Good news!

I'm excited to announce that we went to the doctor yesterday for another ultrasound and I now have all my privileges reinstated!! Tear is healed and baby looks good, so we are very grateful.  As promised, I took Alexa to the park to celebrate.  We went swinging and ran around looking for flowers (dandelions). She has to stop and touch every flower she finds :).

She insisted that her puppy come along.

Maybe because she's a lazy bum and wanted to use him as a pillow!!

We didn't get any really good ultrasound pictures from the tech (I should have made special requests!), but we saw lots of baby!  This was the ultrasound (20 weeks) where they check every little thing developing - every section of the brain, spine, chambers of the heart, kidneys, diaphragm, fingers, toes, blood flow, placenta, cord, measurements of head and waist (baby is 4 days bigger than the due date), etc. etc.  It's so fascinating to see all of that already developed and so teeny tiny!!  Baby was completely folded in half, playing with its hands with its feet up by its head.  Glad Kyle got off work early to come with me!

Alexa's favorite toys these days are fuzzy little pom poms (taking them in and out of containers), snaps and buttons (taking things on and off), stuffed animals, balls, and anything else she can take in and out of bags/containers.  She has started sniffing things a lot, so we may have a weird little fetish on our hands, we’ll see.  Her favorite food to eat while teething is corn on the cob.  She just picks it up and gnaws on it.  Cold broccoli stems kind of work, too, but she doesn’t eat them at all like the corn.  

She has started looking at pictures and pointing to the people in them, especially mommy and daddy.  It’s cute because she’ll do it all around the house with our pictures on the wall.  Oh, and she calls herself "baby" instead of Alexa in the pictures.  Her vocabulary is growing soo fast, and I can’t believe how many new words she learns each week!  This morning she grabbed my elbow and said “elbow” out of the blue.  I just stared at her in amazement.

Here's a video from last week of her feeding Kyle dinner.  She thought it was hilarious, and was laughing sooo hard before I started recording.  She loves to watch the video and laugh and clap for herself.

And a picture of her laying Kyle down for a nap :).  He got home from work and was putting her down for her afternoon nap, but when he told her it was time for a nap she ran over to her closet and pulled out all her blankets one by one and started putting them on daddy.

She’s transitioning between 1 and 2 naps right now, and only really takes a morning nap a couple days a week, but is still tired enough to need a little bit of rest every morning.  Sometimes that may just be laying there for 10 minutes and then jumping up or talking to herself.

Mike came and stayed with us last weekend while Peggy and Paul were gone visiting Grandma and Grandpa Swingle in AZ.  Kyle and Mike even got Todd to come down and play Super Smash, so life was complete.  Alexa joined in on the fun.

I made a new diaper bag this week and it was a really fun project!  It actually wasn’t as bad or time consuming as I thought it would be.  Complete with hidden zippers and sippy cup / bottle pockets.  I love scrap fabric (recognize this pattern, Malori?)!

One last random story.  We asked Craig what he wanted in a package we mailed to him last week in the MTC -- told him that I would make him anything -- homemade bread and jam, brownies, cookies, etc etc.  What does the kid ask for?  Chili Mac!!!  So we mailed him a huge bowl to cook the macaroni and cheese in the microwave, a pop top can of Chili, butter powder and milk powder all measured out so he just needed to add water, etc.  I laughed so hard that he really had us send him macaroni and cheese and a can of chili!

stairs and a silly little girl....

I forgot to mention a few August updates in my last post, and have some more Alexa stories (as always)...First, Kyle (with the help of Uncle Paul and Todd--thank you!!) finished the stairs and they look awesome!!  He completely rebuilt them (ripped them down all the way to the drywall).

Second, both Kyle and I were supposed to be in this work athletic competition in August, but I had to back out for obvious reasons.  Kyle still did the tennis and basketball tournaments and made me oh so proud.  He even got this funny little basketball trophy for taking third place.  The other tournaments that week included horseshoes, ping pong, foosball, golf, Wii dance, volleyball, and a triathlon.

