Chloe is 5 months!

I just love my sweet girl so much! I love that I get to spend everyday with her. She is my best friend! Here are some updates about how she's doing.

• She officially rolls over from her tummy to her back. Now we just have to work on getting her from her back to her tummy.
• She just started grabbing her feet this morning.
• She is very interactive with her toy rings and pacifiers
• She doesn't necessarily love tummy time, but she is definitely enjoying it more and rolls over all the time!
• She is always laughing at things I do, when I talk to her, when I make faces at her, etc
• She loves standing, with help of course!
• She gets very excited when she sees daddy or mommy, she is so full of love!
• She still doesn't like anyone else, just mommy and daddy. Hopefully this is just a phase and she will get through it and let other people hold her/ talk to her.
• She is very selective with who she lets talk to her. If she doesn't want you talking to her, she will let you know.
• We sing together, yes she sings and its adorable!
• She loves the dogs and is very observant of them. When they get close enough she grabs them and puts whatever is in her hands in her mouth. The dogs, especially Molly are very patient with her and haven't really reacted to her grabbing them. 
• Everything goes in her mouth
• I'm pretty sure she's teething, we have had a rough couple of weeks sleeping at night.
• she still hates her car seat, here's to a new one tomorrow! Hopefully its more comfortable and she's happier with it.
• She can take her pacifier out of her mouth, turn it around, chew on it, then turn it back around and put it back in her mouth right side up. I'm still impressed with this.
• Bath time is becoming a favorite time of hers. After we are all done washing I let her splash in the water for a couple minutes and she loves it!
• She plays this game when she wakes up from her naps where she will turn and have her arm extended out then turn back towards me then repeat and she thinks this is so funny!
• She enjoys touching our faces, but especially when she's nursing.... She always tries to stick her hand in my mouth.

Those are the new developments, She is growing and weighing more and more everyday!

See what I mean when I say everything goes in her mouth.

This is what I'm talking about with her touching our faces. It's rather cute!

Scare in the square

Around here they always have something going on in the downtown area. During fall they do a few things, but for Halloween they did a downtown trick or treat. We had so much fun and even dressed up! Well Chloe and I did, I let Brian out of it for today for a couple reasons, the main one being he didn't have any black clothes so he walked Thor. I dressed up as a bank robber and Chloe was my bag of loot! (For Halloween Brian and I will both be bank robbers) I got Chloe all dressed up and then got myself dressed and we headed downtown! 

It was a whole lot warmer than I imagined it was going to be, which made my "costume" quite unpleasant, but at least I didn't wear the mask. I haven't finished all the costumes yet, I have one more thing for Chloe's, and I have to get matching shirts for Brian and I and spray paint them. Anyways once we got downtown I got Chloe out of her car seat and headed towards main street square while Brian found parking. Once Brian caught up we met up with the McCormick's (one of the fire families) and did some trick or treating!

Chloe was so cute and held her own bag, I did get a lot of looks for having her trick or treat because she wouldn't be "eating the candy." My reasoning is that I want to have this memory with my baby and no one will ruin that for me! I've been waiting to do a theme costume for awhile now and you can't take that from me! We had a lot of fun and can't wait for Halloween so we can wear our full costumes!

The pumpkin patch.

Out of my 24 years on this earth I have never been to a pumpkin patch. Now before you start saying how "my childhood was ruined" because of this (which it wasn't) let me explain. I grew up in New Mexico and there weren't really any pumpkin patches that my parents knew of. Besides, back then they weren't the crazy spectacles they are now. Now that I've gotten that out of the way, Brian and I wanted to take Chloe to one of the pumpkin patches here. One of the families from the fire department was going and asked if we wanted to meet up, so we did. It was out in Spearfish, which is about an hour away. We got loaded up in the car and headed out. It was such a pretty drive, I enjoyed looking at all the houses on the way. When we got to the patch we parked and got in line to get inside. When we got to the front they were charging $7.00 per person, I know I haven't had much experience with these things, but that seemed a bit excessive. After paying we went inside and looked around, there was one of those cut outs that you can put your face in. I tried getting Chloe to look up, but that didn't happen. 

