Jaylie June 6 months

Our Juney girl is 6 months old.  It really does seem impossible.  She is still a very happy, content, easy-to-please little gal all day long.  She's easy to please all night too, it just requires me getting up to feed her every 3 hours.  My theory is that she's figured out that's her only hope at having me all to herself so she wakes up for a little one on one time with mommy! haha!  I feel like she's sooooo good during the day that she "deserves" to do what she wants at night and I have no room to complain. 

She is working hard to sit up, but she manages to squirm and wiggle her way all over the place.  She hasn't tried to pull her knees up and crawl or anything, she moves more like a protractor.  Her tummy stays in one place and she moves around in a circle with the rest of her body. She likes the Bumbo and has outgrown the little play mat. She just rolls off of it or flips it over.   

She wants to suck her thumb so badly, but can't figure it out.  She gets in in her mouth, but then just chews on it.  She has pretty much completely stopped taking a paci.  If you give it to her she just takes it out and chews on it and plays with it. If anything, she sucks on her little blanket if she gets it in her mouth just right.  Whatever little missy.  

She takes at least 2 good naps a day (if we aren't dragging her all over the place in and out of the car and stuff) and usually one more cat nap.  She is still in the bassinet in our room and I love having her right beside me....not to mention I don't have to travel far (or at all) for her middle of the night feedings.  

She got a tooth just as she turned 6 months old and it made me sad.  

Her voice is LOUD and she SKWAKS a lot.  She moans and kicks her leg as she's falling asleep just like Quinn does.  

She has had her first bad cold this month and the cough is still hanging around. She never ran fever or even acted like she felt bad and even still slept good despite the congestion.  She was so cute with that snotty nose and watery eyes and her big huge grin all day long.  I felt sorry for her, but she did just fine.  At her 6 month check up she was 27 in.  and 16 lb. 4 oz.  Both of those were somewhere around 25% length may have been a little higher, the Dr. had to remeasure her and never replotted her length.  Oh well.  She has not been much of an eater these last few weeks but I think it has more to do with her cold and congestion than anything. 

Those big bright bug eyes of hers don't miss much as she is always looking around following the action.  I love it when Kory is home and she just follows his every move and is smiling from ear to ear watching him.  

So, at half a year, here are my reflective thoughts. The best way I can describe it is I am just ENJOYING her so much. I know it helps that she's content and happy, but she's still a baby and we all know they require a lot, but for some reason, she has just been a pure joy.  She rarely "gets on my nerves" (come on moms...we love our kids, but we know they some times wear on us.)  She just hasn't done that too bad yet. I can't get enough of her.  She has added very little stress to my life (except the whole heart attack thing) and I am SO HAPPY that I have her. I am not trying to sound like its all perfect or that its all pretty or easy or calm, or that I'm such a great mom, I'm just saying that maybe she was the PERFECT addition to our family and came at the perfect time. The truth is we have one foot in chaos all the time, but we are usually waist deep in chaos only once or twice a day. ha! This transition has been by far my easiest, but I am also an unfair judge I think considering our route to this point.  My transition to one was.....traumatic.  When we added Quinn, Kanyon was still very needy and "young" by all definitions of the word.  Not to mention I was still blending all his foods and doing the time consuming, stressful feeding therapy, and so adding Quinn meant a tight schedule for both kids that I had to stay on to keep them both fed. We enjoyed it, but it was pretty stressful. In retrospect, I kind of can't believe we did that, but Quinn saved us by being a very VERY easy baby.  It does seem like the amount of clothes I wash has quadrupled just by adding one tiny girl.  I don't know how that happens, but it seems like all I do is wash clothes, fold clothes, and put them away.  I think the biggest adjustment has been time. I feel like i have no flex time in my day anymore.  On days when we don't go anywhere, thats fine. Things might be a little busier, but thats ok.  But on the days we have to be somewhere at a certain time it seems like I have NO ROOM for error. So when someone spills their milk all over the kitchen floor, that ruins everything because I don't have TIME to clean that up.  Being on time has never been my strong suit, but its the ultimate challenge now! So please don't read this as me saying because I've enjoyed her so much that I have it all together and don't get stressed.  Sheesh I was a strung out lunatic before kids....they've only made it worse. I guess I'm just at peace with my crazy.  For now. I'm sure this "season" will pass and I will change my tune, but for now, we are rollin' pretty good.

My new years resolution this year was to dress Jaylie.  Yes, you heard it.  Dress her.  All she wears is pajamas.  Part of that is because they're cute and when its cold, its just easier.  You don't have to worry about socks or shoes or whatever.  But I have clothes hanging in her closet that I want her to wear. My problem is I'm getting ready to go somewhere and it comes time to dress her and it just doesn't makes sense.  Why take her out of perfectly good, all-be-it boyish pajamas just to go to small group/a friends house/grocery store, etc.  So PJ's always win.  So I resolved to take the.......TIME to change her and put her in cute clothes.  Cute clothes=anything but PJ's. I've done pretty good so far and have had fun seeing her in her little outfits.  I'm learning the other "girl" rules like bloomers under dresses and having fun with that. I'm still finding my way through the wide world of bows. I'm finding our "style" and figuring out what works around here.  Besides the sticky bow of course.  We know that works for us. hee hee.

