Henlie's Blessing

Posted by Amber

Henlie in her blessing gown. Photo courtesy my dad.

We finally got around to getting our baby girl blessed on Sunday, February 10th. The service was held at 9am in the Payson 8th Ward of the Payson Utah West Stake. It confused most everyone since it was the second Sunday of the month. However, we had stake conference the week prior, so it really was fast Sunday in our ward :)

Happy family. Photo courtesy Matt's mom.

We had a really good turnout of family and friends to the blessing, including my parents and my Dad's old home teacher, Kepi Heimuli :) My friend from work, Roe, also came, although he wasn't in time for the actual blessing. Don and Jenny, and Kyle and Kerry also came. Oh, and of course, Garth, Sarah, and Sophie. I think that's pretty much it for non-related guests.

So glad the party planning was over! Oh, and Matt being matt :)

Lots of people were in the circle. It's nice to have all of that love, support, and priesthood power surrounding a little one :) Matt offered a short and sweet blessing, during which the microphone didn't come in until partway through. It did come in like partway through her name, I think, so we didn't miss any of the blessings.

Photo courtesy Matt's mom.

Being testimony meeting, I got up to bear my testimony. Stupid crying. :) Kepi bore his testimony (more stupid crying :) good thing Matt brought a handkerchief. Yeah, I know, who uses handkerchiefs anymore, right?) Larry bore his. My dad bore his. Marilyn Dommer (who is in our ward and also our building) bore hers, and that's when we found out she and Gloria were in the choir together in St. George and were friends. Small world.

Four generations

John Erdmann (my dad), Henlie, Gloria Erdmann (my step-mom), Don Erdmann (my grandpa), Barbara Erdmann (my grandma)

Matt and Me

Photo courtesy Elisabeth.

After sacrament meeting, we went to Matt's parents' house for brunch. Planning this sort of thing was less than fun, let me tell you. Thank you so much to Lynell, Carrie, and Caleen for helping with making breakfast casseroles. I think having 8 ended up being a good plan. (Matt also put together two. And, we found out our stove does have a timed on and off feature.) Thanks so much to Grandma and Grandpa Hadfield for bringing the very tasty hot cocoa. Thanks to my parents, Grandma Wilson, and Janelle for bringing juice. And thanks to Roxanne and Melody for bringing fruit. Oh, and of course to Jennifer and Michelle for helping me with the plethora of cinnamon rolls. So many cinnamon rolls........ It was lovely, and I'm pretty sure no one went hungry :) It was nice hanging out with family and friends, especially those family members we don't get to see often and who live far away!

Henlie with her Grandma and Grandpa Erdmann
Photo courtesy Elisabeth.

Henlie looked beautiful in her dress (which was my christening gown. I'm glad it fit. In fact, if we'd tried blessing her earlier on, it may have been too big!). Too bad she hates wearing headbands most of the time. We got some pictures. Okay, I snapped like one picture of my family hanging out at the brunch, but Carrie, Dad, and Elisabeth got some pictures. :) I'm glad for technology and the ease of sharing these :)

Three generations

Matt, Me, Henlie, Larry Biggs (Matt's dad), Carrie Biggs (Matt's mom)

Photo courtesy Elisabeth.

It was a beautiful day filled with fun and family. However, I'm so glad it's over :) If you don't get notified about the next one, don't be offended. I just hated the stress of planning a get-together of that magnitude :)

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3 Months

Posted by Amber

Craziness - my baby girl is already three months old! It seems this past month has brought lots of new things.

Henlie finally made the transition out of preemie diapers into newborns about a week after turning 2 months. We'd tried moving her into them because she was having so many blowouts, but they didn't really fit around the legs, so she still had blowouts. We bought two more packages of preemies, and at the end of those, we tried newborns again, and this time, they worked :)

She can still wear most of her newborn clothes, but she's also been able to wear a couple of 0-3 month clothes, including about the only dress she owns in that size. This is good since we finally went to the full block of church on January 27th. Mostly, it was only going to be Whitney and Connie at primary, so I said I could at least go to help get primary started. Matt took her to Sunday school, which he missed most of because she didn't want to sit.... then he brought her to me for the last hour of church. She did really well. However, can I just say that I dislike 9am church even more with a baby? ugh.

