Changing my blog

I honestly don't know if anybody reads this blog anymore... I haven't even updated it in a year. I just noticed my cousin changed her blog and made it private. I've been wanting to for quite some time now... so here it is: chaseandmikah.blogspot.com. If you want an invite, please leave me your email address in the comments. Or email me if you know my address.

Halloween and more...

It's been awhile. Maybe I'm a little slow at adjusting, but I still feel like I'm trying to stay afloat with this having two kids thing...that's why I haven't blogged in awhile. However, I do love it. I have the two cutest, sweetest little girls anybody could ask for. Chelsea's starting to get more interactive. She smiles a whole lot, is starting to coo, and loves to sit up and look around. She can't sit up on her own yet, of course, so she loves to be held. Railee's getting so big, also. We just watched a home movie last night from Christmas last year, and I can't believe how much she's grown physically and mentally. Her vocabulary grows a little every day and now she's starting to put sentences together in a way I can understand. It's amazing how much and how fast kids learn!

Railee is also the best big sister! She loves Chelsea. I can't wait until they can play together... I can tell they're going to be best friends.

Railee loves cottage cheese, and now she knows how to open the fridge. So, now she can get cottage cheese (and everything else) whenever she wants. Ha ha! It's been fun.

Chelsea and Bennett. Welcome, Bennett!

Halloween - I love Halloween. It's getting even better now that I have kids. I have Railee in a Kindermusik class. They all dressed up their last class before Halloween. SO cute! I loved Yoda. Railee was a witch this year but wouldn't wear her hat. She still looked so cute, though.

More Halloween - This is Chelsea with Brooks (Darby's friend's baby). I just thought they were so cute and they're only a week or two apart. I also love the onesie I have Chelsea in, it makes me laugh.

Halloween night. Railee was a witch. Chelsea was the cutest little star! We took Railee trick-or-treating. Oh my, it was a blast. She caught on really fast and couldn't have loved it more. We went up to my in-laws' neighborhood. They all walked around with us. What a nice night, too!!! It was so much fun all the way around!

Chelsea's blessing day - we had a small get together for Chelsea's blessing. I loved this day with her and when Railee was blessed. It's neat to have these amazing little beings in my life and this day just makes it feel more amazing! And I love my husband for all he is and stands for! Chelsea's been so much fun. Like I said above, her personality is starting to shine through. I love her so much! The things I love about her so far: her smile, her strength, how alert she is, how easy-going she is, her skinny little body, how she sticks her tongue out all the time, and a ton of other tiny things that she does. We're so happy to have her in our family!

The crew. Thanks, all, for your support... We love you!

It Happened....

Railee escaped her crib! Not only that, but we were in her room with her reading scriptures before we turned out the lights and neither of us even noticed her crawling over the railing until all the sudden she was out... that's how graceful she did it. It was as if she had done it a million times before. We sat there contemplating whether or not she had done it before, but figured she doesn't know how to get back in so this must have been her first time. She definitely, then, had been studying how she was going to do it. We put her back in to watch what she would do and sure enough she has her method down perfectly, without a struggle at all. We were laughing so hard. Why was it funny? It really makes me stressed out. I don't know if I'm ready for this battle just yet. I am happy, though, that she knows how to get out safely instead of just falling out.

Ok, now I'm going to ask for anybody who reads this next part to leave a comment if you have one. I recently blogged about my method to get Chelsea to sleep through the night. Well, as much as it worked the first night, I found it to be lot harder to keep her awake than I thought. Not impossible, but hard mostly because she was crying a lot and I felt sad doing that to her. Plus, the person Chase got this advice from isn't somebody I can email or call with my questions. ANYWAY, that really doesn't have anything to do with what I'm asking here. Chelsea has actually been doing really well getting through the night. She'll wake up once or not at all. I had somebody that just had a baby call and ask for some advice on this subject. I gave her a few pointers, but every baby is different and responds to different things. Not to mention, I am not a pro by any means. This poor new mom was exhausted from having no sleep two nights in a row. SO, if you have any suggestions or different methods will you please leave a comment so anybody who wants can read them? I feel like I know a lot of new moms that would probably appreciate pointers on this one. Thanks!

