9 Months

Here's a picture of Bridget enjoying her new room (not that you can see much of it). The walls are a very pale green to match her frog bedding. She had a hard time adjusting to her new room the first couple of nights, but sleeps through the night as usual again.

She's crawling all over the place, and getting very fast. If I look away for too long she's bound to be going somewhere or doing something she probably shouldn't. She's also getting better and faster at cruising along the couch or anything else that's the right height. And learning to climb stairs was definitely something she learned to do much sooner and faster than I would have liked.

The last couple of weeks she's been able to spend her mornings with Nate while I'm at work, and she doesn't seem to mind one bit. I'm pretty sure she's already realized he's the fun one anyway.

A couple of weeks ago she also had a fever for a couple of days and her top two front teeth started to appear, but they seem to have stayed where they're at and haven't come through anymore. So shes still really only has two teeth.

In the last month she's also taken much more of an interest in other babies and even herself when she looks in the mirror or sees pictures. It will be fun to see her interact with her cousins Elaine and Charlotte when they come visit in a few days.

As far as her stats go, that will have to be a post for next week after I take her to the doctor for her checkup. She's certainly getting taller because she's recently outgrown most of her 6-9 month clothing.

Climbing Stairs

Bridget has decided that she is old enough to take on the stairs. Yesterday morning I found her 1/2 way up the bottom half of our stairs. This morning she decided it was time to conquer them.

Resolution of a Nightmare

So much has happened since our last post, and I'm never one to tell a brief story but I'll try to be as brief as possible in explaining our nightmare of an experience with closing on our home.

We closed on Wednesday, August 6th (my 28th birthday by the way), and everything went very well at closing. Bridget was well behaved and the paperwork was all signed in about 30 minutes. The nightmare didn't begin until we were finally able to get a key to the house and get in on Thursday evening. One of the first things we noticed besides the filthy condition of the house was that the seller stole the refrigerator which was supposed to stay according to the contract. After contacting our agent we found out that the seller was out of town for an unknown amount of time and no one seemed to be able to tell us when we'd get it back for sure. This was extremely irritating because of how much of a necessity a fridge is, and that no one could give us any answers. We kept being told it would be returned by a certain time, and then it wouldn't happen. It was getting to the point that we were feeling our only option was to buy a fridge and hope that the seller would pay for it, and that's an expensive risk we really didn't want to take. At some point in the middle of the night Saturday night, part of the filthy dirty refrigerator was returned to our garage where we discovered it on Sunday (missing doors, shelves, and trays). I should also mention that the seller had failed to give us garage door openers and the gift cards we'd been promised as a credit for some other issues we'd been having with the master bath remodel. Anyway, here's what the fridge looked like:

After several more phone calls and still no real answers we were starting to feel like our only option might be to take the guy to small claims court. I ended up calling his fiance who happens to be a girl we know from the singles ward we attended. Things got more and more heated and emotional as we talked until she wouldn't talk to me anymore. She said she would have the rest of the pieces delivered Sunday night, and I told her I just wanted a clean, working fridge put back where it's supposed to be. Monday mornning I got a call that the agent was at our house with the rest of the fridge, one garage door opener, and our gift cards. Then he called me a while later to say that this girl wanted to come over with some guys that night to clean the fridge, move it into the kitchen, and put it back together for us. She even brought ice cream and root beer as a peace offering. So we now have our fridge and most of the other details sorted out.

The other stressful thing that happened right after we got into the house was discovering that the swamp cooler was leaking into the master bedroom closet. Nate discovered it Friday afternoon, fixed the leak, and tried to clean up the water as best he could. Sadly, when he got to the house Saturday morning the ceiling had completely fallen in because of the weight of the wet insulation and sheet rock, so there was a giant mess all over the bedroom. Here's a picture of the closet. So now we have to get that repaired, and hopefully we won't have any more problems with the swamp cooler until we take it out in 3 weeks to put central air in.

