Now A Mom

             I know I know, finally another post. This one has taken me a while as our lives have been pretty boring lately in a lot of ways and pretty busy in others. The part of our lives that have been busy, are the boring parts. Things like we’re pretty sure Mia’s getting 2 more teeth so she is CRABBY as can be, but still pretty fun, she just has her bad moments that we want to send her far far away, ha. Don’t get me wrong, we still love her and would be SO sad to not have her around all the time, but I’m sure those of you who have kids know where I’m coming from.                               I have managed to get a few fun pictures of Mia lately while we do some fun things like make cup cakes, and try on Dad’s shirts I thought I should  hurry up and post before we go to Arizona and I have a lot of updates!! SO excited to go on vacation! I also found a few pictures of her in her halloween costume that I never posted that just show how very cute she was better than some of the pics that were already on here. That and there’s some pictures of her playing in her new carseat. She was so funny when I got it out and got the straps all right, she was so mad at me every time I took her out of it. So, I finally learned to just lean it up against the couch so that she couldn’t push it over, and took advantage of her finding somethinig she so badly wanted to play with and took a little break to work on her baby book. She climbed in and out of it, sat in it to watch her cartoons, played with the straps, wanted to sit buckled in for a while, and even sat in it a couple times and leaned until she fell off the seat. She thought it was pretty funny. Anyways, here’s a few pictures of our little goof ball…�

 

Mia playing in her new big girl car seat. She LOVED it when it was in our apartment, and just liked it in the car. She’s still happier in it than she was in her rear facing seat, but still hates being buckled in.

 

Mia ‘helping’ Mom make cupcakes. I was actually practicing her birthday cake. It’s super cute. Pictures will come when it is actually her birthday. She loves to sit up with me while I’m cooking, and the second she sees a whisk or spatula she knows what that means and does all she can to get her hands on it.

Mia making one of her goofy faces while she enjoys a little cupcake batter. She is such a little goof. She makes the funniest faces, I’ve never seen another baby make faces like her.  

Mia wearing one of Jason’s shirts. I put it on her just because she kept trying to play in it anyways and I thougth it’d be cute. To my suprise, she loved it. She kept laying down on our bed until I rubbed her back and just wanted to crawl all over in her Dad’s shirt.  Honestly, I was afraid she’d get mad at it because she doesn’t really like wearing her dresses.

 

My cute little Minnie mouse. This is after a ‘trick or treat’ party we went to at Jason’s work.

Our little minnie again. This was all the pictures she’d let us take of her in it. Luckily we got some cute ones while we could. She was so cute walking around in her little costume, it makes me that much more excited for next year when she’ll care about everything going on a little bit more. SO fun!!

Well, thats all we’ve got for now and there’s a good chance there won’t be anything new until we get back from Arizona. I’ve got a lot to get done between now and then, but I’m sure we’ll have tons of pictures to post when we get back. It’ll be such a fun trip. We have some fun things planned with friends, with Jason’s family, and with my brothers. we’re also going to have an early birthday party with Mia because Jason’s family won’t be here for her actual birthday. It should be a lot of fun and nice to have time to relax!! 

Happy Halloween!! I thought today was as good a day as any to upload all of our halloween fun pictures. There may be more to come after today, since today is halloween, but here’s what we have for now…

  

Mia didn’t last carving pumpkins for very long, she wouldn’t stop eating all the stuff inside and we were worried she’d choke on a seed, so we put her in her chair and gave her the lid of the pumpkin, all ncie and cleaned off. I figured that couldn’t hurt her, and of course, it went straight to her mouth.

 

Still enjoying her slice of pumpkin. 

Mine and Jason’s pumpkin. I’ll leave it up to you to figure out whose is whose. 

Mia with the pumpkins after we were all done carving. 

 

Mia, Minnie, at this little place called Gardner village with my niece and nephew, Cinderella and a Ninja 

The other kids didn’t want to go near this thing, so we took some pictures of Mia by it. She didn’t really care, she just wanted to look at it, not at us.  

 

Gardner villiage decorates for some of the fun holidays and halloween in one they really do up. They have witches like this all over the place and do lots of activites, it’s such a cute little place!Anyways, I hope everyone has a fun night of trick or treating. as for us, we’re a bit lucky that our only child is to young to care what we do, so she’ll be trick or treating at Jason’s work, in doors, then spending the night sitting at home, handing out candy if anyone comes, and she’ll be in bed by 7 as usual. I love my little good sleeping Minnie Mouse!  

