Ode to Blanding

Oh Blanding...How do I love thee? Let me count the ways:

1. FAMILY! Living this close to my parents has been AMAZING! They are the hardest working, most selfless people I know and I could not ask for better examples for me, Taylor, Palmer and our future children to grow up around.
Although four of my siblings live in Utah County I think we see them more often now that we live in Blanding. This is still "home" for everyone and I love it when they all come to visit. I love my brothers and sisters.


2. FRIENDS :) Some of my very closest friends live in Salt Lake, but just like with my family, it was hard to see them on any sort of a regular basis when we lived in SLC. I have great life-long friends that live in Blanding and others that I've become friends with since moving back and it is so fantastic to be able to spend time with them. It is much easier for us to get together for lunch, playdates, game night etc. due to the slow pace of life and the proximity of everything in tiny Blanding.

We have a new moms walking group. We try to go on a good long walk at least once a week. We get the kids together for playdates and we keep talking about getting together regularly for crafting. I love these girls.

Palmer already has a much better social circle than she could have hoped for in big old Salt Lake City. Some of her friends are missing from the below picture picture. These kids are so cute together and I'm so excited to see them grow up together.

3. SLOW PACE. I love that I can run to the grocery store or post office or anywhere else in town and be back to my house in a matter of minutes. I LOVE that I never get stuck in a traffic jam. Nothing in the universe frustrates me more than stop and go traffic. I love that I never have to stop at a red light for an eternity. Sometimes I have to wait for two or three cars at the four-way stop, but I can handle that.

4. Everyone is in everyone's business. Most people look at this as a big negative of living in small towns, but I love that I have a fantastic village that will help me to raise my kids. I love that so many people know what is going on in my life and truly care about me. I know that there will be people all around town watching out for my kids' well-being; I really love that I will always know the parents of the kids that my kids hang out with and go to school with. I love that I will know my kids' teachers on a personal level. I love that my bishop is also my accountant and county commissioner and business partner and friend!

5. I get to STAY HOME with my baby! If I hadn't moved to Blanding I would not have gotten my medical coding certification and I would most definitely still be working outside the home. I can barely handle being away from Palmer for an hour or two; I could not have handled leaving her all day long. I don't think there is anything wrong with a mom who works outside the home and enjoys her time away from the home and kids, but I feel like it is the ideal situation for me to be home with her. I love hanging with Palmer all day. I am SO thankful to Kristi for pushing me to start medical coding and helping me with my endless questions. She is a better boss than I could ever ask for.


6. HOUSE! We have our townhouse in Sandy, but it always felt like just a temporary "starter" for us. We are currently building a house to our exact specifications and it is in the perfect location for us. I am so so so excited to move into the house and I really feel like it will be the perfect place for us to raise our kids.

These house pictures are actually a little outdated.  There's been a lot of work done in the last two weeks.  I need to get new pictures.

7. I really love my COWBOY HUSBAND. Taylor bought cowboy boots and a cowboy hat very shortly after moving here. He has been on a horse ten times more than me since living here. He gets to be my cute little combo chameleon. He wears suits and fancy ties to work every day as the branch manager of a local Wells Fargo Bank. Then he throws on his grubby casual clothes for the rest of life.

How cute is that cowboy?

We definitely miss Taylor's family and feel bad that we see them so infrequently. I miss my friends that live away from Blanding that I don't get to see as much. We miss shopping and restaurants and all the little conveniences of the city. We wish Salt Lake wasn't so far away, but we love love love living in Blanding and feel like it is the right place for us to be. There hasn't been a day since we moved here that we've regretted our decision.

Niner!

How in the world did this little girl get this old so fast? She turned nine months old on the 11th and I am honestly freaking out. In my mind she's still a newborn.
I would like to apologize in advance for the fact that this post is going to be LONG and there will be very close to one million pictures. I could pretty much talk about Palmer all day every day.

I guess I'll start with her stats. She had her nine month check-up this morning. Just as I suspected, she's still perfect. She is 15 pounds 12 ounces, which is a little under the 25th percentile. She is 26 1/2 inches tall, which is close to the 20th percentile. Her head continues to grow at a Lyman rate - she's between 90 and 95th percentile for head circumference. That's my girl!
The following pictures were taken on her nine month birthday.