Chelsea

Our little Chelsea is here! She was born a week ago, but I'm just getting on my computer for the first time today. Having two kids is weird and will definitely take some getting used to, but it's not as hard as I was thinking it would be. Everything went smoothly with the labor and our stay at the hospital.
Railee's been making the adjustment so much better than I expected, too. She LOVES her sister, but does have a few things that she gets upset about that she never did before... like brushing her teeth.

Chelsea was born Sept 1st at 5:44. She weighed 7 pounds, 12 ounces. It's neat because that's exactly what Chase weighed when he was born.

Railee hung out at the hospital quite a bit, so she got to be there for the ride home. This is what our new car-load looks like!

And this is Chase's favorite thing. He loves to have the baby asleep on his chest... it's really sweet. We have several pictures of Railee and him in this same position. I love it, too!

Our first day and night home I felt bad that we weren't being very fun for Railee, so we sent her to spend the night in Midway where all of her cousins were. We sent her with the pack n' play where we were planning on having Chelsea sleep until Railee's done with the crib. So I fixed up this nice laundry basket. I felt kind of sad/lame welcoming my baby home to a laundry basket bed, but it actually worked out really well! She fit perfectly, and it was nice cuz we could carry it around with us downstairs. It'll make a great scrapbook story. She also was being so happy and cute when I was taking these pictures. She does the funniest things with her legs, too. She's so much fun!

NOW... I have to throw this in here because I am so happy about it... but Chelsea slept through the night last night. She fell asleep about 11:30 and woke up at 9:00!!! Again, I know they tell you to keep them on a feeding schedule even in the night, but I don't agree with that. I don't think you should wake a sleeping baby (at night) just so you have to re-teach her to sleep through the night later. If a baby is hungry, he/she will let you know. Anyway, so we have a new method that is supposed to get her on a sleeping-through-the-night schedule. After last night's results I will stick to it! You keep the baby awake from 3:00 to about 9:00. It seemed like it would be kind of difficult, but it wasn't so bad. I kept her fed, but never let her get completely stuffed. Then you can wash her feet, I gave her a sponge bath, changed her diaper between feedings, etc. I started this process a little late last night so she didn't end up falling asleep until 11:30, but once she was asleep she stayed asleep! Supposedly, after 3 days of that the baby should be on a set schedule. I am so happy today with a FULL night's sleep backing me up! Thought I should share my tip with you all!

So we're just watching the clock around here. At this point, it's all a waiting game anyway, but I'm being induced on Thursday. Staci recently took some pregnancy pictures of my little family and me. I don't love the face I'm pulling in the picture above, but I think Chase and Railee are so stinkin' cute! I love my little family! They mean the world to me! I even feel like this new baby is already the perfect fit, and she's not even here yet. I love her without even meeting her. I just know that if she brings me even a fraction of happiness as my little Railee has then life will be pretty fantastic. I know she will bring just as much! And then I'm super blessed with the husband I have. He's so helpful and so loving. I couldn't ask for anybody better! Soooooo..... unless a million people go into labor on Thursday, I will have my baby then. I will for sure be posting pictures as soon as I am able. If not on here, then on Facebook.