         Mia hit the 10 month mark this last week, and I can’t believe it. She’s growing up so fast, and in some ways faster than most kids her age. Some of the ladies in our ward tell us all the time that she seems like she’s at least 1 already, and in some ways, it makes me sad. She is a smart little girl and learns new things all the time that even suprise Jason and I. She is one amazing little girl and I love how quick she picks things up lately.

            She is walking really well now and even climbed up on our furniture and took off on her own for the first time recently.She’s been climbing on our furniture for a while now, but we couldn’t get her to let go and walk on her own, we had to take her off whatever it was she was holding and get her to start walking that way.  She also has learned how to stop walking and fall without hurting herself. She either plops on her bumb or drops down on all 4’s and starts crawling again.  We love to watch her walk around and to see her progress as she gets better and better at it every day.

                                   She also has started to say a few little things and seems to understand what they mean fairly well. She does the typical mom and dad, she started saying “Wow” to things that she liked a couple months ago, and recently started to say baby at all her dolls/stuffed animals and pictures of herself and some other babies. She gets so excited when she seems them and just says baby and points at them non stop. It is so fun. 

She picked up a few unusual talents for her age recently too. One I have posted pictures of before, and that is her baby headstands. Recently she’s began to do those, and then lift her foot in the air, or use her foot to kick different things around. Such a silly little thing she is. She also has used her amazing copy cat skills in the last couple of weeks to learn how to whistle. At first, it was just making a little ‘O’ with her lips and blowing air, but within the last week or 2, she has atually figured out how to make noise. Now I hear a little whistle chasing me around everywhere. I also think that i have the best little eater, haha. She loves everything and we have a hard time finding any food she doesn’t like. She’s tried pickles and lemons and just sucked on them for a while, she love all forms of pasta and different Italian pasta sauces, my little Italian girl. She really just loves everything she tries and eats so very well. We are so happy with her and love what a good baby she is. She is such a good little sleeper and still sleeps from about 7:30pm to about 8am. It is wonderful. I love it. We love her and can’t wait to see what skills she comes up with next!

So Mia started taking a few steps right when she was exactly 9 months old, and has made it a little bit further every day. Now, here we are, she’s not quite 10 months old yet and she is walking all over the place! I’m really impressed with how well she does and really afraid of how well she does at the same time, ha. She is growing up fast and now that she can walk so well on her own, she is really starting to feel like my little toddler, not my little baby anymore. I guess it does seem to be helping with my fear of her turning one, I’m not so worried about it anymore.  She is so so fun now and just loves to play with Jason and I all the time. She sure loves her dad, as soon as he gets home, I don’t hear her say ‘Momma” anymore unless she’s sad. It’s always Dad. She just wants her dad to be there with her playing all she can. It’s so cute and I must admit, I’m usually pretty glad for the break, ha. Anyways, here’s a little video of her walking skills. She could have made it further if we’d let her, but then she’d be off the camera, so we just stopped her and turned her around. She is doing so well and has fun showing off to everyone around that she can walk so well. She loved being in our nursery class and being able to actually walk around with the kids instead of being stuck on the floor while they all run around and play. It was SO cute to see her do so well. 

        Winter… yes… Wonderland… not so much. Not to me atleast. This weekend we were so lucky (really not so lucky at all) to recieve the earliest recorded snowfall in the state of Utah in about 15-20 years I believe they said. Woo hoo, lucky us. In the household of not 1 but 2 adults raised in the amazing and warm state of Arizona, winter is something we both dread and dispise. And of course, this winter has decided to begin very early. We were glad that at least the snow chose to come at a time that neither of us were required to be outside. So, being the snow lovers we are, what did we decide to do? Bundle up ourselves and Mia for her first experience being able to touch and play with snow. All joking aside, it really was fun to see what she thought of all of it and it really wasn’t to much snow.

              So, we put on our coats and fought Mia to get her adorable new coat on and finally headed out before it got to warm and the snow was all gone. We did have a good time walking her around and letting her touch the snow. Honestly, she couldn’t care less what this cold white stuff was all over, she just wanted to practice her walking. We did get her to stop and play a little bit, but I’m sure it’ll be more fun to see how she reacts when we can set her in a pile of it (maybe not, we’re not that mean, ha).  Just thought I’d share the few pictures we got of her actually playing with the snow with those of you who care to see them. She is super cute!

