My growing girls

Miss Emma

Emma is growing so fast. She is 2 and 1/2 years old and soaking in everything around her! She constantly repeats everything I say just so she can make sure she is saying the right words and learning about what I am saying. She loves counting and singing her ABC's over and over and over again.

She is becoming such a good big sister. She is learning to help Reese instead of run away from her when she cries. And if I ask her to go help Reese she'll give her a toy until she is happy. Emma can get Reese to laugh even if no one else can. Reese already loves watching Emma and interacting with her. 

Emma still follows me around ALL DAY LONG. When I say all day, I mean I can't even go to the bathroom without her NEEDING to be there too! As long as I have the patience, Emma can be a great helper! She loves unloading the dishes, doing the laundry (even if it means messing up my neat folded piles :) ), sweeping the kitchen, and dusting the furniture. She's a good little helper and I know in a few years I'll probably be wishing she still loved doing chores this much!

She is deinitely a girly-girl still. Anytime I put a dress on her she exclaims "Mommy, pretty dress!" and asks me to put a pretty dress on too. I can't wait to be able to take her to Disneyland so she can meet all the princesses. She loves them all. Emma loves wearing jewelry and after breaking so many of my necklaces, I decided to buy some of her own for her to break :).

Emma is still an extremely picky eater. It's pretty frustrating, but we're trying our best. We just got this book "deceptively delicious" that we are going to try some things out. I asked on Facebook of any friends with suggestions of what to do and in an hour I already had over 20 comments. There are lots of things we are going to try- hiding veggies in things, putting a variety in front of her and not pressuring her into eating it, making it more fun and having her help with the preparation, and trying our very best not to stress :). It's really hard dealing with it, but at least she is not on a feeding tube. I have to count my blessings. I have two friends who's toddlers are still needing feeding tubes or other assistance, so we are doing pretty good :). Little by little I'm sure she will become better.

Emma is a monkey and like to climb on EVERYTHING! She's even a monkey during reading time with Daddy:

 Emma LOVES the neighborhood kids, but they are all a little older and I don't yet trust Emma to run around the neighborhood and not get hit by a car...so I end up playing hide n go seek with them! And they all like it :). Now Emma always says, "I'm going to go peek!" Took me a while to understand that she was meaning that she is going to go count but wants to play "Hide n seek" :). Cutie.

Poor girl. She gets sick all the time. This was her longest streak in her entire life of not being sick though- a whole three months! But now the last 5 days she's had pink eye, a fever and a cough! Not fun!

The first time we discovered there was a train at the mall, I didn't bring money. So for the next couple months I got to hear about "mommy no money for train!". The next time we went the train was broken so again I got to hear about "train broken. Train broken." FINALLY we went and the train was working AND I had money with me...this is Emma being ecstatic about it...

Now on to Reesie-Roo.

Reese is almost 6 months old! She started getting up on her hands and knees and rocking before 5 months. Crazy! She wants to get around so bad and now she can get to almost anything she wants but inching her way there like an inch-worm. She goes into plank position, moves her back legs close to her arms (with her bum in the air) and plops down on the ground so she's inched a little forward. She'll continue doing that until she's reached her desired toy. It's fun to watch her and all the amazing yoga moves she can do! She gets up into crazy positions, rolls all over but can't quite figure out how to move her arms forward with her legs yet.

Reese is SUCH a happy baby and I love that about her! Yes, she still is waking up once or twice in the night.....boo! But I would rather take the happy, content baby that she is if it means she still wakes up at night. She is just very good for me during the day and it makes it much easier to give the attention to Emma that she needs. Now that she is growing and getting stronger we can try and let her cry it out a little more since I know she doesn't need to eat every 5 hours at night anymore.

She has also gotten her first tooth and it hasn't been too painful for me :). In other words I didn't see it coming cause she never got cranky. One down, 19 more to go!

One of my favorite things about Reese is how cuddly and cute she is when she is happy. I know she has gotten enough sleep when I hear her wake up from her nap talking and giggling. I LOVE going into her room and seeing the big grin on her face when she looks up at me. And she gets excited and squeals cause she knows I am going to pick her up. 

