Waving

Bentlee started waving this week! Is it not the cutest thing you've ever seen??

Family pictures

Happy Anniversary to us!

Wednesday was our 3rd Anniversary. We decided to celebrate last week by going to the play the Christmas Carol at the Hale Center Theater in Orem. Kyle used to go every year with his family but it was my first time and I LOVED it. He also took me to Tucano's Brazillian Grill for my first time which is pretty famous here in Provo. I love date nights with that guy, whether it's a spontaneous dollar movie during the week, or a "fancy" date like last week. In some ways it feels like we were married yesterday, but at the same time I can hardly remember my life without Kyle.

I would define us both as the romantic type, but we are more private about it. We're not ones for gushing about each other on Facebook. I think that takes away the romance for me a little. And if I did, I would never be able to put into words how I feel about this guy. But I guess since this is our family's blog, and because I've been feeling so incredibly blessed lately, I'm in the mood to gush. I often wonder how I got to be so lucky. In the past I have made Kyle a list of reasons I love him for our Anniversary. Since having Bentlee, my love for him has grown so much that I didn't even know where to start. I've never known anybody as patient and positive as he is. I've honestly never even seen him have a bad day. The most frustrated he has been, at least in the last 4 years I have known him, has been with our insurance company (long story) and I would bet everything I own that there wasn't even a cuss word thrown. :) Sometimes I wonder if he's human, or if I'm actually living a fairy tale life of someone like Bella from Twilight. Because of his great attitude, he makes it easy to communicate with. He has never once raised his voice at me or talked down to me, which means more to me than he will ever know. He is selfless, putting everyone else (especially Bentlee and I) first. He loves the Lord and makes his church callings a priority, and he works extremely hard at his job in order to provide for us. He encourages my role as a stay-at-home mom, but also supports my little side job doing lashes and helps with Bentlee as much as possible while I work.

And then there are the "little" things that are much bigger than he knows. From asking about my day each day, to the flowers he often brings me for no reason. And how he checks on Bentlee first thing when he wakes up and right before he goes to bed. He has far exceeded my expectations for a husband and father of my children, and we have only spent 3 years of our life together. He is truly my best friend. There's no one else I would rather talk to or spend time with. I love that we share a special love for Bentlee that nobody else has for her. I love that she is OURS and that we, as well as the other children we bring into this world, will be together forever. For an eternity. And that makes me happier than I could have ever imagined.

                                    

8 MONTHS!

My baby is 2/3 of a year old! This post will be full of really random pictures and videos because I don't have time to organize them and explain each one. Also, every video and picture I've taken this month has been on my phone so the quality isn't great. Lame, I know.

First, for those who are worried how this little munchkin is doing in a cast, these videos might put you at ease. She started rolling and scooting within 24 hours, and after a few days she got up on her knees, followed by a little crawling an hour later. As sad as her cast still is to us, we can't get enough of watching her drag the heavy thing around with her on our hard wood floor.

Cast or no cast, she is still our happy little "angel baby". She brightens each day with her big grin and happy little attitude. One morning she woke up with a bad cough and stuffy nose. I was worried she would get really sick, but later that day I walked in the room and found her like this:

She still loves her bottles and freaks when she sees them. Here's a little example.

Random pictures and videos  (mostly for my family that never get to see her)

 

Grandma Max A reindeer brought Bentlee a huge stocking full of gifts for the 12 days leading up to Christmas. She gets to open one a day. So fun! Bentlee shares the candy with mom and dad. :)

Nothing will stop this girl from finding the door stopper every day

Her latest trick is throwing her bottle. Even when I'm helping her hold it she manages to push it up over her head.

Maybe it's just because I'm around her 24/7 but I don't think I've ever met a baby with as much happy energy as she has. It never ceases to amaze me how good-natured she is. All I have to do is say her name and she turns around and grins at me. One of these days I need to get a video of her watching these videos because she loves them. It's hilarious.

