CREDITS:

Digital scrap items in the header, layouts and sidebar are by Miss Mint at PeppermintCreative.com or Jen Wilson at JenWilsonDesigns.com

Friday, October 12, 2007

I Love Eagle Springs!

This neighborhood has been so good to us! The couple across the street, who have a boy close to Aiden's age, invited us (and all of Hunter's Grove!) to their son's first birthday last Saturday. It was so fun to meet all the neighbors and make some new friends! I'm so thankful to have great families living around us and to live in such a beautiful community.

Of course, the ward has been great, too. There are dozens of girls that I absolutely adore and love being friends with. We always have the best time going out to lunch, arranging playdates or scheduling other fun activities. Every week it's something new! I am loving this time in our lives. Aiden is only 6 months and already he's gotten to do so much! (Even better are the pictures & scrap book pages we'll all have to remember the good times!)

Lately our favorite activity have been our morning walks to go play at the park. We have been doing this for a while but this morning was the first time I remembered to bring my camera! Of course, I had to do a layout!



I usually keep Aiden in his jammies for our walks. They keep him warm when it's cool in the morning and reduce the amount of skin mosquitos have access to. There are three parks near us that we like to stop at. These are a nice break for Aiden who, as you can see, loves to swing and sit in the "holey tube"! It's a nice break for me, too. I leave my phone with the stroller for Major to guard (because this is when everyone calls to plan the day's get-togethers and activities) and I go play with Aiden. It's great!

Speaking of Major, he always comes with us. I've noticed that Major, who usually walks nicely with a loose leash, will walk a little faster so he can peer around the edge of the stroller to see Aiden. I usually scold him and make him walk behind the stroller with me but it's been kind of cute to see him pull forward a little, check, and then adjust his pace to walk back by me. Is he finally going to be protective of Aiden? My guess is he's just checking to see if Aiden has a teething biscuit or something else yummy that would be easy to steal! LOL!

Thursday, October 11, 2007

The Nap Time Wars

They're not pretty and they're fought on a daily basis. There can only be one winner but the battle begins again every few hours or so. Victory goes to the most stubborn; defeat to the most exhausted.

Right now, victory is mine. But it wasn't earlier when the Comcast guy pounded on the door and sent Major into a barking fury. (These barks are extra loud and vicious to tell me it's a strange MAN at the door. Friends and ladies usually get one or two of these barks as he races towards the door, which are then immediately followed by pathetic whimpering for me to hurry and open the door so he can be petted.) Any ways, all of this commotion happend about four full minutes after Aiden had fallen into quiet sleep that was won by about 15 minutes of patient nursing and soothing. So Aiden got a 4 minute nap and was too awake and entralled by the installation of the newer, more brightly lit cable box to go back to sleep.

Fast forward 45 minutes of screaming, crying and thrashing in my arms. He cried when I walked anywhere near his crib. He cried when I sat on the couch. He cried when I walked in the office to rock him in the computer chair. I was very close to not only loosing this battle but possibly having to surrender my entire day to an over-tired teething heathen. It was time to use the ace up my sleeve: the car seat swing.

Aiden loves swings and hates his car seat. So why put him in the car seat swing? The brilliant women at Graco have discovered that the combination of the carseat, the swinging motion, the vibration feature on the swing and the recorded SWOOSH "nature" noise exactly simulates a car ride - complete with wind noise from traffic speeding by - and lulls babies to sleep all without using a single drop of gas. (And saving this mom's waistline from doing the only thing you can do on a pointless car ride around town, which is driving-thru for burgers and ice cream!)

I put a thick blanket in the car seat, pulled the visor down low so all Aiden could see was it's black fabric, turned every feature the thing came with on HIGH and walked off. There was no crying. No noise. Just quiet! I walked back over to check on him after about 10 minutes and found him sleeping like this:



He had pulled down the visor and was in a fairly uncomfortable-looking position but he seemed pretty content sleeping cuddled up with Ralphie. (That's the blue elephant's name.) I love his little chubby foot hanging out!

Wednesday, October 10, 2007

Kids are fun!

At least your own are fun! I am really enjoying Aiden. We have started going for walks several mornings during the week, even though it's still hot as heck, and I really like getting out with him. Everything he does is adorable to me and I can't imagine my life without him now. I'm so greatful I did everything in the order that I wanted because I only had a vague idea of how much I would love our children. It's nice to be able to give him my undivided attention - because even with me spending every second enjoying him, it's still going way too fast. I did this layout last night and as I put the date on it, I was thinking about how he was just born in March. He was a tiny, little helpless newborn six months ago and now he's sitting up, enjoying things, showing a preference for activities and trying to communicate! How can he have grown so much? These photos, with their October date, would have given me a heart attack in March!



