The one where Ellie is 6 Months old

Holy Moly, Ellie is 6 months old today! Kinda crazy.

I'm going to be honest about how things have been with her lately, which means not everything I say will be positive. I'm not doing this to complain or make you think she's a terrible baby, cause she isn't. I just want to remember the problems she's having so I can go back and refer to this in the future if I need to

I'm having some issues with her lately. Last post I opened my big mouth and said she's sleeping really well, and of course that immediately changed. Granted I believe it was mainly due to me finding out she had an ear infection. (She was showing no signs of being sick until I started smelling infection in her ears. I know sounds gross, but at first she wasn't fussy, didn't pull on her ears, didn't have a fever or anything). She use to go right to sleep at night and sleep till 5 or later. Now it takes me minimum of an hour to get to go down and most nights she wakes up twice. Last night it was at 12:30 and again at 5.

-I can't seem to get her on any kind of schedule. She does so much better when she naps regularly, but this girl refuses to do anything consistently. 

- I also can't seem to get rid of her sickness. She had a bad cough for a week which has calmed down to mainly only at night, but it still isn't gone. Her infection "came back" after a week or so. I know it probably never went away. I was taking enough garlic to ward off any strangers from wanting to talk to me and it still didn't clear it all up. Plus that garlic made her constipated, or I should say made it worse. She first got constipated when she started eating baby food, which is normal. But it's been a month now and her body still hasn't adjusted. 

On a more happy note,

- she is so freakin cute. I literally can't go anywhere without people staring at her and telling me how cute she is. Every store I go to I get at least 3 people that say something to me about her. Yesterday I was at the commissary (grocery store on base) and I kid you not I had 10 people comment about her. What can I say, she's just that cute! :)

- She can sit up like a pro now. It only took her 1 day of practice and she had it down. March 7th was the first time she sat up unassisted (5 month and 1 week old)

- She will not roll over for the life of her. She's done it once when she was 4 months old or so, but hasn't since. When she was younger she had acid reflux so I literally couldn't put her on her stomach without her throwing up. Because of that she didn't get as much tummy time as she probably should have. I blame the fact that she hasn't roll over partially on that. Also on the fact that she so chubby. haha. It probably takes a lot more effort for her to move her body. I try to do tummy time a lot more now and she just lays there and after a few minutes starts freaking out but won't move. She shoves her face in the carpet and just screams. I try to help her roll over to maybe help her learn the required movements, but she just flops over like a fish. There is no control on her part. She doesn't even roll on to her side (when she's laying on her back). She grabs her feet, but doesn't show any signs of rolling over. Maybe she'll just skip right to crawling. I'm sure she'll eventually figure it out.

- She loves it when we grab her legs and push on her stomach (like we're trying to help her fart). She gets a huge smile on her face and grunts/laughs every time. 

- still no hair. She's definitely got my family hair genes, poor girl. She probably won't have any hair until she's 2.
- She's getting her right back molar. She's teething and her bottom gums are swollen in the front but no teeth there yet.

Here's 3 really similar pics, but they were all so cute I had to post them all.

How can you not love those squishy cheeks! 

The one with UT vs TX

There are a few things that I've noticed here that drive me crazy! Or just weren't what I was expecting. For example:

-We hardly see any cowboys or big trucks. Its Texas, I totally thought we'd see them all over. But nope. Of course we are in a big city and I'm sure if we went out a little ways away from the city they'd be every where :)
-There are bed bugs here! Ew ew ew! They aren't in our area or our apartment (or so we've been told) but they do have issues with them here.
-I feel like the lanes on the roads are smaller. Plus they don't have left turn lanes. They have them on the main busy roads, but thats about it. Back home I swear they are at every stop light. Not the stop signs necessarily but stop lights, yes. Here they don't even have them at most of the stop lights. The one to get to our apartment doesn't have one and I always feel like I'm going to get rear ended since every one behind me has to wait on me to turn.
-We couldn't find any razor refill cartridges, anywhere. Not even at Walmart. We finally ended up finding them on base at the PX.
-They don't sell Grandma Sycamore's bread or Wild Coyote Ranch (Jon's favorite and only kind he'll eat). The ranch is local to So Utah and the bread is only a Utah thing. Apparently they tried to sell outside of UT and didn't do well. Which is just so strange to me. Their bread is amazing. Its the only bread Jon would eat until we moved here. We had to search to find one that was bearable for him. He's seriously wanting his sister to overnight him both of them just so he can have them while we're here. And might I just add that I will always think it's weird that Fry Sauce is a Utah thing. How, after all these years, has it not caught on everywhere else?!?? I'm seriously baffled by this one.
-There are no landmarks to help distinguish what direction you're going. I knew this before we came out here, but what I didn't know is how much I relied on them to help me get around. Now I never know what direction I'm heading and I can get so confused and turned around. Which leads me right into my next point...
-I swear they don't believe in straight roads! Utah is built on a grid system. Makes so much sense, also makes it really easy to find your way anywhere. Here...not so much! Not having any landmarks on top of swerving roads has made it kind of difficult to get familiar with the area. I'm getting there, but knowing what direction something is from me is a different story. For example, our church is 15 or so minutes away and this whole time I thought it was north of where we are. I found out just yesterday that it's actually east. So confusing!!