She LOVES Baby Einstein. We've been putting it on periodically just to watch her reaction. In this particular video however, she couldn't seem to choose between BE on the computer and the BYU game on our TV.

I can't get enough of this little 8 month old. Every day is better with her apart of it!

Bentlee's first sledding adventure

I'm so behind on my blog and I know if I don't document this now it may never happen. I experienced my worst day of Parenthood today. For the last 8 months I've had this strange fear of falling while holding Bentlee. Today that nightmare came true and I'm pretty sure my baggy sweats had something to do with it. I was bringing Bentlee down the stairs this morning and I slipped and slid down several steps. I reacted quickly and thought I protected her well. One of my hands covered her head and the other held her body close to me. When we came to a stop and she started wailing, it didn't even really occur to me that she may have been hurt. I just thought I had scared the crap out of my poor daughter. I cuddled her on the couch while she cried and after about an hour I started wondering if something else could be wrong. For those that don't know my baby very well, she is close to perfect. Like, really. She's never fussed for more than minutes at a time and when she does fuss it's because she's tired. She was super clingy, every time I tried to put her down she held a death grip on my shirt. Kyle had been at the gym this whole time. I called my mom and told her what happened, and told her (not really jokingly) that I thought I had traumatized her. I still didn't understand how she could have been hurt when I had held her so close to me. I tried a couple things to calm her down including a bath which she normally LOVES but she just cried harder. The only thing that worked was to hold her really still. She kept dozing off but wasn't sleeping soundly and she would start fussing with the slightest movement one of us made. When Kyle got home he agreed something was wrong so I called her Dr around 12:30 and was told they could see her at 2:30. During that time we paid extra attention to where she seemed to be hurting and we realized it was her leg. She saw Lisa, (the PA and my favorite) and she sent us to the Outpatient lab for X-rays. Within moments of getting the X-rays, Lisa called to tell us there was a fracture in her femur, just above the knee. She said the good news was that it wasn't displaced, meaning she wouldn't need pins or surgery. Uh, what? Good thing I hadn't entertained that possibility. I had held it together pretty well until that phone call. Probably because I had been telling myself over and over, there's no way that fall could have broken my baby's leg. There's no way.

If Bentlee wasn't so amazing it would have been harder to dry my tears. Our baby is a TROOPER. She was definitely fussy this morning, but she did so good during all of her appointments today. With mommy holding her and daddy playing music in her ear, she almost fell asleep getting her cast on! So for that reason, and several more, I am counting my blessings. Not only do I have such a sweet and good-natured baby who is (usually) in great health, we have the best husband and father who took his whole, what was going to be a very busy day to be with us and then spent his evening shopping and cleaning our dirty kitchen. I am a very, very lucky girl.

But I still can't look at these pictures without feeling a little sick inside. And I keep thinking back to when I gave her a bath, and tried other ridiculous things to "calm her down" when the poor child had a fractured femur! Hello. Mother of the Year. I know it wasn't my fault, that I didn't purposely slip and fall down he stairs. I know I need to get over that and I will.

And, like Kyle suggested, I need to get some tighter sweats.

6 MONTHS

I think it's going to say I published this almost a month ago when I started it but I didn't finish until today (Nov. 6th). Bentlee turned 6 months old while we were in Michigan and I didn't have access to all of my pictures and I haven't been motivated since. The night before we left for Michigan, we celebrated her "half birthday" with daddy. My friend Lindsey in California has a family tradition of celebrating half birthdays with half birthday cakes and we liked it so much we decided to copy. Since Bentlee couldn't eat her cake, we let her play with it.