Another piece of good news in addition to the fridge problem being resolved is that we had amazing help from family and friends on Saturday getting most of the upstairs painted. The entire upstairs was in great need of a paint job, and all 3 bedrooms and the living room got painted on Friday and Saturday. Now we have just the dining room, kitchen, bathroom, and hall to do. Thanks so much Desaray, Sabrina, Megan, Corey, Emily, Andy, Candice, Megan, Jessica, and Matt for all of your help over the weeked!

Bridget Meets Amy

Last week my friend, Amy, came to Utah for a family reunion. She was kind enough to fit us in her plans and she came for dinner and a visit. She and Bridget color-coordinated outfits that day and the picture turned out perfect.

Thanks, Amy, for taking time away from your family to visit. We can't let it be another 3 years (or was it 4) before we see each other!

If You're Happy and You Know It...

Clap Your Hands! Bridget randomly learned to clap her hands today. I've been trying to get her to do it for awhile, and all of a sudden she did it on her own. To make sure it wasn't just a fluke, we had to see if she would do it again on video, and she did:

8 Months

I really cannot believe that Bridget is 8 months old already and how quickly she's learning new things. Here are some of her accomplishments over the past month:

• She's crawling all over and getting into everything! She still doesn't crawl far distances and won't follow me from room to room, but she certainly can get around the room she's in. She loves to pull the DVDs off the shelf by the TV, and she loves to play in the bottom drawer in our kitchen that's full of plastic bags - supervised, of course.

• She tries to pull up to stand on just about anything she can, and she's getting more steady on her feet and faster at walking holding onto people's hands.

• She has 2 teeth on the bottom that are coming through but not completely there yet. Luckily she hasn't seemed to be bothered by teething much at all.

• She still loves to eat everything I give her, but especially enjoys when I share what I'm eating with her like little bites of banana or graham crackers. She's also finally figured out how to eat Gerber cereal puffs without trying to swallow them too quickly and actually "chews" them with her gums now.

• She learned how to hold her bottle herself and also enjoys drinking water out of a sippy cup and even a real cup when we share with her.

• She loves to blow raspberries and also babbles quite a bit. Right now she says "da" a lot, and it even comes out "da da" sometimes which makes Nate happy.

The Joys of Parenthood

Lately Bridget has developed a liking for sucking on her bottom lip, and some days she likes it so much that she does it nearly all day long. Of course, a picture of her would not be complete without some drool. I should also mention that Bridget's first tooth (bottom right) finally started coming through today!

This is definitely not an attractive picture of me, but the horrified look on my face is because Bridget had just been climbing all over me and then decided to spit up all over my neck and chest - and not just a little bit. Nate was laughing so hard that he decided to grab the camera while he was grabbing a burp cloth for me. Let's just say I am eagerly awaiting the day she stops spitting up, and it's a good thing she's so cute so I can put up with it.

Crawling

Bridget is officially crawling today. She's not particularly fast and sometimes she uses a combination of techniques (scooting, army crawling, reaching) to get to what she wants, but she did some real crawling for the first time today. You can watch her in action:

More House Details

Since Nate failed to post any details about the house, here you go...

The house is 1792 square feet and has 3 bedrooms and 3 bathrooms. The basement is a finished laundry room/bathroom and family room. The yard is just under 1/4 acre and has a garden for me to spend my afternoons and evenings.

We are close to a golf course and the Roy aquatic center and in what appears to be a quiet neighborhood (we hope this holds true).

Our House...

So, we finally did it--we bought a house!

When all is said and done (and everything passes inspection, etc.) we will close on August 6th (Kimberly's birthday) and hope to be able to move in during the next week. We are excited to start this new adventure and scared to death to be putting down roots, no matter how shallow, in Roy.

Although we don't have an exterior picture (one will be added soon), here are some interior ones Kimberly snapped during one of our quick visits:

Bridget & Mason

A few weeks ago one of my college roommates, Danny, came to town (along with his wife, April, and son, Mason). We were lucky enough to arrange some time to get together and it was entertaining to watch Bridget and Mason interact.

I was nice to reconnect and I guess we now owe them a trip to Albany, NY sometime in the future...

