K has been trying to pull herself up to standing these past couple of days.  It's actually quite amazing.  Where she even got the idea to try to pull herself up is incredible and a mystery to me.

Today we went over to a friend's house where they have two little ones.  The older one (two years old) was really kind to K and tried to giver her some of her toys.  K just loves kids and she was just soaking in all of the attention she was getting from the little one.  It was a lot of fun to watch.

I've been up for a couple of hours now (and it's only 6:40 am) so I don't remember how I know this but a friend who is a new mom (12 days!) said that she went to bed at 1 am and her baby sleeps roughly 4 hours (amazing!) and so she gets up around 5 am (I'm guessing).  This is a morning when I really envy that.  Not so much the getting up at 5 am but the going to bed around 1 am.  Okay, I actually really like going to bed early but the days of not having to be home at 7 pm to get a baby into bed were really nice.

I would think that if we put a baby in bed at 9 pm (instead of 7 pm) that she would wake up later the next morning (like 8:30 am instead of 6:30 am) but for some reason, that's not the case.  Instead, she wakes up earlier ... and she wakes up so grumpy!  I tried to put her back to sleep this morning instead of getting up with her but she would have none of that.  The more I tried to calm her down, the more she screamed.  And I'll admit, it was slightly funny to me.  I still find it funny when she thinks she's not going to eat because I'm not feeding her - I wish she knew that she's going to survive if she waits to eat a little longer.

But right now I have it pretty good - a sleeping baby and a sleeping husband.  Yesterday morning at this time, I was on my way to the living room for some working out (because I had already had 8 hours of sleep!) but this morning, I think I will just sit in the peaceful silence, relax, look at the morning snow, and watch some "House Hunters."

(By the way, if you're reading this Christa, it's okay that we kept K up late so we could hang out with you guys last night - if we had really cared about how well K was going to sleep last night, we would've stayed home. :) )

Our weekend in Cedar City ended up being much better with K than expected.  She got her own crib in the corner of the room we were staying in (which was about the normal distance between our bed and her's at home) and she got plenty of rest since we didn't go anywhere - we went outside once while staying there and then quickly went back inside.  She also absolutely loved being with her cousins and loved all of their wrapping paper that they had taken off of their gifts.

Unfortunately, it wasn't until we got home that we got to suffer from the vacation.  The night we got home, poor Mike didn't get much sleep since K seemed to want to stay up all night.  I was exhausted so I slept through most of it but it involved a lot of crying.  The day after wasn't great either.  She was really fussy and grumpy.  But today's a good day.  She's enjoying helping me edit photos and figure out this awesome "The Eleventh Hour" book that Mike got for Christmas!

Tomorrow we're heading down south to visit Mike's sister and her family.  They recently moved back to Utah which is great because I don't know their family very well and it's nice to have them closer.  My worry, however, is K.  She gets so upset when she's not at home for sleeping and I'm afraid we're about to have 2 nights of little sleeping.

We spent a few minutes this morning watching a television show from Netflix on the laptop with K stopping and starting the show.  She loves pressing the keys on the keyboard and kept pushing the spacebar which started and stopped the episode.  She was fascinated.  I loved it.

I'm completely exhausted tonight but I can't wait for tomorrow when K's awake so we can play!

If you haven't ever seen the television show, "Modern Family," I'd suggest watching at least one episode.  It takes a couple of episodes to understand the characters but I enjoy the show.

Last week's episode involved Lily, a little baby/toddler, who had started biting people.  Mike and I thought it was pretty funny and since Lily looks a bit like K, we could totally see K doing that at some point in the future.  Little did we know, we only had to wait a couple of days.

Sunday at Mike's family's FHE, Mike's sister was holding K while she said a prayer.  She had just started when she let out a loud, "Ouch!"  We all opened our eyes to see what was wrong and she said, "She bit my thumb!"  We all closed our eyes and giggled throughout the rest of the prayer.

We still think K's going to get teeth sometime soon with the way she gnaws on everything, but maybe she just likes chewing.  It's really hard to say right now.

Just spent the last 30 minutes laughing and playing with K.  Life really doesn't get much better than that, does it?

Before that, we held a little practice photo shoot.  She absolutely loved the lamp that was lighting her.  Hope she doesn't go blind!

