8 months old!

Lincoln is 8 months now. It's so crazy. He is so incredibly fun and is learning/doing new things daily!

Getting him to take a picture with his sign this time wasn't so easy. He is such a wiggle worm.

I just love that face. And look at those eyes!

So the other day, we were playing peek-a-boo around our ottoman. I then decided to look underneath it, and see if Lincoln could figure out where I was. I just kept calling his name and hitting my hand on the floor. He finally figured it out. Here he is looking under the ottoman and discovering me.

He then decided to crawl around to where I was. Here he is peeking his adorable little head around the corner.

The other day we were driving in the car and Grammy put this bear on Lincoln's head. He didn't even care. He left it there for the whole drive. What a little rascal.

It was raining on Sunday, and when we were walking home from church (yes, we can walk b/c it's so close) Lincoln helped his daddy hold the umbrella. I love this picture.

Other things about Lincoln:

1. He is crawling like crazy. I can't really contain the kid anymore.

2. He is really getting the hang of pulling himself up now. Yesterday he was taking a bath and when he decided that he was done, he pulled himself up and tried to get out.

3. He loves to swing.

4. He will smile at me when I sing to him.

5. Sometimes I catch him singing too.

6. He says "Ma Ma." YES! I win!

7. He is so observant. Yesterday I had the broom sitting out next to his high chair. I could tell he was looking at something down on the floor. I then saw his eyes look all the way up, and back down again. I then knew that he was checking out the broom.

8. He can go from crawling to sitting by himself. He pretty much can do it, but he just needs to move his one arm up from under him a little more.

9. He finds ANYTHING on the carpet. I have mentioned this before, but it's seriously out of control. He even finds pieces of the carpet to eat.

10. He smacks his lips.

11. He gives really cute/slobbery kisses. The other day I knew he wanted to give me a kiss, so I put my cheek in front of his mouth. That wasn't good enough for him, so he turned my face so he could plant one on my mouth!

12. His teeth are really showing now. I love the two-tooth smile.

13. I think he may like the color purple. 

14. I think he may be left-handed.

15. He is ticklish, especially on his feet.

16. Everyone that he meets refers to him as a Cabbage Patch doll, or Charlie Brown.

17. This morning his Grammy gave him a taste of caramel apple dip from her finger. He grabbed her finger and kept sucking on it. Then a few minutes later he tried to suck on it again. Hilarious.

18. While in his high chair, he is finding that it's fun to drop things onto the floor. He will then lean his head over and stare at whatever it is until we pick it up. Seriously...he just gets quiet and stares at it and we can't get his attention until that thing is up off the floor.

19. A couple weeks ago, we were a bit late to church. While we were waiting in the hallway to be able to go in, the primary of the other ward started singing "If You're Happy and You Know It...". This is Lincoln's favorite song. He immediately popped his head up and looked toward the sound of the music, and then turned to look at us, as if he was saying, "Mom and Dad, I know that song!" It was so cute.

20. I could go on and on....

I love this kid!

Pumpkin Carvin'

We decided to carve pumpkins last night. Derick's parents are up visiting us right now and so it was fun to have them participate. Lincoln just wanted to eat them...

...so he got his wish.

And he LOVED it. Seriously. He loved eating the raw pumpkin.

Holding our finished Jack-O-Lantern. {Don't worry...it's not smashing him or anything}

 Posing with Papa and Daddy with the 2 finished products.

 Still wanting to eat it.

Then we just let Lincoln get into the big mess. And of course he loved it.

Lincoln's first snow

This morning we woke up to a couple of inches of snow! 

Although I don't like snow at all, I was kind of excited to let Lincoln play in it for the first time.

He didn't really show much excitement, but that's how Lincoln is when he's having fun outside.

After a little while, he started to play with it (poor little guy had such a cold hand afterwards b/c we don't have gloves for him yet, but he didn't seem to mind at all)

He even liked eating it.

Doesn't he look so cute in his little snow suit that I got for him??? I love it.

Lincoln lately

Lincoln is such a blast. He just gets more and more fun every day and I love watching him learn and try new things.

I got some of those Gerber, puffy, cheeto-like thingies. Lincoln LOVES them. He gobbles them up every time I put them out. The other day he just sat there with one hanging out of his mouth for several minutes. I think this picture is hilarious.

