Well there was supposed to be the cutest video ever of my CB leading the choir during General Conference, but my lack of "tech-i-ness" now makes this entry only mediocre compared to the super coolness that it would have been!

It's been forever since I've blogged.  My goal was to blog once a month with E's stats and updates, but I have been so busy that this blog has not taken priority.  Honestly, I don't know how hard-core bloggers do it, but kudos to them for keeping updates.

So onto my babies because that's probably why you came to visit my blog.

First, we'll start with the oldest child: CB

She is amazing! I love her with all my heart and soul. It's true. I really do love her that much and each day that love gets bigger and deeper.  She is so stinking smart.  She is kind. She is aware of EVERYTHING, she asks questions; she's curious; her comprehension of conversations and situations astounds me every time. But most of all, she is the BEST BIG SISTER a kid could ever want.  One of the first things out of her mouth every morning is: "I wanna go see my baby E." She can hardly wait to get her foot braces off, change out of her jammies, and go see her "sistuh." Because of that, I love her even more.

She's getting tall...too tall.  She doesn't look like a little girl some days.  Where has my baby gone? She loves her monkey, Koko that K originally gave to me wayyyyyy back when we were still dating.  She loves Doc McStuffins, Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, Peppa Pig (which drives me half crazy), and Elmo.  She can quote lines from all of them, sing the theme songs, and play her own versions of what she saw on those shows.

CB LOVES, LOVES, LOVES her aunties and uncles and grandparents on both sides.  How blessed she is that so many people love her and are patient with her.

This is an old picture from the 2013 football season, but dang it's a cute one! Believe it or not, she looks young in this picture. If you saw her now, you would be amazed how much more grown-up she looks. Yup, my baby is growing up too fast! Oh, and by the way, she's all registered for pre-school in the fall! Whaaaaaaaat?

Now onto E, my little E bug.

Halloween and today.  She is so busy it's hard to get a good picture of her now.  She crawls everywhere and gets into everything.  She loves her big sister something fierce.  She claps, giggles, jabbers, eats like a pro, and snuggles better than anyone else. K and I seriously can't get enough of her! I am still so amazed at how different she is from CB. She still doesn't sleep entirely through the night (though we are working through that) and acts like she's been starved for 5 days when it's meal time. She's not even one and has grown out of her carseat.  This girl is LONG! I think at her 9 months check up she was 29.5 inches--something like the 85th percentile. Her weight was just over 16lbs.--20 something percentile. Tall and skinny like her momma.

Some fun things I love about E bug:
--When you pick her up and hold her under her arms, she kicks her feet to fast it's like she's sprinting in a race.
--She has this weird noise she makes when she sees animals--specifically my parents' cat and my in-laws' cats. It's hilarious.  It's like she's trying to talk to them.  They completely ignore her!
--She can say "dada" in the cutest voice ever!
--We are considering buying stock in those little puffy snacks.  She goes through them like a maniac (see above note about being starved for 5 days!) and LOVES feeding herself.  If we are feeding her, she gets mad, but oh well.  She can't completely feed herself yet. Silly girl!
--Did I mention she loves her big sister? Yeah. She does.

That's about it. More later.

Half a year later...

...this is what she looks like! Isn't she too cute for words?????? I love this girl!

She makes me so happy and I miss her while I'm at work!  But I know she's in good hands with Grandma and Grandpa and Claire during the day. :-)

Wanna know more about this munchkin? OK!

Weight: 13lbs. 13.5oz. (11th percentile)
Height: 27 inches (89th percentile)

Again, tall and skinny!

Likes: EATING! Being held, watching Claire, playing with Claire, her family, toys she can hold, sweet potatoes and green beans, blowing raspberries, going for walks (around the house), being outside, wiggling, and being rolley polley!  Seriously, you put her on the floor and there's no containing her.  She LOVES to roll around!

Dislikes: Being done eating! Burping, anyone sitting while holding her, and seeing the empty bottle when she's done eating. Poor girl!

Mommy and Daddy dislike being spit-up on, ALL THE TIME! This girl is so spitty we change her clothes at least 3 times a day.  We could do more clothing changes, but then we wouldn't ever get anything else done. So sometimes if it's minimal, we just leave her be. She's never really cranky about it though which is why we decided with the doctor that we would hold of on any meds for all the spittiness and see if she grows out of it.

I think I mentioned before how much I love her cuddles.  She is so snuggly. I love it!  She likes to just bury her face in your shoulder when she's finished eating and it melts me.  Here's a peek at that:

I'm sad that I've stopped with nursing her now.  I wasn't producing enough and pumping at school was taking most of my prep time, thus leaving me feeling unprepared all the time!  I miss nursing her, but at the same time it's a relief and I'm less stressed that way.  There's nothing quite like the bond of baby and momma during nursing time.  I will miss that.  BUT, maybe Emma misses it too cuz she loves to hold my hand when she's drinking her bottle and I love holding her hand right back and staring into her brown eyes.

Claire is such a good big sister to this little one.  I think she is growing to love Emma more and more.  She always wants to "hold" her and has even tried picking her up a few times. AGH! Heart-attack for momma. They love each other, but they couldn't be more different.  It seriously amazes me how different the two of them are.  It's like being a first-time parent again.  It keeps us on our toes. ;-)

Okay, here are my girls, then I'm done for the night.

Oh, P.S.--did I mention Emma LOVES her grandpa Cummings? Yeah, she does. Just a little, though. :-)

4 and 5 months

My girl is just growing so fast I hardly have time to keep up the blog. Here are her stats from her 4 month check-up.