  I had a pretty rough patch during the 2 months that I wasn't able to nurse her.  I felt pretty lost and my attitude about it all was less than stellar.  I always knew that breastfeeding was important to me, but when it got taken away from me, I really learned how I felt about it.  I am thankful that she did well on the formula and bottles while we needed them but am so happy to be back to nursing again. For us it is just way easier so I really feel a giant burden lifted.  Thankfully, she went back to it with no troubles. I had worried that she would "forget". In the big scheme of things I know it wasn't the most important thing during that time, but I just couldn't get over it and I am just so relieved that it is behind us.

 So, here we are half way through her first year and its safe to say she makes our hearts explode! 

I fed her a few days after she turned 6 months.  She's still gagging through the whole process.  Here she is trying avacado.  We'll keep trying.  Ha.  

Taking her bath is her favorite thing! 

Randomness at its finest

Some stragglers from the last couple of months......

Doesn't he look smart????....

klp loving riding his horse

Showing Mommy his "airplane arms"!

This was back when she first started "talking".  She's a full fledged jabber jaw now.

Sometimes this is what happens on Friday night. This was the boys' first time to watch Peter Pan (one of my all-time favs) and they loved it.  They play lots of Peter Pan these days. 

Sweet big boy with his missing tooth

These are some chaps we got as hand me downs from some of Kory's cousins.  Q was feelin' pretty tough in them.  

watching Lone Ranger wearing his chaps and shooting the bad guys on the TV. Almost too much cuteness for one picture. 

Good ol' Paw Paw taking the boys for a sub-freezing Mule ride.  

baby sister snuggles

J having a sink bath at Gay Gay's.  

King Quinn wanted to pose with Jaylie June for her 5 month pictures

I tried to get some cute pictures of J all dolled up for church. 

When Jaylie was born, bloomers with her name on them was one of the things I looked forward to about having a girl! They did not disappoint. 

These next 2 picture capture Jaylie June so perfectly (i just hate they're blury. I needed a tripod).  She plays on this quilt ALL DAY LONG.  She loves it and is so happy and sweet.  I love this age where they play on their tummy pushed up like this.  I seriously want to attack her she's so cute! 

This wide open mouth, wrinkled nose is sooooooooo her. 

I'm trying to get all caught up here on the blog, but it has taken me a while to get caught up in life. Being out of commission for so long got me VERY behind in every single part of my life. I don't think it helped that I was barely back in the swing of things after having a baby when the heart attack happened.  With my pregnancy I felt pretty yucky for the first 20 weeks so I was moving a little slower than usual, then at about 24 weeks, Dr. says to "take it easy" and not do too much "extra" stuff, then you're the size of a cow and CAN'T do as much as you want to, then you have a C-Section and have 6 weeks worth of not being able to lift your kids...especially that biggest brother! I finally got back to normal after all of that and then got slammed right back down with the heart attack and recovery. I have been cleared to go back to normal and I feel great. Our awesome church brought us meals for 6 weeks!!  YES 6 WEEKS! It was so awesome and SUCH a HUGE help as we got back in the swing of things.  I am so glad to be able to not have restrictions. Its been over a year  (other than the brief time between baby and heart drama) since I haven't had restrictions and its wonderful.  During the last year or more, I feel like we've been in survival mode. We might've had snippets of normalcy but on a whole I feel like I've been treading water for the last year.  I am SO GLAD to not feel like that, though now I'm sort of digging out of the last years worth of putting things off and doing the minimal and all the other "survival mode" sort of things.  I am thankful that I feel so much better and to top it all off I am back to nursing Jaylie and I'm so happy.  We were finally able to talk to some experts on nursing/drug interactions and based on my dosages and medications, It is ok for me to nurse her! YAY! I thought I was going to have to stop the meds before my Dr. wanted me to or just stop pumping and be done with nursing. It was a bigger deal that I would've imagined, and I feel like it affected me in a HUGE way. I am glad that is over and so thankful to be back to nursing her (even if that does mean I'm up a million times a night.....funny what a little perspective does to ya!)

Here's to a year of only our normal craziness....no added medical craziness!!!

Fire Pit Fun

I got Kory a little fire pit for Christmas.  I knew it would be something fun for us to do outside on these short nights when it gets dark by 6:00.  I have a few pics from the times we've used it. 

klp LOVES to roast marshmallows. By roast I mean light on fire.  He has no interest in eating one, of course.  

klp keeping the fire going......KLP doing damage control.  ha!

yummmmmmmmmmm. Quinn had LOTS of interest in eating the marshmallow! 

This was when Q was trying his first s'more.  KLP was laughing because he was DEVOURING it!  

This maybe my new favorite picture of the boys.  I wish I would've used a tripod. I was being lazy.  klp is blurry because the child does NOT sit still.  :)