Jared's Life is Coming Full Circle

To help you understand the title of this blog post, I need to tell you a little bit about Jared's childhood. He was welcomed into a wonderful family by his parents and three older sisters. A few years later, he got to welcome a new little sister into the family. So he had the opportunity to grow up with the influence of four wonderful sisters. I actually feel that marrying a man who is so used to being around women is great. Now in our own household, Jared is beginning to be outnumbered by females.

Somehow I forgot to mention the newest addition to our family in the Christmas post. Allie loves seeing the fish at Walmart and Petco, so we got a really pretty female Beta fish for her for Christmas. We call her, "Fish." Allie loves watching us feed Fish, and sometimes gets distracted by meals and points at Fish and says, "Fish, Fish, Fish..." (We can see her from our table.) She has brought a new form of entertainment and joy into the home. Fish is the first female that we are introducing to you in this post.

Fish

 Perhaps I should have introduced myself as the first female, since I was the first woman with Jared in his new family. I am the love of his life, and he is mine. We have almost been married three years, and I can honestly say that we have a wonderful marriage. We cannot recall any arguments between us, and we are truly each other's best friend. I consider myself so blessed to be his wife. (Female #2 in this post)

So surely you know who Female #3 will be. It is of course, our beautiful daughter, Allie. She is nearly 20 months now. I think that I comment on how busy she is in almost every post that is about her. Well, she is still as busy as ever. She continues to learn so much. She is good at recognizing and saying shapes; animals and animal sounds; and she loves music and dancing. She is beginning to recognize some letters, too. She knows O, U, and B consistently. She is catching on to other letters, but is not consistent with them, yet. She is trying to improve her climbing skills, despite her parents' attempts to dissuade her. She has put herself into some dangerous situations (i.e. climbing up to windowsills and onto the keys of a piano and then being stopped from going higher by Daddy). Luckily, we have caught her before she has had any falls from these high places. She has a funny sense of humor and can also be very sweet. She will occasionally come up to me and just give me a hug and kiss just because. And when I tell her thank you, she will do it again. Oh how we love our little Tornado Allie!!!

Daddy and his little girl

So who is Female #4? You may have guessed it by now, but we are pregnant with Baby Girl #2 and due July 2nd. I am 20 weeks pregnant today. Yea for halfway there! We are excited for Allie to have a little sister. She does not understand, yet. I doubt that she will until the baby is here. It is really going to rock her world. But we think that she will be a good big sister. I was quite sick until 17 weeks, and therefore did not do much of anything that did not need to be done. As a friend from church said, "I entered survival mode." Allie probably watched more TV than I would normally let her, and our floor completely disappeared at times due to Allie's toys being everywhere. And clearly, I got a little behind on the blogging. Jared has been absolutely wonderful! He did extra when it was tough due to his school load. I only have to change poopy diapers when I am home alone with Allie. And he still tells me I am beautiful, even when I am exhausted, have no make-up on, and have thrown-up. Now that is love! I am excited for Jared to have this fourth female come into his life. I know that he is going to be a great daddy for his two little girls.

Now here are some pictures of our little girl who is preparing to enter the world.

10 weeks
Profile (Baby looking down with head at left of picture)

Profile at 19.5 weeks

Bottom of Both Feet

Right Leg
(left image is of femur, right image is of shin bones and foot)

It's a girl!!!
(What you cannot see clearly in this scanned picture are three little lines that indicate that it is a girl.)

As mentioned above, Allie doesn't quite understand that there is a baby in Mommy's tummy. But I think that she has caught on to the word "baby" being said more. We had the infant car seat out for a few days because we needed to fix a part on it due to a recall. I told Allie that it was for the baby. She then put her baby doll in it, followed by her teddy bear, then her stuffed dog, Buddy, and lastly, herself. She's a little long for it, I think. It is amazing to think how big she is getting and how little the new baby will be in this car seat. 

Allie is preparing for the new arrival

We had a Merry Christmas!!

We had a wonderful Christmas! We were blessed greatly by the generosity of so many. It was truly a time to reflect on all of our blessings, especially including the wonderful gift of our Savior Jesus Christ.

Our ward (church) had a Christmas breakfast a few Saturdays before Christmas, and Allie got to meet Santa Claus after eating. She wasn't scared of him, but she didn't really have much of a reaction. We don't remember if she said, "Ho Ho" at that time, but she has since learned that that is what Santa says and says it whenever she sees a picture of Santa.

Allie meets Santa

Our good friends left town for a few weeks, and we got the opportunity to add a new member to our family as we dog sat for them. Roxy the little rat terrier was a lot of fun to have around. Both our family and Nikki's sister's family fell in love with her. Allie started asking for Roxy first thing in the morning. Even after we had to give her back, Allie would continue asking for Roxy several times during the day. Now, as we drive to our friend's house, or even if we are just driving in the direction of their house but do not plan on going there, Allie will ask, "Roxy?" It was a lot of fun having a dog in the family for a little while.

