Abraham's First Month

Okay, so he isn't quite a month yet but he is getting close. Which I can't believe. It is funny to think that if he had come two weeks late I could still be pregnant with him! I am starting to feel like I have a bit more of a handle on the three kid thing. Jon has been home for most of the month with me, he is working on writing his thesis and so he can do that from home, and it has really made our transition so smooth. He started going back to work last week and so far I feel like I've been doing okay on my own. Though there are certainly times when all hell breaks loose and everyone (including me) is crying or screaming. But I am giving myself a pretty big learning curve, I know that things will get better with time. I remember it was pretty crazy with Asher and Rose at first but we all figured it out sooner or later.

We haven't really been doing much the last month, which as been okay with me. It is cold outside and the idea of taking three kids out by myself is still a really daunting idea. So we've been reading lots of books and watching lots of movies. But I will try to update you a bit on what our Abey baby has been up to.

Meeting Grandparents!

I don't know what Rose is doing in this picture!

Meeting Aunts and Uncles (though there are still some of you he hasn't met yet!)

Being loved by his older siblings

I don't know when the excitement of a new baby is going to wear off, probably not anytime soon. Asher and Rose are still ALWAYS so excited to hold him and help with him. I feel bad because a lot of my time is spent saying "Don't touch the baby he is eating, don't touch the baby he is sleeping, don't touch the baby he is happy, don't touch the baby he is getting his diaper changed, and, "Ahh, don't squash the baby!" They just love him a bit "violently" at times, but they are getting much better. Asher always wants to carry him but we tell him he is too little still. But a few times over the last several weeks I've left the baby lying in his bouncy seat or on the couch and come back to find him in a different spot and a guilty look on Asher's face. He is actually really good with the baby but it scares me that he will drop him. I am sure glad God made newborns pretty tough... I guess He knew they'd have older siblings to contend with!

I can tell you now that this little boy is never going be lacking in attention. Especially from Rose, she has taken on quite the role of the little mother. Quite often I find her shutting all the doors to the he family room and locking herself inside with Abe... which scares me. Yet the other day I opened the door and found this.

She was singing him a song and giving him his pacifier. It was so sweet! Speaking of pacifiers Rose has taken to using one lately. She ditched hers at about 4 months old but now that the baby has one she thinks she needs one too!

It is also really cute to hear her say his name. It comes out "A-ham". Someone the other day though she said "Ahab" and looked a little bewildered!

Celebrating his Dad's 30th Birthday (I know! We are getting SO old!)

Asher REALLY wanted everyone to wear a party hat for Jon's birthday party, so even Abe got one. If you look really close you can see the little baby that Asher drew on his hat.

I also made Jon a cake with duckweed on it.

I figured that it was appropriate this year since he is up to his elbows in duckweed data and research. Also, it seemed like a much more classy way to honor the "'International Toilet Day" theme he insists on celebrating each year.

Celebrating Thanksgiving!

His first time going out in the car seat. He just looks so tiny in there.

Asher and Rose at Grandma Bay's house. They got their own little spot and were pretty excited about it. Here I caught them breaking into their table decoration treats before dinner started! Oh, and I realized this year that every time I have had Thanksgiving at my in-laws house I've either been pregnant (Asher) or just had a new baby (Rose and Abe). We switch between families every other year and so that means that every time I've had Christmas with my family I've had a new baby! Crazy.

Snuggling his hot water bottle

Lately Abe has been really gassy in the evenings and it makes him really fussy. Our midwife suggested putting a hot water bottle under his belly to help relax his tummy and get the bubbles out. One night we decided to try this but realized that we didn't have a hot water bottle and since we no longer have a microwave we couldn't heat up our corn bags either. Jon got creative and filled a Ziploc bag up with hot water and put it in a grocery sack. It worked wonders. Abe snuggled right up to it and fell right asleep. I think he liked that it was big, round and squishy like a breast!

I was nervous though about him suffocating on the plastic bag (not to mention it started to leak) and so I went out the next day and bought a real hot water bottle. He really likes it a lot and it helps with the gas.