 This pic is blurry because L was on the move, but you can see how he loves to suck on his lower lip as of late. He also loves to make the slight popping noise when smacking lips together.

Lincoln has had his two bottom teeth for quite a while, but they are finally starting to show enough for me to get a picture. Unfortunately, Lincoln doesn't really smile for pictures or anytime that I really want him to. Even if I can get him to smile, once the camera is out, he's back to his straight face.

Anyhow, I had to kind of hold him down to get this and he wasn't thrilled, but I wanted a pic. The picture is quite awkward, and that's why it makes me laugh.

This boy just loves to chill. When he crawls around and plays with his toys, I often catch him laying on his side, like this:

And of course, with every mobile baby comes curiosity. He is into every little space and corner that he can get into. I was thinking that after taking this that I didn't know why he even cared to go over to this spot, but then I saw the shoes. Lincoln LOVES shoes. Plus, he finds something to be excited about wherever he goes, whether it's a toy, a string, a crumb, etc. I don't know how he spots things sometimes. In the hallway at church on Sunday, he found a paper clip hiding under another woman's stroller. 

He blows my mind. 

And I love him to pieces.  

A Halloween Laugh

We made this little Halloween video last night. We wanted to make this particular one {there were a few to choose from}, but needed two other people, so we threw Derick's parents, Dave and Darlene, into the mix.

Hope you enjoy it! {Click HERE}

Inspiring

I love the Billboards that the Foundation for a Better Life puts out. Some are funny, some are touching, and they are all inspiring to me.

You can go HERE to view them.

Sunday Dress

First of all, thanks to those who gave some feeding advice. It has helped a lot. I kind of had some ideas about some of it, but it's nice to hear things from people that you know and trust, vs. some random website, ya know?

Ok, so for lack of anything better to blog about....

I love dressing Lincoln for church on Sundays. I love little dress outfits and I think that all babies look adorable in them. Lincoln is no exception. During the last 2 Sundays, while sitting in the hallway with Lincoln (He is too noisy to keep in meetings. He has been so vocal lately.), I decided to take pictures of him.

Yesterday, he sported a green and brown pinstriped shirt with a matching argyle sweater vest and khaki pants. We bought this lovely outfit with a gift card to gymboree. Love it.

(You can tell that it's in a church building by the carpet, huh? ha ha)

Last week, Lincoln wore navy blue pinstriped pants with a matching patchwork vest over a white button-up. We bought this ensemble at a second hand store in VA for like $5. 

Love finding deals like that.

We love our handsome dude!

baby food

So I am trying to get the hang of feeding Lincoln food. I probably haven't been giving him as much as I should have, just because it's so expensive. I am, however, now getting sick of breast feeding so dang often (still like every 2-2.5 hours!) and so I need to feed him more solids.

Right now, I feed him a jar of food in the mornings (usually some kind of fruit and yogurt blend) and 2 jars (one veggie, one fruit) in the evenings. (And let me tell ya, he EASILY downs these 2 jars. He could probably eat more).At some point during the day, I give him a snack, usually consisting of some pieces of bread and some cut up bananas or pears.  He usually wants to nurse in addition to these meals, and still wants to nurse, like I mentioned, every 2-2.5 hours. He doesn't love rice cereal or oatmeal. He will tolerate it if I mix it with juice, but if it's with formula he won't even look at it. He does like the jarred baby foods and he likes the food that we eat too. He is too the point where he wants to eat if he sees us eating. The doctor said that this should happen by 9 or 10 months, but Lincoln decided to do it at 7!  He is getting pretty good at chewing with his two teeth and gums (so cute) but still has somewhat of a hard time. He also gets frustrated when he can't pick up soft things like chunks of pear or banana b/c they are too slippery. It's kind of funny, actually. Bless his heart. He seems to like pretty much every thing that I have fed him and has only had a reaction to sweet potatoes.

Anyway, I have been looking at suggested menus, etc. online but they vary (which I know they should because babies vary) but I am not really sure what to go by. I mean, I know that since Lincoln will eat what he wants and when he wants, I just have to go by what he tells me.

I guess what I am trying to know is what worked for any of you? How often did you give meals and snacks? What did you give? Any advice?

This may seem so dumb, but I am still a new momma tryin' to figure this all out! :-)

blast from the past

A couple of weeks ago, two of my good friends high school, Ali and Ashley, were in town. It was so fun to see them (after like six years!).  It was fun to laugh about old times.

