7 months old!

I can't believe how fast time flies! My little girl is getting so big! She turned 7 months old last week! She is closer to her next birthday than she is to her original birthday! That seems so crazy to me!

Here are just a few things about my baby at 7 months:

Rachel weighs 22.3 pounds! (She lost .2 pounds this week, probably from all of her scooting!)

She is 28-ish inches long. ( I measured her myself and she is super wiggly)

She can pull herself to standing in her crib.

She is finally starting to get some hair! I am so excited about this that I had to take quite a few pictures of it!

I know I've already said this, but she is scooting! I love watching her scoot! It is so fun to see her starting to explore what ever room we are in. She hasn't ever quite left the room without me yet. She will sometimes start to go down the hall, but she never goes far enough that she can't see me.

She picks up everything she finds on the floor and puts it in her mouth. I can't even tell you how many times she gets something in her mouth and I don't even know about it until she starts choking on it. Also she gets mad when I try to get whatever is in her mouth out. She shakes her head and tries to keep me from getting in her mouth.

This is a little video I took a few weeks ago when she very first started scooting. My internet has been super slow and I haven't been able to upload it til now. She is a lot quicker and goes a lot farther now. I don't have to coax her to get her to scoot anymore either.

She loves to eat. . .big people food. She has taken to refusing any form of baby food (baby mum-mums not included, because they are a cracker which means they are big people food). I can't even get her to eat applesauce which she loved before!

She is now going to sleep in her crib and she spends the whole night in it, except for when she is nursing. She wakes up quite a few times to eat during the night and I don't know how to get her to sleep longer. I have tried upping the amount of calories she gets during the day to see if that will help, but so far it hasn't. She makes me tired.

She still loves to go outside. She doesn't even mind that it is so hot! The other day my mom was leaving the house and she opened the front door and Rachel bolted. I watched her to see how far she would go, and Rachel scooted all the way outside. She didn't go past the doormat onto the cement though, but it was pretty funny!

She loves to eat watermelon! Actually she likes pretty much any fruit, but she particularly likes watermelon because she can feed it to herself.

She just had her 1st Father's Day and unfortunately it was with out her Daddy. We got to see her Grandpa Bulloch the day before and her Grandpa Banks that day though. She has the best Grandpa's ever!

My little girl is growing so fast and discovering new things every day and I love it! I'm sure there are many more things that are new this month, but I'm a tired mommy and my brain doesn't want to think anymore. If only I could just get this girl to sleep through the night! I love being Rachel's mom! She keeps me busy and tired, but it is totally worth the work! I love this little girl!

Eating

Rachel loves loves loves to eat! She eats just about anything she can get her hands on, or that she can coax someone else into feeding her, unless she thinks it is baby food. If she thinks you are feeding her baby food she will absolutely refuse to eat it!

Here she is sucking on a chicken bone my dad gave her! She loved it and wasn't too happy with me when I took it away from her. What a funny girl.

This video is an example of what she does when she doesn't want to eat something. I love this little girl, even if she is a little naughty sometimes!

An Artist?

I often find myself wondering what Rachel will be like when she is older. What types of things will she like to do? Will she like to play the piano or will she like to play soccer? Will she want to dance or will she want to do karate? Will she be a singer or will she want to play softball? There are so many different things she could do. The other day she showed interest in being an artist. Well she showed an interest in the markers at least. She just wanted to eat them at the time, but maybe it is a sign of things to come?

Bed time is for squares

So as you know, I've been working on getting Rachel on a routine and on getting her to sleep in her crib. Ever since she started being more mobile she has been getting wigglier and wigglier. She has a hard time sitting still for any length of time. She doesn't cry as soon as I put her in her crib anymore because she knows that if she doesn't want to lay down and go to sleep, she doesn't have to. Here is an example of how our going to sleep routine goes almost every night. This is after we have wound down by reading stories and singing songs.

Eventually after a while she does stop doing that and then she starts doing this:

My baby girl is just so funny! It is exasperating to have to keep laying her back down so many times every night, but I can't help but love this little wiggly girl. It is all I can do to keep from cracking up as I'm trying to get her to sleep. (On good days that is.) She is so cute! I just love my baby girl

Happy Father's Day

This last Sunday was Father's Day. It was Rachel's first Father's Day and Jacob's first Father's Day as a dad. I had a really hard and emotional week that week leading up to it and I think the main reason was because I knew we weren't going to be with Jacob for Father's Day. I was feeling really lonely for him, and I was really sad that we couldn't be there to spoil him, or make him breakfast in bed, or at least hug him.