Practicing her plank yoga pose:

Reese started getting mad when I put the head-band on her head :). It was really funny. Her pose..."Mom, why did you do that to me??"

I'm happy that she is starting to get some chub on her! No, she's no a huge baby, but she looks very healthy and that's all we care about!

"Part of your world" pose...

My girls are the joy of my life! Being a mother is hard work- very hard work, but the joy that I experience through being their mother, is greater than anything else I have accomplished in life so far. They are so fun and I wouldn't change the time, effort, sleepless nights, and poopy diapers for anything. The performing I have done in the past has been a lot of who I am and I gained a lot of joy through that. All the crazy, fun times I had throughout college with my roommates were definitely a lot of fun! Going on my performing mission, singing in firesides, going on amazing vacations to Hawaii and Disneyland and such have been great memories! But being a Mom is lasting joy. Being a mom brings greater rewards than anything else this world can offer. Now I do have to say that I am a much better mom when I am able to have some time to recouperate and exercise, read, sew, craft, garden, sing, or whatever talents I want to work on. I think we all are able to be at our best when we can balance our lives with good things. But I sure love being a mom and I love my girls!

Five Month Fatty

Reese had her follow-up check up this morning to see if she is growing after some of the changes we made. Right after her 4 month check-up I stopped giving her breast milk and switched to a sensitive formula. Soon after, Reese started drinking 6 ounces in each bottle instead of 3 or 4! I've kept track of her ounces every day for the past 3 weeks and she has been drinking 30+ ounces a day now instead of 24-26. I've been so happy! You can see the difference in her. She just looks a lot healthier now! So this morning we got her weighed and she is 14 1/2 pounds! At 4 months she was in the 3 percentile, now she is 35%! I wonder if it was recorded wrong at her 4 month check-up because that seems too big of a jump, but all I care is that she is now drinking a whole lot more than she was and is growing and growing.

James Eric Bleak

He's here! Bryan and Jennie had their baby last week on April 25th at 11:13 a.m. He was 6 lbs 7 oz and 20 inches long. It was a very long couple days for Bryan and Jennie (and long week before that). Jennie was in the hospital on bed rest since the cord was wrapped around James' neck a couple times and they had to keep him constantly monitored. Tuesday they did an ultrasound to see if he was "ready" to come into the world and he was. At 1:00 in the morning (Wednesday) they started her on pitocin. She was only at a 3 up until a couple hours before he came, but once he was ready she only had to push one or two times and he was out! Luckily the doctor was there in time! I couldn't believe that. I was pushing for one hour and 15 minutes with Reese. Jennie is very lucky for a first birth :).

We are SO excited to have James in the family now. He is such a darling, darling baby! He has such a cute little face and they say that so far he is a pretty content baby with a little cry. Unlike Reese's cry who you can hear from a mile away :). They showed us the baby picture of Bryan and they look almost identical.

Nathan and Steph are so cute. This was on Bryan and Jennie's door to welcome them home! William and Henry of course helped :).

Jame's room is SO cute! It is a bicycle theme with different colors of blue. Jennie's mom made the bedding and the sheet is all bicycles. And the bicycle at the top of this picture is going to hang above the crib. Jennie made it...she's very talented!

Congrats Bryan and Jennie! We are so happy you guys are parents to a beautiful, healthy boy!

Our St. George Adventures

Cade, Bryan, and a couple other guys from Fishbowl were planning on going down to St. George to do a century bike event the middle of April. We were blessed that Cade's mission president has a home there and has offered to let us use it anytime. So that worked out great! But other things did not work out so great while we were there :).