Last time for newborn clothes

Her smiles have become a lot more social. She's a daddy's girl. All he has to do is come home and say, "Hey, Baby," and she gives him the biggest grin. She also smiles for Grandma Biggs. In the last week or so, I can also get her to smile for me. So cute!

I'm pretty proud of this picture :)

We still don't really do tummy time, but she's definitely starting to get her exercise in. When she's being held upright, she'll sit up and balance her head. We've done this some, along with me laying her on my chest at an incline so she'll hold her head up. She's also getting pretty good about holding her head while I pull her into a sitting position. She sometimes even likes to push with her feet, which then I'll let her stand for a few seconds. She thinks this is all great fun.

She is also discovering she has feet. When I was taking her three month pictures, she would look down at her feet and just watch them as she'd kick and such. I'm not certain she knows quite what to do with them, but she is finding them to be rather fascinating :)

Hey, Mom! Look at these!

Henlie's baby book has a page to record her height and weight each month. The doctor told us we could bring her in for a weight check whenever we wanted at no charge (we'll see if the no charge bit is accurate :)) Since we don't own a scale and they are always the ones weighing her anyway, we went in for a weight check on her 3 month birthday. She's up to 7 lbs. 15 oz. That's a full pound heavier than she was at 2 months. However, that still doesn't put her on the growth curve they'd like to see, so we left the office with a new regimen to try. Dr. Fullmer has us adding some formula to her bottles. She's supposed to get about 21 ounces/day, about 3 ounces in 7 feedings. For half of those, he wants her to take a bottle, to which 1/3 scoop of formula is added. In theory, this would increase her caloric intake by 10 percent each day. I felt pretty awful over this, and wasn't fully positive I wanted to try it. Her weight has been the only concern since her birth, but she's healthy and happy. She's alert, growing, and learning. Just not growing according to what statistics dictate she should be. However, I figure we can at least try it this month, and we'll see if it did us much good at her 4 month appointment. Dr. said we could revisit it anyway. He said if it doesn't really make much difference, it's probably just her genetics are on the small side. I tried for a week pumping half of the time I'm home with her, but it hasn't been productive. Not to mention, all I do this way is feed her - pump, make bottle, feed her, burp her, let her top off at the breast because my pumping was less than ideal. Ugh. I gave that up. :) I still work three days a week, and she gets extra calorie bottles whenever she gets a bottle. I'm just not putting for the extra effort to create more bottles for her.

Can you believe my baby is already 1/4 of a year old?

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Hadfield Christmas Party

Posted by Amber

The Hadfield Christmas party was held on Saturday December 29th. Dad purchased a four-wheeler this year, so we had fun playing in the snow on his and John's four-wheelers, sleds, and tubes. Matt and I took John's four-wheeler around the field, and then they convinced me to drive it too. Matt pulled me around in the tubes. It was fun, but I had a hard time keeping my butt off the ground! Then I piggybacked while Dad took Matt around on the sled. I'm just disappointed I looked forward for a few seconds - and those happened to be the few seconds we lost Matt :) Ah, good times :)

Learning about John's four-wheeler

Me, Matt, John, Larry

I was done with the snow before Matt - and Mocha was done before me! It was fun to watch her and Paisley run around and around, though. Speedy little herders :) I was smart and brought dry pants to change to :) Then we mostly hung out with family and had yummy soups for dinner. Grandpa gave a lesson, and Grandma doled out gifts. Henlie now has a Christmas night light and a stuffed Koala named Kayla. (Yay for alliteration, although I'm not certain how I feel about this Koala having the same name as her future aunt :))