T Minus One Month...

Even with food all over her face, I just think she is the prettiest little thing I've ever seen.

Well I think I've been putting off doing this post because I thought that Palmer couldn't turn one if I never blogged about her hitting the 11 month mark.  I guess I've come to terms with it now.  Don't get me wrong, I really do love watching Palmer grow and learn, but it's just going too fast.

These pictures were taken on the 11th.  This was while we were at Noelle's for a few days.  Her and Denver did lots of playing.  I think her hair is lightening up.

We took the kids to the park.  The babies played on the blanket, while the big kids played on the jungle gym.

This little girl is my best friend!  I love spending my days with her.  She could not be more fun or more silly.  I feel like she grew up a ton in the last month.  I also feel like she's gotten a lot taller and just looks older these days.
Palmer is still cruising around with her little army crawl.  She pulls up on her hands and knees about 100 times a day and sometimes moves forward a little, but then she drops right back down and goes back to the army crawl.  I guess she thinks it's sufficient for now.  She's pretty darn fast.  She's really good at climbing over, under and through obstacles.  She pulls herself up onto her feet on the side of the couch and on other objects a lot more lately.  She still doesn't seem very inclined to walk.  She's pretty wobbly on her feet and I don't think she'll be taking those first solo steps any time soon.
She jabbers at me all day and currently her favorite sounds are "oh" and "ow."  Sometimes she says them together and it sounds like, "oh wow."  She still says "mama" and "dada" here and there, but those aren't her favorite sounds currently and we're still trying to get her to connect those words with us.  Sometimes she "sings" along with music in the car.  I've been trying to teach her to dance when she hears music and sometimes she sways a little bit, but most of the time she just laughs at me when I dance for her.
She still loves her tricks.  Her favorite is probably peek-a-boo and she'll even play that when she's sad and crying.  She quite often starts playing it by covering her eyes without being prompted, especially when I'm feeding her.  She still loves to clap and wave "hi" and "bye."  She'll usually give five if you put out your hand in front of her and sometimes if you ask for a kiss she'll lean in with a big open mouthed wet one!  More often than not though she'll turn her head and let us kiss her on the cheek.
Palmer girl still loves to eat.  She's a good little eater, except at dinner time.  Actually she only gives attitude if I try to feed her food specifically made for babies.  She eats our dinner just fine, and as much of it as we'll give her.  But baby food...even when it's noodles, chunks of meat, non-pureed vegetables etc. she somehow knows that it's baby food and starts fighting it with all the attitude in the world after about five bites.  She loves to eat our dinner though and we're getting to where she eats a lot more of our food and a lot less baby food.  She also loves her some snacks.  Her favorite is graham crackers and they ALWAYS make her happy no matter how upset she might be.  She also really loves yogurt.  I think it's like dessert to her and she'll always eat her little baby yogurt with no problem.
No more teeth this month, but her two bottom teeth are coming in a little crooked (she can thank me for that) but SO cute!
We've been swimming a lot since the pool opened last month.  We like to go during the "mommy & me" time slot and we usually meet up with a bunch of her little friends.  She seems kind of neutral on the whole idea of the pool so far.   She doesn't love or hate it.  She likes to try to eat the water.  The longer we stay at the pool the more clingy she gets and sometimes she even gets super cuddly with me.  Of course I love that, especially since she is so not a cuddler normally. 





P-Tay loves bath time!  She insists on being on her stomach and just swims around like a crazy little fish for as long as I'll let her stay in the bath.  Seriously she goes from one end of the tub to the other, and back again the whole time and she's fast and silly about it.
We have recently decided she definitely has ADHD...hopefully she'll grow out of this.  She does not hold still or focus on anything for more than a few seconds.  She is constantly moving.  She has more energy than I will ever dream of having.
She is a great sleeper at night and usually sleeps for a little over 13 hours.  She takes two good naps during the day.  She does not like to travel!  She does not sleep well in the car, and just gets so super upset the longer we're in the car.  I can not wait for the day when she can be in a front facing car seat; it seems like she'll like that much better.  At the rate she's growing that could be quite awhile though.  She's still my petite little thing, no matter how much she loves her food.  She's wearing size 2 diapers.  I tried to move her up to size 3, but they didn't fit snugly enough so we went back to size 2.  She mostly wears 6-9 month clothing.  She still fits in some 3-6 month stuff, and can wear some of her 9-12 month clothes also.
We just love our little Palmer girl.  She makes life so fun!