As for an update on the last few weeks... not much has happened around here. We had our last hurrah in St. George, but that's the extent of our excitement. I've been trying to keep Railee and me busy around here. I've rearranged my WHOLE house. We have a "guest" room upstairs that also used to function as my craft room, Chase's homework station, our junk room, storage room, laundry room, etc. We figured we want the girls to have their own rooms at first, so we had to find space everywhere else for all that we had in there. Now all that's left is the bed, which we'll get rid of when we're ready to switch Railee into a big girl bed. Also, Chase painted our garage so we've been reorganizing it and trying to get rid of any clutter in there, as well. It's been quite the month of projects. Our garage isn't completely done yet, but it's almost there. My house is FINALLY at a state that I feel happy with and I finally feel ready to bring our baby home to this place. Nothing feels better than a little order. If something doesn't have a place to be put away, then I'd rather just throw it away! Other than our house projects, we've been able to go on a few field trips. I forget about all that's available to us just in our own area. We've been to Wheeler Farm twice, Tracy Aviary, the library, $2 Tuesdays at Thanksgiving Point, lots of walks, swimming at our neighborhood pool, sleepovers with cousins, etc. We've been able to keep busy. It's good for me because I get super anxious (the good and the bad kind) when something so big is about to happen, to the point I don't get a ton of sleep at night because my mind would rather go crazy. Also I think Railee's been sensing the change so it's been nice to spend some fun time with her.

Railee loves birds, so we took her to the Tracy Aviary. It was my first time, too. What a fun place!

We love our cousins! They came to sleep over one night. Both Railee and I loved having their company! Such cute and entertaining girls!

Just Plain Cute...

Ok, nothing special about these pictures other than she's just plain cute. I can't get enough of this little stinker. She constantly makes me smile.


July has continued to be awesome for us. It feels like we're always moving, doing something fun. Chase just had his birthday - he's getting so big. We've made even more jam, raspberry this time. Railee helped pick and eat them. I've been to St. George, I hired my first teenage babysitter, Chase and I have been to 2 movies together (that's huge these days), and we've hung out a lot in Midway. Things are starting to slow down for the summer. We have one more trip to St. George planned, but then it's wait at home and watch the clock until #2 is born. Which, BTW, is for sure a girl. We were having our doubts. I am carrying super different and when I had my ultrasound, the tech was not convincing at all. He just kept saying things like, "Well, nothing is ever 100% certain," and "From what I can tell you're having a girl." I think he was supposed to say that, but ever since we've had the lingering thought that he very well could be wrong. Anyway, my doctor gave me an ultrasound last week to check the position of the baby and.... YEP! No doubt about it now, we're having a girl! Things are going great in this pregnancy. She's healthy and I'm healthy... what more could you ask for? I'm getting nervous and excited about this baby. I am excited to not be pregnant anymore and to see our baby, but nervous to have two kids. I'm also nervous for Railee... I just feel she doesn't have a clue, even though I've tried to help her understand, and that her world will be turned upside down. I love seeing that girl happy, and she does get jealous and angry sometimes when I hold other babies. She loves babies and I know she'll get used to it and love her sister, but the worry is for trying to juggle the new baby and her tender emotions. I'm also worried about being overwhelmed. As I've mentioned before, Railee's a handful. Will she become even more of a handful competing for my attention? Overall, I am excited. I think she NEEDS a playmate. I also think it will be a great thing for her to learn to share her attention.

So, that's our update.

Making Jam

Every year since Chase and I got married we've made jam together. We didn't intend it to become a tradition, but it's become a very special one for us. I can't explain it, but it's just a neat bonding time. And then when we're eating the jam we get that pride that we made it together. This year was the first year we had a little extra help, and we enjoyed every bit of it! In fact, it made it that much more special! I put a chair next to the sink so she could see what I was doing, and before I knew it she was pulling the strawberry stems off leaf by leaf. She then would do one of three things... eat it, put it in her oven mit (?), or occasionally put it in the bowl with the other washed and stemmed strawberries. Since this night of making the jam, I haven't been able to get her to eat a strawberry. I'll try again in a few weeks. I wasn't expecting her to take so much interest in this activity but she absolutely loved it, and we loved having her there with us!

Ok, now here's a little bonus to this post.... a little shout out to my sister, Deebs. First of all, somehow I noticed in my RAGNAR post that I didn't post the group picture with Darby and Trevor in it. Oops! They were there and they did see it to the finish line! Let it be known! Second, My little sister is just great. I can't tell you how sweet she is to my little girl! Railee really does light up whenever Darby comes around. We love Aunt Deebs!