He is really such a sweetheart. His little chicken legs are starting to fill out a bit which sort of makes me sad. The newborn stage goes by so quickly! And in true Heather fashion I've already given him several nicknames. I call him "Abe", which makes sense, as well as "monkey", "mister mister", and "munchkin", none of which make much sense. But hey at least I get his name right all the time which is more than Jon can say!

Let Me Introduce You to...

Abraham Bay

Born two weeks "early"!

on Thursday, 11-10-11

@ 7:57 PM

6 lbs 15 oz (smaller than my others by almost 2 lbs!)

20 3/4 inches

And practically perfect in every way.

We are a little tired (mom, dad and baby) and
a little thrilled beyond what we can handle (Asher and Rose)
but we are just loving every moment with this new little boy.

Life is sweet.



Really sweet.

Two Months of Halloween

Can I be honest and say that part of me is really glad that Halloween is over? My kids started getting excited about Halloween way back at the end of August and after two months of reading Halloween books, talking about Halloween costumes, and squealing with delight every time we pass a "Halloween House" (a house with Halloween decorations) I am sort of glad to have a break until next year! Even though it has been really fun to see them BOTH get so excited about a holiday. Maybe all their energy will now be directed towards Christmas... I guess I will just have to wait and see.

We started out our festivities a few days early with a Halloween party at their Grandma's house. It was the first time they got to wear their costumes and they were thrilled. Not to mention they got to spend time with River, which always makes them happy.

This is a cute video of the kids at the Halloween party and you can see Rose's bat costume really well. Asher is grumpy because he hasn't had a nap.

We had TONS of pumpkins this year because last year I threw a pumpkin out in our garden and all the seeds sprouted. I transplanted about 20 of them to Jon's uncle's garden and they did really well. We harvested 74 pumpkins! Most of which we shared with friends and family. Rose was especially attached to her "baby pumpkin" and carried it around like it was a real baby. She almost didn't let me carve it because she didn't want me to poke it with a knife. Yet when she saw that Asher was doing it she changed her mind.

She "helped" by coloring all over it!

Asher named his pumpkin something goofy like "googagerma". He comes up with the craziest names whenever you ask him to name something. Most of the time no one can remember them... not even him!

And here is my bat pumpkin... I'm sort of proud of it.

I sewed both of the kid's Halloween costumes this year and I am really happy with how they turned out. Asher's hat is a bit big and so it kept slipping down over his face, but other than that they turned out better than I thought they would. And Asher was pretty thrilled about having a complete pirate outfit. He has been wearing it non-stop since Halloween and insists on being called "Captain Hook" or "Asher the Nice Pirate" ( I told him mean pirates aren't allowed in our house.) He has also been carrying around his hook non-stop (I didn't make it, his Grandma gave him) for the last month or so. It goes EVERYWHERE with him, except for the bathtub. It is actually getting to be sort of gross and I need to figure out away to get it off his hand long enough to wash it!

Rose really wanted to be a bat this year. I don't know where she got the idea but she was pretty enthusiastic about it. It was really cute to see her flap her arms and pretend to be a bat. Actually her favorite thing is to put her costume on and jump off the couch while flapping her arms. She really got into her part!

Jon and I didn't dress up this year. Asher told us that he wanted me to be a princess and Jon to be a donkey (I have no idea why!). I just didn't have the energy to try to figure out costumes for us this year, and I didn't fit into any of my old costumes because my belly is too big!

For trick-or-treating we just went to our Ward's trunk-or-treat. Which, in my opinion, is ideal for little kids because the walking is very minimal and it wasn't too cold! Someone in our neighborhood rigged up a trailer with a strobe light and scary music that kids could walk through. Rose was too scared to go inside but she sure had fun rocking to the music outside. I caught a bit of it on video, but wish I'd gotten her a bit earlier when she was REALLY going at. Oh, and the skunk is just too cute too!

Gratefully the kids have now blazed through all their Halloween candy (I still have a little stash hidden away) and so now life is getting back to normal. Though I don't know if Asher will let me take down the Halloween decorations yet... he is still going through denial that Halloween is over!