They also had a couple animals you could kind of pet, but not really, a corn maze, and a couple other things for the kids. We decided to meet up with the family first then decide what to do. They were in the corn maze so while we waited we went over to the animals, I wanted to pet the goat they had. So naturally I make Chloe do it, but she wasn't super into it. After our rendezvous with the goat we met up with the family and decided to go into the maze! I wish I had gotten a picture of the map, it was literally like looking at hieroglyphics I had no idea where to start. Since I was carrying Chloe, Brian had the map. I felt confident we would do good, and we did until I handed Chloe to Brian and I took the map and we got to this circle part. We got so lost, not even the map could help us so we took some pictures and Brian had us look into the sun... it was awful!

Eventually we found the right path, Brian took the map from me and we did pretty good the rest of the time. I guess we got lost a second time, however Brian did good at not letting me know. We made it out of the maze and went to this big bucket of corn and Brian sat Chloe in it.

 

By this time she was starting to get a little fussy so we couldn't get any good pictures of her. We took her over to where the pumpkins were and they were all gross looking. We found one that looked half decent and tried to get some pictures of Chloe "sitting" on them, it didn't really work out. 

(the only half decent one)

We decided that now was a good time to leave so we said our good-byes and got on the road and went home. We ended up getting some pumpkins at Walmart for $3.88 and they're a good size! We had a lot of fun spending time together and cant wait to carve the pumpkins!

My crazy morning..

I thought today was going to be great! Chloe woke up in a good mood, stayed in a good mood even while being in her car seat, and even took a nice long nap until 11. I knew I wanted to go grocery shopping today, which was the first time going at it alone since moving to South Dakota. I was really excited because I enjoy doing it alone and taking my time getting everything. I load Chloe up into her car seat after she finished eating and tried to get out the door as fast as possible, because you never know how long she will tolerate being in the car seat. It took about 20 minutes before I left. Chloe was still in a good mood so I thought this was going to be great! We got to the store and it had been raining all morning, so I pull the car seat cover over the top so Chloe wouldn't get wet, and I walked quickly to get inside the commissary. Once inside I got a cart and set her in it and quickly realized how much space I didn't have, that was okay because I had a plan! We started to walk around and get some stuff and after about 15 minutes she had reached her limit! Chloe started to fuss and scream, so I did the only thing I could think of and took her out of her seat. I tried to buckle her into the seat in the cart and she did okay, but we still don't have the sitting thing down yet so she would slowly fall to one side, so I ended up carrying her. This worked for a little while, but as the cart got heavier steering with one hand was just not cutting it. I had filled her seat with food so I couldn't put her back in it. I had to work with what I had and continued to carry her. I was dropping things left and right, she was fussing and fighting me, and I was trying to shorten my shopping list as fast as I could. I was so frustrated at this point and to top it off she starts spitting everything she ate up! At this point, I had to find a blanket to wipe the mess up. Everyone around me just looked on at me with annoyed faces and not one single person offered to help me out. Everyone was just annoyed that I would accidentally steer my cart into theirs or take too long getting something, etc etc. This was the worst shopping trip ever. Finally I was finished and I made my way up to the check out and the bagger offered to unload my cart for me, which was so nice of him! The cashier on the other hand, was quite the little ray of sunshine! She was super annoyed I didn't have my I.D. out and that I said I wanted plastic so when she confirmed that, I changed to paper then back to plastic because I didn't realize what I was saying. Anyways I payed then got to the car and Chloe did not want to go back in her seat so she's screaming while this teenage kid with my groceries is loading them into my car, he probably thought I torture my kid! I tipped him and he left and as I'm leaving the parking lot Chloe finally gave in and fell asleep, which gave me a nice quiet ride home. When I got home I realized I had to go pick something up from a lady in our ward, so I loaded Chloe back into her seat and she was so mad at this point! We drove to her house which is right down the street, I got out got this thing and I was literally gone for 2 minutes and Chloe was screaming with tears streaming down her face. I got home as fast as I could and it took a while to calm her down, but she gave in and fell asleep!

