4 Months

Lydia turned 4 months old on Christmas Eve. Necon and I were both off on Christmas Eve, which was nice since we both had to work Christmas Day. We had such a good day just enjoying playing with Lydia. She has gotten to such a fun stage! I know that we will probably say that about all of them, but she is such a joy! She now weighs a whopping 15 1/2 pounds (75%) and is 25 1/2 inches long (95%). She obviously gets the heighth from me...We had to get some more shots on Wednesday at her four month check up and she has been super fussy since then. She didn't fuss after her 2 month immunizations so I am getting a little worried. Last night she got up almost every hour. It was the first night she hadn't slept all night since she was a week old. She even has really hard knots at all three injection sites. I know that being a nurse I should probably know if this is normal or not, but I am of course worried and hate seeing her looking like she is in pain! Enough of that...she is for the most part an extremely happy baby. She loves to look around at us. She now reaches towards us and is really grabbing at things. She is officially in the oral phase where EVERYTHING goes straight to the mouth. She rolls over onto her back when she is on her tummy, but she hasn't quite tackled rolling the other direction. She gets so close that I know it takes her more energy to roll back than it would to finish rolling over. I keep thinking she is going to get a tooth any day she is so slobbery (see exhibit a below!!), but she hasn't.

This is the best picture I could get...she was really tired!!

I'm not sure why being parents gives us the right to do things like this to our children, but I am so glad it does because I think it is absolutely adorable! Lydia has taken a few showers and she really seems to like that better than her little bathtub! This is her "I'm freezing" face...

More bumbo pics...

If you look closely you can see how much she slobbers and how much it does not bother her in the slightest to leave it just hanging out of her mouth. I know that we should pay Amy Bell more for all the extra work she had to do taking the slobber out of Lydia's 3 month pictures!!

Pop and OG

Lydia is blessed enough to have 3 sets of grandparents...my parents, Necon's parents and Travis' parents. For those of you who don't know, Necon's best friend since they were 7 passed away this summer. We miss Travis very very much and we really wish that he could have met Lydia and been a part of her life. Fortunately for us, we were able to adopt his parents to be an extra set of grandparents for Lydia. We had been bugging them to come up with their grandparent names, since Mr. Randy and Mrs. Karen (their first name proposal) sounded like next door neighbor names! We were eating at Cock of the Walk a few weeks ago and Karen gave us two choices for her. She said that she could be Mimi because she is the third grandma and "mi" is the 3rd note of the scale (you know...do, re, mi??). The other choice she liked was OG because she is the "other grandmother!!" We LOVED this. She also informed us that Randy looks like a "Pop" and since he didn't disagree that is what we are going with. We exchanged gifts with them just before they left for Florida, where they are spending the holidays. LOVE YOU OG AND POP!!!

OG gave us this blanket before Lydia was born. It was Travis' baby blanket. We always tell Lydia when we put it on her that her guardian angel is there with her helping her sleep. When she is extra fussy we get the blanket out and she almost always calms down immediately.

Tulsa Christmas

Two weekends before Christmas we ventured to Tulsa to visit Necon's family and watch his cousin's kickboxing match. If you recall this was just after the ice storm that hit Oklahoma leaving hundreds of thousands of people without power. We weren't even sure we were going to be able to go because his grandma didn't get power until the night before we were to leave. While we were driving the damage to the trees was quickly apparent. It was crazy how huge the trees were that were snapped in half like they were twigs. Here are some pictures from his grandmother's house...

We got into Tulsa on Friday afternoon. Thomas' fight was that night. He is fighting in Chuck Norris' World Combat League. It is a team kickboxing competition where each fighter fights two 3 minute rounds on either side of half time. Thomas won his first fight!! It was so much fun...

Thomas was unable to return for his second round because of a deep cut over his right eye that had to be stitched after the fights were over. For how bad the cut was, he really looks pretty good! Lydia was cheering him up...

Lydia also had a blast playing with Thomas' wife Holley too!! She has officially picked her index finger as her favorite one to chew on...we are in trouble already!!

I should have taken pictures of all the food we ate (indian tacos, grape dumplings, hot links, biscuits and gravy...) because that is what we did the majority of the time we were there. But since I didn't here are some pictures of us celebrating Christmas!!

Lydia is playing shy with Uncle Keith...

Tree Farm 15th Anniversary

This was our 15th year for the tree farm...11th for Rebecca, 7th for Necon and 1st for Lydia. We had so much fun looking for a tree. Every year we listen to Bing Crosby Christmas and Beach Boys Christmas on the way. When we get there they give us a saw and a flashlight (if we go at night) and we head off to the part of the farm where the great big Christmas trees live. Dad refuses to let us get a tree that is under 10 feet tall. One year we got one so big they couldn't get it through their machine to wrap it all up so we drove all the way home thinking the tree was going to fall off the roof! Once we find the tree we all do a little sawing (except for mom, and now that we are older pretty much it is just dad and Rebecca) and haul the tree back to be shaken out and wrapped. While we wait (and Dad "helps" the workers) we get hot chocolate and candy canes. It was so much fun having Lydia there this year, even though it didn't quite feel right since it wasn't even cold! She has been so fussy yesterday and today, so the pictures didn't turn out too great, but we got one pretty good one for the Christmas Card.

Dad and Necon with the BIG TREE...

She got worn out being so fussy while we were trying to take the pictures

Just to clear things up...that big tree is for my parent's house, our tree is now fake. Growing up we NEVER had a fake tree and I swore I NEVER would either. We got a real tree our first married Christmas and it will be our last! They are the biggest pain in the entire world! We still had pine needles in the apartment when we moved out a year later...I never knew how much hard work my mom put into making the tree look so good. She is a better woman than I...here are some pictures of Lydia putting her first Christmas ornament onto our fake tree...

Weight Loss

Inspired by another new mom, I have put a weight loss tracker on our blog! I am having huge problems trying to lose my baby weight. As most of you know I was pre-eclamptic with Lydia and this caused me to gain lots and lots of water weight. That came off easily, but has made it more difficult to lose the rest of the "normal" weight. I am sure the fact that I am neither dieting nor working out helps any at all!! So...hopefully this will help me stay accountable to losing weight!

3 Month Pictures

So, we went on Monday to take Lydia's 3 month pictures. We did some in her Christmas dress and some in pink bloomers. After I spent a fortune on our newborn pictures, I promised Necon that the rest of the sessions would only have one or two really good pictures for us to get. I TOTALLY LIED!! I didn't mean to...I really did think that we would be lucky to get 2 really good shots the older she got. They are all good...I want every single one. For those of you who are interested go to the Studio Bella Photo link on the right side of our blog and click on the CLIENTS link at the top right of the page. Lydia's gallery is all the way at the bottom. Let me know which ones are your favs and I will keep track. Hopefully that will help me narrow down this list...

Also, even though I don't have a picture, Lydia rolled over on Sunday night!! She was on her tummy and rolled to her back. I haven't been able to get her to do it again, but that is probably because I am having a really hard time not holding her this week. Up until now I haven't had a super hard time leaving her while I go to work, but this week has been AWFUL!! I would appreciate your prayers for peace about it and helping me not to feel so guilty.