Palmer girl is busy busy busy! She does not like to hold still and she needs her toys to be rotated very regularly or else she gets bored. As long as you change her scenery often she is happy happy happy. Church is a very long and exhausting three hours. She's not one to just sit still and hang out on my lap. She twists all around and pulls herself up on the back of the pew and on chairs in order to see everything and everyone around her. Of course church starts right when she should be going down for her afternoon nap so she starts out tired and it gets harder and harder to keep her entertained for the whole three hours. She refuses to sleep in my arms. She'll sleep in a crib or pack-n-play and that's just about it. She did end up falling asleep in my arms about five minutes before church ended yesterday; I think she just got so tired that she could not fight it for one more minute. She is not a cuddler at all. She won't cuddle with me before I put her down to sleep. She just wants to be left alone in her crib. She won't rest her head on my shoulder for more than two seconds ever. There's a few laurels in young women's that have understandably fallen in love with Palmercita. They steal her from me every week and Palmer loves them back. Yesterday while Lindsey had Palmer she totally cuddled with her! She laid her head on Lindsey's shoulder and left it there for quite awhile! I was so jealous.

This child is laid back and just goes with the flow. She makes you earn her smiles and it REALLY takes a lot to get her to laugh, but when she does laugh it's the best sound in the world. Everyone always comments that she just seems so content. They are very correct, BUT in the last month she has started to develop a little attitude if she's bored or unhappy with her surroundings. She'll be sitting on the floor happily playing with toys and suddenly she'll scream LOUDLY and MADLY and just hold it until I do something to make her happier. It's very easy to get her happy again and then she goes right back to playing happily. She's happy to go to anybody and doesn't seem to feel any stranger danger. BUT she seems to be turning into a bit of a mama's girl. If she's with someone else, even Taylor, and she sees me walk by or hears my voice she'll start fussing and reaching for me. I love that she loves me, but I want her to be happy with others too. I can't be right by her side every minute of every day. Don't get me wrong though, this little girl really loves her daddy. She lights up when he walks in the door after work. She gets all excited and starts flailing her arms and squealing. She laughs the most for him.


I posted the above picture because of the drool ring on her shirt. This was the first time that I have ever seen her with a drool ring on her shirt. The second and last time that I've seen it was the next day. For this reason and others I was certain she was going to bust out with a tooth, but it hasn't happened. She's getting by just fine without teeth.


All of my family except Deco and Kera were down for my cousin's funeral and then Easter festivities. Palmer and Denver were so stinking cute together. They played lots and lots for the days that Denver was here. They shared toys and binkies and told each other some great stories.


Palmer absolutely loved having extra aunts and cousins to hang out with for a few days. She loves her Aunt Marilyn.

The above and below pictures are on Easter in her pretty Easter dress. I love playing dress-up with my little doll.

This year's Easter picnic was my favorite that I can ever remember. The weather was P-E-R-F-E-C-T! The food was delicious. The company was great. We went to Recapture Pockets, down near Bluff. This is where we've gone for Easter my whole life and where my dad used to go when he was a kid. It is the absolute perfect place for Easter picnicking. We had four-wheelers and the Razr for a little added fun. It was just such a good fun day.
Palmer and Denver hung out on this picnic mat and ate snacks and played with toys.

Lexi and Palmer love each other. Palmer never laughs for me when I tickle her, but she loved it when Lexi tickled her little tummy.
Kristi, Lexi and Scout keeping the babies company. Palmer just really loves her aunts, uncles and cousins.
Here's everyone waiting to take off into the rocks to find Easter eggs!

And they're off!

Palmer loved picking up the eggs...and then eating them :)



Palmer and Daddy had to sit down and rest after some strenuous egg hunting. It was pretty warm by this part of the day.
Yes, I'm that mom that didn't bring a basket for Palmer to put her eggs in, so we used a grocery sack instead. To be fair, she didn't mind at all and I didn't actually plan on her collecting her own eggs since I knew I would just end up eating all her candy. But everyone said that she had to hunt eggs with the rest of the kids so we took part. I was glad we did - it was really fun.

Heading back to check out their loot. Look at the rocks in the background. I challenge anyone to show me a better place for an Easter egg hunt.

