7 Months Old

It's been a fairly uneventful month over here.

She continues to grow and has a good amount of chub to her. I love her squishy cheeks, her little belly rolls, and her chunky little thighs.

Austin has officially mastered sitting up. She sits up most of the time she is awake and is able to catch herself if she starts to tip.

Her siblings love watching her learn new things and are always saying how adorable she is. They love helping in any way, bringing her toys, grabbing  a diaper, giving her a cracker, etc.

She detests tummy time and refuses to even try. When you put her on her stomach, she immediately put her head down into the carpet and sobs. She wont try to lift herself up, roll over, anything. She just screams.

I have been trying to get her started on baby food, but she will not have it. She takes a bite, then becomes VERY tight lipped. If you try to put a spoon up to her mouth, she will back away, shake her head, and do everything to make sure you can't get it in her mouth. And if you are able to get some in, she'll likely just spit it right back out. The little stinker.

While she hates baby food, she enjoys gnawing on fingers, crackers, noodles, and other small things. She definitely acts like she wants real food. It's impossible for me to eat or drink anything without her attacking my food and trying to grab it for herself. She loves when I share my yogurt and green smoothies with her.

We spend a bit of time outside, and Austin loves looking around at everything and eating anything she can get her hands on. Some of her favorite things to chew on are sticks, leafs, wood chips, and grass.

We have had some really nice weather and have taken advantage of it and spent a lot of time outside. I was a little too slow getting sunscreen on Austin and her shoulders got a little bit red. Nothing serious or painful, and she didn't even notice. As you can tell from the smiles, she didn't mind.

I've been wondering when she would get some teeth and at times it seemed she might be teething, yet her gums always looked normal. No redness, and I couldn't see anything trying to push through. Then suddenly one day, she was sucking on my finger and I noticed she had two teeth. Two little teeth on the bottom. She will let you feel them, but she will not let you look at them. Her tongue is always in the way or she refuses to open up.

Austin has had a bit of a rough month. Perhaps it was due to teething, but I'm not so sure. She used to be content to either sit up or lay down and play with toys or just watch what was going on. The past few weeks, however, she insists on being held. It doesn't really matter who is holding her, but she wants some elevation. She screams the second you put her down, and will stop crying the moment you pick her up. It makes it difficult to do anything. I have to just let her scream so I can get stuff done. She has been a little happier the last week, so maybe the grumpiness was due to teething and has passed now. I can hope.

She still refuses to sleep through the night. She goes to bed between 7:30 and 8:00 pm. And every night she'll start crying around 10:30 pm. She's super reliable about it too. Often times I'll lay down for the night a little after 10 pm. I hesitate to go to sleep because I know, without fail, that she will be waking up any minute. And she always does. I'm not quite sure how to get rid of that one. I've let her cry, but she wont stop until she is fed. I guess I could let her cry longer, but it is easier just to give in and feed her. I guess it's my fault for taking the easy way out. I keep telling myself I start sleep training, then I get lazy and give in. One day. One day.

You can tell when it's nap time because she becomes fussy, but doesn't calm down when you pick her up. She loves to be held, so if she is still crying when while being held, then it probably means that it is nap time. And anytime she starts rubbing her eyes, you can be fairly sure that its time for sleep.

And she knows when you are about to put her down for a nap. When you walk into her room, she starts getting a little tense and anxious. Right before you lay her down in her crib, she squirms and starts to cry. I walk out and leave her and she is usually asleep within a few minutes.

While she is in her crib screaming, whether before her nap or once she wakes up, she grabs her blanket and chews on it.

Austin loves the swing. In fact, when I stop her to try and take a picture, she gets upset and cries until I start to swing her again. Then it's all smiles and laughs.

Austin seems to have her tongue hanging out of her mouth about as much as she doesn't. Especially when her teeth first came in, her tongue was constantly rubbing on them. I remember one Sunday in church, she kept sticking her tongue in and out, back and forth across those teeth. She did in pretty consistently for the entire hour of sacrament meeting.

While she may have been a little grumpier than usual, she was still very easy to make smile. And her smiles are just the cutest little thing around.

She is very ticklish and will laugh out loud when she is being tickled. Her prime spots are by her neck, under her arm, and her inner thigh. 

Her hair has started coming in more, but it still isn't quite long enough to do a pony tail or anything. She did have a patch on top that was about 3 times as long as the rest of her hair, but I ended up trimming it off and evening it out.

