Where Does the Time Go?

Time seems to be going so fast, and Aliyah seems to be growing even faster! I can't believe she is already six months old! She's learning new things and getting cuter by the day! But let's back up a little bit and visit the highlights of the past couple months.

4 Months - Aliyah reached her four month mark in mid-October. As seen in previous posts, at this point, she had learned to roll-over and loved playing with anything that wasn't a toy. She was quick to laugh, and we loved to hear it! She was weighed in right at 14 pounds and 24 and 1/4 inches long.


5 Months - The month of November was a very eventful one, with a few more milestones for Aliyah.

5 Months Old

We broke out the big girl bath!

Time for solids!

We went to a hockey game for my sister-in-law Betsy's birthday. It was another first for both me and Aliyah. No fights like you see on tv, but it was still fun.

Sitting all on her own! In the beginning, she had to use her arms to support herself, but now she is steady as can be!

Seattle Snow Storm!!! A week before Thanksgiving, snow hit Seattle and everything shutdown as usual. Luckily for me and Aliyah, we just sat at home and watched the snow fall. It was very pretty from our point of view. Unfortunately, Steve was not so lucky. He had driven to school that day, hoping to stay late and get some extra studying done, but when the school canceled all classes after 3, he decided he should probably head home early. 10 and 1/2 hours later, he made it home at 2:30 in the morning.

Steve's parents came for Thanksgiving. We had dinner at his sister Betsy's, dessert at his brother Les', and then headed down to my parents' and stayed for a couple days.

6 Months - That brings us to now. Aliyah is now15 and 1/2 pounds and 25 and 1/2 inches long. She has finally found her feet and likes to lift them high then slam them down. She loves to stand all the time and we are grateful that one of our neighbors lent us their exersaucer so she is able to stand as often as she likes. She looks like she is always chewing gum, which totally cracks me up. And she is ready for her first Christmas.
Steve is finished with his first semester of law school and survived some brutal finals. We are now looking forward to a three week break to relax and visit family and friends!

The Simple Things...

Lately, Aliyah doesn't really want to play with her toys, she'd rather play with the trash. I guess she's learning early how to be a penny-pincher. (Don't worry, she was supervised while chewing on the plastic Huggies bag, no fear of suffocation.)

Happy Halloween!

Well, Halloween was not that eventful for us, seeing as Aliyah is a little too young to participate in all of the festivities, but I did get to make her a super cute Halloween costume! She looked amazing in my opinion, and we got to show her off at our ward Halloween party.
So, for her costume, I decided she was going to be a peacock. Seemed like a great idea, until I put the costume on her. I failed to remember that Aliyah likes to put absolutely anything she can get her hands on straight into her mouth. Needless to say, being covered in feathers was not the ideal situation for her. Within 5 minutes of putting her costume on, our living room floor was covered in blue feathers. We continued to leave a trail of feathers in our wake the entire night. In order to keep her from eating the feathers, we ended up having to put a bib on her and some mittens. They detracted a little from the look, but seemed like the best thing to do. So although her costume was a bit of a hassle, it was all worth it for the cute pics!
One thing I did want to do this Halloween was take Aliyah to a pumpkin patch. Unfortunately we never made it, but I survived the missed picture opportunity. It was probably for the better, I think Aliyah gets tired of posing for Mommy's photo shoots. :) We'll do it next year for sure!
For actual Halloween, we headed down to my parents' house to celebrate my mom's birthday. We enjoyed a nice dinner and cake, and Aliyah got to see her great-grandma again! All in all, I think it was a pretty good holiday.

Rollin' Rollin' Rollin' . . .

Aliyah officially learned to roll over two weeks ago! I put her on her tummy and she plopped right over. I decided I better try again because she had rolled a couple weeks before completely on accident. So again, I put her on her tummy and bam! And she did it again and again! I was very excited! Now she's done it at least once a day since! I know, my baby's got skills. Next trick, sitting on her own, we've been practicing. :)
1st day rolling!

Two weeks later

Reunion Revisited

I finally got some pictures from the Natter Family Reunion!
Enjoy the pics!


The sweet lodge we stayed at


Hanging out in Leavenworth


Hot tub time


Hiking


The kids seemed to enjoy themselves


Horseback riding and kayaking


Relaxing at the cabin


Cousins!

Go Mariners!