Palmercita still has the most beautiful blue eyes. I absolutely love my pretty little girl. Her hair is growing slowly but surely, mostly on top. She sleeps great for the most part. She sleeps an average of 12 hours at night. Sometimes she fusses once or twice in the night, but gets herself back to sleep within a minute or two. Every once in a while she doesn't calm herself down so easily and I have the dilemma of whether or not to go comfort her. I am weak so I end up going to her if she cries for too long. Luckily that doesn't happen very often. She takes two good naps most days. Every once in awhile she'll take a short third nap if I think she really needs it for one reason or another. She's not crawling yet, but is getting better at scooting and pushing herself around. She still struggles with going forward, but is getting better at it each day. She loves to pull herself up on things and you can just tell that she thinks she's such a big girl as she stands there holding onto the couch or whatever it may be. She is still a great eater. She eats anything that I give her and she eats a lot of it! She went through a few days where she acted quite picky about what she would and wouldn't eat. She wouldn't eat some things that she had never had a problem with before. She got over that pretty quickly and she's back to eating everything I put in front of her. She used to prefer vegetables, but seems to be leaning towards fruits a little more now. Her least favorite is the protein/veggie combos I give her, but she has really warmed up to them and after a couple of bites she really seems to like them. She jabbers a lot. For a couple of weeks she said, "dadadada" almost exclusively. But for the last couple of weeks she mostly says, "mamamama." I know that they're just sounds to her but I love it so much! She started waving "hi" and "bye" a few weeks ago. I didn't even realize she was old enough to start teaching her such things, but my sister-in-law Heather told me she was probably about the right age for waving. So when I was leaving Heather's house she was waving goodbye to Palmer and sure enough she waved back! After that she waved at anyone that waved at her. She's gotten a little stubborn about it for the last week or so, but she'll still do it sometimes. She loves to play pat-a-cake and peekaboo. She also loves it when I stand and dance with her to music. She shakes her head and kicks her feet in excitement. She absolutely loves bath time. From the moment I set her in the water to the time I take her out she splashes splashes splashes! I usually end up drenched after giving her a bath. She loves it.

I really will do a post about the progress on our house soon. It's all framed up right now, except for the roof trusses which should come by the end of this week. Woohoo for progress!

I just thought I'd end with this little gem. She's just chilling with her sippy cup and a book.

Sleepy Girl

I decided I needed to do a little post dedicated to Palmer's cute sleeping ways. Like I've said before, I think everything she does is the cutest in the world, including how she sleeps. She is a good little sleeper and is on a pretty good schedule these days. She loves her crib and loves to play in it before and after her naps. 90% of the time she goes down without any fuss. Every once in a while she'll fuss for a minute or two, but then I think she remembers that she actually loves her alone time in her crib.

Sorry for the darkness/fuzziness of the pictures. I couldn't turn on the light or use flash for these pictures.


This picture is for all of you people who think she's not growing and that she's just a little scrawny thing. Check out those thighs! So. Dang. Cute.

She insists on sticking her feet through the slats of the crib. She falls asleep like this quite often. When she wakes up and we go to get her out of her crib she always has her feet through the slats and is just laying there playing with Violet.


She usually sleeps with Violet either over her face or under it. She LOVES Violet's tag. As she's falling asleep she runs her fingers over the tag over and over and over. Sometimes she puts the tag up to her cheek and just rubs her finger against it over and over. So super sweet. I had put her down just a few minutes before this picture was taken. When I left her room, her head was where her feet are, but I guess she decided she would sleep more comfortably if she rotated 180 degrees. Also her feet are sticking through the slats at the end of the crib, but I took the picture too closely to see that. We never know what direction she'll be facing when we go to get her out of her crib.


Another thing she has started to do recently is to suck on her binky upside down. You can't see the picture super well, but her binky is upside down. It's pretty common for us to find her like this. She used to flip over onto her belly and then get really mad about it after playing for awhile (she seems to think she can't flip herself back over while in her crib). But just recently she's started sleeping on her belly most of the time. It's much more common for her to sleep on her stomach than her back these days.

I love my sleepy little girl.

Elite Eight

I thought the title of this post was appropriate since March Madness is starting this week.

The below three pictures were taken on the 11th.