I know it's probably something I say every single month, but she has the brightest blue eyes. Especially when she is wearing something that really makes them pop, they are piercing. I've had numerous people stop me and comment on her eyes.  

She sure is a fun and beautiful baby and we love having her around. 

Mommy and Blake

Blake has been in this new little phase of refusing to let me take her picture. She wants to be the one taking the picture. When I ask her to smile or say cheese, she either hides or face or gets all grumpy. She will do anything but look at the camera.

It takes all sorts of jumping up and down, making silly noises, goofy faces, whatever it takes just to get her to look at me. 

Every once in a while, captured within the many pictures I find a decent one. 

And trying to get a picture with her is even more difficult. When I ask her if she will take a picture with me, she says no. Through some wrestling and intense prodding, I was finally able to convince her to take a few with me. I may or may not have been restraining her and forcing her to sit by me.

But I was only able to get her to sit by me by saying we could do monkey pictures and other goofy pictures. Even then she wasn't too keen on the idea. 

And like any time you try to get pictures that involve children, you get a decent one of one person, then a decent one of the other person, but it is impossible to have both people looking at the camera at the same time and not having a goofy face.

 Or you finally get the shot you were hoping for but it is out of focus.

 

 

Blake also likes when mommy does fishy kisses. She tries to do them but hasn't quite figured it out yet. It's fun to be goofy sometimes.

Waterfall Canyon

After talking about doing this hike for weeks, we finally did it yesterday. The kids were all smiles and excited to start. Boy how quickly that changed.

Right near the beginning, there was some women coming down with two young children. Just curious, we asked about how long it took them to do the hike. They said it took them an hour and a half just to get to the top. We didn't start until 5:30 pm, and suddenly I was worried that we wouldn't have enough time. I knew coming down would be much quicker, but I absolutely did not want to still be on the trail when the sun went down. Lance and I decided to go ahead anyways, but we both agreed that no matter where we were, we would turn around at 7pm.

The trail started climbing right from the start and never stopped. The first little while was completely in the sun and it was hot. Surprisingly, it was Will that started whining first. Less than 10 minutes into our hike, Will was complaining. We took a short break, then kept pushing on. Every 2 minutes, Will would ask if we could take another break. It was frustrating and I could barely get him to keep moving. He was breathing pretty hard, holding his stomach, and near tears. He had woke up with a high fever only 2 days before, and suddenly I was wondering if maybe he still wasn't feeling well. He said he wasn't feeling sick and that he wanted to keep going. This all happened within the first quarter mile or so and I knew there was a very good chance that we wouldn't make it very far. Will had only been on one hike before, but it was more of a stroll through the mountains with much less climbing. This was Blake's first hike ever, and my first hike carrying a baby. But we just kept walking.

And walking.

And climbing over rocks.

And walking.

Luckily  not terribly long into the hike, the trail entered the trees and climbed along the river. It was nice to be in the shade, and Austin seemed to like the sound of the water. The kids complained less and less. And suddenly, the trail opened up and the waterfall was in view. The last climb to the falls was very rocky and very steep. It was a little nerve wracking trying to climb it while carrying Austin. There were a lot of loose rocks, plus trickles of water coming down the rocks made it slippery in some spots. I went slow and made sure I had steady footing, and we found a good little spot to rest by the falls. 

When we passed people as we neared the top, they encouraged us to keep going and that the view would be worth it. And it definitely was. The waterfall was spectacular, and the view out to the valley was just as stunning. The waterfall was even taller, but I wasn't able to fit the entire thing in my photos. We sat down for a little bit and enjoyed a snack while being sprayed by mist from the water hitting the rocks. 

It was very peaceful and relaxing. I would have like to just sit and listen to the waterfall for a long time. It was 6:45 pm when we reached the top, and I was thrilled we had made it in time and didn't have to turn around before seeing the waterfall. But with how steep and rocky the climb was, I knew going down would be difficult in a different way. We didn't stay long at the falls since we weren't sure how long it would take us to get down. 

Austin did amazing. She didn't cry once the entire time. She hardly even made a peep. But she was kicking her legs and seemed very content. Towards the bottom, she was dozing off a little bit, but was unable to stay asleep because I kept having to adjust her.