Rather than repost pictures, here's a link to their post: Mason and Bridget. Enjoy!

Montana Vacation

We're finally back from our long trip to Montana, and it's so good to be home again. We left on July 2nd and drove to Idaho Falls to stay with our friends Dustin & Emily for the night before heading to Kalispell and Big Fork, MT the following day. We were trying to make it in time for a BBQ dinner that was part of the pre-wedding festivities for Nate's brother Brant's wedding, but we ended up not making it.

Friday we just hung around the hotel until it was time to head to Big Fork for the wedding. We had a big downpour of rain that evening, but luckily it stopped in time since the wedding was outside. We don't have any pictures from the wedding because we forgot our camera at the hotel and we never really saw much of the bride and groom anyway. I was too busy with Bridget during the ceremony to take pictures, and Nate was up front looking handsome in his tux. After the ceremony the bride and groom were off taking pictures for almost 2 hours, and we had to leave to go put Bridget to bed shortly after they came back. It was a nice wedding, but it was too bad it was somewhat disorganized and the location was too small to accommodate everyone comfortably. It was the first time I'd been to Flathead Lake, Kalispell, and Big Fork, so it was fun to see new places.

On Saturday we headed back to Nate's parents' house and basically just spent the next week hanging out and relaxing.

Bridget loved being outside and enjoyed Grandma and Grandpa's huge yard. You can see the nice creek behind her in this picture.

Bridget got to help Grandpa mow the lawn

Bridget played with her cousins Tanner and Jaxon a few times.

Another one of Bridget's accomplishments while we were away was learning how to get from her tummy to a sitting position by herself on Thursday, July 10th. Here's a video of it:

On Saturday the 12th, we headed to Great Falls for my friend Angie's wedding. Angie was one of my best friends in high school, and we hadn't seen each other in a few years. I also got to see my friend Emily from high school, and she was kind enough to let us stay with her that night.

Me, Angie, and Emily

As an added bonus, my brother and his partner were in Great Falls for Mark's high school reunion, so we met up with them for lunch that day at my favorite pizza place of all time - MacKenzie River Pizza. Here's a picture of Bridget meeting Uncles Mark and Mark for the first time.

We were very ready to make the return trip home yesterday but had one more stop to make in Pocatello, ID to visit one of my friends from BYU, Marshall, his wife Krista and their two kids.

Bridget did really well with all the traveling. She slept well in all the different places and did really well on all the long rides in the car. But it's so great to finally be home!

My Domestic Side

When Bridget isn't demanding my attention (and that's not very often) I like to spend my spare time in the kitchen or sewing. I just finished her Christmas stocking a few days ago - it only took me 4 months of working on it little bits at a time. And today while she was napping I whipped up a devils food cake with chocolate frosting, chocolate mint ganache, and Andes mints for Nate's coworker's birthday. And when we get back from our vacation in a couple of weeks, I have to find time to alter a wedding dress for one of my former students who's getting married in August.

7 Months

Bridget is 7 months old today and here's a little of what she's doing these days:

• She is still toothless, but I think a tooth must be on its way soon because her drooling has drastically increased this past week. I didn't think it could get much worse than it's been the last three months, but I was wrong.


• She's loving eating solid foods and doesn't seem to be a picky eater at all. She eats anything I give her so it's hard to tell if she has favorites, but they seem to be sweet potatoes, peaches, oatmeal, and rice cereal.


• Prior to this week Bridget didn't move around in her crib at all. All of sudden she's figured out that she can roll around on her mattress just like she does on the floor and now we find her sleeping on her tummy on occasion.


• Her favorite thing to do is to practice standing and walking while holding onto someone's hands. Quite often as she's sitting on the floor playing, she'll lose interest in her toys and turn to us and reach out to grab our hands so she can pull herself up to a standing position. As soon as she accomplishes this task she gets a huge grin on her face, and then she gets mad and fusses if we stop before she is ready to be done.


