was feeding Blake his bottle and Sophie was pestering me, so I told her to go up and watch a show on my TV until I was done feeding the baby. Bad choice. After I was done feeding the baby I thought "Hey, since Sophie is being good and watching a show and the baby is fed and happy, maybe I'll get some cleaning done!" After doing the dishes, organizing my bottles and sippie cups, rearranging my dish cabinet, and cleaning up the table and countertops I called up to Sophie to see if she was hungry yet since she still hadn't eaten breakfast yet. She came running to the stairs and descended in her typical princess fashion - pearls on, arms out dramatically, walking on her toes, chin held high - only this time she proclaimed proudly "Mommy, see my pink lips! Pretty princess!" Sure enough, she had put on my pink lip gloss. It's the one I usually let her wear when she's attacking my makeup bag, so that didn't bother me. What caught my eye was the charcoal gray and the blue eyeliner streaks on her face and the splotches of alabaster foundation on her white nightgown. (Yes, I am that pale...) At first I was thinking "Oh crap, I need to get upstairs now!", but then I decided that she was already down away from ground zero, so I might as well get her some food and then worry about it. What was done was done, right? Well then she went to climb on a chair and I see a little bare bum pointing at me! "Sophia," I ask, "Where is your Pull-Up?" to which she says "I need go pee potty!" and starts to run upstairs. That's when I saw the carnage. My makeup bag contents were spilled over the floor, with the mascara, foundation, cuticle oil, lip gloss opened, eyeliner lines are drawn on the floor, makeup brushes are on the floor, and my hair smoother goopy stuff is opened. Then, I see that she has also attacked the drawers, and her toothpaste as well as mine are opened, toothbrushes are not in their places anymore, and a few other things are strewn around the counter top. As if that weren't enough, I notice a large wet spot on the floor next to the bath mat. I'm thinking "Oh great, my cuticle oil leaked everywhere!" because it had been tipped on it's side near the puddle. So I say to Sophie "What is this?" and just as I'm dipping my fingers in it to see if it's the oil, she declares that she peed.
"Wait, what? This is pee?"
"Yeah! I peed da floor!"
"You peed on the floor?!"
"Yeah!"
"Soph...why...the toilet...you...ew!"
"I go pee potty, okay?" She runs into the potty closet and goes pee.

And that was what happened before this calm, serene moment that I'm enjoying now. (Sigh) Being a mom is fun, and even though that was a lot, she was so proud of herself for going pee on the potty that I couldn't stay mad. Love my kids, and love being a mom, and love my life. :)

Family Pictures!

So last time we had some family pictures done, it had been about 7 months after having Sophie, and I felt huge and fat. So this year we thought - hey I have an idea! Let's get family pictures done during Blake's blessing - a whole 2 MONTHS after having a baby! Well, in a weird kind of way, I actually really liked these pictures a lot better than the last! Although I still feel like the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man, (please don't give me that "you just had a baby, give yourself a break!" crap because I started out heavier with this pregnancy, gained a lot of weight during, and haven't done much to lose weight for the last 2 months, so yes I really could be and should be smaller, but my laziness inhibits me) and although Sophia was kind of sick and SUPER DUPER cranky all day, I really like them! So here are our family pictures - puffy face and all! :)

First of all, here are the ones of my handsome little guy in his tux - ain't he cute??? I cut his hair less than a week later, but I made sure to keep it long for his blessing day. :)

Which one of the ones below do you like best? Colored, black and white, closeup black and white? (I also have that one in colored, but didn't post it)

Then of course there's my sweet little girl - like I said, she was not a happy camper all day, but Jacque managed to get a little smile out of her. :)

And then there's our family shot. :)

And I really liked how this one of me and Jon turned out. :)

Ha ha ha, I love my sisters and cousin Jacque!

And last, but not least, the big family picture!

Anyway, that's them! I think they turned out pretty good and I'm so glad that my cousin Jacque is so talented and willing to do crazy day photo shoots with us last minute! :)

2 Months: Blake's Blessing and First Haircut!!!

Oh man time is FLYING!!! Okay, so time isn't really, but it seems to be going faster than it really is because Blake is growing so dang fast! He turned 2 months on July 22, and I swear the kid is double Sophie's size at that same age! He is smiling like CRAZY lately, still super snuggly, still super sweet and still such a good baby! He very rarely cries - just whimpers and squeaks. It's so nice! :) Anyway, here are his stats:

Weight: 11.8 lbs
Height: 22 3/4 inches

So big!!! He has grown out of all of his newborn clothes (Sophie wore hers until well after 3 months!) and has grown out of some of his 0-3 month clothes too! So he's been wearing a lot of 3-6 month clothes lately, which Sophie wore around 6-9 months of age. Crazy crazy crazy. Anyway, his eyes still look blue and don't show any signs of changing right now, and his hair is brown on the ends and blonde at the roots like Sophie's hair was. :)