 

The snow had stopped by the time we made it out there, so Jason shook a tree to make it snow on us. I don’t think Mia noticed, ha. 

 

Mia’s first time touching the snow. Jason took a handful off of our car. She liked to touch it, but wouldn’t do it for to long and wouldn’t really pick it up. I don’t blame her, it was freezing! 

 

She had to poke her finger in it of course. She wants to point and poke at everything. 

 

She stopped to get some off of the bush while Jason was walking her around and even tried to get a bit in her mouth, but her coat got in the way.  

 

And last but not least, my favorite picture of the day. Mia LOVES to say ‘Wow’ at new things and at things that she really likes. This is her cute little ‘Amazed’ face. I love it. She made this face at me right after touching snow in Jason’s hand. 

        I’m happy and sad to say that my sweet little babie’s growing up and turning in to my little toddler. She’s had a busy couple of weeks. She’s just been on a developmental growing streak and seems to be learning new things and getting so much better at them every day. She had a few little toys that she can stand at and push them around to walk that at first, she was so terrified of she wouldn’t touch them. Now, we can’t get her away from them. She’s gotten so steady on them, I don’t quite feel the need to follow right behind her and hold on to her shirt in case she falls all the time. I’m actually comfortable enough to take a few steps back and let her run and play. Well, I guess she got a little to good because last week, she took her first steps by herself and has made it a few steps further every day since. She has such a strong desire to walk on her own for only being 9 months old and is getting it down quickly, before I know it, she’ll want to walk every where and won’t let me carry her anymore. I’m so proud of her that she’s learned how at such a young age, but sad to see her grow up and become more independent every day.

 

          She also finally started crawling the right way a couple of weeks ago. Before then, she could get up on her hand and knees, but refused to move. She’d sit there and rock back and forth, then plop on her belly and army crawl when she was ready to move. Either that or she’d do what we like to call her ‘baby handstand’ and occasionally walk and move like that. She is now getting in to everything, including getting lost in our closet, under our beds, and her favorite rooms, the bathroom and kitchen. I am tryinig to make it a habit to close every door so she can’t hide or crawl around in our bathrooms, gross.

 

           She also got her 1st tooth finally. It broke through this last week, and I must say, she was still a pretty good baby considering. She was just a bit more tired than usual and a little sad. Not so much cranky, just sad. She didn’t really want people she didn’t know and wasn’t as playful as usual, but she was still just as sweet as she can be. She seems to be about back to her usual self now, just a little tired which I don’t mind. Just means more naps, ha. I’m afraid to see what she eats with teeth considering how much and how well she eats without them.  

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Just a couple of pictures of Mia doing her baby handstand. 

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     Last weekend we got to take Mia to her very first circus. I know I know, she won’t even remember it, but it was still a lot of fun. My parents wanted to go along with my sister and her kids, so we decided to tag along. It was a log of fun. We went early for the preshow where you can walk around and see the clowns and the elephant and they have clown noses you can put on and what not. It really was so crowded we couldn’t do much, but still fun just to be there and get a few pictures.

    Once we got up to our seats (way WAY up, haha) than we had a few minutes to sit and relax before the show started. Mia had fun walking across our laps and playing with the chairs in front of us. The circus finally started and it was so fun to watch Mia and see how she reacted to all of it. She just stared at everything for a while and eventually started yelling ‘Da Da Da Da’ over and over again. I told Jason I’m pretty sure she wanted to be louder than the circus. She really seemed to enjoy most of it, all the loud music and bright colors. We of course only had her about half of the circus then she went down to sit with Grammy and Grandpa. She still continued to watch the circus and have fun for a while, then sat on my dad’s lap and fell right asleep. After about a 15-20 minute nap, she went right back to watching. It was really a lot of fun. Even all the adults seemed to enjoy it, I know Jason and I did. After the circus, we all went to The Pie for dinner for some yummy pizza! It was a really fun night with the family!

Mia and I at the preshow before the circus started. 

 

Mia on the motorcycle they use in the show. My little biker chick!

 

Elephants! 

 

This is Mia during the circus. She LOVES to stand, espeically when she’s excited about something. She wouldn’t take her eyes off the circus long enough to get a picture with her looking at the camera. 

 

Mia sitting with my Dad. She kept playing with his binoculars. 

 

Her little nap time. It was so cute to see her sleep even though it was crazy loud. She was nice and cozy on her Grandpa’s lap. 