I must admit, however, my first parenting trial is here. Aiden has begun spitting baby food. He does it at every meal, with every mouthful, forcefully enough to splatter me and some of the appliances on the other side of the kitchen! It has gotten worse since I gave him his first teething biscuit last week. I bought the Earth's Best Organic Wheat ones and the Gerber Zwieback Toast. He seems to love both, although the wheat biscuits smell pretty sweet and yummy, but he only gets those at dinner. Still, baby food is suddenly out. I don't know if he doesn't want it or if he is just trying to make us laugh. (Brian and I can't help it, we break down into hysterics at his bad habit!) We're trying not to laugh and it's quickly becoming less and less funny. This morning I placed a folded paper towel on his lips as he spit to stop the spray and said "no-no". He understood, because he broke down into a tantrum - with tears and wailing - twice.

I REALLY hate telling him no when he just wants to communicate and have me love him. And I know he can't be the first baby to spit food. What advice do you gals have?

Tuesday, October 9, 2007

Tootsie Rolls & Puppy

Those are Aiden's two favorite things today. The tootsie rolls he got at Kelsey's house, left over from Blake's birthday party. And he loved it, probably because they are a no-no. (For all the grandmas reading this and having a heart attack, you probably have forgotten the screaming tantrums even six month olds are capable of and when you want the twins to stay asleep, you compromise by pulling the paper wrapper, which is less nutritious and more of a choking hazard, out of his mouth and let him suck on the candy. Like any of YOU will have to do the spot treating on the chocolate drool!)

His other favorite thing is Puppy. That's it's official name. It's probably going to be his transition object but I don't care about that right now. All I care about are the near-magical properties it has at 3:56 am to get a wide-awake Aiden to be quiet and fall back asleep! He really does seem to love it. I took this picture the other night of him after he fell asleep cuddling with it:

Usually he falls asleep with his thumb still in his mouth, too. Oh, and we don't lay Aiden in his crib that way. We actually lay him the complete opposite direction but every night he twists into this position, with his head & feet touching the rails. Since this seems to be his sleeping preference, I have never put the crib bumper on for fear he'll get caught or suffocate in it. (Yeah, I know, I'll let him have Tootsie Rolls but crib bumpers are out of the question!!)

Yesterday we went to the park and I finally remembered to bring the camera! Unfortunately swings put Aiden to sleep. FAST. So all of his pictures are pretty groggy looking. I'll post the layout when I'm done - I'm hoping I have time to finish it tonight. We'll see!!

Monday, October 8, 2007

I don't feel like thinking of a title...


Love this pic of the guys. I am really getting in to embellishing photos just for fun. I like that I have a place to put them here and I might have a few printed for Aiden's photo book.

The weather is gross today. We were going to go swimming, and some other friends invited us to the park, but I don't know if either are going to happen on this yucky, muggy day.

I got a ton of new scrapbook stuff this weekend and I almost can't decide where to start. I'm dying to do a pumpkin patch layout. (Kels, when we go, you can have a copy to put your photos in!) I'm also excited about the day hike we planned during our Oklahoma trip. I'll do a layout of that, too, with the grandparents. I'm really excited about that trip!

While Aiden is alseep, maybe I should try to get more work done. I'll post any pages I finish!

Sunday, October 7, 2007

Nice Weekend

The breaks on the truck went out, we spent $270 fixing it, Brian was stuck at the auto garage for three hours while I went to meet with Brother Davis about a calling that I had to turn down (because Brian teaches during the same hour and Aiden is WAAAY too young for nursery!), Berry Hill changed it's opening time and we got there an hour too early, I had to breastfeed in the bathroom at the mall and we didn't get half of the Christmas shopping done that we needed but Brian and I both agree it was a pretty good weekend! (Read: Tay wasn't on the computer hardly at all and Brian got some attention.)

So Bri got the "family time" he wanted and I got behind on layouts. Just finished up this one tonight:



The idea of quilting the background papers came to me while I fell asleep last night. I have a few other layout ideas I'm dying to use but I seem to be spending nearly 2 hours on each page which I need to cut down on. (Or maybe it's two hours because I have to stop every few minutes and tend to a screaming Aiden or answer one of Brian's annoying I-hope-this-gets-her-off-the-computer questions.) *SIGH* Nevertheless, I really love these photos of Aiden. In fact, he's suddenly become very photogenic and lots of his pictures are turning out adorable. Where is that cold front?? I need my outdoor pictures!

By the way, I just picked up a box of the Aquafresh White Trays because I have never bleached my teeth before but I have wanted to lately. (I had a coupon for $5 off! You know me and coupons....) The first tray set was horrible. Messy, gaging horrible. And while I still dislike the "trays" (nasty, inflexible, Solo cup-like plastic) I have figured out how to get through the 30 minutes with them in place. Today is day 3 of bleaching and I'm seeing some pearlier whites! Maybe this will make me more photogenic?? LOL!!