This last separation has been really hard for me. I think it might be because we got to visit him for so long and we got to see what it would have been like if we had moved out to Texas with him. It was so nice to be there for a week and a half. It was so fun to see Jacob playing with Rachel and being a dad. It was so nice for me to have someone else to share the responsibility of having a child with. It was fun to go places with Jacob but it was also fun to stay home and just be our little family. It was fun to go to church with him on Sunday and it was so nice to be able to hand Rachel to him so he could have a turn taking our noisy baby out! It was fun to make dinner for my husband. It was even fun being there during the day while he was in class just knowing that he would be able to come home to me soon. The rest of this can't go by fast enough. I am really grateful to my parents for letting Rachel and I come invade their home, but I really miss living with my husband. It is crazy to think that we are more than 2 months into this separation, but we still aren't even quite halfway yet! I see all of the new things Rachel is doing and learning and it makes me happy that I can be there to see her doing them, but it makes me so sad that Jacob can't be. I try to keep him updated over the phone, but it isn't quite the same. I miss my husband so much! I miss snuggling with him and I miss holding his hand. I miss talking to him with out the use of a phone. I miss seeing his cute face and the cute expression he makes when he is about to say something he thinks is funny. I miss being able to hug or kiss him when ever I want to, or even just touching his arm or tickling him! I miss being there when he comes home from work and hearing about his day. There are so many things I miss and love about my husband. He really is the best husband a girl could ask for. Rachel and I are so very blessed to have him in our family. Happy be-lated Father's Day my love! We love you so much are are so excited to get to come see you next week!

Week 1 of the Baby Whisperer

Today starts the second week of our new baby whisperer routine with Rachel, and some days I feel like it is working wonders and other days I just want to sit down and bawl (some days I have!!) So far we have succeeded in two respects. I don't have to feed Rachel to get her to sleep although she would still like me to, and she is now sleeping in her crib all night long and for naps which is a big improvement on what we were doing. The first few days Rachel took to our new routine and did really well, but I'm not sure what happened, but after those first few days she started fighting going to sleep. For the most part she is doing better but last night she woke up 8 times during the night! We are going to stick to it and hopefully Rachel will start sleeping better, crazy girl! I could tell she was just as tired as I was this morning when we woke up. Well, she just woke up from her nap so I better go get busy! I love this girl!

I'm not fat. . .All this dress makes me look poofy.

So we went to Target while I was in Texas and I found this super cute dress on clearance for only 5 dollars. What a steal! It is really poofy (the bottom part has 5 layers!) but Rachel looks so cute in it! Sunday morning before church the next day I gave Jacob the choice of getting Rachel dressed or making lunch. He chose dressing Rachel. She was a little traumatized at having her daddy put her in this huge poofy dress. Doesn't she make such a cute sad face. What a good mother I am, instead of comforting my child when she is bawling I take pictures of her.

As soon as I was done taking pictures and Jacob handed her to me she quit bawling.

Notice how tight she is clinging to my shirt. I don't think you could have pried her out of my arms after that.

Hungry? Why wait. . . Eat a banana pepper?

Fuzzy Wuzzy was a ball. . .

My sister Caralee has this ball that was kind of fuzzy. It had these little rubber things poking out of it. (I can't describe it better than that. Refer to the picture below if you are confused.) Anyway, we were playing at Caralee's house one day and Rachel started playing with this ball. She is really funny with textures on her face. When something with an odd texture gets in her face she makes a really funny face. This ball is a good example. She kept putting her face back into the ball though. I couldn't get a picture of her making the face though. This is the only picture I was able to get. I got maybe 5 or 6 different pictures all exactly like this one, with her face buried in the ball.

We took a little video of her playing with this ball on my phone because she was really funny with it. I'm not sure if the video worked out though because I can't view it on my internet, so if it doesn't work or the quality is bad then I'm sorry, but I thought she was so funny that I just had to share.

I heart purple cookies!

First off I'm going to say that if you haven't had Albertson's chocolate chip cookies than stop reading this and go buy some. They are delicious! They are the ones in the purple bags. We actually cal them purple cookies. In fact, Albertson's red cookies are pretty good too. Anyway, we found an Albertson's when we were in Texas and rented a movie from the Redbox there. We decided that since while we were there we might as well get some of those awesome cookies!

Now, I feed Rachel almost anything that I am eating, and so when I was eating the cookie she kept watching me and patiently waiting for me to share. I started off by giving her little tastes of my cookie, but Jacob eventually gave in and gave her a cookie of her own. She was so cute with her little cookie!

