3 months

It's hard to believe that these last three months could have gone by so fast! Kip is growing so well (up to 10 lbs!) and is a joy to have in our lives. Here are some favorite pictures. WARNING: There's A LOT here, but she's just so darn cute!!

Kip's wonderful personality is really starting to blossom now. She is so sweet and happy, unless something is really bothering her and then she is LOUD.

She makes the most adorable, soft cooing noises. Mostly just vowels now. It sounds a lot like "Hi, hi, hi" sometimes.

She enjoys lying under her play gym, looking up at all the animals, etc. Her favorite thing to "talk to" and watch right now is a little black and white soccer ball. Our future athlete?

She is starting the hand fascination phase and spends a lot of time sucking on her fingers. Unlike Gus, she really likes her pacifier and her swaddler. She has started taking longer naps and sleeping more at night (5-7 hours) some nights.

It's so much fun to see the way she recognizes all 3 of us. We love you SO much, Kipster!

Why it pays to live in the South

While playing outside yesterday with Gus & Kip, I saw this....

this...

and this!

You'd think after living down here for roughly 10 years now that I'd be used to the early spring, but it catches me by surprise EVERY year!

Here's something ironic though....as I post this, it's SNOWING. A lot. But I don't mind. I like snow too! Just so long as it's not cold and rainy. I'll leave those type of days for Scott. They're his favorite:)

Christmas Day

This year the Deterding side of our family came to visit for Christmas: Oma & Opa, Uncle Steve & Aunt Heather, and Cousins Grace & Leah. It was a blast!!

Steve & Leah

Grace

The cousins had so much fun! Grace & Gus spent most of the time running around, with little Leah bringing up the rear. It was so much fun to hear them talking and laughing together while they played.

All the cousins decked out for the Christmas Eve service.

The girls in their matching Christmas PJs (thanks again, Heather!!)

Christmas Day Random Pics

Gus' big prize this year was his train table (Thanks Oma & Opa!)

Thanks again for making the trip down, Deterdings! We enjoy our holidays with you:)

Christmas Preps

It was fun having Gus involved in getting ready for Christmas this year. The two activities that I remembered to take pictures of were cookie making and stringing pasta for a Christmas tree garland.

Making sugar cookies.

I love this progression.....

1.)

2.)

3.) Garland. He was pretty excited about the wagon wheel pasta that I found:)

The other day, we were talking about Christmas being over, and Gus' comment (which we hear A LOT of these days) was, "Are you sad about that?" (Translation: "I'm sad about that.") I reminded him that next year he will be 3 when Christmas comes and he seems to think that's pretty cool.

Christmas Tree

We spent this past weekend taking down all our Christmas decorations, so I decided it was high time I uploaded some pictures of our Christmas exploits. I'm not promising anything, but my goal is to have all my Christmas related blogs up by at least Easter:)

We cut our tree down at our favorite Christmas tree farm with our neighbors again this year. It has become a fun tradition for us. This time there were 2 more kids with us!Gus was fascinated with the "baby" trees, as he called them. He stopped to talk to a lot of them along the way.The boys with our conquest.The girls:)We really like this particular type of tree. It's called a Carolina Sapphire.I'm not sure what he's doing here....directing, conducting, doing magic??The men hauling our trees back up to the car.Yes, that was car, singular. We got some interesting comments from people who saw our car sporting TWO trees. I have no pictures of the tree once it was decorated, but it was lovely....even if it was just propped up in the corner of our living room. Time for a heavy duty Christmas tree stand, me thinks:)

Happy Birthday, Amy!

Today is Amy's 30th birthday. I stayed home today to try and make her day a little more relaxing. As a result, I haven't taken this baby carrier off for the past 3 hours. I just finished giving Kip a bottle so that Amy could go off to her surprise massage and get some much needed time alone. Let's just say that neither Kip nor I are used to the bottle. For the first 15 minutes, more of it came up than went down. In the middle of her feeding, I had to stop to give our sick and whining oldest some medicine b/c he was losing it. After her feeding, Kip went poop and more of it went up than down into the diaper itself. Thus, the need for a completely new outfit. In the past hour, I have disciplined Gus twice. He's due for lunch, but I'm stalling as long as possible, hoping that Amy will get back in time to help. Kip is back in the carrier and fighting her nap. Hold on...need to go fix the train tracks again so Gus can settle back down... Back now.

All that to say, I am very thankful for Amy and the hectic job she manages here at home. She's a great mother and still finds the time to be a fantastic wife and friend. I love you, Frau. Happy Birthday! (I think I heard the car pull up. Sweet. She's home!)

Funny Man Encore

Today, while trying to get the house cleaned, I let Gus play with a container of Q-tips. I told him he could take them all out, as long as he cleaned them all up when he was finished.

I came in a few minutes later to find him cramming all the Q-tips back in the plastic cup. I asked him if he was having fun.

He said, "Yes, I'm just cleaning up all these Booger-tips."

(That's what we tell him Q-tips are for: Cleaning out your ear boogers.)

Funny Man

Here's a conversation that just transpired:

Amy to Scott: "I wonder how they did this." (Referring to a personalized note pad that we just received.)

Scott: "I'm sure that any printer could do that."

Gus, from another part of the room while playing: "Printer. I want to see a printer."

Amy, under her breath: "Gus Man, you're such a little eavesdropper."

Gus, from the other side of the room: "Eavesdropper. Eavesdropper."

Argh....Sigh....

Life can be so frustrating and yet joyful at the same time.

On Sunday, Kip started having the same food allergy symptoms that we suffered through with Gus for 7+ months when he was an infant. It has been shocking to me how similar my two children have been so far! She even started the symptoms at exactly the same age as Gus (almost to the day!).

I was, at first, devastated. Just remembering how stressful and sad it was the first time made me want to give up this time. I thought that with it being our second time around that I would handle it better, but it's still hard.

It's hard to think that her body is suffering and her immune system is working so hard to defend her against something that it doesn't need to worry about (that's what this type of allergy essentially is: a confused immune system). It is hard for me to contemplate many more months of elimination diets and doctor visits. With Gus, we were never able to figure out what it was in my diet he was reacting to, so I modified and modified, with little success. But, he is completely fine now which is a comfort to know, and he by no means had as severe a case as he could have. There are a lot of things for us to be thankful for. Kip has started smiling and hanging out with us more. Her whole face lights up when she smiles, and it's been so much fun to watch her interact with Gus a little bit.

For now I'd really like to try and continue breastfeeding so I'm not eating dairy, soy, eggs, nuts and fish for 3 weeks. We'll see if that does anything to ease the symptoms. After that, I don't know what we'll do. The formula they suggested switching Gus to supposedly can run up to $100 a week, which does not sound good to me!

I'm praying for a good attitude, complete healing for Kip or at least for us to discover what allergy she has so that I can avoid it. I am learning to process my ever fluctuating emotions through prayer and, as always, these "light and momentary troubles" are bringing me closer to my Savior!

Life goes on...I'm off to try replacing the eggs in some of my Christmas cookies with flax seed meal. We'll see how THAT goes:)

1 month old

It's amazing how fast they grow!! From this...

...to this, in just 1 month.

Kip is doing great. At her 1 month appointment, she weighed 8 lbs 3 oz (25%) and was 21 inches long (50%). Although we've had a few rough nights, overall she's a much better sleeper than Gus was. She's pretty easy-going and loves to cuddle:) She's starting to get interested in stuff around her, like her mobile. She also really enjoys laying on the floor next to Gus!

Here are some of my favorite photos from her first month.

We love you, Kip!