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Family Vacation!

Jordan and Crystal’s family went with Kathryn and Grandmother to Disneyland a few weeks ago, and as we heard talk of warm weather and a getaway, we Monsons got a little stir-crazy and decided we needed to get away for a bit as well. However, we didn’t go quite as far.

The day after St. Patrick’s Day, we drove down to St. George. While there, we went swimming, went running, ate lots of yummy food, and enjoyed the feel of summer–warm weather and no work!

Fay loved swimming! And she looked SO cute in her swimming suit!

This is the family at “The Crack.” Josh and I took turns scooting through while the other kept the baby. For some reason we just didn’t both fit at the same time. 🙂

As most of you know, I love St. Patrick’s Day. As all of you know, flowers are ridiculously expensive at Valentine’s Day. So, my sweet Josh got me these BEAUTIFUL flowers for St. Patrick’s Day! They have kept our house feeling nice and springy even after the snow returned!

Fay Update

Fay is now 9.5 months based on her birthday and 8 months based on her due-date.  She has yet to crawl, but we’re pretty sure that is because she is far too excited about walking. She will walk anywhere as long as she’s got someone or something to hold on to!

Her favorite food is probably oatmeal, but she likes basically everything if given enough time with it. She loves to make TONS of noise, especially in Sunday School and Relief Society. She’s figured out that Sacrament meeting is a quiet place, but not the other two yet. ha ha! She loves eating everything she sees, especially Josh’s glasses, any and all paper, and her own feet! She has also recently learned to open the drawer under the oven. yikes! She now has 3 teeth with two more coming in!

She is basically the happiest baby in the world! If she sees a new person–especially another baby–she will flap her arms and breathe really fast, or wail! She is just tons of fun! We love her SO much!

Here is Fay in her Valentine’s outfit! I love the one with her laying down because it is so dramatic! Thanks, as always, to Crystal for the cute bow!

 

Sunday Morning! I have some time!

I know it has been a million years since I have posted. But whatever. Here is some random musing about our current life.
For Valentine’s Day, Josh and I got a babysitter (Lacey) for Fay and we had a special dinner at home.  We had artichoke stuffed chicken, asparagus, and mashed potatoes with gravy. It was basically fabulous! (if I do say so myself). But the funny thing was that, we were just sitting down to eat, and I had my potatoes and gravy already, and I was so excited to dig in that I told Josh to just serve the chicken. I thought that he was going to serve himself first, so I started eating my potatoes. But Josh was trying to be a gentleman and serve me first, and because of the pan of chicken he was holding he couldn’t see that my face was right by my plate as I shoveled potatoes into it. So, he gently placed the fresh-from-the-oven chicken into my cheek! I sort of freaked out at first because it burned, but it was SO funny! Poor Josh, though. He felt so bad. But in the end we were able to just laugh about it, and enjoy our dinner! Yay Valentine’s Day!
In other news, Josh has now been accepted to the University of Utah as well as University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill! We are expecting that he will get into University of Virginia (UNC is ranked #20 and Virginia is #28, so it would make sense), but we don’t know yet. We’re excited to have another option, though!
I know its a little blurry, but this is the only picture that shows just how much she LOVES being in laundry baskets! It’s kind of adorable!
We have a keyboard in our kitchen, and Fay likes to play all by herself, so we put the bumbo on the chair and just let her pound it out!  She gets really excited and plays even more vigorously when you clap for her!
These are the ice-cream cupcakes that we made for valentine’s day. They were chocolate shell, half a cake-pop, berry cheesecake ice-cream and then we put a DELICIOUS whipped cream cream cheese frosting on top (I forgot to photograph it, but it was pink). They were so good!
This is Josh. I thought this picture would make you happy. It sure makes me happy!

School, Fay, and Halloween

School started back in August, and we have been well busy. But, Fay is taking a nap, and I am avoiding a research paper, so now is a wonderful time to blog a little! We have pictures of Fay and Halloween stuff, but school is just too scary! Plus there’s not much more to say about it. So, on to the good stuff!

yum!

We were given this ADORABLE tutu outfit by one of my neighbors from back home! It is probably the cutest thing a baby could ever wear, and Fay is the cutest baby there ever was, so it is a great combination!

Also, the other day, we were getting Fay ready for the day and decided since it was cold out she could use a hat. We got this little pink Santa hat out and put it on her! She was just so cute in it and her diaper that we had to document it! Josh said “awww! She’s Santa Fay!” I started laughing and then he said “Oh, I didn’t even think of that!” We have been singing the song to her ever since!

Halloween is a busy time of year because Josh works a lot on the “Nightmare Express” in Lindon.  He and his dad are in charge of the light show which is featured in the line. Usually it is just a show that people watch and not much else, but this year Josh decided to make it interactive by building skee ball machines that go with it!  

Even on the day we were setting up, the skee ball machines were being used more or less constantly!

This is Josh with his masterpiece of computer nerdyness!  Because of all this hardware, we had beautiful lights in sync with Halloweeny music! Plus, it just looks crazy cool back there!

These are our costumes! We used the same ones as last year because we are low on funds. But they still look good, I’d say!

For family home evening at the start of October, we carved pumpkins. Guess which one Josh did and which one I did!

Also, because it is pumpkin season, Josh and I bought three cans of pumpkin purée! Josh labeled all pumpkin recipes “pumpkin wonders”. Thus far we have made creamy pumpkin soup, pumpkin quesadillas (crazy good!), pumpkin muffins, pumpkin oatmeal, and these pumpkin scones. It has been so fun. If you want recipes, you can find the ones for the soup, the quesadillas, and the scones on my pinterest. 🙂 Also, if anybody has some really great tips about food photography, I would love them!

Summer Adventures

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!

 

Fay at 3 Months!

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!

We’re back … and Fay is Adorable!

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!

Fay at two weeks

Fay is doing exceptionally well. She has a reputation in the NICU as being “too cute to handle”. She has been doing very well with her feedings and is being fed three times a day. There have been a few times, including last night, when she ate so much from Elisabeth that she didn’t need to be supplemented from the feeding tube. The nurse said yesterday that she might be moved to 3/4 feedings a day soon.

Fay weighs almost 5 lbs.  She loves the color pink. Her favorite hobby is pulling at the tape which holds her feeding tube to her face. She loves taking baths. She doesn’t really like having her temperature taken. Fay likes showing off how well she eats when she is being observed by an occupational therapist. She gets the hiccups every time she eats.

Basically, she is adorable and doing awesome.

One note about the very last picture. When Fay was born, she was about the same size as that bear next to her. Look how much she has grown in two weeks!