I seriously cannot believe our sweet girl is 5 months old.  Where has the time gone???  In one month, she will be half a year old, ahhhh!!!!  So much has happened this past month.  Keen and I got off from school for the summer so we have enjoyed our time here with her.  Keen has still had basketball practice and has been doing some work up at school so he has kept pretty busy still!

Baby girl has learned to roll over and while she was already rolling from tummy to back, she seems to have forgotten that she knows that so she gets stuck on her tummy now!  We have been giving her LOTS of practice during her wake time, though, so she hasn't been having 4am rolling sessions anymore, yeah!  She also enjoys tummy time a lot more now so she doesn't really try to roll back over.  Naps have also started getting better!

She is, however, having 4am talking sessions!  She wakes up and talks (loudly) for about an hour before she goes back to sleep.  Doesn't cry, just experimenting with sounds and her hands in her mouth.  It is super cute, until it happens, like, 14 days in a row.  Yeah.  Little tired here!  And I can't really get her to practice it during wake time like I can the rolling!  Oh well, this too shall pass.  And will be replaced by her newest discovery!

She is SO CLOSE to sitting up on her own.  She occasionally can go a few seconds but then she starts to tip a bit.  She can lean forward with her hands on her legs or on the ground and sit up for longer.  She also can be leaned back, like sitting against me, and sit herself up.  I just have to be ready because she cannot control her momentum yet!  So she ends up toppling over.

Big things:
-Really found her feet.  She loves them.  She is very close to getting a toe in her mouth too!  Ha!
-EVERYTHING goes in her mouth and she is chewing it, not just sucking it.
-We think she may be showing early signs of teething.  Not expecting to see any cutie teeth yet, but we are seeing signs!
-Rolling around.  Cannot get her to stay on her back much these days!
-She is using her feet to kick things.  Its so cute to watch.
-She notices Boone now.  I thought he would be more interested in her but he's not!  She tries to pet him but any of you who know Boone, he comes around like her really wants to be petted but the moment you reach out, he moves!!!  She will probs be following him around soon.
-Speaking of moving, she is not moving yet, but man she wants to be moving!!!  She will stare at something (like a toy on the other side of the quilt) and try to roll that way.  Or she will move her feet and hips trying to get there but she hasn't figured all of that out yet and how to coordinate it.  I know its still a ways away but she already gets a bit frustrated when she can't get somewhere.
-We took our first trip to Cartersville this month.  That was so fun.  Got to see our neighbors, friends and go to church.  EA did wonderful there.  Even had good naps, yeah!


Here are some pics because I am out of time.  Hopefully I can write another post soon!!!

Happy 1st Father's Day to a wonderful, caring, loving Daddy to our sweet baby girl!  I know I have posted this picture before but it just shows how secure EA is with Keen.  I just love it!!!


I am so blessed to have Keenan and we are both so blessed to have our baby girl.  Here's to a wonderful 1st Father's Day and to many more to come!!!  I love you Keen!

This week has been pretty crazy!  Keen helped a friend move to Louisiana so he left early Monday morning and we were on our own til we went to pick him up from the airport.  It was kind of a flashback to the newborn days when I didn't even have time to eat.  I had her and during her naps I was trying to get everything else done.  Just wasn't enough time.  We are so happy to have Keen back.  I am pretty sure she knew that he was gone too...and missed him.  He is her world!

In sleeping news (cause that seems to always be the thing) she has still been sleeping 12 hours at night. Occasionally, though, she will wake up and talk to herself, squeal, play a bit....sometimes for up to an hour!  Then, she conks back out!  So funny!  Naps have also been good.

Then, this happened:

EA has officially rolled over!  Well, she was already rolling from tummy to her back but now she is going from back to tummy.  Not all the time but sometimes.  Sometimes, her arm is still stuck under her and she can't remember that she knows how to pull it out!  She loves rolling up onto her side to see more things (like the tv, which stays off pretty much until she goes to bed for the night!) and to look at us.  This morning, I pulled out a quilt and put her on it and she rolled all the way to the tv and looked at our dvds, ha!

Yesterday was a big day for us.  My mom, aunt and uncle came up to visit EA (and see our house for the first time) and hung out for a bit.  While they were here, I had to go because I was helping with a baby shower.  I was thinking I was really late and even called a friend to ask her to grab balloons and just come on over.  She told me how our other friend was going to go back to her house to get ready and all I can think is.....It starts at 2pm, you don't have time.  Like I thought about calling our other friend to tell her.  Then, I get to the house where we are doing the baby shower and realize...Oh, it doesn't start till 3pm.  Yep, can't even remember the time of a shower I was helping to throw.  Its just mommy brain, right????

The shower was so fun.  There were so many people and it was awesome catching up with 305 girls (from where we lived in college!).  I hope to get pics soon and I will post some of them because we did some cool activities at the shower.