The one with the potty training

My kiddos are getting so big. Taegen turns 3 next month! so crazy. He also is in the funniest stage. I have a love hate relationship with this stage. He does and says the cutest stuff, but man is he a little terror too. I do think that the terror side of him is not just the stage though. Yes some of it is, but he's been this way his whole life, so I figure I've got a long road ahead of this kind of behavior. None the less, we still love him to pieces.
Some of the funny things he has done/said recently:
-"Mom, this water is disgusting" (talking about a water bottle) and he refused to drink any more of it.
- "It's too hard" are the words that come out of his mouth when he is wanting to be carried up the stairs. He complains that he can't walk up the stairs by himself. "(of course we don't cave into this, especially now that we have 4 flights of stairs to walk up everyday).
- "this is my block station" as he's playing with and setting up his blocks. Which we were not allowed to touch.
- I don't remember what we were talking about, but I was telling him I was going to do something, and his response was "of course you can, but you won't!" Seriously?! Such attitude already!
- He was walking through Costco with Grandpa and he saw a huge playset and he told grandpa that he needed to get one of those for him :) Smart kid.
- "I want to take a bath, but I'm too busy"
- "This is not a good game, lets put it back and get another one".
- Me: "I think it's time for someone to go to bed" T: "ya...Ellie!"
- He only lets me kiss him on the cheek, especially if he has chap stick on. Occasionally I'll be able to sneak in a real one, but most times he'll turn his cheek to me when I ask for kisses.
- I can't call breakfast, breakfast. I have to call it food or dinner. He doesn't like breakfast, but he likes it just fine if it call it something, anything other than breakfast.
- He was watching a show on the tv and I started dancing to the music and he says "No mom, you can't dance to my boy show"

I started potty training him yesterday. He didn't do terrible, except for the fact that he was intentionally peeing on the floor. When I would ask him why he was peeing on the floor, his response was "because I want to". So irritating. You see this is potty training round 2 for us. The first time around we made it the 3 days, then he got super sick with diarrhea, throwing up, fever etc. So it all went out the window. But since then he's been using the toilet occasionally and was very familiar with it. I was preparing him way before hand and told him that when we moved out to Texas he would get to wear his big boy underwear. He is more than ready to be potty trained. Today, I've started giving him treats and praise along with letting him "pee on cheerios" (I put cheerios in the toilet and he tries to hit them. He says "Mom I'm scaring them away" when they move around in the water) This is seeming to help stop him from peeing on the floor. It's almost 12 and hes's only had 1 accident (knock on wood). I tried putting blue dye in the water so when he pees it'll turn green, but he normally doesn't pee enough for it to actually change color. He didn't wet the bed last night either. When we were going to bed he asked for a diaper and I told him that big boys don't wear diapers and he gets to wear his underwear instead and he seemed ok with it. He woke up at 10 with growing pains and needing to pee, so he went and after that he was fine all night long. He woke up so proud of himself.

Ellie is 5 months and is getting so chubby! It is too cute. She was born so skinny and just this past month or so has chubbed right up.
-She went through a stage where she would wiggle her feet and only her left sock would come off. Every time, it was only her left. Never her right.
- She just had an ear infection and I felt so bad that I had no idea. She didn't show any signs of hurting. She wasn't fussy, didn't tug at her ears or anything. I finally noticed when they started smelling like puss/infection. It was so sad.
- She's talking a ton now.
- She's rolled over twice, but won't do it again and that was over a month ago.
- Just today I started practicing sitting up with her and she stayed by herself for about 5 seconds, multiple times. She did really good.
- Her laugh changes almost every day. I swear every time she laughs it comes out sounding differently. But she has what we call a laugh tank. You can get her to laugh, but once that tank is empty no matter what you do, she will not laugh anymore. In fact, she starts to get upset if you continue trying for too long.
- She's found her hands and feet (picture below) Changing her diaper has become a pain because she constantly wants to hold her feet. And with all those fat rolls she's got on her thighs I need her to let them go so I can clean in between them. haha
-She's no longer throwing up! I don't know if I've mentioned this before in another post, but I'm so excited about this. She threw up on January 19th and then one more time between then and the 19th of february. Then she may have done it one other time, but that's it. She's officially cured of her acid reflux (I hope anyways. She better not progress backwards with that one).
- She's sleeping fairly well (knock on wood!) She goes to bed at 8 and will either wake up and 5 then sleep till 7 or 8. Or she'll just sleep straight through until 7. It's been super nice to actually get some sleep.
-I've started feeding her solids. I normally try to wait until they can sit up relatively unassisted (so some where around 6 mo) But this girl was not getting full after she ate. She was wanting to eat every 2 hours or more. At first I thought it was just a growth spurt, but it didn't stop and she was fussy. So I tried the food and sure enough it's helped. She's just ready for solids earlier than T was. (pics of first feeding below).
- She sticks her tongue out all the time. And most times it's out and to the side. Don't know why, she's normally not hungry when she does it. She's just playing around.