• Her biggest accomplishment of all has definitely been sleeping through the night consistently as mentioned in a previous post. She's doing so well at going to sleep on her own at night and for naps, and she consistently sleeps for 10-11 hours at night!! She is a much happier baby these days, and I'm a much happier mom.

Who Doesn't Love Kisses?

Thank You Dr. Ferber

For the last couple of months Bridget's sleeping habits were getting progressively worse. It was so bad a couple of weeks ago that I felt like I was at the end of my rope. She had to be held to go to sleep and would usually wake up and freak out as soon as you laid her in her bed and then the whole process would begin again. Add that to her waking up 2-6 times during the night and you can see why we were getting desperate for help. I'd read a lot online, in magazines, and in a book someone gave me, and nothing was working.

I decided to ask my older sister Amy for advice. She told me that they had very similar problems with their son and that they had amazing success with the method found in a book by Dr. Richard Ferber called Solve Your Child's Sleep Problems. Amy was very skeptical about it, but her husband followed the method exactly, and in 3 days their little boy was sleeping great. As soon as I told Nate about the book, he said that Amy's husband Stuart had given him a book for Christmas, and amazingly it was that exact book! When Nate started reading the first chapter, he was in tears laughing because Dr. Ferber described our situation exactly.

So last Saturday night we instituted his method which consists of putting your child to bed awake, leaving them for short periods of time which increase in length, returning to comfort them for 1-2 minutes without picking them up until they fall asleep. I knew it would be difficult because Amy warned me that it took her son an hour and 45 minutes to fall asleep the first night. Well, it took Bridget an hour and 30 minutes. It was hard listening to her cry for that long, but I knew I would only get results if I followed the method exactly. She only woke up a couple of times in the night, and when Nate used the method again she only cried for about 5 minutes before falling asleep again. I really thought the first night would be much worse than that, so I was pleased. When we instituted the method for naps, she only cried for about 5-10 minutes and sometimes less. The second night she only woke up once and cried for about 15 minutes before falling asleep. And she slept through the night (9-10 hours) nights 3 and 4. I love the Ferber method! Thank you Amy and Stuart for your advice and for giving us this book.

Father's Day

Today was Nate's first Father's Day, and although it wasn't too exciting, I think we had a pretty good day. It got off to a not so great start though because I didn't remember that it was Father's Day when I woke up and didn't remember to say or do anything until we'd been up for about an hour. Nate was grumpy and kept saying he was just tired but really he was mad that I hadn't wished him a happy father's day or done anything special yet. After I came out of my morning fog and realized the problem, I quickly gave him his gifts and apologized. Sadly, with 9:00 church and my forgetfulness I didn't have time to make him breakfast and he actually made it for me. We spent the rest of the day with Nate's family eating good food and visiting.

Nate is an amazing dad, and I always knew he would be. He loves playing with Bridget and can get her to laugh and smile without much effort. For the last few weeks he's also been great at getting up with Bridget when she wakes up at night because he does much better without good sleep than I do. And as you can tell from the pictures, they also enjoy taking naps together.

Hooray for New Toys and Good Deals

For the last few weeks I've been wanting to get Bridget an exersaucer to help keep her more entertained - especially since she loves to stand so much. Because I'm so frugal, I wanted to buy a used one as they are pricey and not something she'll use for very long. As luck would have it, I found a nice one for sale for a screaming good deal in the ksl classifieds yesterday, and it was only located about 15 minutes from where we live. I love a good deal, and Bridget loves her new toy!

Happy Anniversary to Us

Today is our 2nd Anniversary! The three of us went out to dinner at Red Lobster and the celebration was fabulous. The two years have gone by quickly, especially when you think that for over 1/2 that time I was either pregnant or a mom. While at dinner we reminisced about all the wonderful, exciting, fabulous things we have done. We also tried to remember specifics about our wedding day...like the rain.

Regardless of the "cheesy" factor, I have to say that you really do grow to love someone the more you put up with them...I mean, spend time with them.

Playing on the Computer

Bridget loves to touch everything she can. Tonight, after her bath, I set her in our desk chair...and here's the result.