Last Sunday, July 29th, Jon and I were able to bless our sweet little boy!!! It was extremely hectic in the few days leading up to the blessing, but in the end it turned out beautiful! The biggest obstacle was that poor Sophia got sick the Friday before, and after going to her cousin Faith's 1st birthday party and then driving to Park City (where we were going to spend the night and swim and such) she threw up purple birthday cake all over right in the parking lot of the hotel, and since she was still burning up with a fever we called Jon to have him come and take us home. I felt so bad for her - she was just so miserable and then she had an ingrown toenail on top of all of it, so needless to say I didn't get much sleep Friday and Saturday night before the blessing. But somehow (with a TON of help from family!) we got all of the food ready, house cleaned (okay, I didn't do much in this department, thanks Laura!) and miraculously I got my hair straightened! (Sigh) I remember the days when I had the time and energy to straighten my hair every other day, and would only have it curly to give it a break from the heat...now it takes about 12 hours! (Okay, reality it took 5 because I would straighten a layer and then run to take care of kids/food, then try to straighten another)

The blessing itself went so good!!! We had it at Jon's parent's home (since we wanted to do it with our family we did it here instead of doing it in AZ) and Jon himself performed the blessing. It was so good to have friends and family there to support us and celebrate our little guy, and Blake looked SO handsome in his little tuxedo that my baby brother Jeffrey actually wore when he was blessed (19 years ago! Crazy!) The only thing different from when Jeffrey wore it is the bow tie - the little white one that came with it looked a little sad, so I got him a nice navy blue tie to give it a little pop. :)

One of my favorite parts of the day was that my Grandpa Nielsen could be there and participate in the blessing. In fact, after the blessing was over he came over and told me that while Jon was giving the blessing, Blake reached over and grabbed my Grandpa's finger and he was "holding on for dear life!" For some background, Blake has never been a big "grasper" like most babies. He might close his hand around your finger, but only for a moment and he almost never closes it all the way, so to hear that he reached out on his own and grabbed his Great Grandpa's finger was just so sweet! I feel so lucky that my kids get to know both sets of their Great Grandparent's on my side of the family - I know that sometimes this is a rarity! :)

Now since I left my camera in Arizona, I was lucky that I had several people there taking some wonderful pictures for me! I'm most excited to get our family pictures back from our cousin Jacque! For now, here are a few that my sister in law Jen took for me! :)

Luckily my sweet Sophia started to feel better so she wasn't miserable the whole time, but we had to sort of sneak pictures of her because she was not a fan of them. :)

Daddy took her on a four wheeler ride after most of the people had gone home, and she seemed to like that a lot! :)

And just for fun - here's a picture of my hair all done up. It took a long time! :)

The other fun thing is that between yesterday and today (mostly today) I cut Blake's hair for the first time! I almost considered doing it before the blessing, but I thought it would be more fun to let his hair be long for it and trim it after. (Plus I didn't want to ruin his hair before we had family pictures!) Anyway, I've already had a few people scream "WHY???" at me, so just know that he is growing like a weed, and so is his hair. It was just too long and unruly, and that even though I cut his hair a full inch (a lot in baby terms) he still looks like a Chia Pet, so don't freak out! :) Anyway, so here are the results! (Again, I don't have a real camera, so the pictures are just from my iPod and not the best!)

Before:

After day 1 (only cut sides and back a little - he got mad!)

After day 2:

(The second picture is styled, but still wet so it looks shorter than it really is!)

He's so handsome. :)

Okay, so going BACK in time back to July 22 now, my baby brother Jeffrey had his missionary farewell!!! It's so weird to think that in 5 days (HOLY COW IT'S 5 DAYS AWAY!!!) he will be going into the MTC (Missionary Training Center) to prepare and train for his mission in Berlin, Germany! I'm still freaking out that he's old enough to do this - I was 7 when he was born for crying out loud!!! He'll do such an amazing job and will have a blast though, I just know it! So proud of him for choosing to go, and he did such a good job on his farewell talk!

After the blessing we went to my Grandma and Grandpa Daugherty's house and had a lunch. I just love visiting with family, and this was no exception! Here's some of the pictures (courtesy of my aunt Jennifer!)

(Be kind - I just had a baby!)

Anyway, so that's all for now because I'm 1) tire 2) out of time. I have more random pictures that I will post later, but for now I hope this will appease my stalkers. :) Be sure to comment so I know that my efforts aren't in vain! ;)