                        She's started giving kisses! Not really on demand-it has to be her idea :)

People find it hard to believe she's 6 months old because she's such a little peanut. In a way I like that she's so small because it's not as sad for me to see her get older. It's probably nice for my parents also because she doesn't change much between our visits. I don't think I've ever heard anyone in Michigan say, "She's geting so big!" My milk supply has continued to decrease so I have been giving her mostly formula and just nursing a couple times a day. For the most part I'm okay with it, but when she lunges for my chest looking for food it makes me a little sad. What worries me though, especially as winter is approaching, is how often she might start getting sick. Other than a UTI a few weeks ago, Bentlee has never had even a cold! She has stayed healthy while Kyle and I have both had horrible bugs including the stomach flu. I definitely understand now what amazing immunity breastfed babies have. On a brighter note, she LOVES her bottles. She spots them from across the room and starts panting like a dog. I can tell if she's hungry or not by her reaction to food. If I have a bowl or plate of something and she freaks out, I know it's time for her to eat.

Bentlee grabs people's attention everywhere we go with her happy personality. Someone at Jiffy Lube yesterday told me that she has a great disposition. Another man's eyes were glued to her as she stared back with a perma-grin. She's so much fun. It's hard to stay in a bad mood with her around. There is a family (the Snyders) that always sits behind us in church and they love taking Bentlee from us. They get a kick out of how happy and smiley she is. It's fun to see her interact with other people and I love seeing guys get all mushy over babies.

This is her famous closed-mouth smile. Love it.

About a week ago Kyle and I were talking about how it didn't seem like she was even close to starting to crawl. I mentioned that I'd never seen her push herself up on her arms. The very next day she started doing it. And although she's technically not scooting yet, she's moves ALL over the place. It amazes me how fast she can get from one side of the room to another by just rolling. My mom told me in Michigan, "You know that when she starts crawling she's going to be into everything right?" (I guess I was a little troublemaker at that age) Two days after we returned home I walked in the living room and found Bentlee under the TV like this....

Kyle is so great at entertaining her. She can always depend on him to find her "toys" to play with, no matter where we are. Last night we went to JCW's  for shakes and he kept her occupied with a plastic spoon, a little ketchup cup, and a lid. She had a blast with them in the restaurant and on the way home. She's always happy when daddy's around. Today I came home from running an errand and found her in his office:

Bentlee thinks she is really helpful. Whether she's "helping" you shove her food in her mouth, or "helping" you fold laundry, she'll never let you down. She's continues to be much more serious when we go places but at home she's super goofy and quick to laugh at us. The other day she started giggling for no reason while I put on her diaper after her bath. So funny. (At the end of the video I was making faces)

I asked Kyle what his favorite things are about Bentlee right now and he said how smiley and vocal she is. My favorite thing is how excited she gets when I walk in the room. She kicks her legs and arms so hard that I'm afraid she's going to break a rib. I've tried getting it on video but she gets too distracted by the camera. And when she's on her belly and I walk up to her, she leans to the side and lifts one arm up to me to let me know she wants to be picked up. Cutest. thing. ever.

 I also love this....

I could lie and tell you she's saying "Mmm" in the right context, but she says it when she gets picked up, when she gets her binki, etc. Basically whenever she gets her way. It's adorable.

Last but not least, we finally had her 6 month check up on Friday and these were her stats:

Weight: 13 lbs 12 oz (15th percentile)
Length: 26.5 in (70th percentile)
Head: Can't remember but it is the 40th percentile

Dr. Savage told me we can start giving her table food already. What?! The only 2 things we need to avoid aere honey and milk. Products with milk are ok, she even mentioned ice cream. What kind of Dr. tells their 6 month old to start eating ice cream? Ours. We love her. She also said to start giving her a sippy cup once in a while so it will be easier to ween her off a bottle later. Basically Bentlee went from a baby to a big girl in one day. Not cool. I don't plan to actually start her on table food quite yet but I'm still a little sad.

I'm adding this part today....she has had rice cereal, oatmeal, whole grains, sweet potatoes, squash, zucchini, avocado, pears, and bananas and so far she seems to like everything!

Rice Cereal

We fed Bentlee rice cereal last night for the first time and her reaction wasn't what I expected. I thought she'd be more weirded out because she HATES medicine. But she loved this!

It didn't take her long to realize she could "help" get it in faster.

(Side note: The bouncy seat ended up being a little more effective but she was so cute sitting up in her little bumbo)