Well, it happened a few months ago, but I figured, better late than never. :) Shortly after coming back to Washington, we went to a Mariners game! We found some really cheap great tickets and decided that it was cheaper to go to a game than it is to go to a movie, so why not? We invited my parents to come along, and we all had a great time. Aliyah did great, was awake and happy through the first couple innings, and then after a short bout of walking, she slept through the rest of the game. And they even gave her a certificate for her first game! (Everyone loved her.) We played the Oakland Athletics and we won! Woo hoo! First sporting event, success.

A is for Adorable

We finally got pictures taken of Aliyah! Unfortunately she was super tired, so we didn't get any smiley pictures out of her, but we still got some good ones. Thank you Trina Mitchell! As a side-note, I made all the clothes/props: dress, tutu, hats, shoes, hammock. It was kind of fun. I'm trying to develop my domestic talents. :) Here are some of my favorites!

Rodeo

About a month ago we went to the Semi-annual Roy Pioneer Rodeo. That's right, the little town I grew up in has a rodeo. And not only does it have a rodeo, but it has one twice a year. So you would think that I would be a rodeo aficionado by now, but no, until a month ago, I had never been. So, Steve, Aliyah, and I met up with my parents and headed out to the rodeo. It was actually very entertaining, complete with bucking broncos, wild-cow milking, steer roping, barrel racing, and bull riding. And let's not forget one of my favorite parts, the rodeo clown. Apparently it's been the same guy for like twenty years. We really did have a lot of fun and may have to make it a more regular outing in Aliyah's childhood.

The Laugh!!

Aliyah just started laughing within the past couple weeks and I love it! She seems to find the hiccups particularly funny. Her laugh is so much better in person, and it's hard to catch the best laughs on video because I'm too busy laughing at her. So this is just a small taste of how cute she is! :) It get's better in the middle of the video, so keep watching!

Three Months!

I can't believe my baby is growing so fast! She had a check-up when she was 2.5 months and was right at the 50th percentile for weight, height, and head circumference. She smiles all the time, and even if she has just screamed for the past hour, the second she smiles, it melts my heart. She has now laughed a couple times and I can't wait until this becomes a more regular occurrence. It's so cute! It has been so fun watching her discover her hands and figure out what she can do with them. She is learning like crazy!


She's learning to fall asleep on her own! She has still only done it three times, but this is a big step for us. I now know that it is possible.


She likes to blow bubbles and does it all day long, usually soaking the front of her shirt. It might be time for a bib!


We broke out the big girl toys, some of which may still be too big for her, but she enjoys them anyways.


She loves to fly, especially when Daddy is pilot. She just loves playing with Steve in general!


And she's learning to grab things and I love it! she also likes to put anything she can get her hands on, straight into her mouth.

I think that's everything, but at the rate she's changing, I'm going to have to update more often!

The Pit

I know I still need to write about our new place, but near our new place is a place we like to call The Pit. We first noticed it when we were driving around looking for a place to rent, I mean, how could we miss it, it's this huge, strange hole in the ground. Let me explain, The Pit is exactly what it sounds like, just weirder. Around the top, it is the size of a high school track and then it gets small as you go down. It's kind of like a stadium, but without so many benches and made out of the ground. After living in our new place for a couple weeks, curiosity got the best of us and we decided to go check it out. After our three minute walk to get there, this is what we found out:




The Pit is a part of a public art collection called Earthworks. That's right, it's art. "The Robert Morris and Herbert Bayer earthworks were developed in conjunction with the groundbreaking 1979 Earthworks: Land Reclamation as Sculpture symposium." It was once a gravel pit abandoned in the 40's, that has now been recreated into a work of art.
So you're probably saying, "What's the big deal?" Well, it's not really that big of a deal, it's just weird. The Pit was created back in 1979, and our little community was not built until three years ago. Up until that time, The Pit was the only thing on the hill. This strange, large pit in the middle of no where, surrounded by trees. It's got this kind of eerie feeling about it, like a window to the past. While the whole world has been changing drastically around it, The Pit is exactly the same as it was thirty years ago! It's just weird.
Now that you all probably think I'm crazy, this is what The Pit means to me today. It's my own personal exercise facility! Because we live on such a large steep hill, going on walks with Aliyah was kind of brutal, but now, I've got a nice little track just a few minutes away! Some days I just walk around it and some days I go up and down, do a little stairs workout. Anyways it's nice to have a place where I can go to just get out of the house and work my body. A place that I don't feel like I'm going to pass out when I'm done and isn't right on the main road. But I can't help but wonder, was someone else doing the very same thing as me thirty years ago?