Like I said, the view out to the valley was incredible. One of my favorite things about hiking is seeing just how far you have come. While you are walking, it's easy to keep your head down and stare at the trail ahead of you. And you don't realize just how much you are climbing. It's crazy how far you can go and how high you can climb in such a short amount of time. 

I wish I would have got a better picture of the trail just to show how steep it actually was. If you look closely at the picture of our whole family, you can see the grade of the slope behind us. There were a few tears on the way down, as the kids lost their footing and slipped a few times. Luckily they were just small slips and only resulted in tiny scrapes.

The way up was more aerobically exhausting. Our heart rates were up and our breathing was labored. The way down, however, was more straining on the muscles. Trying to step down off of big rocks slowly felt like I was doing one legged squats. Everyone else seemed to be fine on the way down, but I was in some serious pain. It didn't help that yesterday morning was squat day at crossfit so my legs were already sore. Probably not the best day to plan a strenuous hike, but I didn't really think about it until the pain hit. And Austin isn't exactly a teeny baby. She is quite the chunk and my arms and legs definitely felt the extra weight. While I was just focused on staying alive and not tripping while carrying her, Lance was awesome and helped the other kids when needed. Blake wanted to hold his hand most of the way, and she required a lot of help climbing up and down the rocks. Honestly, I'm not sure who had the harder job - me or Lance. 

We arrived back at the car, tired and hungry, a little before eight o'clock. Once we got out of the rocks and back to the open trail, the kids were cruising. They were anxious to get down as we had promised them slurpees on the way home. The bribe worked and we seemed to fly down the mountain. That is, everyone except me. My legs and back were on fire, but I tried to keep up. We had to keep yelling at Will to slow down because he was getting too far ahead of us. I would have never believed it if you had told me he would be doing so good at the start of the hike. I thought for sure we would be carrying him out. Blake enjoyed a couple of short piggy backs on the way down, but she did most of it by herself. I am so proud of the kids and it made me super excited to see them do so well. It got me excited for the possibility of a lot more hikes this summer. We had a good time and think this is a hike that we will do again, but maybe on a day when we aren't feeling so rushed.

Bedroom Update - Decorating

*If you missed the post about the construction, click HERE.

Now that the construction part of the room was finished, it was time to decorate! It wouldn't have taken so long if I wasn't so indecisive. I went in several stores and discovered pretty quickly that I was not going to find a bed spread that I liked that would match the room. So I started scouring fabric stores, looking for something that I liked. 

Finally, I found two that I really liked. And they even looked decent together. To prevent myself from having to make a decision, I got both fabrics and just made the comforter reversible. Yay!

I also made some throw pillows to go on Blake's bed.

Once the room was finished, it also became very clear to me how much I hated the kids dresser. The color clashed terribly with the new pink walls and it bugged me to no end. My neighbor has painted tons of furniture so I enlisted her help. She came up with the idea to do ombre drawers, and she told me how to do it.

The dresser took me way longer than I thought it would. I'm not sure why I always think it'll go fast because it never does. I took off all of the hardware so I could paint the base of the dresser white.

Then I painted the drawers.

I also added some fabric to the sides of the drawers to add just a little something extra.

When I was finished, I decided I wanted to do the top glittery gold. For whatever reason, this was the hardest part of the entire thing. I had to redo it about 4 times. Either the paint was patchy, lots of air bubbles, or just a ugly color. Finally I ended up finding a color that I was happy with. Then I added some new hardware, painted the same as the top, and it was good to go!

Before and after of the dresser:

I also painted a mirror that we had and placed it on top of the dresser. I am so proud of how the dresser turned out. I wasn't sure how it was going to go, as it was my first time really tackling furniture. I'm a bit obsessed with it, and it may have given me the bug to refinish more furniture in the future. If only we had a garage or somewhere to do that type of work..I think it is something I would really enjoy doing with the intent of selling the products. 

It took me FOREVER to decide what accent colors I wanted. When I chose to do gold, I knew I wanted to do gold polka dot on the walls too.

Add some decorations and the room is complete! I'm in love with how it turned out.

I both love and hate finishing projects. I love seeing the final product and being able to see my vision come to life. And I hate the mess and chaos that comes with projects, so I am always happy to get my house back in order. But I love having a project to work on. By the time I'm finished, I'm both determined to never do another house project again and anxious to start on the next one. Let's be honest, I'm usually more than ready to start dreaming about the next project.