Thursday, October 29, 2009

.:Baby it's cold outside:.

Brrrr! It has been SO COLD here lately. I definitely was not ready for snow. I was quite enjoying my fall, thank you very much. But it did make it a little more fun to have my Christmas music on as it was a blizzard outside! Due to the extreme cold, my sweet girl got to wear this cute little hat. Don't you just want to kiss her little face? She was so cute watching the snow - she just kept saying "Ohhhhh"


Here are a few other recent pictures of little Reece. This is such a fun age right now! She is just walking and talking and making us laugh all the time. I love that she is trying to run to 'chase' us. I love that she says 'whooooaaa' whenever she falls down (copying Mom on that one!) I love that she knows some animal sounds. I love that she's trying to repeat some of what we say, however funny it sounds! I love that she is a total cheeseball sometimes (as you can see in the pictures!) I love that she stops and shakes her groove thing anytime she hears music. I love that she gives kisses to anyone - and anything - that she can! I just love everything about her! I can't get enough of my girl!

Tuesday, October 27, 2009

.:18 Weeks:.

Sunday marked 18 weeks for me! It is hard to believe how quickly time is going by with this pregnancy. We find out a week from yesterday what we are having - how can we be almost halfway through already?

Be sure to cast your vote if you haven't already! Will Reece get a little brother or a little sister? Josh says sister, I say brother. When I was pregnant with Reece, I dreamt I had a boy and I thought she was a boy. She obviously wasn't. With this pregnancy I've dreamt that I'm having a girl. Wonder if that means there's a boy in there?

Here's a picture of me and my hugeness at 18 weeks. I wasn't even close to this big at 18 weeks with Reece! It's amazing the difference second time around!

Loving it!

Thursday, October 22, 2009

.:Best Little Buddy:.

I have the best little buddy in the world! I love palling around with this girl everyday!


Being a mom is the best job in the world!

Friday, October 16, 2009

.:Sick as a dog:.

This week has been soooooo miserable. I can't remember the last time I was this sick. I had chills and a fever, but those went away, and I thought I was just dealing with a bad cold. Which is what I still think, but this is one killer cold! My sister in law was experiencing a lot of the same symptoms as me, and she found she tested positive for h1n1, so I decided to call my doctor and see if I should get tested. They decided to pass the testing, and just treat me for it and put me on tamiflu. I am hoping that will help something soon! I keep expecting this to be over, but it doesn't appear to be getting better anytime soon. I even got to make friends with my toilet this morning! Guess my stomach's upset from all the drainage going on. As my mom put it....that's the cherry on top! I'm just exhausted; being sick like this makes it impossible to sleep, so it's been four nites of sleeplessness, and I'm dragging.

But the good news in all of this is that Reece and Josh are both not sick, so hopefully they have avoided it! I don't want either of them to have to go through this!

Reece is such a sweet little girl. She is walking all over now. She's finally starting to figure out how to get from the floor to her feet without the help of anything. I knew that would be the thing that would really kick it in for her. She doesn't like crawling anymore at all! All she likes to do is just toddle around the house from room to room - it's so cute!

Here's a few recent pictures of Reece. She's such a busy body these days, it's hard to get any decent pictures of her!

After tub time
Daddy is so funny!
Reece's hair with her goo in it before we put it into piggies
Sporting the new crochet flower piggies I made for her

Tuesday, October 13, 2009

.:Busy Busy:.


This little guy has been sooooooo active today! Not just fluttery bubbly busy, but real kicks sort of busy! I love it when I start feeling that! I hope it keeps up! (And yes, I did just call the baby a guy. I think it's a boy. But don't count on my mother's intuition when casting your vote. I was convinced Reece was a boy, too.)

Other than that, just dealing with the sickies in our house. Yesterday I came down with a sore throat and the chills in about ten minutes flat, which laid me out on the couch for the rest of the nite. Luckily Josh was so helpful with dinner and Reece! My temp spiked at 101, and I spent a sleepless nite on the couch. Luckily, this morning my fever is gone and I'm feeling more like it's just a bad cold. But, poor Reece had a fever of 100 this morning. We're staying on top of it with Tylenol, and I'm hoping that we can turn hers into a bad cold, too. We both have had flu shots, so I'm really hoping we can avoid the flu! She's still being such a good girl considering how awful she is feeling. Plus she's extra cuddly, and I love to get those snuggles in any way I can! She's also enjoying her Halloween goodies from Grandma Z and GPSTEW - they came on the perfect day! Thanks Mom and Dad!
Not much else going on in our house. We found out on Sunday that our ward was splitting, and we are in the newly formed ward. I am really sad to leave our ward; it's been the best ward! But we're lucky to still have quite a few of our friends in the new ward with us, and I'm anxious to see where we end up serving. I'm praying for something that lets me go to Relief Society on Sundays! I haven't been for three years!

Josh is busy with school and he's doing really well. He's been able to see lots of interesting things in his clinicals, and I think he's enjoying them. That's the excitement of our lives right now!

