A couple days after my birthday Josh hosted a cake party for me! Mostly it was an excuse for us to make a really cool cake! And yes! I actually did do a fair amount of the work on this cake!We made four carrot cake recipes and stacked them on each other with cream cheese frosting in the middle.We also made three recipes of Alton Brown’s red velvet cake. We didn’t want to use all of our red food coloring, though (because we’re cheap) and so we tried blue and purple. The blue attempt is the green layer on top, and the purple turned into the brown in the middle. The red turned out great!I wanted it to have a garden feel (because we spent evenings throughout the whole month of July making flowers) so Josh made this great green color for the fondant!In the end it was pretty impressive! If I do say so myself!

The week after my birthday was the Boone family reunion (my mom’s family) and we went up to Idaho for a day of it.Josh went for a cool hike with the cousins! They were gone for a good couple of hours! Josh said it was BEAUTIFUL and really fun! I am personally impressed with Gwen for bringing her little girl with her!Even though we did our very best to keep her in the shade, Fay got a sunburn. You can see her binky line in this picture, and she also had a good line from her oxygen tubes.

Her skin has just about healed all the way now!

 

I must give credit to Maren Muhlestein for the idea of doing posts of Fay based on her age. Thanks Maren!

Anyway, Fay is just puttin’ along at her very own little pace. She wows the Welcome Baby nurse (she visits our house once a month to talk about Fay’s developments) with how well she can hold her head up, follow objects with her eyes, roll to her side, and whack at her hanging toys. But she’s still on the oxygen.

A week and a half ago, she weighed 9 lb 5 oz (over double her birth weight!)

She can now nurse for her entire feedings (no more top off bottles!) without the help of a shield. (We had to use that when she was first born because her mouth was just so tiny!)

She is learning to smile–especially for Daddy–and has as sweet a temperament as ever. She really doesn’t fuss unless something is genuinely wrong.

Favorites — Eating, sleeping, baths, binky, swatting her hanging toys, being held, high contrast pictures

Least Favorites — Tummy Time, anything to do with her oxygenI love to watch her smile at her little pictures!

 Love this cute SUPER pink dress!She’s SO big compared to that bear! We already can’t believe she was ever that tiny!

For the past several weeks, we haven’t had internet at our house neither have I had much time to do things, and so we have been remiss in giving you all updates on our exciting life (aka: baby). I will now proceed to update you!

Fay is now two months or nine weeks old. She weighs 7 lbs 14.5 oz–her birth weight was 4 lbs 6 oz so she is making lots of progress. She is a champion at holding her head up, she loves to look around, she loves her binkey, she loves bath time, she loves eating, and she loves her mommy. She loves her daddy too, but mommy reminds her daily who the favorite is. 🙂

Fay has been on a “trace” of oxygen since leaving the hospital. We are hoping that she comes off of it soon, but it could be another month or so. We love taking the oxygen tank and her apnea monitor around with us because it makes us buff. That may or may not be the ONLY reason we love it.

Now for some photographic evidence of all this…

Fay closer to the end of her hospital stay

This adorability is thanks to Fay’s Aunt Crystal–for the bow and her Aunt Lacey–for the slippers!

Fay has been getting extremely good at pooping. And she poops whenever and wherever she needs to. Case in point: Mommy’s pants. 🙂

Christina–the self proclaimed godmother of Fay–gave Fay this … article of clothing on the condition that we photograph her in it every year for the rest of her growing up years. Fortunately for Christina, Fay can make anything look good!

We went to the 4th of July parade as a family. Fay loved it so much that she slept through the whole thing!

This is me holding Fay. Also I colored my hair brown. That’s all.

Fay looked so cute yesterday that it HAD to be documented! Don’t you love her little “I know I’m the cutest thing ever” smile ?!

This is Fay next to her bear when she was first born.

This is fay next to her bear today. Look how much she’s grown!

We’re sorry that we are just now posting some photographic evidence of our soon-to-be child, but we hope that this will not be the last you see before she is born. 🙂

These are some pictures of Elisabeth at 24 weeks. (Please excuse the goofy expressions.)

Now for some basic info.

Weight at 22 Weeks (last doctor’s visit): 136 lbs.

Morning Sickness: Pretty much gone. I had it a little bit until around the middle of January, but it was never too bad. I only threw up about 6 times in the whole first trimester, and all of those were in two or three of the worst days.

Baby movement: She is a real kicker sometimes! I think she gets mad at me when I lay on my stomach (I can understand that) and she will sometimes move a lot when I’m laying there. Josh felt her move for the first time on Sunday 26 February. He has since felt her several times.

Ultrasound information: When we got our 20 week ultrasound (at about 21 weeks) we found out the gender, and we also found out how her development is coming. The ultrasound tech said that, based on her head size, our little baby is exactly on track with my due date. All the developments that should have been noticable at 20 weeks were there and she said that everything looks great! (I love it when they use the word great!)

Maternity Attire Information: This is my first day wearing anything at all maternity. And it is actually only a really loose fitting regular shirt that Christina so generously allowed me to borrow. (Bless you Christina!) I am still wearing my regular pants and have not even graduated from needing the belt yet. (We’re almost there, I’m sure of it!) I guess that is the beauty about having hips that are at least one pants size bigger than your waist!

I can’t think of anything else to mention, but please feel free to pose any other questions you may have!

So since our last post, school decided to pick up quite heavily, and thus we have been remiss in writing about our super exciting life. I’ll just give you some highlights

1. We won the French Club costume contest at Halloween! The reason we won (my guess) is because Josh had this AWESOME mask!
   

   Wouldn't you vote for him?!

   

   When you see a sign that says anything that sounds like "Jimmer" you just have to record it This was just outside Fort Leonard Wood (where Nathan trained).

2. Josh’s family participates in the Nightmare Express train ride every year. He and his dad and brother Aaron make the light-show and it is really great! This year, the train had over 11,000 visitors! (We’re pretty famous like that!)
3. Apparently the month of November was rather uneventful month because neither of us could think of anything that we did between Halloween and Thanksgiving. School was all, I guess.
4. After a wonderful Thanksgiving of turkey and happiness with family, we took off for about 4 days to Missouri for Army boot-camp graduation. Josh’s cousin Nathan graduated and is now in Arizona for Officer Intelligence Training!
5. And finally, as of this morning, we have both finished all our classes for the semester, and only finals are left until we are FREE! (for awhile)
   

   We stopped at a cheese outlet on the way back to the Branson airport, and we HAD to get a picture with the giant cheese!

   

   This is the men with the manly looking army tractor thing. Nathan is the one in the uniform! Uncle Tyler is in red, Josh is left of Tyler, and Justin is left of Josh.

For our first blog post, we are including a lovely sample of pictures of our lovely families from our lovely wedding! We love you!

Love, Josh and Elisabeth Monson