She stayed asleep for the rest of the day!

Chloe is 4 months old!

How on earth has it been 4 months?! It's not like i have felt like time has zoomed by, it definitely took its sweet time passing. Just looking back it seems like its flown by. Our beautiful baby girl is 4 months old today! She weighs around 13 lbs and already fits in 6 month footsie pj's. I love spending everyday with her, and watching her discover the world around her. Here are some fun facts about her!

• She loves talking, she copies noises I make and babbles on and on about everything. It makes our conversations interesting! Her recent (as of two nights ago) favorite time for talking is around 430am. I'll go in and put her back to sleep, but it's so cute watching her babble away.
• She is VERY clingy, I cant even put her down for nap time or she wakes up. The only time she willingly lets me put her down is bedtime. I really don't mind at all though, I love that all she wants is me holding her. It makes me feel good and extra loved. She doesn't like when other people hold her or talk to her, It's actually pretty funny.
• we gave our turtle away and put fish in the aquarium, Chloe loves watching the fish! This has become a lifesaver when it comes to her clingy-ness because she will happily sit in front of it for a couple minutes so i can grab something to eat or clean, you get the picture. We LOVE our fish tank!
• She likes singing with me, it mostly sounds like yelling but its quite adorable!
• She smiles anytime she looks at me or Brian and laughs quite often. One of her favorite things to make her laugh is when I sit her on my stomach and bounce her. She also enjoys smooches on her cheeks.
• We love Skyping with grandma and it happens to be the only time she will do tummy time.
• Speaking of, she hates tummy time. We have tried everything and nothing has worked except grandma but she still only tolerates about 5 minutes. 
• she doesn't roll over but she sits really good with my help. I figure she will figure the crawling thing out when she can sit on her own.
• She hates her car seat. We don't know why but out of nowhere she hated being in her car seat so we don't get out much because I don't want to wrestle her into the car seat. 
• We snuggle ALL THE TIME, and I couldn't ask for more! She is the light of my life and I love her so!

Reasons not to get a turtle.

Yes it is sad to say we had to give our turtle away for a better life. Don't get me wrong we took good care of her, but she just got too big and our tank was just too small. Sure turtles are so cute and look like fun at the pet store and they are. Eventually they get big and a 55 gallon tank just wont cut it any more. So here are my reasons not to get a turtle.

Reason 1. 12 inches is a lot bigger than you think. When you look at a ruler you think its not that big, but just wait until your turtle gets that big, you wont know what to do to give her enough room because lets face it a tank that would be big and wide enough is $500 plus. 

Reason 2. Plan on having a pond outside and doing the maintenance on it. Sure the tank will serve you well for 1-2 years, but once that turtle gets so big it can barely swim, its time to bust that pond out. Ponds can run anywhere from $100 and up. You might as well get a pool, and if you thought cleaning the tank was bad every two ish weeks think again! The pond is much bigger so obviously much more work.

Reason 3. Turtles are mean. Maybe not all turtles, but ours wasn't the nicest once she got big enough and realized she could defend herself. Her nails got so sharp and there was noway in Hades I was clipping/ trimming those suckers. She was always trying to snap at me, it was an all around no when it came to holding her.

Those are my 3 main reasons to not get a turtle. If you can handle caring and providing for one go for it!

Chloe's photoshoot

About 2 weeks ago we were able to have some pictures taken of my sweet babe. I was so excited because we weren't able to get newborn pictures done seeing as they cost an arm and a leg. When I found Bianca it was the perfect time! She had a great deal going and I had the money. She was so wonderful to work with and so patient with Chloe, and she captured some phenomenal pictures! Chloe even fell asleep and Bianca was able to get some pictures that make her look like a newborn! I am so impressed and am so excited to share them with you all! Please don't copy and save these images, if you want some let me know and I can get you some. These pictures pretty much prove that I have the most beautiful baby in the whole world!