She is a pretty smart little girl. The next time we got out the cookies she knew what they were and she lunged for mine! I'm so glad I could introduce Rachel to the perfectness that comes in an Albertson's purple cookie!

Scooting?

My Rachel-girl can scoot! She started scooting last week and is now a pro! She is a lot less fussy because she can just go after what ever it is that she wants. She used to fuss at me when I left the room, but now she just follows me. She is still learning and so she doesn't get very far very fast. . . yet. So usually if she is coming to find me, I get back to the room she was in before she has actually left it, but I think it is really cute to see her trying to come find me. What can I say, she loves me. :)

So, a good friend of mine recommended a book to me because she knew we were having nap time and sleep time problems. It is called The Baby Whisperer Solves All Your Problems by Tracy Hogg. It talks about getting your baby on a routine and it talks about how to teach your baby to go to sleep on her own without just letting her cry it out. I started implementing some of the things from the book yesterday and so far it has worked great. Usually I have to nurse Rachel to get her to sleep. That isn't actually too bad. The bad part is that Rachel also wants to nurse the entire time she is asleep. Occasionally I can sneak away from her, but she never sleeps for very long after I leave her. The method in the book is to stay by her crib at first and if she cries pick her up, and as soon as she stops crying to immediately lay her back down. Eventually she will get the the point where she won't need to be picked up anymore.

Yesterday, Rachel slept in her crib for both of her naps (which never happens) and then went down to bed for the night in her crib as well. Both of her naps were about 1 1/2 hours long and I didn't even have to nurse her to get her to sleep! I am so excited about this. We aren't to the point where I can just put her in her bed and she goes to sleep without crying yet, but I am quite excited at how things are going after just one day of this. We did have a little set back last night though. I laid Rachel down in her crib and the little stinker figured out how to sit herself up. Don't get me wrong, it is fun to see her figure out new things, but every time I laid her down she would just sit up and then she wanted to play. According to the book you are supposed to keep laying them down when they do this so they know it is time for bed. So I kept laying her down and she kept sitting up. Eventually I decided I needed to think about things, so I sat on my bed for a minute and when I looked back at Rachel she was standing up in her crib! She pulled herself up to standing all by herself which she hasn't ever done before. I hurried over and laid her back down, but she pulled herself to standing maybe 5 or 6 times before she gave in and fell asleep. I can't believe it.

My 6 month old in the last week has figured out how to scoot, sit herself up, and now pull herself to a standing position. All in one week! What is she going to be doing next week? Crawling? Walking? Running? I don't really think she will be doing those things next week, but it is just so crazy how much she has figured out all ready. She is so fun! I'm so glad I get to stay home with her and watch her figure out every little thing. I'm excited to see what she learns next!

Yum. . . a couch!

Rachel was so funny one day. I helped her stand at the couch and here is what she kept doing.

First she would look at me. . .

Then she would bury her face in the couch and just leave it there for a while. I think she was licking it, but I can't be sure.

Then she would look back up at me as if to say, "You've got to try this thing!"

What a silly girl!

Mirror Friend

Rachel was so funny again about seeing herself in the mirror. She loved the huge mirror and she loved that she was able to touch it. Jacob stood her up to the mirror and she promptly leaned forward and kissed the baby in the mirror. It was so cute, I was glad that for once I had my camera ready! She stood there and kissed that mirror baby for at least 30 seconds. It was pretty cute!

Here is a little video of what Rachel does when she sees herself in the mirror.

Car Seat Friends

Rachel has a few toys that are hooked to the top of her car seat and she gets excited when she sees them when we are putting her in her seat. It was so cute the other day we got her out of the car to take her into the store and she had fallen asleep holding on to one of her "friends." How sweet is this!

I love my sweet little baby! There is just something about a sleeping baby that just melts your heart every time!

San Angelo Mall

We found a fun mall in San Angelo. From the outside I saw the usual stores like JC Penny and Dillards and since San Angelo is a smaller town that St. George, I assumed that the mall would be smaller or similar that the one here. Boy was I wrong. The mall in San Angelo was way cooler! My sister Julie had been telling me about a fun place that her family likes to eat at sometimes that I had never heard of. The place was Chick-fil-a. I hadn't ever heard of it before she had told me about it but we were excited to find out that there were a few of them in San Angelo, more specifically there was one in the mall. With all of her raving about the place, we decided we had to try it. She said we had to get their fresh squeezed lemonade because it was the best. She was right! Everything we had there was absolutely delicious. Jacob and I both got the spicy chicken sandwich and waffle fries with some lemonade. This was our first night together and just the sugar from the lemonade put me over the top sugar wise. On our way out though, we saw a Dippin Dots. I hadn't seen one of those for a lot of years and Jacob hadn't ever seen one. We went over just to get a sample (because they are so expensive) and both ended up buying some. It was so fun and yummy! Rachel loved it too!