Little Miss Palmer turned eight months old on Sunday. Each month goes faster than the last. I feel like she grew up and changed a lot in the last month. She is so much fun! She makes me smile and laugh all day long. She has started jabbering a lot more lately and she tells the cutest stories ever. She likes to try out different sounds that she can make and loves to squeal and sometimes it even sounds like she's trying to sing. She seems a little shy though and is much more talkative around Mommy and Daddy than when others are around. She'll smile and giggle at any dumb little thing I say or do all day long, but she is quite stingy with smiles around other people. We honestly become more infatuated with her every day; obviously we knew we would just keep loving her more and more, but it's more than that. We literally can not get enough of her. I know I'm biased but everything she does is the cutest in the universe to me.

We go on walks with friends every week. The picture above is Palmer and her good buddy Bryir. Little does Palmer know that I've already got her whole social circle picked out :)

I was certain she'd have a tooth or three by this post because she was definitely working on cutting some teeth a couple of weeks ago. I could feel three little buds, and it was obvious that her mouth was tender. She was fussy and drooly for a couple of weeks. I can still feel the little buds, but she doesn't seem bothered by it any more and the teething process seems to be on hold for now.
In my last post I talked about her pesky little cough. It got a little worse after that post and then it got a lot worse all of the sudden. She was coughing constantly and neither of us was really getting any sleep. Her poor little nose ran non-stop. She had a very slight fever off and on for a couple of days. After a few days/nights of no sleep I took her to the doctor to make sure her lungs sounded ok and that she didn't have an ear infection or anything else that would need attention. I've mentioned before that we absolutely love our doctor, but the bad thing about having an awesome doctor is that everyone else wants to go to him too. So there's just no way to get in to see him unless you make an appointment far in advance. Palmer has had to see a different doctor for her last couple of sick visits; luckily we like this doctor too and she is very kind and seems to know what she's doing. She said that Palmer seemed healthy other than the cough and prescribed a home breathing treatment to try to help her get over the cough and be able to get some sleep. That night was still rough, but by the next night we started seeing some serious improvement. Three or four nights later she was doing SO much better! Ever since then she has been sleeping so great. She seems to love her crib now. When I lay her down for a nap or at bedtime, she happily grabs her lovie named Violet, rolls to her side and goes to sleep without a peep. On the rare occasion that she doesn't go right to sleep she lays there and plays with Violet for up to 45 minutes, talking to it and squealing happily. Then when she decides she's ready, she rolls to her side and goes to sleep. When she wakes up, both in the morning and after naps, she immediately starts talking to Violet and just squeals and plays until I go in to get her. She's now sleeping just over 12 hours most nights - hallelujah! Most days she takes three naps, but if she sleeps long enough in the morning and/or takes two long naps then she gets by just fine with only two naps.

She was such a trooper with her breathing treatments!

How sad is her little runny nose and red eyes?

My beautiful blue-eyed girl is such a pleasant little thing. Even if she gets upset about something she'll let out a little disappointed whine and then she's usually fine. She loves attention. She loves to be sung to. I sing silly made up songs to her all day long and sometimes she "sings" along with me. We sing songs before naptime and bedtime and she usually gets the biggest smile on her face as soon as I start singing.

She has pulled herself up to a standing position on the side of the couch a couple of times with a little help, but she honestly doesn't seem too interested in it. Sometimes I'll stand her up next to the couch or something else she can hold onto and she'll stand there for a minute looking at me like, "now what?" and then she'll drop to her bum and get back to her business. She still isn't crawling. She pushes herself backwards and turns herself in whatever direction she wants, but hasn't quite figured out the forward thing.
She still loves her solids and baby snacks and is such a great eater. She gets very excited when the spoon is coming towards her mouth and she starts flailing her arms and squealing. She ends up hitting the spoon and splattering food all over herself and me quite often. Then she laughs like it's the funniest thing ever.
She loves to shake her head "no." I don't know what she thinks she's saying/doing when she shakes it, but it looks like she's honestly disagreeing with everything that is said to her. It's pretty darn cute, but probably won't be quite so cute when she gets older and pulls real attitude with us.

Last month Noelle hosted her third annual Lyman girls weekend. Palmer was happy to be a part of her first, and certainly not last, girls weekend. We did lots of girly things like sewing, painting nails, eating good food, crafting etc. Noelle is awesome; her house was a straight up circus, but it was so much fun!

One of these days I need to do a blog post about the progress of our house. I also want to do a post about our first two years of living in Blanding. Hopefully soon I'll get on that.