While I was at the shower, Keen got to hang out with EA all by himself.  Sometimes I would run out to the store or something so its not like he has never been with her alone but this was the longest time.  And it had a feeding in it!  Other a few people have given her a bottle and this was Keen's first time.  I think it took him a bit to work out the kinks but I think it was a very special time for him.  They had so much fun and she apparently laughed (like REALLY laughed) for about 10 minutes.  I can't wait to experience that!!  I am so glad that they got to spend that time together.  Keen did tell me later that he appreciates the mental-ness that goes into caring for her.  Just how when you are awake with her, you are thinking all about her but normally, it is the two of us playing with her or me so he doesn't have to be so mentally involved (that sounds so weird, ha!) but yesterday he said he was thinking so much about here obviously while she was awake but also when she was sleeping.  He said it was just different.  And it is.  Its not the same mental energy as anything else you do, like studying or something.  Its almost like its just an extension of you, just an ever present thought even if you are not constantly focusing on her, the mental awareness is always there.

That was definitely true of me at the shower too!  I felt like I was missing a body part being away from her!  I knew she wasn't with me but I kept thinking in my mind (not in a panic though), Where is she?? It was just kind of weird.

Thats about all for now!  In other news, I think we are weaning off the nipple shield, yeah!!!!!  So excited if this actually happens because then I won't have to make sure it comes with me when we go places!!!  I will do a bigger post on this soon if we are successful in getting off of it.  I still don't care that I used and am still using it- I just would love to not have to make sure I have it when I go out!  (I do keep an extra one that I NEVER use in the diaper bag just in case I were to ever forget, but its just a backup and I will bring my regular one if we go out.)

Wow- I haven't put a single pic on here.  I will leave you with this:

I just had one of the most precious moments with my baby girl.  Ever.  We have a big group of people over right now and so I took EA upstairs, gave her a quick bath and was nursing her in her room.  It was nearly dark and I was just finishing up nursing and she started to suck her thumb.  I was rocking in the glider and she was just all cuddled up, sucking her thumb.  I just leaned my head back, closed my eyes and started praying.  Praying for her, for me, for our family, just everything.  We prayed for our grandparents, aunts, uncles and for all the kids that were downstairs and I looked down at my baby girl.  She was just looking up at me and smiling.  For the remainder of the time we really were just praying together and she just kept smiling.  It was incredible.  Thank you Lord for this moment.  It was truly precious.  I knew I had to come down and write it quickly so I remember it!

So that is how our day ended.  It was just perfect!

I think I have posted this pic before but I can't do a post without a picture of the cuite, so re-enjoy!

If any of you recall my post a bit back about being a first time mom, you would probably think I would be thrilled about my baby girl growing up some!  Those first weeks were really tough!  I have told some people that when EA started sleeping longer stretches at night, I got my sanity back.  Then when she started napping in bigger chunks (as opposed to the 30 minute naps!) I got my time back.  I no longer had to decide if I wanted to eat breakfast or shower (and you can probably guess which one won out most of  time, ha!) in the first nap of the day.  Every nap, I had exactly 30 minutes to get things done.  Then, this happened:

When Keenan and I found out that Jill and Alan were pregnant we were SO excited.  My next thought was....Oh, we should throw them a shower!  Yep, because thats how my mind thinks.  After throwing around a few ideas and dates, we decided on a gender reveal.  I started looking at things on the internet and on pinterest to get some ideas.  For as popular as they have become, I am surprised at how little there is on the internet about them!

We wanted to have it here and I wanted to do it outside since there were so many people invited!  I had everything all planned out, when food would be cooked, when decorations were made, when everything was put into the yard.  Then, the forecast changed.  Yep, rain.  That changed plans a bit.  Even the day of we were trying to decide if we should chance it outside or not (we decided to not).  Oh, and a few days before this, our upstairs air handling unit went out.  Oh, man.  So now I was trying to put everyone in our house and a crazy hot upstairs.  Luckily, the only reason people would be going upstairs was to go to the bathroom.  It really ended up being fine (other than the fact that it is still out!).

So, people inside.  Lots of people, lots of food.  We ended up setting up tables in the garage, thanks to Keenan cleaning it out (sweeping, etc) and Kelli decorating the tables.  Huge thanks to Anna who seriously cooked almost all of the food.  I was more like a general manager :), keeping it all going, ha!  I also had a crazy, fussy baby on my hands!  I mentioned in a post yesterday about how rough Sunday was for us.  By the time the shower started, she had only slept a cumulative 1 hour and normally by that point she would have slept about 4.  You can imagine what it was like!  Yesterday though, she took at 2 hour nap in the morning and a 2 1/2 hour one in the afternoon.....that I had to wake her up from!  She was tired!!!

Anyways, we set up the eating area in the garage, decorated the tables and put all the food/gender reveal things in the kitchen.  It worked out really well!  Things that were for the gender reveal were the lips/mustaches for everyone to pick and get some pics of it.  I also had a chalkboard for people to cast their vote!  Jill and Alan had made cupcakes with the centers revealing boy or girl and they also had make a painting to reveal the name.  So, here are the pics from the shower and I am just going to spoil it: Its a girl!  And they are going to name her Hannah Catherine!!!!  How beautiful!