We went out to dinner tonight at Iggy's ... love their fries.  But K sat in her car seat in a sling and I gave her the animal book that she loves so much.  She absolutely loved it.  She just kept smiling and laughing ... love a happy baby!

K is trying to scoot but hasn't quite figured it out yet.  I still think rolling would be easier to learn than scooting, but whatever floats her boat, I guess.

I had K during Relief Society today. Sometimes Mike gets to take her to Priesthood with him but I love to take her with me to RS so I try to make it seem like Mike's getting a good deal by letting her come with me. Today about 6 minutes before the class was to get out, I had K standing on my lap facing me. She was just chewing on her fingers and all of the sudden she smiled her biggest smile to someone behind me. I turned around and Mike was standing in the doorway smiling at K. It was probably the cutest thing I've ever seen.

Our little K has developed the oddest thing - she loves to do this little cough for laughing and crying. It's not a real cough but it's pretty funny. She started doing it a few days ago and every time she'd do it, it would get my attention and I'd laugh and she loved it. Now she does it a lot more often and I'm never quite sure if it's to get my attention or if she has just decided that this is the way she's supposed to laugh and cry.

She also is our little Houdini. We still swaddle her when she's sleeping but last night she kept unwrapping her left arm. I'd hear her talking to herself and I'd walk in and she would be sucking on her left hand. I would wrap her up again and a couple hours later, she'd have it out again!

There are definitely pros and cons to swaddling but the biggest con is what I'm dealing with right now - she doesn't sleep very long without being swaddled. I've only kept her arms out for napping but her naps usually don't last longer than an hour to an hour and a half and if she's upset at all when I'm putting her down without being swaddled, she won't go to sleep. So if you're thinking about swaddling your baby, I'd definitely think about when you'll have to train the baby to sleep without being swaddled. But then again, maybe I'm just not giving her enough credit. She may sleep through the night just fine without being swaddled - I just am not ready to give up my sleep just yet to find out.

By the way, I'd like to apologize for the ads that were on the side of the blog. I had no idea they were there. We use an ad-blocker on our browsers which obviously blocked all ads.

We went up to Idaho for my grandma's funeral.  Mike and I had a hard time deciding whether we should make the trip in one day or stay overnight in Idaho.  We made the decision to stay overnight and we're still not sure if that was the best decision.  Not only did we get the cutie into bed about 2 hours later than we normally do, but she couldn't go to sleep so I held her until she did and then 2 hours after she fell asleep, she started waking up every half hour to hour and would cry.

When we made the decision to stay in Idaho, we knew this might happen but I didn't expect it to be this bad.  In fact, it was much worse than our first night with the kiddo.  I mean, imagine waking up every 30-60 minutes for 6 straight hours because you have a crying baby ... it was anything but fun.  It's unfortunate that she despises sleeping anywhere else but home as much as she does.  We were hoping to go out of town for Christmas but after Thursday night, I don't think that's in our plans anymore.  We value sleep too much.

She had to sit in her car seat a lot yesterday because we did a lot of driving and she did so well.  We got home a little late last night but despite that, K slept like a rock last night and I think she really enjoyed sleeping in her own bed.  I know I did.

We are guessing that our little Babers may be teething.  She has been so grumpy and chews on anything she can get her mouth on.  We've found, however, that she loves her chilled teething toys - ones that go in the fridge to chill.  I noticed yesterday that she would try to chew on the cold portion of my water glass and when I gave her those toys, she loved them until they were warm.  I'm not too excited for her to get teeth but I guess there's always good and bad things about her growing up.

By the way, just so you all know, I'm going to be an aunt again today and I could not be more excited!

With our schedules lately, it's been hard to get K into bed between 7 and 7:30 pm each night which has led to a really grumpy baby.  Today is no different.  She keeps crying (I think it's because she's tired, but I would be too if I woke up and cried from 2:30-3 am) and it reminds me of the first couple weeks of her being home with us.  She would cry and sometimes I just had no idea what she wanted.  I'm so glad we're past the first couple of weeks.

A few days ago, a friend who just had a baby leaned over to me and asked, "Does it get easier?"  To be honest, I almost cried because I knew exactly how she feels.  Classes, books, relatives, friends ... no one really prepares you for the first few weeks of being a new mom.  But my advice was to take advantage of it too.  K's only 5 months old (today) and she wiggles all over the place when I try to hold her like I could 5 months ago and she's just not as easy going as she was a few short months ago.