We went to Ikea for breakfast last Saturday (so delicious and cheap!) and bought Alexa a stuffed puppy while we were there.  She now takes it everywhere continuously saying "puppy, puppy, puppy!"  Speaking of the puppy, she even dragged it through toilet water last week.  Yes, you read that correctly.  Alexa pooed through her cloth diaper and shorts (yumm), so Kyle stripped her down and threw the diaper in the toilet to get all the nasty poo off. Well, I came home a couple hours later and grabbed a hair tie out of the bathroom and accidentally left the door cracked. Alexa wandered in while we were doing the dishes and grabbed the diaper out of the toilet and started dragging it around the bathroom along with her puppy. There was like an inch of nasty toilet water on the floor and she was playing in it when Kyle found her. It was horrifying and disgusting and awful. We laughed and sanitized all of her, the bathroom, the bath mat, her stuffed animals, etc. etc. Never leave the bathroom door open!!

Kyle and I were downstairs in the living room, and Alexa decided she was done so she climbed up the stairs and on to the table to play with my cup of water!!  Kyle went up right after to get her and freaked out (as I would have done). Karen, I thought of you as this was our first surprise table climbing incident.  How quickly they can figure things like that out when they have 5 spare seconds.

We were grabbing something at Kohl's last week and Alexa happily started chasing a 5 year old through the aisles giggling.  I walked around behind her and laughed as the 5 year old jumped on top a display rack to get out of Alexa's reach.  Keep in mind, Alexa doesn't really know how to run, but just walks faster and looks like a staggering drunk while hyperventilating with glee.  The five year old could have easily walked faster than her and gotten away.  Anyway, the 5 year old's mom said, "the baby just wants to give you a hug!" to which the girl responded "I don't want a hug" and sat up there on the wooden display shelf staring down uncomfortably at Alexa.  So very funny.  I can tell that Alexa will grow up to have no sense of others' personal space, and that this girl definitely does not like people who invade hers.  I led Alexa away so the poor girl could breathe again.

Oh, and she got 5 TEETH last week, including 3 molars.  Ouch.  Kyle was up with her at 4 this morning and couldn't fall back asleep after.  Poor baby and daddy.  She's been pretty good about it, just waking up like an hour earlier in the morning and being a little bit grouchy off and on.  Otherwise, she's a happy, babbly, wandering little girl.  New words include book, baby, body parts (this is her favorite new thing to do -- point to our teeth, nose, eyes, ears, fingers, belly button, etc. and she can say about half of them).  She said "amen" a few times at church today.  That's a word I'm surprised she is just now saying since she hears it all the time.  She is also starting to do animal noises, which I love!  I still remember when I got a video at college of my niece Wylah doing animal noises as a little toddler.  Adorable.  Alexa will do puppy, bunny rabbit, fish, elephant, monkey, lion, and dinosaur.  She has also mastered going down the stairs by herself standing up (she's been going up since she was like 8 or 9 months, but down is another story).

There's no story behind this photo.  I just think she looks hilarious in this racoon hat at our friends house, which she would affectionately pet and call "puppy" :)

She's been hanging out with me more lately and sat on my lap while I peeled a bunch of potatoes for a triple batch of creamy potato soup.  I had to laugh while she sat there biting the raw potatoes one after the other--just biting them, not eating.  Peeled, not peeled, she didn't care.  That's how she entertained herself while I peeled.  She sits on my lap every day while I put on my makeup (she likes to brush our hair and play with the blush brush).  She also sat on my lap for like a solid half hour (miracle) while I finished up two new church quiet books for her.  Some of the pages are for when she gets older, as she could care less and doesn't understand at this point...

Book 1 - tie your shoes

Book 1 - hair braiding, build a temple out of felt squares

Book 1 - build a road and get the car home (it can drive under the house).  Right now the car mostly drives on mom and dad's arms.  Also, a treasure chest to hide snacks in at church.

Book 1 - have to decide if the food goes in the trash can or fridge (Word of Wisdom).  Also, felt soldier / armor of God.

Book 1 - finger puppet animals in Noah's ark.

Book 2 - counting the 7 days of creation with beads

Book 2 - Day 1: separated light from dark (sensory sun), Day 2: earth and heaven (earth puzzle)

Book 2 - Day 3: separated land and water (sensory water), Day 4: made sun, moon & stars (snap on stars)

Book 2 - Day 5: fish and fowl (bird "flies" back and forth on string), Day 6: animals and man (alligator mouth zips open and closed and you can hide things in there too)

Day 7: rest (read the scriptures--buckles open and closed with paper and crayons/pencils inside to scribble on)