Tuesday, October 6, 2009

.:Four Years:.

October 4th was Josh and I's fourth anniversary! We celebrated a little earlier since the day fell on a Sunday this year.

On Thursday nite, we left Reece here with her Grandma Beckloff while we headed down to Gateway for some dinner. We ate at Ztejas (we were not impressed!) and wished we had gone with California Pizza Kitchen instead. Guess we'll have to go back sometime! After that, we headed to the Armstrong Mansion. Our friends have stayed there a few times and recommended it to us. It's an old house that serves as a bed and breakfast. We got the August room. It was a cute little room, and it had stairs that led up to a loft where the jacuzzi tub was. Josh made himself a little bubble hot tub (I didn't get in since preggo ladies aren't supposed to sit in super hot water - just dipped my feet in) and we relaxed for awhile.

The next morning there was a delicious breakfast waiting downstairs for us. It was sooooo tasty! After breakfast we got ready, checked out, and headed up to Park City to hit the outlets. We spent most of the day up there, and found some great deals.

It was just so nice for Josh and I to have that time alone together, without having to worry about Reece, or work, or school. We had such a great time and hopefully we'll get to do it again another time soon before our next anniversary rolls around!

Here are some numbers to represent our four years together: (stole this idea from Kimberly - thanks!)

- 1 beautiful sealing in the Bountiful Utah temple
- 2 fun filled receptions with lots of good food, family, and friends (Salt Lake and Oregon)
- 1 mini honeymoon in Park City
- 1 honeymoon in Cabo San Lucas Mexico
- 1 rental apartment
- 6 house offers
- 1 house that we own!
- 1 associate's degree
- 0 new cars = 0 car payments
- 2 jobs for Josh (Macey's and IMC)
- 3 years teaching first grade (6 years total!)
- 1 school move (from Draper to Monte Vista)
- 1 surgery
- 1 pet (sorry, our goldfish don't count - there's been too many!)
- 1 beautiful baby to make us a family of three (soon to be four!)
- 4 pregnancies
- 1 breakdown on the drive to Oregon
- 3 Sunriver trips
- 2 wards
- 4 church buildings

We've had a few disagreements along the way, added a lot more laughs (and they just keep coming) and tons of love that just gets stronger every day!

I love you Josh!

Monday, October 5, 2009

.:Ultrasound:.

I got my gender ultrasound scheduled! We'll be finding out pink or blue on Monday, November 2nd at 1:00 p.m.

Be sure to cast your vote in the poll on the sidebar!

.:12 Month Checkup:.

Reece had her twelve month check up this morning. Here are the stats:

Weight: 17 pounds 9 ounces - 4th percentile
Height: 29 inches - 41st percentile
Head circumference: 17.7 inches - 45th percentile

So basically, she has barely gained over a pound since her nine month checkup! I wasn't expecting her weight to be that low because when I took her in two weeks ago, they weighed her with her clothes on, and she was just over 19 pounds. Who knew toddler clothes could weigh almost two pounds! As my friend Sarah said, that means I can now subtract about six pounds from my own weight! :)

That doesn't seem like a huge weight gain to me, but her doctor was not worried at all. She is a great eater and will eat anything, and he just attriubted it to her being so busy crawling, and now walking, all over the place. I wish I had that metabolism!

He gave us the results of the EEG, which came back normal. We expected that, but still good to hear nonetheless. The cream on her goodies has been working, so we're taking two weeks off of the cream, and then we'll do another two weeks back on it. I have to take her back for her booster flu shot in a month, so he'll re-check that then.

She is still tensing like crazy, but for now he is just chalking it up to some sort of habit she's developed. Since she's so right on track and perfect developmentally, he is just not sure it could be much else. Josh and I suspect urinary reflux, but he really doesn't think it's that because she doesn't have urinary tract infections, which would be one of the main symptoms of the reflux. He is also worried about doing the test without knowing for sure if it is necessary because the test for the reflux involves a catheter with dye to her kidneys, and Reece being exposed to a large amount of radiation. He doesn't want to put her through that when we're not quite sure, which I appreciate. Josh had mentioned that it was a lot of radiation as well, so I wasn't surprised to hear that. For now, he just wants to wait and see, but also said we could call at any time with any concerns.

Reece got four shots today! It was supposed to be five, but he took one out since she was getting her flu shot. I was expecting the worst, but she was so amazing! She cried for about 30 seconds, and has been perfectly fine and happy ever since! That's my girl!

A few more fun facts about Reece at one year:

- She now knows how to give a high five, and will 'buzz' your finger after. It is so cute!
- She knows the animal sounds for tiger, doggy, and cow. We're working on duck right now!
- She has gotten in the habit of throwing all of her animals and blankets, and binky out of the crib when we put her down for bed at nite. It is really funny to watch her on the monitor!

I've been only doing her binky for nap times and at nite, but it looks like she may end up weaning herself off of that if she keeps it up with the throwing out of the crib trick!

We love our girl and just think she's the greatest!