Sorry for the creepy red eyes, but I had to include this picture because she loves climbing in there and playing.  She thinks it's so fun to climb in one side and out the other.  Sometimes she just crawls through, and others she stays inside and plays around for awhile.

She loves to lay her head down on her toys and cuddle with them for a few seconds and her exersaucer is no exception apparently.  She cuddles with her toys WAY more than she cuddles with us.

She loves to watch us do pull-ups and loves it even more when we help her do some of her own.

She can spread the toys all over the living room much faster than I can clean them up.

How cute are those little feet?!  This was when Palmer and I went up to Noelle's house with her for a few days.  Her and Denver sat next to each other on the ride there and stole each others' toys the whole time.  Like I said, Palmer is not the happiest traveler.

Ok, but seriously could she be any cuter?

Upcoming post teaser - the ultimate chocolate chip cookie recipe experiment!

10

This was right after Palmer got her ears pierced while we waited for Bryir to get hers done.

There's lots to tell about Palmer's happenings in the last month.  I'll try to keep the words to a minimum; I've been looking through old posts lately and I'm realizing that I have a lot of really long posts.
Palmer turned 10 months old two days ago.  How is this happening?  Here are some of the happenings of the last month in the life of Palmer:

*Got her ears pierced.  I always said I didn't want to pierce my baby girls' ears.  I thought I would just wait until they were old enough to ask for it.  Taylor really wanted to get her ears pierced.  He slowly started wearing me down.  On top of that, a few of Palmer's little friends started getting their ears pierced and it was so dang adorable and their moms said that they were glad they had done it.  So long story short Cheyna and I decided to take Palmer and Bryir to get their ears pierced.  Palmer had been a HUGE grouch for a couple of days so I was a little nervous, but I figured we should go ahead with the plan.  She HATED getting her ears cleaned and marked.  But after the piercings were done she cried for a minute or so and then she was just fine.  She looks so dang cute and hasn't played with her earrings at all.  She gets annoyed when I clean them but gets over it as soon as I'm done.

*The next day I found out why she had been such a huge grump.  She woke up with a nasty cough.  I didn't think much of it at first cause she was acting pretty happy and she seems to get coughs pretty often.  But then Cheyna reminded me that at the playdate we'd had a few days earlier, Palmer's little friend Jag had a very similar nasty cough and he was diagnosed with RSV a few days later.  So I quickly called the clinic for an appointment.  I took Palmer in and, sure enough, she tested positive for RSV.  Her oxygen level was good and so they told me to just watch her closely at home to make sure she didn't have trouble breathing and that she didn't get dehydrated.  For the first couple of days I thought it wasn't going to get too bad for her, but by about day three she really started acting miserable.  She never had trouble breathing and she kept eating enough to stay hydrated.  She had a really bad cough and had a never-ending supply of snot; she vomited a bunch of times and had a lot of trouble sleeping.  On Sunday she got really lethargic and had a pretty good fever so I got quite worried.  My dad came over and he and Taylor gave her a blessing.  I came really close to taking her to the ER that day, but she took a sudden turn for the better that evening.  It still took her a few days to really come around, but from then on she just continued to get better.  Oh, and she got her first tooth the day after testing positive for RSV.  Poor little thing.  Once she was pretty much over the RSV we got to enjoy a couple of days of rest and happiness, before she got sick again.  It seemed to be some sort of flu or something.  She had a fever for a couple of days and vomited a few times.  She didn't seem super miserable, but she only wanted me and would cry and cry if I left her side or handed her off to anyone else.  Needless to say, we did not get very much sleep for about two weeks; we spent a lot of time cuddling in the glider chair in her room.