Weight: 11 lbs. 2oz. (barely 2 oz.) -- 2nd percentile
Height: 25.5 inches -- 87th percentile

I have a tall skinny baby! Hmmm, I wonder where she gets it?? The doctor said it would be better to start her on rice cereal sooner than later.  I think she's trying to fatten up Emma.  If that babe is anything like her momma, rice cereal isn't gonna do anything except fill her tummy and even that's just an assumption. :)

Other fun things about Emma:

* She is talking up a storm
* We finally got her to really giggle...by spitting at her!
* If we put her down on the floor on her back, she doesn't stay like that for very long.  In fact, if you blink, you might miss her crazy rolling and she'll just automatically be on her tummy.  After that, Claire will declare that baby Emma is having her tummy time!

* Because of her long, skinniness it's hard to know what fits her and what doesn't. Some things are too short, others to big around the waist.  I'm currently stretching her 3 month size clothes as far as they can go and hoping that her 3-6 month sizes don't fall off her. 

*The way she looks at you will just melt you, right where you are, on the spot!  Those light brown eyes and intense stare just gets to your core.  That makes it so hard to leave her (and Claire) in the mornings and go to work.

*She still just loves to watch Claire.  It usually calms her down if she can be held and watch Claire play or eat or whatever. Baby Emma loves her big sister.

*When she goes down for a nap, she has to be swaddled and rocked and she likes momma to sing "I Am A Child of God" and "Edelweiss".  Sometimes she hums along.

Claire is doing some great things too.  She is so darn smart, we sometimes don't know what to do with her.  Our favorite thing about Claire right now is how obsessed she is with the Temple (a sacred building for members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints to go and make covenants with the Lord).  They're building (reconstructing) the old Provo Tabernacle into a Temple and she LOVES it.  After she sees any temple she boldly declares "I goin dere (there) someday."  *MELT* How happy I am that she desires to go to the Temple.  It makes me love her even more which I thought couldn't be possible because I love her so much already!Part of the reason why she loves it so much is that she got to be outside the Mt. Timpanogos, Utah temple when Uncle Kevin married Crystal.  Claire remembers that experience and I am so grateful to Kevin and Crystal for making that choice so that Claire could have yet another positive influence in her life.

Something else we love about her is when she needs a tissue to blow her nose, she stands there and says "oh gosh, oh gosh, oh gosh!" Not sure where she got that, but it's cute. She is also obsessed with "Meena Mow" (Minnie Mouse) and has to watch "Meena Mow Cuh-how" (Mickey Mouse Clubhouse) at least once a day.

That girl loves her family and talks about them every day. I just love both of my girls so much.

Posting for heritage sake

When Jase (my nephew) is older, I am showing this to any and all girlfriends. :)

Today we were talking about diapers and I said something to the extent of how poopy baby diapers stink.  Jase then said: "Well, then why don't they put air conditioner in them?  Someone should make diapers with air conditioner already in them."  HA!

THEN, later he was talking about having a job of being an unventor--you know, people who make new things for people to use.

THEN, to top it off, he was helping Claire play with a  Disney toy (it's one of those where you push the button and a character pops up then you push it closed and push the button to make it pop again) and he wanted us to guess where "Pluno" was.

Oh, THEN Kory said something to me jokingly and I gave him a look.  My MIL said: "Oh, did you see the look she gave him.  He deserved it."  Jase asked: "What book did she give him?"

Check your hearing aid old man!!!!!

growing

Goin' for a walk!

Love the daddy!

My baby girl is growing like a weed. I can't believe she's already six weeks old! Here are some fun things about Claire:

Favorite time: feeding time!
Favorite thing to do: snuggle with mommy and daddy
She loves to smile!
She giggles in her sleep.
Momma and daddy could stare at her all day
Hair is growing longer and longer
Getting hiccups is a routine part of the day, several times during the day.
Only cries when she's hungry or trying to pass gas!

Claire has one more set of casts, which she will get on Monday, June 20 and have until July 1st then she's DONE! All she will have are braces on her feet and legs. My baby girl is a trooper and has done so well with her treatments for club feet.

She is the most beautiful baby in the world.

I always tell Kory I can't wait for her to sleep through the night, though she is a good sleeper anyway.

It's so precious to me how much her Auntie Kali (Kory's only sister) loves her! Kali came home from work during her lunch break on Sunday just because she knew Claire would be there. She came in, said hi to us and Jase (her son), quickly grabbed a plate of food and went into the living room, where Claire was contentedly lying on the floor looking around, and laid right next to her for her entire lunch break. The two of them just talked and played (as much as a 6-week-old can do) and it was so sweet. Kali didn't even join us at the dinner table. I think she barely said 5 words to us. Then Kali told Claire she was sad to have to go back to work. Auntie Kali is in love with the baby and I think it's just about the most precious thing ever. I wish I had a picture!

That's all for the updates. I'll try more later!

The Best Mother's Day Present...EVER!

So, the evening of Cinco de Mayo my membranes released (water broke) and the next day at 4pm Claire Leinani Sekaquaptewa was born. We immediately fell in love with all 5lbs. 10oz. and 18 inches of her. She was perfect and beautiful, club feet and all! I was planning on being at school that Friday morning, but after laboring all night at home, I checked into the hospital around 7am and the rest is history! She decided she wanted to come 5 weeks early.

This baby girl is enamored with her daddy, loves snuggling with momma, and knows exactly how to play the "cute" card. She is loved by so many people but most of all by her momma and daddy. She makes momma's heart melt when she reaches for and grabs my finger during nursing time and she's a trooper with her casts on her feet. We love this baby and can't believe how much our lives have changed in the last 4 weeks. WOW! She's already 4 weeks old.

This is a great shot of her feet.

It was really nice not to have to worry about work, though I did think about my students every once in a while and hoped they were happy and well.

Mine and Kory's lives have completely changed....We wouldn't trade it for anything in the world.