Me and Ali with our little ones.

Lincoln (7 months at the time) and Della (Adele) 11 months. Two cuties.

Ok, I am so glad that Ali caught this picture. Lincoln was doing this hilarious frowning face for a while for no reason. We could never capture it on camera, so thankfully Ali was able to get it.

160 points

That's how many points I got from one play in Scrabble. Yep. 160. Well, it wasn't scrabble, it was Words with Friends, but it's basically scrabble on our iphones. Derick and I were playing last night, and I  seriously wasn't trying to get a ton of points. We were to the point in the game where I just had to play whatever I could. It just worked out that I could play a "Q" on a triple letter space, and the "Z" on a triple word space, so my word "Quiz" came out to 160 points. Pretty unbelievable if you ask me. 

Derick resigned after that. Ha ha. Love you, Babe!

the sofa

Lincoln thinks that it's so fun to sit on the couch with us. The other day, all he wanted to do was hold a pillow. He was so excited.

 This pic is blurry because he was so thrilled and was moving the pillow around.

Yesterday he was chillin' on the couch and his hair flew up from static. He was being silly and giggling at the same time, so I got this hilarious picture. 

Lincoln is getting so big and is loving to do things that we do. Besides sitting on the couch with us, he wants to eat when we eat, etc. He is so fun!

infatuated

Lincoln has always loved looking at himself in the mirror. I am still not sure if he knows that it's him or if he thinks it's a little friend. Either way, today was hilarious. We were in his room playing and I held him up to the mirror. At first he was just smiling and laughing and hitting it, but then...

 ...he started to kiss himself! It was so stinkin' cute!

 I love this picture with his eye looking at me.

Sleep...or lack thereof

Lincoln has never been the best sleeper.
Before 2 weeks ago, I could count on one hand the number of times that he had slept through the night (according to the definition of 6 or more hours straight), and is naps were always around 30 minutes (or less).
Thankfully Lincoln's naps started to get better (sometimes up to 1.5 hours) which helped, but I still needed to get him to sleep at night.
When Derick went on a business trip a couple of weeks ago, I knew it was my chance.
It was hard to let Lincoln cry, but I knew that I just had to do it. The doctor told me that his baby daughter cried so hard once that she almost passed out and her eyes were swollen shut. If the doctor did that, I knew I could do it. After about 3 nights, Lincoln was sleeping through. He would go to bed around 8:30, wake to eat around 5, and then go back to sleep until around 8:30. This was wonderful! BUT...

The first night that Derick got back, Lincoln reverted back to his old habit of waking up like 4 times a night. I couldn't believe it. Derick didn't believe me that Lincoln had been sleeping through the night because why in the world would he just quit when he had been doing so well?

Anyway, I suffered through another week and decided that once the weekend hit, we would try again. Well, it didn't take as long this time, and by the third night, Lincoln was sleeping through the night again.

Until 3 nights ago.

Last night was the worst. He woke 4 times in 5 hours. It was a nightmare. Derick wasn't feeling well and I was so exhausted and we both had to get up early today, so I just dealt with it. I know I am just going to have to let him cry it out again this weekend and try to train him again.

What I am wondering is...has anyone else had this problem? What did you do?

Right now I feel like there is no end it sight. The other problem is that when he sleeps well at night, he doesn't take good naps. How can I find a happy medium? I have tried reading books and stuff, but not all of it works.

Lincoln is 7.5 months old now. We have to fix this!

Help me! :-)

beauty and the beast

This movie just came out today. I love this story. I saw this show on Broadway and it was amazing. If you want to buy this movie like I do, go HERE to get a $10 off coupon! The lady at Walmart told me about it today. Ha ha. How nice of her.

Bridal Veil Falls

Yesterday after conference {which was wonderful} we decided to take a drive with Sam and Jenae to Provo Canyon and go to Bridal Veil Falls. It was so pretty there. And, the leaves are starting to change.

Walking up to the falls.

 Stopping to look at the creek.

 The falls. So pretty, huh? See the little bit of peachy color?

 Cute little man.

Lincoln was DYING to play in the water. So we finally let him, but then....

...he realized why we hadn't let him in the first place. It was freezing!

 Jenae and me with the babies with a view of the beautiful mountains!