Greta is two (months)

Oh Greta girl, we love you! I'm going to make this blog easy on myself and make a quick comment on all the exciting things that a two month old can have going on with them, and then dump a bunch of pictures :) Awesome, right? Well, Greta is just wonderful. Towards the end of the two month mark, she started going about 5 hr stretches at night, and then maybe 3 hrs after that. Not bad. She's still been kind of grunty and squirmy, but it seems to have subsided slightly.

My friend Steff gave her this set, and a few days after we left the blanket at the park and no one turned it in. My mom and I are still SO sad about it. Cutest, softest blanket that ever was. Ugh.

Some superficial comments about her looks - she didn't seem to lose much hair and at first I thought the top part was coming in a little lighter but I might be wrong - she might not follow in her toe-head brother's footsteps. Her eyelashes have come in and are long and dark and beautiful. Her eyes are so incredible to me. And we kind of lucked out and missed the baby zit phase. She only had a couple for a couple of days. But if she's anything like me she'll more than make up for it in her adolescent and young adult life. Sorry, G!

No bald spot yet

She looks bald here which is funny. But she likes laying on her tummy on legs.

My FAVORITE thing that has happened is she officially started smiling and talking and cooing on purpose a week before she turned 2 months. Oh man. Best thing ever. 

Harvey is still a great big brother and loves to hold her and will help out with binky patrol. If he here's her crying, he usually will say "B, crying" or "B, sad" or "B, binky!" It's super sweet. He bonked her on the head the other day and a couple minutes later, when she was still crying, he came over of his own free will and gave her a huge hug and kiss and patted her head saying "tay, tay" (it's ok, or maybe asking if she was ok...still so sweet. And that happened after 2 months, but I don't want to forget to write it down :) )

Are you kidding me?!

She's got to make some new friends as well. She met my friend Brooke and her son Garrett, who loves her and held her for such a long time. She had some more bonding with cousin Logan and got up close and personal with the dogs. 

Here's some other random cute ones.

G-lo LOVES her grammy!

She's got some good facial expressions and scowls just like her brother did.

Finding treasures in grammy's cedar chest

And she is much more of a chubby baby than Harvey was. She's gained a leg roll a week, it seemed like. But oh how I love those chunky legs! And, those CHEEKS! So kissable :) We took her to the doctor on her birthday and she got her 2 month shots. She weighed in at 13lbs 1 oz. Meaning she gained almost 3 pounds in just over one month. Nice work G! She was 98% for length and head and 90% for weight. Other than her umbilical hernia (just like brother), she is super healthy, and a very happy and content little sweet heart. Gosh we love her!

Sumo baby!!!

Dr. Leah Farley

 

Ouch ;(

A quick visit

Tanner is awesome and landed an interview with the company he recently applied for - Holly Frontier. Of course it couldn't be during the week he was home for Easter, so we bought another plane ticket for last Saturday-Wednesday. It was so awesome having him here. Not long enough at all. But it sure helped break up the 7 week stretch. The kids and I went to the airport and waited inside for him to come down the stairs. Harvey was too dang cute when he saw him and ran up to him and gave him a huge hug. It was precious. Then Tanner took Harvey on a father son outing to McDonald's and the race track where his brother and dad were driving their race car. Apparently Harvey really is Tanner's because he was in car heaven too!

That evening we went downtown so Tanner could get him a super sharp interview outfit. And sharp it was. Man he looked so good and I didn't even take a picture! 

Sunday we drove up to Smithfield and went to church with Mason and Carrie. Then Clare and Berrie and Preston and Nat and fam came up for dinner. Harv had a GREAT time playing with all of Payne's awesome toys. He spent most of the time playing by himself - so many new cars and trucks and other cool boy toys. He was NOT excited about leaving, to say the least. 

Monday we visited Carson at the fire station. He let Harvey spray the hose and sit in the drivers seat and just showed him all sorts of stuff. Again - a piece of heaven for the Harvster. It was awesome. 

Then Tanner picked himself up a new putter. Then we had lunch at the Mellow Mushroom. Same restaurant Tanner and I had our 1st date at in Savannah 5.5 years ago :)

Tuesday morning was the interview. Tanner killed it. He felt really good about it and all the experience he has from

ND transfers really nicely to what this job entails and the people interviewing were quite impressed. So hopefully that means we will be hearing good news in a week or two. After that we drove up to Farmington and I babysat Millie while Carson and Tanner went golfing. The weather was predicted to be so awful the whole time Tanner was going to be here and it made me so sad because I wanted him to be able to do the stuff he wanted. Well - I believe we got some answered prayers because it really held out when it mattered and Tanner did get to do some fun stuff :) That night we went with Carson and Nat and Clare and Berrie to get sushi. Harvey ate edamame and pot stickers. Love it. 

Then we had to take Tanner back SUPER early the next morning. So sad. We are at less than 3 weeks now though. And yes, I am DEFINITELY counting down!

