Aja at 7 Weeks

Aja is now 7 weeks old, and it feels like time is flying by. It seems like she just came into our family, but how can it be that it has almost been 2 months?

She is growing up so fast!

-She is smiling quite often now, but I am never lucky enough to capture it on camera.
-She is getting really good at holding her head up, and can do it for short periods of time.
-She wears size newborn diapers and newborn clothes still.
-She weighs almost 8 pounds now.
-She eats a lot... around 4-6 ounces every 3 hours.
-She still sleeps around 20 hours a day and only wakes up once at night to eat.
-She is finally starting to put some weight on her feet.
-She loves to be held, but sleeps great in her own bed.
-She loves bath time, but hates to be dressed afterwards.
-We are madly in love with her!

Angelic

This weekend coming up we will be blessing Aja and naming her in our church. Alex has blessed all of our children, and I am looking forward to him blessing Aja.

My mom can sew... no, I know how to sew, I can sew a button on and sew a straight seam on my sewing machine... my mom knows how to create. She has done it my whole life, taking a plain square of fabric and making it into something spectacular.

Aja's dress is beyond spectacular, it is angelic, perfect and gorgeous.

I had to dress her up in it today just to see it on her. And if she is going to look like an angel, I just had to break the camera out. Here is her photo shoot, that she really didn't want to do or cooperate for.

Camping

Having a baby kind of took all of our Summer vacation plans away, but we decided to make the best of it anyway and try and squeeze some weekend camping trips in before the season ends.

This past weekend we went with some friends up to Payson Lakes.

Since they had two boys, we brought a friend along for Ally, her friend Nicole.

This was taken before Devin decided to get really dirty.

The kids loved playing up in the trees, playing hide-and-go-seek and kick the can... until they found a deer carcass the last day and were too scared to go up there any more.

Our friends oldest son was so sweet to Devin and he was so happy to play with him.

Our friends brought the dogs along and all of the kids adored them.

Aja spent 98% of the vacation doing this:

But here is a picture from the rare 2%:

It was a lot of fun!

My big girl, errr BOY!

Yes, his sister still thinks it's funny to dress him in girl clothes. Those big blue eyes and long, dark lashes would make him a pretty girl... but he is definitely ALL boy!

Devin is a tough, stubborn kid. He is definitely not the easiest child, and can make me want to pull my hair out most days. BUT he is the sweetest kid, loves to be cuddled, gives me kisses and tells me he loves me several times a day, and besides all that he is just SPUNKY, IMAGINITIVE and FUN!!!

We have struggled with potty training for almost a year now, that's right a year! Ally was fully potty trained by 20 months, and while I heard boys were tougher, I had no idea that we would struggle this much. When he hit his third birthday and was starting preschool, I knew he needed to be trained. We started, would persist for a week or so, and then decide he wasn't ready and give it a month. This continued through the fall and winter. (Try going through morning sickness and potty training so you have to move your child off the potty so you can throw up in it, not fun!). Finally around February, he got it. I think he accidently went in the potty but he FINALLY understood. It was a huge breakthrough, and we were so excited. However, that was not the end of our drama.

He refused to poop in the potty, I mean refused. We bribed, talked, bribed some more... to no avail, he just wouldn't have anything to do with it. That was the messiest 5 months of my life! Finally in the past few weeks he has decided to be a big boy. It had nothing to do with me, Alex, bribery... it was HIS decision and he decided to do it. That pretty much sums up Devin for you, when he decides to do something he will.

So, right before his fourth birthday my son is finally potty trained. I swore it would never be me to have a child untrained so long... but if I have learned anything, I have learned I was given children to prove me wrong!

I am so proud of my big boy!!!

Our Mini Vacation

Alex's aunt lives in Green River and owns 60 acres right on the Green River... they also have dug a big pond and we got to go down and visit.

We decided to take our trailer and stay for the weekend at a local campground. The campground had a swimming pool and the kids loved it and the slide. We planned on spending more time there, but we went to Diane's house on Saturday and spent the entire day there instead.

Here is all the fun they were having in the pond.

Aja did not sleep well on vacation at night, so I went back to the trailer for a nap with her while Alex and the kids floated down the river in canoes... this was apparently the highlight of their vacation.

Devin also loved playing in the dirt and thought he was pretty cool to wear Grandpa Sam's hat.

Ally adored her Aunt Diane, who she had never met before, but bonded with floating down the river.

Aja seemed to like her Aunt Diane too.

Ally took a little time away from swimming to hold her baby sister too.

I think Alex was a little jealous of her land and wants to move down there too. It was too far away from everything for me to want to, but this was amazing:

There was hummingbirds everywhere!

We had so much fun!

The other camera

We have 2 cameras, a nice one... and one that I can stick in my pocket if we go hiking, go to Disneyland, etc. The problem is, I forget to get pictures off it quite often.

Here are a few pictures leftover from Arches:

And here are some pictures from when I took the kids (all 3) to The Living Planet Aquarium a few weeks ago.