The pictures in this outfit were taken on the 11th.  I included this picture to show how much hair she's getting on top.  She had just taken a bath so her hair was a little wet still; it's not greasy :)  Also, check out those lashes!

I just thought this was a cute silly face

In this one you can kinda sorta almost see her teeth...well at least one of them.

She wasn't very happy at first when I put her in this basket.  Her favorite thing to do is to pull out all of her toys and throw them all over the room.  Since she emptied out the basket it seemed like the right thing to do to put her in it.

After a second she decided it wasn't so bad in the basket.

Then she even decided she kinda liked it :)

This girl loves to be outside.  We are so happy that the weather is getting nicer so we can spend time outside.  She loves sitting on the lawn and running her hands through the grass and watching the millions of neighborhood dogs and cars go by.

We went to the circus in Monticello on Palmer's 10 month birthday with all of my family that lives in Blanding.  Here she is sitting on Aunt Kristi's lap.  She was happy as could be and completely entertained for about five or ten minutes.  For the rest of the time she was climbing all over her dad and me and really didn't care about the elephants and clowns.

Family picture at the circus...with an elephant bum in the background :)

Some of Palmer's brave cousins rode an elephant at intermission.

*Palmer's second tooth came in on the 10th.  So she now has both of her bottom middle teeth.  She seems to be kind of an average teether as far as her fussiness is concerned.  I definitely figured that a tooth must be coming in because she was extra fussy for a couple of days and didn't want to eat as much, but she didn't seem as miserable as I've heard of some other babies.

*Over the last couple of months I've gotten more into making my own baby food.  At first it just seemed overwhelming to do it, so I just did a very little bit here and there.  I've now decided that it's really not very time-consuming at all.  It's a great way to not let fruits and vegetables go bad.  If we ever have anything that is getting close to having to be thrown out I'll just make it into some yummy Palmer food.  It's a nice way for her to try different things, since store-bought baby food can be limited in the flavors you can find.  For the most part she still seems to like everything that I feed her.  We've tried some interesting combinations and she eats it all up.

*I said, "for the most part" she'll eat anything I feed to her.  She has really started to develop quite the little stubborn attitude.  Sometimes mealtime can become quite the messy battle.  It's not just at mealtime that her attitude comes out.  It's hard to really explain because for the most part she's still a happy little sweetie, but I think she's really just getting more aware of everything and when she doesn't want to eat/drink/play with something she lets me know by squealing madly and batting away whatever I'm trying to give her.  She'll fling her head back and arch her back if she's not happy with her situation.  I think I'm seeing the beginnings of her tantrums.  I'm gonna be honest, I don't love it.

*She's getting really good at copying my actions.  She'll clap her hands after I do it.  She'll raise her arms after me.  She loves to cover her face and play peekaboo.  She's finally mastered the army crawl.  She's getting pretty good at scooting wherever she wants to go.  Luckily it's not the fastest mode of transportation so it hasn't made my life too difficult yet.  Mostly it's just really cute.  She's not super into her binky.  She still likes it when she lays down for a nap or at bedtime, but lots of times she'll spit it out and fall asleep without it.  She very rarely uses a binky outside of her crib.  I was always planning to take it away, except for sleeping, at a year old but she's basically done that herself already.

*Palmer girl is getting VERY clingy.  I don't think she feels stranger danger; I think she just prefers me.  Quite often she'll cry when I hand her off to someone else, but she gets over it right away and then will be just fine with others, unless she's really tired.  She hates it if I leave the room unless she's really enthralled in a toy.

Ok this did not end up being any shorter than all my other long posts.  Sorry!  I just really have a lot to say about Miss Palmercita.  I could talk about her all day long - love this girl!

This was right when Taylor got home from work the day that we got Palmer's ears pierced.  I hadn't told him we were going to do it that day.  He noticed them right away and loved them!

Sad sad sad little RSV baby.  I can't even put into words how much I hated to see her so miserable.

Joshy came to Blanding for a week or two after he finished finals.  He loves the babies and they LOVED him too.  As soon as I would walk into my mom's house he would reach for Palmer and then hold her pretty much the whole time I was there.  She was always very happy to hang out with Uncle Squashy.

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.