The best picture I've ever taken

I have this friend named Katie, whom I love for so many reasons. One is that she posts on my blog, which makes me feel that someone (besides my mom) cares about it. Another is that she takes beautiful pictures of my family. This is a big deal to me. And she lent me a book called "How to Photograph Your Baby" and after 1 day I took this picture. I am so thrilled, I just had to share.

This is the original. All I did was put her in natural bright light, then take loads of pictures close up.

Then I used picnik.com to add effects. What do you think?

Sweater Dress

With the weather getting colder, I started checking out how to make Baby Legs. I met with success, maybe I'll post a picture later, right now the star of this show is taking a nap. In my internet searching I came across this sweater dress at Make It and Love It, which is basically the most adorable thing I've ever seen. I loved the tights! And had to have some, so I made a trip to Old Navy, and got the 0-6 month size. I want to know why they think that size makes sense. A newborn and a 6 month old are nothing the same. This is how they fit Allie. She's basically a newborn size.
Of course that wouldn't do. I had a brainwave--why can't I make my own "tights"? I made these babies out of women's knee sock. I can't get enough of them!! I'm the only one around here that appreciates them, though. The boys in this house think they're rather tacky. What do they know?

They were so easy to make. If anyone is interested, I'll post a little tutorial, just leave a comment.

She's worn them every day since I made them. After a really obnoxious trip to the thrift store, which I won't get into, I found a couple of sweaters. This is my first one. I haven't made the second, but it's going to have long sleeves like the one my sister made, also inspired by Make it and Love it. Having a girl is SO MUCH FUN

I made it a little too long. But it should fit her for a long time, I suppose.

Also, It's really hard to take a picture like this by yourself. Enough pictures, mom! I want a nap!!

Jason Turns Seven

Seven years ago Jared went to Priesthood session and I started a pork chop dinner with salad, complete with homemade croutons. Then my water broke. So I put everything away, called the inlaws to tell them we were bringing Joey over for a couple days, and packed a bag. When Jared got home we went to the hospital, and that night Jason was born. He was the cutest little boy ever. He had an adorable mad face. And it was so easy to make him happy. He's always gotten so much pleasure out of little things.

One of those things being candy. This boy loves candy more than anyone I know, so when my friend Sharon at This Thrifty House made a Candyland cake, I knew it was perfect for him. He requested a candy pinata, too, and I was pretty proud of the Tootsie Roll I made.He got a tackle box for his legos, and several lego sets, a Yoda lunchbox, gum, and a house key with a keychain (he loves keys). He got doughnuts for breakfast, a pizza Lunchable for lunch, pizza for dinner, cake and pinata, of course, and he didn't have to do any chores. What a great day.

Blessing

My mom made a blessing dress for Allie, but since she came so early, the dress was way too big. So I made her a smaller one. That's Joey's hand holding the hanger for me :) The headband and bracelet my mom made were adorable

The Fam

Surgery

I was changing Allie's diaper a few weeks ago and discovered a huge lump in her groin area. I freaked out, raced her to the doctor's office. I was really relieved to find out it was a hernia. Hernias are no big deal. Except in girls it can cause damage to the ovaries, so she had to get it fixed, which meant surgery.

The thing that probably worried me most was that she couldn't eat for 4 hours before we arrived, and then it would be another hour before the surgery, so 5 hours without eating. That's kind of a big deal for a 3 month old baby. But she actually did really well. She slept until about half an hour before they started, and she only got a little fussy right before they took her in.

I was afraid they were going to take her and give her an IV, and she'd be screaming because they'd have a hard time getting it in because she's so little. But they gave her some gas to put her to sleep, then did the IV, so I was really happy about that. She wore this cute little hospital gown. And these are the smallest pants they had. A couple of the nurses assumed she was a boy because she was wearing blue. :)

After surgery, she slept like a log. She woke up about once an hour and gave a really sad cry, then went back to sleep. She didn't wake up enough to eat until late afternoon. I thought my chest was going to explode. Once the anesthesia wore off, she was in a lot of pain, and was inconsolable. They gave her a tiny dose of morphine, and she was much happier after that. By the next afternoon she was totally fine, didn't even need Tylenol.This is the incision, they didn't do stitches, just used some sort of glue. Normally they do it laproscopically, through the belly button, but the instruments were too big for such a tiny girl. As a side note, check out her belly button--it's huge! It was also herniated when whe was born, but it fixed itself. It's still huge, though. Her doctor said, "At least you won't have to worry about her wanting to wear a bikini!"So everything turned out just fine. I was really worried about it, but everything worked out great. Since she was so little she had to stay overnight. I stayed with her and Jared stayed with the boys. I actually enjoyed my time there. I had no dishes to wash, or meals to prepare, I just sat by her bed and watched movies and fed my new obsession: making headbands.

A lot of memories came flooding back, since she was right down the hall from the NICU. It reminded me again of how grateful I am that she is safe and healthy.

Smiles

I took this picture of Allie. So cute! As I looked at it I thought her smile looked familiar . . . Not Tyler. I don't think they look anything alike.

Not Jason. Although they do have the same blue eyes.

This is me when I was a baby. Getting closer . . .

Aha! That's where I've seen that smile before. I guess she looks like Baby Joey. And actually she reminds me of Joey a lot. She's a high maintenance baby, she wants to be held all the time, and that's how he was. And she smiles a lot, just like he did.

It was fun going through old pictures. It goes by so fast!

School is back in session. Jason is in Grade 1 and has to go ALL DAY now. I thought it would be hard for him, but the 2 recesses, plus lunch and lunch recess softened the blow. He is thrilled with eating lunch at school. Joey's in grade 5. So far so good. He keeps forgetting to bring his homework home, though, which had dire consequences: no video games. He suffers.

Tyler didn't start kindergarted until a week after his brothers. I took him to Thanksgiving Point to Farm Country on a $2 Tuesday. He loves animals, and I thought it would be a blast. In reality is was barely worth the 2 bucks. It's just not very fun to look at a pig or a chicken or rabbit when you don't even get to pet it. He did get to feed the ducks, and that was the highlight of the trip. Or maybe the popcorn was.

The wagon ride, with Allie in the picture on his request. Isn't he the cutest little boy ever? Tyler likes school, too. He kept saying he didn't want to go, though. On the first day all the kids lined up in front of the kindergarten room door. I remembered last year when Jason went that half the kids were crying, some trying to run away, there was a lot of drama. And I was noticing that none of the kids were upset this year. Then I realized Tyler was crying. Oops! He got over it quick, though.

Allie is growing like crazy--she's about 8 pounds now :)

She is smiling now, which is ADORABLE. And also hard to capture. She gets really interested in the camera and quits smiling.

And she has adorable feet nowadays, thanks to Auntie Betty

She's a pain in the neck, like all babies. :)

But we adore her.