He Wolf/She wolf

I haven't posted a Youtube video in a while and I thought this was pretty funny!

My Baby is all grown up. Part 1: Rice Cereal

We tried rice cereal on her 4 month birthday and let's just say... she liked it.

Of course the first couple bites were very shocking for her.

Sometime we got this: The "okay-I'll-put-it-in-my-mouth-but-I-don't-know-what-you-want-me-to-do-with-it-now" face.

But eventually, she was licking the spoon clean.

And even taking it from me to make sure she got every. last. drop.

This is the "Oh-dear,-did-I-just-eat-all-that?-Where-are-my-manners?" face.


Too cute...

It's been 4 months? Are you kidding me?!

I can't believe how quickly she's growing up! Ila turned 4 months old yesterday and had her 4 month check-up. She is 25 1/4 inches long and 12 lbs. 13 oz, which puts her in the 75-90th and 25 precentile. Her head is in the 50th. She loves standing on your lap and jumping up and down. She has found her voice and has no problem letting you know when she wants to be held! She is sleeping through the night for about 8 hours straight, and I'm loving it! (I think I figured out the secret to getting a baby to do this, although I don't know how big of a secret it is but what I tried worked after 2 nights, so if you are interested, let me know and I will tell you what I did. side note: I feed my baby formula at night, I know it sticks with them better and I don't know if that has a huge impact on what I tried) Look at her sweet little hands... I'm really lucky she's a good sleeper cause I get migraines when I have interrupted sleep. In the beginning I was getting headaches every other day, at least! Ila started rolling over a week ago. I feel like she will be sitting up on her own soon and crawling and walking pretty early also. But, I have no other baby to compare her to so who knows? The big news: the doctor told me to go ahead with the rice cereal, and that's a post on its own! She has started grabbing everything and putting it into her mouth, and my favorite... she LOVES kisses! She will lean in for them all the time over and over and over. We just love this little girl so much.

If you wanna laugh...

Might I recommend http://www.peopleofwalmart.com/? Now, we all know that only the classiest people shop at Walmart. (myself included) For example:
1. This father son duo, classy indeed.
2. We are actually trying to sell our car, and though we did write "Babe Magnet" on it next to "For Sale", we have never considered marketing it in this manner, sheer genius.3. I'm not really sure what to say...4. Yes, classy, classy, classy.5. Wow... I even do hair and I know I would never be able to concoct such a masterpiece.6. And my personal favorite: I applaud you, as a fellow mother myself, I could never multitask this well. Impressive. Yes, that is a child hanging off her neck, and yes, she is breastfeeding it.

Being a Single Mom is hard

This weekend Trent went to Laughlin with my dad and brother for a desert truck race. He had fun and I'm glad he got to go but holy cow, it made me realize how nice it is having a husband. I had a photoshoot scheduled for 10:00 Saturday morning. Thanks to Ila's growth spurt she has gone through since the cold (and after the diarrhea... can't this girl give me a break?) she has been eating about double the norm. Which means she has been waking up 3 times a night again. Which is fine, but I was planning on her being my alarm clock Saturday and I didn't take into account that she would probably sleep in since she was up more in the night. So we both woke up at 9:00 which meant I had a 1/2 hour to get her fed, changed and dressed. Get myself showered and ready. Get my camera gear ready to go. and get that dang diaper bag packed (I HATE packing the diaper bag). And all this assuming she would let me do it. I hurried and switched out memory cards since my one in the camera was full and I didn't have time to load them on the computer. Angie called and offered to watch Ila during the session so I pushed back the session to 10:30 to get me enough time to drop her off. As I pulled off the exit, it seems like one side of the car is lower and more bumpy. I was driving with the spare on since one tire got a bolt in it earlier in the week and we were waiting for a new one to come in, but it was really bumpy. So I hurried and pulled in a gas station to give the spare more air. I pumped in 75 cents and tried putting air in, I hear the air going in but nothing is happening. I call Trent, I am doing it right apparently. I put in another 75 cents, time runs out again, tire is still flat. I ask the gas station guy to help me, he is busy on his blue tooth and doesn't want to but finally consents. He says it's my tire and is nice enough to let the rest of the air out of so that I am now officially driving on the rim. I drive it on the rim over to Discount tires across the street and Angie meets me there to take me to her house and switch cars. I fly down to the place I'm meeting up for the session, we finally find each other after a mix up and settle down to take some pictures. Remember how I switched out memory cards? Well, I click to take a picture and I get the message "Memory Card error...." I try again, and again, and again. I pull it out, is it in wrong? Nope. Okay, sorry folks, guess we will be doing this another day...
SO the moral of this story is... I want to offer Sheena a public apology for giving you the run around Saturday. I really felt so bad! and I hope I didn't ruin your day. I'm really excited for our rescheduled session Saturday. Same place, same original time sound good?

Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night!

One night last week we got the house nice and festive. We went and got a tree. We hung the lights. We listened to Josh Groban "Noel". Ila wore her "My First Christmas" jammies. We ate Dreyers peppermint ice cream. And we watched elf. Then we all went to bed with visions of Sugar Plums dancing in our heads. I l.o.v.e. Christmas.

Thanksgiving slash my birthday

This was another year for the 4th time in my life (I think) that Thanksgiving has stolen my birthday. I didn't hate it as much this time and maybe its cause I've matured or something...