For those of you not aware of this momentous occasion, The Office season 5 premiere begins tonight on NBC. If you haven’t watched previous seasons, thats ok, watch anyways! Trust me, you will still enjoy the amazing humor that this show has to offer. And in all honesty, there isn’t to much as far as a story line to follow. All you need to know if you want Jim and Pam together, Dwight and Angela dated once, and Michael and Jan dated once. There, i think you are all caught up. Now, watch and enjoy.�

    Well, since Mia was born I’ve gotten pretty in to a few new ‘crafty’ activities and with that, have created a lot of headbands and bows for Mia as well as handbags, dresses and jewlery for myself. Since then, I’ve been stopped by people to ask where I have bought the various objects or how I made them. Because of that, I’ve decided to look in to the possibility of selling them. So, to begin the process, I’ve made a new blog to show off some of the things that I have made thus far. I still need to add jewlery to it, but here’s what I have so far. Check it out. If you know someone that might be interested, please please send the link on to them. Thanks a ton!!

http://www.miabcollection.blogspot.com/ 

              Alright, so her birthday was over a week ago, but I figured a post to celebrate her and to show some of the fun pictures from her party. My Mom is an amazing mother, women, wife, and friend and I don’t know what I would do without her. I know that with out her influence and example in my life, I would never have been able to become the women, mother and wife that I am today. For that, I am so thankful and I know that my family is thankful as well. I know without a doubt that a lot of my best attributes are the things that I learned from her. We are so happy to have her here close by now, to know that my daughter will be able to really get to know her and to have a great relationship with her Grandparents. She will be a better women in the future because of it. 

 

            Anyways, enough of the mushy stuff and on to the fun! My mom decided that for her birthday, she wanted to go out and do something fun that both the adults and the kids would enjoy. After a little talking with the family, she decided on hiking up to timpanogas cave. I said of course, that it sounded like a good time and from what i could remember, was a really easy hike that would be no problem with Mia. Boy was a wrong, at least a little bit wrong. The hike is paved all the way up to the cave, but it is 1.5 miles of straight switch backs with the last 1/4 miles being in particularly steep. Besides being a little winded, we did make it up to the top without really any problems. I did have to pass Mia off to Jason a little after the 1/2 way mark because with a baby in a pouch that sits right on your stomach, you become winded quite a bit quicker. We made it up to the top, then went in to the cave. For those of you that haven’t been to timpanogos, I’d recommend it. That cave really is quite amazing, it’s actually a combination of I believe 3 caves together. The hike is worth it to go to the top. I guess there are some things in this cave that can’t be found in the large numbers they are in timpanogos, I believe called helectites, but they really are amazing. It looks like a ton of coral, really quite pretty to see. The cave tour is just under an hour long, so plan a good 1/2 day for the hike and the tour. Anyways, It was a really nice day and even worth loosing the ability to walk for the next couple of days, haha. It’s so nice to have my parents here and to be able to celebrate it all together.

 

 

This is Jason, Mia and I on the hike up. We were only 1/4 of the way there, so we were still happy and peppy at this point, ha. 

Some of my family on the hike up. I love my dad with his little preppy sweater tied around his shoulders. I was quite impressed with my 5 year old nephew walking the whole way up himself and my 3 year old neice going a part of the way up walking herself.  

Mia and I in the cave trying to squeeze through some of the tight spots without hitting her head or mine on some of the sticking out rocks. To make it even more challenging, your not supose to touch anything in the cave because it’s considered ‘alive and growing’ but the oils on your skin can kill it. It got a little tricky, especially because all that Mia wanted to do was get down and play. Luckily, there aren’t that many tight spots, most have room to move.

Jason Mia and I in one of the caves, I believe it was called Middle cave. I only remember the name of this one cause it’s in the middle of the 3 and the 1st one because it’s called Hanson cave and made me start humming ‘Mm bop”while the tour guide was talking about it. 

Some of the growth in the cave, a bunch of stalagtites and stalagmites. The looked a little prettier in person then they came out in the pictures. It really did look like coral. My sister kept asking my princess obsessed neice if she thought Ariel would like it and she’d just say ‘No, it’s WAY to cold in here’. They did say it was about 43 degrees or something like that, as cold as a refrigerator inside. It is a little chilly. 

This is some of the flow rock in the cave. I liked it cause hey kept comparing it to ice cream with carmel sauce. They actually had a few food referrences in the cave, the ice cream, carmel, marshmellows, arby’s curly fries, and cave bacon. Needless to say, I was ready for lunch when we got out.

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