On Trains, Fish and Pirates

Wow, I really have to play catch up on this summer. We have had a really busy few months and I have been really bad about getting pictures up here! I think that this picture explains pretty well how we've all been feeling lately. :)

It has been a really fun couple of weeks. First Jon's uncle Jim invited us to go with him to a little town called Ely, Nevada which is right in the middle of nowhere... honestly look at the map. He wanted to take us because Ely is one of the only places in the US where they still have a working Steam Engine railroad. They have several turn of the Century steam and diesel trains that they run up and down the mountain and Jim knew that Asher would love it. It was a long drive... and crossing the Salt Flats with a three-year-old and a freshly potty trained two-year-old was quite the interesting experience. I think we saw one gas station the whole time. But we made it!

The trains were really fantastic. We forgot that there was an hour time difference once we crossed into Nevada and so we got there really early. We got to take a look around the Engine shop and were able to watch them fire up the steam engine and get it ready to go. It was SO COOL to see how those big old engines work. Asher wore his engineer outfit-- complete with hat and coveralls-- and was so excited to see that the real engineer was wearing the same thing! He was pretty ecstatic the whole time.

Jim thought it was pretty funny how knowledgeable I was about trains. I was able to identify every type of engine they had, explain what was special about it and what it was used for. I guess I hadn't realized that after reading EVERY train book our library owns (at least twice) to Asher that I've picked up quite the extensive train vocabulary. So I had a really good time too.

Oh, they are cute. They had a great time on the train ride (which was about 2 hours long) and made friends with this cute little boy whose Grandpa worked on the train. Rose is wearing her "engineer clothes" too. Every time Asher wears his she has to wear her overalls to match him.

The weekend after we went to Ely we went camping with Jon's cousin and their family. It was the first time we'd really been camping this summer and it was a shame that we left it till the very end of summer. I got Asher a little fishing pole and he is a natural fisherman. He didn't really care about catching anything, he just liked to cast it into the river and reel it back in. We did put a hook and bait on his line but it kept getting caught in the weeds so we just put the floater and the bait on it and he used that. The cutest moment was when, after one if his casts, the line came back without the bait on it. The bait had gotten caught in the bushes, but he didn't know that, and when he saw that it was gone he got the most astonished look on his face. Then he broke out into a big grin and he said "Mom, the fish ate my worm!" He was so proud.

We also went to Hoogle Zoo a few weekends ago and Rose was super excited about the elephants. I wish that I could have captured her face the first time she saw the elephant. She'd never seen one in real life and I think it was pure magic for her to realize that the pictures in her books were really REAL. She was especially excited about the baby elephant (which you can barley see in the background).

She is really into anything "baby". She will pick up rocks and tell me "baby rocks", she wants a "baby pancake" for breakfast, and every animal we see is a "baby so and so". Basically, she is pretty excited about babies. Which is a good thing because we are going to have one in a few months! But I am a bit nervous about how she is going to handle not being the "baby" of our family. A few days ago I was re-organizing our basement and I pulled out the bassinet and the baby swing and Rose got really excited. But when I explained they weren't for her but were going to be the baby's she LOST it... big time. It was the most heart wrenching tantrum she's ever thrown and it made me realize that even though she is excited to be a big sister, it might be a hard transition for her. Hopefully things go easier then I expect.

Oh, and here is Asher on the carousel. He really did like it... I promise.

And last but not least the last few weeks of my life have been filled up with pirates! I think Asher has a very one-track mind. He gets his little heart interested in something and then obsesses over it for a really long time. It started with basketballs... then moved to trains... and now it is pirates. He has worn his snow boots EVERY DAY this summer because he says they are his pirate boots. He has also been asking me to make him "eye witches" (eye patches) which he wears at every waking moment... even though it impairs his vision considerably and has walked into several doors as a result. He is pretty excited about getting a REAL eye patch to wear for Halloween (he wants to be a pirate... surprise, surprise... and Rose wants to be a bat).

Oh, yeah and they pulled out the snow pants too one day and wore them around, even though it was 80 degrees outside!

What a crazy bunch I have!