Heres some pics of my chubby monkey.

 Look at the major fat rolls on her arm... :)

 And heres just some more random shots of them lately...

the first and only time she's fallen asleep like this.

 Cody (JoLee's fiance) T and JoLee right before we left for TX

 Ellie's first time eating solids:

OH mom, this isn't bad...

 wait a second...

 EWWWWW!!!

 Oh ok, never mind

 I may have over reacted a bit :)

 E watching Shamu. She liked it probably more than Taegs did at the time. 

 Taegs and his best friend Lacey, the day before we left. He sure does miss her!

Cutest laugh ever!

Taegs loves his sister

The one where we went to Sea World San Antonio

Members of the military (and their families) get into SeaWorld 1 time a year for free. So we decided we'd go   before Jon started school. The weather wasn't super warm (in the 60's and kinda windy) plus I forgot a jacket for me and T but by noon or so it's warmed up just fine and we didn't need jackets anyways.

This was seriously the best picture I could get out of them. Love the resemblance. haha

We saw the dolphins

 Sharks 

 his face doesn't look like he was too excited, but I promise he was 

Nemo and Dori fish (which I didn't get a picture of, but Ellie was completely fascinated).

 Shamu

 

 Shamu was right during his nap time so this was about as much enthusiasm that we got out of him, but after he woke up a little bit he kept talking about how cool the whale was. So he did really like it.

penguins. Ellie liked them too. 

 And his all time favorite of the day...

Elmo and Cookie Monster.

(he could really care less for all the other characters. Although we did get a picture taken with him, Elmo and  big bird that is now sitting on his dresser)

T and Daddy watching Elmo and friends dance.

I love his face with him and Cookie monster. The worker supervising had to tell Taegs his time was up to get him to leave him. :)

The one around SA

We got here to SA about a week and a half before Jon was to start school. We did this so we could have time to settle before he got super busy, but I decided against that. We talked to a guy from his unit that started this school back in January and his wife said to prepare to just not have a husband. Because of this we decided to go sight see a little bit while he could join us. We did unpack a little bit, but I've saved that to give me something to do while he's gone all day at school. (he leaves at 4:15 am and doesn't get back until 5 pm or so).
We went and saw the famous River Walk. It was cool, but I was expecting something a lot cooler. It was mainly just restaurants and it was not stroller friendly. There was a few signs saying there was an elevator somewhere, but we couldn't ever find a working one. So just FYI to anyone who is wanting to go check it out. Plan on wearing your babies/infants and make your toddlers walk. Carrying our double stroller up and down all the stairs was not so much fun.

Eating at the Hard Rock Cafe 

My ward also has a play group every Tuesday that we've started going to. The first one we went to a park that has a train that you can ride. Taegs loved it. It also stops at a Japanese Tea Garden, which was pretty cool as well. Taegen loved being able to play with some new friends.

 On the train

 Leap pads. Heres a river the train crossed over. 

We also bought we a new car. I don't like having a car payment, but we just recently paid off Jon's delinquent credit problems and so we needed something to help build his credit. So we decided to get me a reliable car for once. We intially were going to spend our tax return and get me a car to last the year that we're here then sell it before we leave, but we decided to pay off the debit instead and get a car. That was it'll help us both :) I love the one I choose, 08 Ford Edge. Its super nice on the inside too. Leather seats, seat warmers, dvd player, blue tooth connections. So excited. This is a terrible picture, but you'll get the idea of what it looks like.

 And heres Taegs enjoying the DVD player. It's so nice to have something to entertain him with. 

We also went to Sea World, but that's a big enough post that it gets it's own entry :)