Star Spangled Cutie

I'm pretty sure every single blog post I create is going to start with "I can't believe how fast time is going!"  I had no idea that the last time I created a entry was almost 3 weeks ago!  As I grabbed my camera to look at the pictures I wanted to upload I couldn't believe how different my sweet little girl looks already!  She is such a sweet baby and is getting so smiley.  Almost every time Billy or I talk to her she gets a HUGE smile on her face.  I can't even began to describe the feeling it is to look into your little girls eyes and feel such unimaginable joy and love for someone.

We love when cousins and family come over to visit!

I love my Auntie

Hanging out with great-grandma!

When it was time to take our One Month pictures we had a little bit of an attitude.  I kept meaning to retake them but it's almost time to take month two pictures so these are what we get to live with!

 We tried…I guess that's all that matters.  Thanks for my Dumbo Auntie Em and my monthly stickers Grandma!

This past weekend was our very first Holiday as a little family!  Minus Memorial Day but Halle was only about a week old so I'm not counting that one.  We had such a great day.  I bought Halle's outfit about 3 months before she was born thinking she was going to be a chunky monkey but this little girl is long and lean.  Today is the first day her newborn clothes have started to get tight at 8 weeks!  (Yes I cried when I realized this was her last day wearing them)  Anyways I had to shrink them down in hot water and we of course wore matching bows!  We BBQ'd and watched fireworks…all in all it was a perfect day!

Billy went back to work on Monday.  I really thought we were going to miss him as much as we do!  Halle gets the biggest sweetest smile when he comes home everyday.  I'm pretty sure she counts the hours until we get to see him each day!  We've started going to the concerts in the park with my mom most weeks and Halle really loves them.  She usually kicks her feet and moves her hands to the music!

Halle (mom) LOVES BOWS!

 We're not co-sleepers mostly because I'm way to scared.  Halle sleeps in a bassinet next to the bed and is great sleeper she sleeps almost every night from 9:30 pm to 5:00am I'll feed and change her (dad helps too!) and then she sleeps again until around 7:30.  I'm praying this is not just a phase!!

I set her down the other morning and thought this was so cute!  She looks so much like Billy sometimes!

 Sitting here writing all of this right now and listening for my sweet girl on the monitor really makes me realize how blessed I really am.  I can't imagine life without Halle and Bill and am so lucky to have them!

Happy Birthday, Graduation, Scentsy, One Month and Frenectomy!!

What a couple of crazy of weeks it's been.  I feel like we've had something everyday and I can't imagine how I'm going to manage keeping up with everything once I go back to work!!

On June 13th Halle went to her first party!  We celebrated our family friend Hanna's graduation from South Pasadena High School.  It was so much fun and the party was beautifully put together.  I'm so proud of Hanna and she will be attending Cal Poly San Luis Obispo in the fall.  Halle partied the day away by sleeping and eating most of the time but she woke up and gave a couple cute smiles!

The next day on the 14th we celebrated mine and Billy's birthday with the Baker family.  Fun Fact:  Cody, Casey and I all share our birthday on June 15 and Billy's birthday is June 16!  We also celebrated Bill's first Father's day on Sunday mostly for the fact that we had NO idea that Father's Day was not the 14th it's actually the 21st!  We went to breakfast and everything haha!  I guess on the bright side we get to go out to breakfast again!?!

Celebrating 29, 31 and 32!

Caught the tail end of Halle smiling and cooing!

On the 15th we spent most of the day at home relaxing and went to an Angel game with Cody and Ashley that night.  We had so much fun!  We only stayed for about an hour and our section won a give away!  We were the proud winners of (1) 16 oz bottle of Aquafina water!  Wahoo.  Billy and I are firm believers in taking the baby out socializing and having her adapt to our lifestyle while we also adapt to hers at the same time.  If we had to stay in the house 24/7 we would probably kill each other!  She did great at the game and slept through the whole thing in her Moby wrap on me.  Halle is really the best happiest babies!

On June 8th we had Halle's One Month check up.  She weighed 7 lbs 13 oz and was 20 3/4" and was super happy and excited at the whole appointment.  We've had some issues with Halle being able to latch because she has an upper lip and tongue tie which in turn made it hard for her to put on weight so we have had to supplement with formula.  We also had to schedule her to have a frenectomy which is the removal of the extra skin that attaches the lip to the upper and gum via lasering.  We ended up having the procedure on June 16th (Poor Bill's Birthday).  There is only one doctor in our network that is able to perform the procedure so we had to drive to San Diego.  When we got to the appointment Halle measured 21.25" and 8lbs 5oz!  Big growing girl!  They explained how they would burn the skin off of her tongue and upper gum line.  We were also instructed on how to do tongue and lip stretches for the next 2 weeks.  Billy and I expected and were warned that our little girl would be extremely fussy and in pain but we didn't quite expect how bad it has been.  Poor Halle had just started cooing and smiling at us pretty often but now whenever she is awake she is whimpering, crying or full blown crying.  It really breaks my heart but we have to keep in mind the good the this procedure did.  If we had not had it done she would have had to go strictly to formula because she would not be able to breastfeed from me and I was already starting to loose some milk production because of her poor latching.  She also would have had an extremely large gap and a speech impediment.

 Happy One Month Check-up!

Poor swollen cheeks

What our days have looked like since :(

The last thing that happened within the last few weeks is I signed up to sell Scentsy!  I mainly did this because I use it so much that I wanted a discount but I've started out pretty strong on selling and have already sold enough to receive the Shooting Star within the first 7 days!  I'm so excited to see where this takes me.  If you'd like to look at my site it is http://katies.scentsy.us

Someone's excited to start selling Scenty!!

Find your tribe…Love them hard

I really can't believe that Halle has been here for 3 weeks and 1 day already!  In 6 days my little girl will already be 1 month old.  It blows my mind just how fast life really does fly by especially now that we have a little growing girl in our home.

Miss Halle has changed so much already it seems like.  She's been a very alert baby from day one constantly looking around and reacting to people talking to her or holding her.  This past week she's become even more alert staying awake for longer periods of time.  She's even started to smile a little bit.  Her eyes will light up when Mommy or Daddy talk to her and she did a full blown smile when Grandma picked her up yesterday.  Her favorite place to be is when Mommy puts on the Moby wrap and she gets all snuggled up.  I had originally planned on strictly breast feeding Halle but we've had a few set backs due to her being tongue tied and needing frenectomy on her upper lip.  We have an appointment June 16 to have the extra flap of skin removed and it should help with our latching issues and also help eliminate future speech issues.  This little girl loves tummy time and we spend multiple times a day on our tummy time mat.  She has been able to hold her head up on her own for small periods of times since Day 2 and she's just grown stronger over the last few weeks  I'm so proud of my little girl!

One of the things that I've learned the past few weeks is we are so lucky and so loved.  I grew up with a relatively small family. We were very spoiled by my grandparents being my mom was an only child so we never had to share which was amazing!  Because of this though I also learned that just because you are not related by blood does not mean you are not related or loved any less by friends that you now consider family.   Here are just a few of  the family Halle has had recently