One Month

Little miss Mary is one month old today!  It's been a good month, I think my favorite part of this month has been watching my two girls start building a relationship.  Avery loves Mary so much!  The first thing she does when I bring her downstairs in the morning is call for Mary.  "Mamea!  Where aaa you?"  It's really sweet.  Avery loves holding Mary and giving her kisses and stroking the top of her head softly.  Whenever Mary is crying Avery says "Oh no!  Shh shh shh!"  It's very sweet watching the two of them.

"Oh no!"

Mary has fallen into a pretty good routine.  She eats every 3 hours then is awake for anywhere from 1 to 2 hours then goes to sleep.  She's not to good at the falling asleep thing yet and I'm afraid she's getting too dependent on her swing to sleep.  We live in a two bedroom apartment and so she sleeps in a pack n' play in our bedroom.  The only problem is with Louis' work schedule he has to sleep during the day so she doesn't actually sleep in the pack n' play very often, but in the swing instead.  I really wish we had a room for her so she didn't have to be in the swing.  Or that we had two pack n' plays, one up in our room and one downstairs.  She sleep pretty well at night, right now she'll sleep 5 hours at a time.  I feed her at 10:30 then put her in bed around 11:00 and she sleeps until a little after 4:00 then straight back to bed and I wake her up for the day at 8:30.  She is also already a complete binky baby!  She almost always needs her binky to fall asleep!  I don't mind, but it will be nicer once she can keep it in her mouth better.

Mary is nursing so well!  I was very worried about this before she was born because nursing with Avery was HORRIBLE!  I tried and tried for 6 weeks with Avery and it wasn't getting any better, it was taking about an hour to feed her and it would usually end with both of us in tears.  What I ended up doing for Avery was pumping and then giving her a bottle.  It was hard work and I didn't want to have to do it again.  Lucky for me Mary has been a champion nurser from day one!  She did have a hard time latching on right for a while, but we got it worked out really quickly and easily.  I feel so blessed that it has gone so well.

She is a pretty good baby, I won't lie, Avery was much better.  Avery was such a chill baby, she would be happy to just sit in her bouncy chair looking at everything going on.  Mary is another story, she's pretty whiny.   She has her happy moments of course, but mostly just needs to be held and rocked.  It's funny as I'm typing this she's laying on the floor happily looking around!  She really loves to be held by her dad.  His kisses are her favorites!  They make her stop crying in an instant.  Maybe it's the feeling of his scratchy face.  

Or probably just because she loves her daddy!

She's very strong!

On her first Sunday to church

Huge eyes!

Mary and cousin Isaac

Meeting her great grandma Steele

Now as for me, I'm doing great.  I feel 100% back to normal.  I haven't started exercising yet, I walk, but nothing more than that.  With nursing though, my stomach is shrinking very nicely!  Here are a few pictures of me, the first is at 5 days postpartum the second was 8 days postpartum and the last was taken last night.  It crazy how fast it shrinks down!  Also I must really love all of you because I hate this first picture of myself and I'm putting it up for all to see!

So things are going great over here!  The adjustment from one to two kids has gone a lot smoother than i expected it to.  We sure love Mary and are so happy she chose to be in our family!

Pumpkin Walk

Last night we headed over to North Logan to go to the annual pumpkin walk.  We were joined by Josh and Megan as well as John and Courtney.  For those of you who don't know the pumpkin walk has been going on for 29 years and it is held at the old Beutler Farm.  It is a bunch of different displays created by pumpkins.  Families, businesses, organizations, and classes all volunteer to create these displays.  You park at the specialty hospital or at the elementary school and you take the buses over to the farm.  Best of all, the night is completely free!  If you want to read more about it, or look at the galleries for the past few years, click here.
It was packed last night!  We waited in line about 25 minutes before we even got into the Pumpkin Walk.  Luckily, it wasn't too cold.  Unless you ask Courtney, then it was pretty freezing!  We went through it pretty quickly because it took so long to actually get in and I wanted to be home in time to feed Mary.  But we still enjoyed it and had a fun time!
After we finished at the Pumpkin Walk we all came back to our house and had some hot chocolate and a yummy Halloween treat.  It was a fun night, I'm grateful to live in a great place that has fun things like this!

Our Halloween treats!

Louis and Avery on the bus!  I thought it was really cute watching
her hold on while we rode.