Easter Week

Blogging has quadrupled in difficulty for me now that there's two dependents in the household. I might have to alter how I do it and not make it so jam packed with every detail and every picture. I just don't know if I am capable of that. Ha.
Anyway - I'll do my best and it might get done in pieces, but you'll never know the difference.  Tanner got to fly home the Thursday night before Easter. It was a long 9 days which was rough because we have 7 weeks ahead of us. He wanted to take Harvey to the Lego store so that was our first official outing. (Tanner came to Greta's doc appt with me when we learned she could be off oxygen! Hooray!) Harvey picked out a blue Mustang and Tanner got himself a yellow Corvette.

 I really can't remember the exact dates we did things - which only matters in my OCD mind - because I'm several weeks behind and back dating this. But I believe that night we went to Boondocks with Nat and Preston and kids. Unfortunately for Harvey he was too small to even ride along in the go-karts (which we accidentally told him he'd be able to do), but he had the most fun "playing" the arcade games.

Love him trying to reach the pedals!

 

Harv LOVES his cousin Mitt!

Saturday we did a little scavenger hunt for Harvey to find his Easter present. I printed off pics of obvious household locations and put them in eggs. He sort of caught on and sort of stayed interested through the whole thing. He was dang excited when he opened his present though! FARR TRUCK!!

 

 

Harv and Greta also got there baskets from Grammy and Pop-pop

That night my Laura and Kathryn came down and we watched the Women's Broadcast and ordered mexican and ate with everyone. Tanner got some uncle time in.

Easter Sunday we went to Sacrament with my parents and then went up to visit Elaine in Layton for a bit and then came back for Easter dinner with the whole fam. I don't think I got any pics of that but it was a really FUN evening with everyone. All in all a great Easter!

Gosh she's adorable.

The best fam shot we could get.

Cool dude!

I think these pictures Tanner tried to get of the two of them later that day are hilarious. We just couldn't get either to cooperate. Guess it's good it wasn't during an expensive paid for shoot :)

We decided it would be a fun new family tradition to color Easter eggs for the family home evening Monday night after Easter. That's what we did anyway and we liked it. Kind of spreading out the festivities. Harvey LOVED it. He made a huge mess, which we wouldn't expect otherwise. He pretty much made every egg a greenish brown color. He kept grabbing eggs, whether they were colored or not already and dropping them into the closest cup, whether they had an egg or two in it already. So much fun. 

Oh, and while I was getting the colors ready he was making fun dip waffles :)

Tuesday my mom and Tanner and I and the kids made our way down to Thanksgiving Point to go the Museum of Natural Curiosity. (We stopped at Cabella's first because we were a little bit too early). It was a super cool place but HOLY!!! It was INSANELY crowded. Tanner and I amazingly kept our cool through the chaos and I think Harvey had a great time (although he did seem minorly overwhelmed with crowd as well at times), and then we got a delicious lunch at Mo Betta's and stopped at REI to pick up my new JOGGING STROLLER! YAY!

He loves his guns!

We got to get together with Tanner's family on Wednesday night. All but the lonesome Cache Valley crew unfortunately. It was so fun. Watching Harvey play with his cousins, and have so much fun, and beg for days after to see them again, made me not doubt that our decision to move home was the absolute right one and at a great time.

Haha - Harvey's eyes

Millie and Harv

Probably one of the hightlights for Harvey that week was getting to go visit uncle Carson at the fire station. The station he was working at has one of the big fire trucks with ladder and bucket on it. Harvey got to sit in the driver's seat, try on a real firefighter's hat, got a goody bag, AND they let out the ladder and let all three of us go up 100 ft in the bucket. I was a tiny bit nervous only for myself - I'm a wimp with heights. Harvey wasn't scared at all and thought it was super cool! We got to eat lunch with them and then they got a call, so Harvey got to hear that and watch them drive out of the station with lights and sirens blazing. He talks about it all the time. How the big fire truck went to help the people in the accident. And going way high up, etc. Thanks Carson! We love seeing Harv get so excited about stuff. Makes a parent's heart happy :)

 

 

 

My parents watched the kids for us one night so we could go out on a real live date. We took trax to downtown, ate at Melting Pot and then met up with a couple from Tanner's mission he hadn't seen since the mission. It was all SO glorious! It was probably our second, maybe third date in 2 years and it felt so nice, like a mini honeymoon! So much fun to just pay attention to each other and not have phones or kids as distractions.

Soooo good!

 Getting baths with Grammy and Pop-pop

 Saturday we did some conference watching, Tanner got in some golf, and then we had the Niederhauser Easter party at Carson and Nat's. We had an Easter egg hunt and ate yummy food and the boys watched conference and Harvey had a blast again playing with all the cousins! Love love love family!

Some other random pics from the week...

Ready for some camping!!

Experiencing his first In and Out burger - which I think was mostly bun for him.

A kennel is a great place to watch a movie from, right?

Tanner had to leave Sunday afternoon and it was the absolute pits. 3 weeks is just too long. Can't wait till we are all together again for good!