Roxy

 We spent nearly a full week at Nikki's sister's house. It was a wonderful time to relax and enjoy being with family! We made Christmas treats together, watched several movies, and had fun opening gifts together Christmas morning. Allie had a lot of fun playing with her cousins Nathen, Bella, and Breya. Despite getting a double ear infection and strep, Allie was really pretty happy the whole time. Due to our camera taking a spill, we have limited pictures. But here are a few from Christmas morning.

Santa brought Allie some Winnie the Pooh books that make sounds.
Allie loves them!

Unwrapping a gift

Nikki and Allie enjoying Mommy's stocking

Breya and Bella opening their new church bags that we got for them.

Fun with Fall Leaves!!

We captured some of Allie's fun times in the leaves in October and November. It was really cute to watch her enjoy another aspect of nature and the seasons.

  

On this particular day, after playing in the leaves, she decided to go for a little stroll. She didn't even look back to see if Mommy was coming or not. Obviously, Mommy didn't let her get too far away.

Hmmm, a branch with some leaves still on it. Cool.

Then about a month later, Allie had an outing with Daddy. She not only enjoyed the leaves, but she got to learn a little about wind.

Some of Allie's Random Moments from 16-18 Months of Age

Allie continues to bring us so much joy. She makes us laugh all the time. Of course there are times when she really tries our patience, too. But we still thank Heavenly Father daily for having blessed us with such a sweet little girl.

We had her 18-month doctor's visit at the end of December. She has continued with the same growth pattern: she was 33.24" tall (95th percentile) and weighed 22 lbs, 11 oz (50th percentile). So she is actually slightly more proportionate than before, though she is still tall and thin.

Below are some pictures that were taken between 16 and 18 months of age.

Allie in her pretty dress (16 months)

Sadly, Mommy thought the above dress was bigger than it was, so Allie only ended up wearing this one time. We tried putting it on her before, and she could get in it, but she really put up a fuss. It must have been too tight for comfort. Too bad.

Allie in a pretty dress with a pan, one of her favorite, toys. (18 months)

 The video below needs a little bit of explanation. Allie loves to follow us everywhere, including the bathroom. Sometimes it isn't a big deal, but sometimes a person wants a little bit of privacy. And as she gets older, we figure that she needs to learn that she doesn't need to be with us ALL the time. So one time when Daddy locked Allie out and she was distressed, a new game was discovered. As you can see, she got a kick out of it.

There is a wonderful couple in our ward at church with whom we will trade babysitting. They have a daughter named Lily who is 11 months older than Allie. They play so well together. It is really cute watching them. The following pictures were taken during one of our nights babysitting in either November or December.

Allie, Mommy, Lily

Allie and Lily playing together

 Allie really loves watching videos. We don't get cable, so we don't have television. But we own a few Sesame Street and other kids videos. We try not to let her watch too much. Below is a picture of her zoning while standing and watching one of her videos.

Just a cute picture with her baby and a can of beans or enchilada sauce

 The next picture doesn't really have anything to do with Allie, but we thought we would share it with you. The same couple that we trade babysitting with held a Pie Night the week before Thanksgiving. Four or five different couples all brought a different pie. There were some sweet and some savory. We found an Amish recipe for a Lemon Sponge Pie. It sounded delicious, and the book said it was a pity it isn't made as often, so we thought, "why not?" It turned out really pretty, and the texture was good, but the lemon was too strong. We would probably have to tweak the recipe in order to get it to our liking in the future.

Lemon Sponge Pie

Allie loves playing with all the pots and pans, Tupperware, and other kitchen items that are in our lower cabinets. We've placed our items with that in mind, so she can't get to any that will break. But recently (maybe December?) she discovered another way to enjoy the cupboards.
 

Next are just some videos of Allie having fun with her stuffed duck.

Halloween Addendum

So we know that Halloween was three months ago, but we found additional pictures that we want to post for posterity's sake.

Allie had her first experience with carving pumpkins. She didn't enjoy the feeling of the seeds and gunk inside. She only reached in a few times, and then she was okay with letting Mommy do the rest.

What is this stuff?

We thought that letting Allie use a spoon might induce her to help a little more, but it only proved to be something that allowed her to inspect the gunk without touching it. And then they became a source of entertainment, as you will see in the video below.

Here's our final product. Daddy's is on the left, Mommy's is center, and Allie's is on the right.

Allie got a taste of trick-or-treating at our ward's Trunk-or-Treat. She had a good time going from car to car getting candy. She heard the exclamation, "She's so cute!" over and over, too.