I really had such a great birthday. Trent knew exactly what I wanted with out me even having to tell him (directly I mean, I may have dropped a few hints i.e. "Boy, that 50 mm lens sure is what I need" "look at that bokeh from that 50 mm lens... amazing""I sure would love a 50 mm lens f/1.8" etc.).

We spent my birthday slash Thanksgiving day up in Logan and went and saw Blindside. Trent and I are now looking into adopting a black child from the projects. If you haven't seen it, you better, right now, I'm not kidding... GO! Why are you still reading this? It was one of my most favorite movies I have ever seen. I think what made the movie was the way the actor portrayed him, he did such an amazing job. Sometimes you just need a movie like that to truly humble you.

Oh and I saw New Moon, of course it was better than the first one cause I mean come on, it couldn't have been worse. The "running" was much better. But I still can't get past the horrific acting. I'm pretty sure every scene lasted about 5 minutes longer than it should have because of all the pauses and stuttering, you know what I'm talking about.

We had Coldstone ice cream cupcakes to celebrate the big 2-4 and they were so good!

This is Ila's signature face. She always has her eyebrows raised, she looks like a little monkey.

Oh i just love to kiss those cheeks! Okay thats enough pictures. I guess I'll do one more.

Newborn session

My first newborn session! I was so excited to get them edited and we got a lot of great shots! Sofia is only 11 days old and I couldn't believe how much smaller she was than Ila, especially her head! These 2 have such great lookin kids!

Gotta catch up...

We had such a great Thanksgiving and I had such a great birthday, which happened to fall on the same day this year! Before I can catch you all up on that though, I have to get to my obligations:
Iv'e done lots of photo sessions and have lots to edit, its been tricky with Ila being sick.
First, an old friend from high school. I got to take pics of her and her husband and little Gwendolyn!

Second, Meggan + Remy. While photographing Meggan's family Saturday, she informed me she needed some engagements pics and stat. She and Remy have decided to be married THIS MONTH! After just getting engaged days ago! Busy, busy!

Now I'm a little more caught up! Oh yes, I am starting a photography blog, I know a lot of you don't care about these photo sessions so I will get that up and running asap. Also, I have 1-2 spots left for sessions in Las Vegas for December and 3-4 left for January. I will be in Utah the week of Christmas and have a few spots for then. Remember, people these are free sessions if you want em! Although, I don't promise you will love the pics since I'm not a professional, you are helping me learn!! And, I will only be doing a couple more family sessions so grab them while you can!

Deja Vu

Last night, it was back to the emergency room with Ila.

Since Saturday, she has had horrible diarrhea, we can't keep a diaper on her cause not only has her butt bled but we go through about 50 a day since as soon as we put it on she goes again. Finally, yesterday, I took her to the doctor since it was lasting so long. She wasn't dehydrated and the doctor just said to call if she was. She actually seemed a lot better, she wasn't going nearly as much and I thought we were almost through this. Then in the afternoon, she kept making sounds like she was gonna throw up, little gagging sounds. I couldn't tell if she had learned something new or if she really was going to. She is just so sweet and so strong, when she isn't feeling well, she doesn't complain, so I couldn't tell. And now I feel so bad cause I was kinda jostling around playing with her and she was giving me this look, like, "I hate this... I'm gonna puke." She must have been so nauseous. She finally threw up more than I have ever seen in my life. It just kept coming. She was so worn out afterward we wrapped her up in a blanket and she went right to sleep. A few minutes later she woke up dry heaving till she was purple and eventually some bile came out. I immediately called the doctor and since Ila wouldn't let us put a bottle in her mouth to drink, we were instructed to get her to Pediatric ER.

She continued to choke on bile a couple more times while trying to throw up. The nurse came in and tried to give her medicine for the nauseau, but she couldn't keep it down and they decided she needed an IV to get it in her and some fluids. By the end of the night, she had experienced 3 attempts at getting a catheter in, her blood getting drawn, an IV, a nasal swab, and the very worst: being held down. She is so strong, and such a good baby, and that is what upset her the most. Each procedure took forever to get her calmed down again because she was so angry and hungry since she wasn't allowed to eat. She was just so worn out, she would just sit there and wimper in our arms after. The doctor gave us the option of admitting her or going home, and we decided to go home.

I'm so thankful to my parents for meeting us at the hospital cause they really helped to liven things up for me and get my mind off it. I'm so grateful for the priesthood and Trent and my dad being able to give Ila a blessing. When we were in the hospital for jaundice, the doctor was "very surprised" by how quickly her jaundice levels dropped after being under the bili lights for just 24 hours. And again last night, the doctor was very surprised by the fact that Ila ate as much as she did as soon as she was allowed to have a bottle. I know that in both of these circumstances, Ila has stayed so strong and recovered so quickly because of the blessings she has received from Trent. I can't imagine how much more scared I would be, or what would happen if she wasn't able to receive them.

Today, we are still waiting for her to recover, but she hasn't thrown up. The doctor has prescribed Benadryl for her nausea and that has helped, but maybe cause she has slept so much today! I hate the way she acts on it, she's not herself.

We still don't know what it is, all the tests have come back negative for whatever they were testing for. We hope that whatever this bacteria or virus is that she has caught will be gone by this weekend, please pray for her. Being a parent is the best thing in the world, especially being one to such a great baby, but it's also so hard!

In the meantime, I am keeping the christmas music going cause nothing lifts your spirits like this time of year! Trent and I are so grateful for our blessings, it's funny how in times of trial you think of all the these you do have and how blessed you are. It sure makes the trials easier.