John and Courtney

Josh and Megan and their little elf friend

Avery!  She keeps giving me this face lately

Relay for Life!

Mario!

Harry Potter-Wizard's chess

Clue

Pooh Bear

Jesse, Buzz, and Woody

Beautiful Cinderella

Genie 

On the bus

Sibling Supper-Murder Mystery Dinner

This last weekend Louis and I went to our Brandley sibling supper.  It's always so fun!  You can read about some of our previous sibling suppers here and here.  Jon and Alisha were planning this one and they planned a murder mystery dinner.  They gave everyone a character to play and we had fun putting together our costumes!  Josh was Miles a race car driver and Megan was Lucy a gambling heiress.  Jake was Jules a jewel maker and Celestial was Desiree a business women.  Jon was the steward and Alisha was hosting the game.  Kamila was Nadya a Russian night club owner, Sterling was a business man, (I don't remember his name) Tifannee was Kitty a Russian spy, and Kaileb was S.L. a detective.  Louis was Captain Mal and was captain of the yacht, and I was Bella an Opera singer.  We were all aboard the yacht when our host Mr. Archibald Frath was found murdered.
We had a 4 course meal (appetizers, salad, main dish, and dessert) and each course was a different round for the game.  In each round we got new information on ourselves and on the other players to help figure out the mystery.  In the end pretty much every one had attempted to kill this guy, but only one actually succeeded.
At the end of the night there were a few prizes given out.  Megan won the best costume, Kami won best actress, and Celestial won for being the first to solve the murder.  It was a fun night, apparently we left too early though and missed Jake's dancing.  Too bad!  I really like doing these sibling suppers every 6 months.  I am extremely blessed and thankful to be a part of the Brandley family!  They are all amazing, loving and thoughtful people.

Kamila

Josh and Megan

Louis and me

Jake and Celestial

Sleeping Mary

Tifannee

Quarter of a Century

Yesterday was Louis' 25th birthday!  I didn't end up doing a birthday week for him like I've done for his last 3 birthdays.  We just had a relaxed day, which Louis likes because he has a very busy life.  We started out our day by heading over to Alisha and Pug's for a birthday breakfast.  We had some delicious waffles, bacon, sausage, potatoes, eggs, and fruit.  Plus the delicious Oreo pudding cake I made.  Joel, Annette, Josh, Megan, Jake, Celestial, Maya, Teancum, Alisha, Pug, Isaac, and Kami were all able to come celebrate Louis.  We always have a good time when we get together.  After the breakfast we went to the Halloween store to look for costumes for the upcoming sibling supper!  We didn't find anything.  The rest of the day we spent at home, where Louis likes it best.  Louis said he had a great birthday.  I am very grateful for Louis and that I get to spend eternity with him!  He is very loving and thoughtful and helps me out so much even with all the responsibilities he has with school and work.  He works so hard for our family and I am so grateful to be married to such a wonderful man.

birthday breakfast

Jake "weighing" Louis

Louis with his cake

Louis with his new nerf gun from Kami

First Week

We've had little Mary home with us for a week now.  So far it has gone very well!  I was pretty worried about how Avery would handle it because she's such a mama's girl, but she's been great!  She loves her little sister.  She'll go sit by Mary and scootch right up next to her.  She is very soft with her and strokes her head and places her hands on her tummy and gives her kisses.  Yesterday she also gave her a high five and then pounded it.  It was hilarious!  Watching my two kiddos really makes me realize how incredibly blessed I am. I have so much love in my life.
We have had a few visitors in this last week.  First it was Ben, Sarina, and Lizzie(I didn't get any pictures).  Sarina wasn't able to come to the hospital because of work.  It was really nice, it makes me happy to see other people love my children.  The other visitors we had were John and Courtney.  They came and had lunch with us and watched a football game.
Mary has been a very good baby!  She is a champion nurser, it makes me so happy!  Avery was a horrible nurser, I tried for 2 months and eventually just started pumping and giving her a bottle.  Sad.  Mary doesn't sleep as good as Avery did at night.  Avery slept an average of 5 hours at a time from the beginning so I would only have to get up once during the night.  Mary sleeps 3-4 hours at a time, so I get up twice during the night.  Still not that bad.  And worth it.  Mary is slowly starting to stay awake longer during the day.  She'll stay awake for about an hour, sometimes an hour and a half.  She is very sweet and we love her!