Even though they had lots of fun food and other fun stores there at the mall, my favorite part was the big children's play area. They had all sorts of things for kids to climb and play on. Here are a few pictures of Rachel "playing" in the play area.

Growing up in St. George with the small little mall that it has, I never knew that a mall could be so much fun! I hope we have a fun mall we can go play at when we get to Tucson!

What would you do for a Klondike bar?

So one of the days we were together, we bought mint chocolate chip klondike bars and they were oh so yummy! Rachel was eyeing mine so I decided to give her a taste and of course she loved it! I was surprised at how much she loved it though. She didn't want to share it with me anymore. Everytime I would try to take a bite she would grab my arm and try to get it back to her mouth. Needless to say it got really messy really quick!

"What are you looking at? I'm just trying to enjoy my ice cream."

"Where did it go?"

"Is it really gone?"

Even Daddy got a little messy.

What would you do for a klondike bar?

Texas

Rachel and I had such a fun week with Jacob! It was just so fun to be together and be a little family again. It has been fun getting to see my sisters and my parents, but all of the time I

feel like part of me is missing, and it is. Being with Jacob for a week was so fun, and it was just so natural to be together again. I kept wishing we could stay longer! Rachel had so much fun playing with Daddy (almost as much fun as Daddy had playing with her!) We partied all week long! It was really fun to be there for two weekends, and get to spend that extra time with Jacob then, but it was so much fun to be there during the week too and spend some time just living together like normal.

Something we did to make being together extra fun (and to help us be good when we aren't together) was we decided we would only eat sweets when we are together. It was really fun because we haven't had sugar for a while, but we discovered our sugar tolerance was really low, at least it was at the beginning of the week, we quickly remedied that problem with

cookies!

Here are a few pictures from the trip. (There will be more in other posts.)

I actually quite liked having the closet doors be mirrors. I never knew I would like that, but it was so nice to be able to set Rachel down with some toys and be able to do other things because she was preoccupied with flirting with the baby in the mirror. Also I could stand next to her and get ready in the bedroom instead of having to get ready in the bathroom.

Jacob and Rachel and I went out and bought new swimsuits for all three of us! It was so fun! I haven't had a new swimsuit since high school! It was fun staying on base because they had a lot of fun things to do all with in walking distance of our apartment! They had a swimming pool, a bowling alley, a movie theater, a gym, and other cool places. we went swimming twice while we were there and will for sure go again next time we come. Rachel loved

playing in the water, and we did too! I wondered if she would have a problem with it because the water was cool, but I shouldn't have worried. As long as we are outside, Rachel doesn't care what else we do. She loved splashing in the water. It was so fun to hold her and feel how excited she was to be in that much water. She would get her legs kicking and her arms splashing and she was just so cute. I think her favorite part though was watching the

other kids in the pool. She would watch them and get really excited about it.

I really love my little family! It was so fun to get to spend so much time together this last week and a half! It was really hard to leave Jacob when it came time, but I'm so excited for when we get to go see him again. 2 months down and 4-ish to go until we can live together full-time!

Fun in the Sun

My sister Caralee bought a little swimming pool for her kiddos to play in this summer, and invited us over for the first swim of the summer. As you can see from the pictures, Rachel liked eating the toys more than playing in the water, but we had lots of fun!

This swimming suit that Rachel is wearing was one Caralee found that was an old one of Sydney's. It is size 3T. We thought that maybe the top would fit okay, but that the bottoms would be way too big, but it turns out we were exactly wrong. The top was a little big, but the bottoms fit perfect. That is right, my cute little baby has a big bottom! It is a very very cute bottom though!

I had to paint her toenails so she would be ready to go see Daddy! I just love seeing her cute painted toes!

Sydney was fun playing in the water with us. I think her favorite part was pouring water on Rachel's head.

I went over to Caralee's totally not planning on getting wet at all. I should have known better! Caralee and I both ended up getting soaked along with the kids. It was so much fun though! I'm glad it is starting to warm up and we can start having fun in the sun!