Jennie was coming down with Bryan and we were excited to be able to hang out while the guys did their bike event. We all went out to eat at Olive Garden Friday night. Then afterwards, Bryan and Jennie went to the store to grab a few things. We went to bed thinking they'd be back soon and in the morning Bryan came into the kitchen and said, "Jennie is in the hospital and since I got in after 3:30 in the morning, I won't be riding today." Jennie had been in the hospital earlier in the week for some tests but the doctors gave her the okay to go to St. George because she and James had been doing just fine the couple days before and she wasn't due for a month! But that Friday night, Jennie wasn't feeling James move like normal and so they decided to go check things out. It was a very good thing too because her fluid levels were extremely low. She stayed there over night and the next afternoon after her levels were up, they headed back to Utah valley. So unfortunately that didn't exactly go as planned :(. We were bummed we couldn't hang out all weekend.  But more importantly we were so glad that they made it back home and that Jennie and James were okay! They were able to receive the medical care they needed to be safe and healthy (even though bed rest in the hospital is not fun...I would know).

Then, the day of the bike event was 40 degrees and raining all day! Cade did awesome up until he stopped to fuel up and couldn't get his legs working again. It was way too cold to be riding at all let alone 100 miles! So after about 55 miles he called me to go pick him up. Dave from Fishbowl also had the same problem and went until about 65 miles and Jameson's bike broke, so he couldn't finish even if he wanted to. It was a pretty miserable day for riding. But I am proud of Cade for doing that well. I'm sure he will have many events in the future to participate in!

At least he has a good story to tell :). And this is what a biker should look like after a good ride:

On Sunday, since we no longer had Bryan and Jennie to hang out with, we drove to Vegas so we could see Cade's family! Tara and Johnny just got a new house and so that was so fun to see. And grandma and grandpa happened to be visiting Tara that weekend so we all go to meet up!

These two always have SO much fun together! They get along SO well and just giggle all the time :). I love seeing them play together.

Well, the weekend definitely didn't turn out the way we had planned, but we still had a great time! This was our view from the home we stayed at. It was literally right on the golf course. So fun!

And since we couldn't go to the swimming pool, I took Emma swimming in the "big bath". She loved it.

Dino Museum

So one day Emma saw the Jurassic Park DVD and wanted to watch it. I thought maybe Land Before Time would be a better introduction to dinosaurs. Then a pamphlet came in the mail for the Dinosaur Museum at Thanksgiving Point and Emma got really excited! She kept asking every day for a week to go see the "big dinosaurs". So we finally took her and she LOVED it! She is just at such a fun age where everything in the world is exciting. We love taking her to see new things and she just kept running around saying "look mommy! Look Daddy!" over and over again. It was so cute.

 

Easter and Spring time fun!

Easter this year was really neat.  Cade and I have been wanting to implement a spiritual tradition since Easter is usually revolved around bunnies, eggs, and candy (which, don't get me wrong- I love). But we want our girls to grow up with remembering traditions built around Christ and why we really celebrate the time of Easter. So Cade is awesome and came up with the idea where we watch the sunrise together and talk about Christ and how he is the light of the world. We read a scripture or two with Emma and then we came inside for a yummy waffle breakfast! It was neat to start the morning off right :). Definitely a tradition that we will keep doing for years to come!

We also had lots of fun taking Emma to do an Easter egg hunt in the neighborhood and watching her find her basket in the morning. She also got a new tricycle from Great-grandma and grandpa! She was SO excited!

Whopper lipstick! Just another reason that Easter should not have much focus on candy...

 

I LOVE spring time! Every time it's spring, it's my favorite season (and then fall rolls around and it's a very close match). I love walking outside and feeling the air warming up. I love being able to take Emma outside and play in the grass and let her run around. I love going to the park, going on walks, and seeing the flowers come alive. It's such a fun time. And Emma is begging for time outside ALL the time!

Here are some pictures of us enjoying the spring time:

I just got a bike trailer/stroller and I love it! As you can tell on Reese's face, she is in LOVE with it too :).

Visiting the new City Creek Center. A great view of the temple as well.

Popcorn popping on the apricot tree! (I actually didn't even know the literal meaning to that song until a few years ago...sad to admit :))

These are blossoms from our tiny tree in our front yard.  It is BEAUTIFUL about 6 days out of the year. We really enjoy it those 6 days.