Natter Family Reunion

Steve and I made it back to Washington just in time for the Second Annual Natter Family Reunion. This was the first time that we had all been together since our wedding, since last year Michael was on his mission in New York. There were also two new additions to the family in the past year, so everyone was able to meet Heber and Aliyah. This year, everyone came home to Washington for the gathering. Once everyone was home, we headed over to a beautiful lodge on the Chiwawa River, near Leavenworth, WA. We spent our time playing games, hiking, visiting the Bavarian city, white water rafting, horseback riding, relaxing in the hot tub, and just enjoying being around each other. The week was wonderful! Unfortunately, I left the picture-taking to everyone else, so I don't have any to post. So once I get my hand on some photos, I'll edit the post and you can see how much fun we really had!

Random

I was going through pictures the other day and realized that the majority of Aliyah's clothes were polka dots. This made me laugh, especially since she was wearing polka dots that day too. Just thought I would share!

Farewell to Utah

Although we were pretty excited to move home to Washington, saying goodbye to Utah was not the easiest thing. Yes, there were some things we weren't very fond of, namely unbearably hot days in the summer and eight month long winters, we' d been there a long time and had really grown to like it. We knew where everything was, it was easy to get around, everything you could need was within walking distance, and it really was pretty, especially when the trees had leaves. But the thing that really made us enjoy Utah were the amazing friends we made.
The majority of our friends are friends we made when we first moved to Utah six to seven years ago, and even though all of our lives have changed, we've managed to stay good friends through it all. We've gone to eachothers' weddings, been on multiple roadtrips together, and just genuinely enjoyed spending time together. These friendships made leaving bittersweet. Even as I type this, it still makes me sad to know it could be a while before we see them again.
We spent our last weeks in Utah hanging out with the people we love, enjoying the beautiful weather, and squeezing in a few outings that we hadn't done the entire time we'd lived there.
I spent as much time as possible with my best friend Bec and her kids. She had a baby three weeks before me and we've created a master plan for our daughters to be roommates at BYU 18 years from now so that they can become as great of friends as we are. We spent a lot of time out at the pool (the only way to actually enjoy the heat.) I think Steve went swimming everyday for our last two weeks there. I said my goodbyes at work and will truly miss the great friends I made there as well. Some things we squeezed in that we hadn't done before were a trip to Utah Lake, only about ten minutes away and we'd never been, and we rode the ski lift up at Sundance, relaxing and beautiful. Utah, we will miss you.As we prepared to leave, our niece, Brittany, flew down from WA just to help us move. She was a life-saver. She watched and held Aliyah non-stop so that Steve and I could finish the last minute packing and clean the apartment. She also made the car ride much easier, giving Aliyah bottles and keeping her entertained. We were definitely glad to have her!

More to Come . . .

I realize that all the recent posts are about old things. Here are some things you can look forward to hearing about soon, hopefully. :)
Return to Washington
Natter Family Reunion
Our New Place

Blessing Day!

The weekend with the grandparents was topped off by Aliyah's baby blessing. Aliyah was blessed by her dad and had her name entered into the records of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on July 4, 2010. It was a beautiful day and we were happy to share it with many of our friends and family. After church, we were able to go back to our place and enjoy a picnic with everyone. I couldn't have asked for a better day!

Visit From the Grandparents

In the first couple weeks of Aliyah's life, we were blessed to have both of our parents come to Utah to visit us. My mom was actually able to be there when Aliyah was born and stayed for a week. The day she left, Steve's parents flew in and we were able to spend a week with them. That weekend, both of my parents came and we spent the weekend with both sets of parents. We went on a couple hikes, spent some time at the freedom festival in Provo, and finished packing our apartment in preparation for the move. It was fun to spend time with all of them and we are grateful for their love and support!

1st Bath!

So, obviously it's been at least a couple months since Aliyah's first bath, but here are the pics! You can't really tell, but she actually really liked it. She was totally calm the whole time and didn't cry until I took her out of the water. Since then, showers are more common than baths and she possibly enjoys those even more. It's nice because on her grumpy days, when I'm not feeling very patient, I know I can always hop in the shower and it will calm us both down. Yay for showers!

The First Few Weeks

The first few weeks consisted mostly of eating and sleeping, and going on long walks with Mommy, but as the days go on, she has become more and more alert. She follows objects, especially faces, really well. She's very strong. When laying on your chest, she lifts her head right up so she can look at you, and when she's gassy, she kicks really hard. She seems to grow and change every day and we can even catch a smile occasionally. Isn't she the cutest?