On the other hand, some new moms seem to handle it like it's no big deal.  They're baking, out shopping, doing everything it seems like they normally would and I have no idea how they do it.  Maybe they're just good at hiding.  Either way, it's sure impressive.

We had a really sad baby last night.  After 45 minutes of crying in the car, I was partially deaf and had a nice migraine.  She was so tired.

Here's a quick shout out to my little babers. She did so good today with very few complaints! It all started at 10:30 am this morning when I had to wake her up from her nap. Then we were on the go until 7:30 tonight when we arrived home and she was able to go to bed, but not before reading herself a book! Thanks for being my cutie!

K loves to sit in her stroller when we go places.  Well, she'd much rather be held but she likes being able to sit up all big and tall in her stroller and be able to see everything.  It's fun to actually be able to have her sit up in the stroller without me worrying about her tipping over or falling out, even though I don't know how she would do that when she's strapped/buckled in.

Today we went to Michael's and hung out in the store for a half hour or so.  She loved all the colors and different things she could see.  It was during her nap time so she was a little grumpy, but as soon as I picked her up, she stuck her hand out and tried to reach for all the brightly-colored objects.  I love that she loves to learn.

It's different having 3 kids live above you - the weirdest part is that they have a one year old who sounds almost exactly like K so when either of them cry, I am ready to go rescue my little cutie from whatever is making her upset.  Usually, however, it's not K.  It's the other baby.  So I rush into K's bedroom only to find her sound asleep.

The new neighbors have woken K up quite a few times these last 5 days that they've lived here but I'm guessing it's just because she hasn't been in a deep enough sleep yet because she's quite a good sleeper when she wants to be.  Last night was an interesting night though because they had woken K up so she was crying but their baby was crying too so sitting in the living room gave you surround sound of crying (because a vent from our living room to their kitchen lets in a lot of sound).

Today K was a grumpy pants.  I'm not sure why, but she would be fine for a while and then all of the sudden she would complain.  Yet a few minutes later she was fine again.  It may be because she didn't sleep well or maybe she wasn't feeling well or maybe she just wasn't having a good day - it's hard to tell with her.

But once again, the funniest part of my day was when we were at a staff Christmas party.  Christa was holding K (at this point, there was no reason for her holding K, she was just nice and held her) while we were playing a game.  Well, Christa got really excited and everyone else let out a semi-enthusiastic "yay" and it was all just too loud for K so she busted out her high-pitched, intense scream/cry which made everyone pretty quiet.  I'm not sure why she hates loud noises so much but she does and my poor coworkers get to hear her cry every single time it happens.


In better news, K is getting really good at sitting up all by herself and her current favorite toy is all of these rings that we've linked together.  You can't really see them but she loves to look at them and chew on them.  She's not providing any evidence in this photo here, but she's actually also getting much better at picking up items like we would pick them up and not putting them between her pointer and middle finger.  But as you can see here, the ring is between those two fingers on her right hand.

Mike and I went out to lunch with Mike's coworker, his wife, and their 2 kids.  It was a nice eye-opener to see what's in store in the future with 2 kids.  But boy, those kids are so cute.

K has slept a lot today.  She slept almost 12 hours last night, woke up for a bit to eat and relax, and then slept for another 3+ hours after that.  We went out to lunch, visited Christa, and came home so K could take a nap since she was pretty tired.  Well, it's been an hour and a half and she's still out.  It's most surprising to me because we have new neighbors upstairs and they have 3 kids so it's not exactly quiet yet K can sleep through it all.  I'm so impressed.  She didn't do well Monday with all the noise but maybe Monday was just a bad day.

K is loving drinking out of a glass.  I don't think she really ever actually drinks anything (there's quite a bit of drool in the glass afterwords) but she loves to hold it, put it up to her mouth, put her tongue in the water, and try to slurp it up and out like a dog.  It's really funny.  One day she'll be able to copy everything we do and I'm sure she'll love it.

My parents were kind enough to get her a high chair.  I'm pretty excited to be able to sit her down in an actual chair at the table while we eat so she can play with a little spoon or cup while we eat.  I really enjoy eating with her on my lap, but sometimes when I get to eat baby-free, it's a really nice change.  I almost forget how to eat without a baby on my lap.