Calico

On our way back from a visit to our friends in Palm Springs (which we'll blog about at another time), we stopped by a ghost town called Calico. It is very commercialized now, but still pretty interesting. It's a lot like Virginia City for those of you who know it. The main reason we went was to get our first family portrait. For the countless thousands of pictures when we couldn't get Kaiya to smile, this one actually worked out best that way. Her and Leah both look very 1880s. I guess they were just born 120 years late. Leah had been screaming the 30 minutes leading up to the photo and was asleep about 2 minutes later, so we got pretty lucky. It may be a little odd for a family photo shoot, but we like it.

What We've Been Up to

It has been a while since we've posted anything, not because we haven't wanted to, but because of our lame dial up internet. So if anyone still reads our blog, here's the latest from us. We recently moved into another house in the same area, and are getting all of our things put away in new places. We really like the new house, and since it's right by the playground Kaiya really likes it too. When we were still in our other house, and during the hottest part of the summer (130 degrees outside), our air conditioner broke, and for a week the temperature inside our house was above 90 degrees. Luckily, we had our window air conditioner from our house in Idaho, so Patrick installed it in our bedroom and the four of us camped out in there.

Leah seems to finally be over her colicky stage, and is becoming quite a happy baby. She still isn't laughing, but smiles all the time and last week rolled over for the first (and only, actually) time. Here are a few updated pictures of her at 3 months.
Kaiya got a new "big girl" bed when we moved in to the new house. She was really excited about it and has done really well with the transition. We have been really lucky and she hasn't tried to escape from the bed yet. She just lays down and sings and plays a little and then falls asleep. She even waits for one of us to get her when she wakes up in the morning instead of climbing down by herself. It's great. The girls and I are also trying to get out more so we don't go crazy being in the house all the time. Last week I took them to Beatty (an hour away) to a little candy shop that also sells ice cream. Kaiya was so excited to pick out her own ice cream and eat it all herself (this is the first time we've let her). She of course picked chocolate so it got everywhere, but it was worth it to see how happy it made her.
That's basically what we've been up to, and now that Leah is screaming again (she gets mad when no one is paying attention to her) I better end this.

Look Alikes? Not so Much...

My friend Stephanie recently posted on her blog a picture of each of her kids at the same age and the same pose to show how similar they look. You could guess which one was which, and then look at the answer. I guessed, and was totally wrong. She even has a boy and a girl, but they look so much alike, they are practically identical. It was a fun post, and made me think of how I thought our girls would look alike. When Leah was born, both Patrick and I were surprised that we hadn't just had another little Kaiya. So I thought I would post a picture of each of them at one month old to show how different they are. Of course, they are baby pictures, so they both have the baby look, but you can see that they don't really look alike. But we think they are both cute:)

In other news, we took Leah to the doctor for her 6 week checkup. When we told him about her crying pattern, he said, "so she has colic". I was trying to convince myself that I could have a baby without colic, and since she wasn't crying all day long like Kaiya did, just keeping to the entire evening, I thought maybe it was normal newborn crying. But apparently 5 hours in the evening isn't normal. So even the going off of dairy didn't seem to help, at least not enough for me to continue restricting my diet so much. The funny (or not so funny) thing is that her crying got much worse after our trip to Carson for her blessing, and with Kaiya her colic started right after our trip to Tokyo. We've decided never to travel with a newborn again.

Blessing Day

Two weeks ago we took a trip to Carson for Patrick's 10 year high school reunion, and while we were there he blessed Leah so that the family could be there. Despite all the chaos of the trip and trying to get everyone ready for 9am church, Leah did really well and didn't cry during the blessing. She was even awake the whole time. Patrick gave her a beautiful blessing, and it was really nice to have family and friends there for it. Here are some pictures of our little cutie in her blessing dress:

This picture kind of summarizes how Kaiya felt about Leah getting so much attention.

First Video

Poor Leah is the classic second child. By six weeks old I'm sure we had at least 500 pictures of Kaiya and several videos. We have considerably less of Leah. Even though she has been smiling for 3 weeks now this is the first time I've attempted to capture it on camera (amazingly, I was successful on the first attempt) and this is also the first video I took of her. I wanted to get her smiling on video, but instead, she sneezed, and Kaiya politely responded, "Bless you Leah". I thought it was cute anyway.

The Whole World is a Stage

I know the setting of this video is kind of odd, but it's the only place she will hold still long enough to film even a short movie. A few months ago, Kaiya started repeating the songs she has been hearing. At first it was just portion of them, but now there are several songs she knows all the way through. Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, ABCs, Popcorn Popping, Once There was a Snow Man are some of the songs she sings all the way through now. She usually won't sing the whole song unless she's doing it for herself, but this filming site is the other location that seems to be her stage. We are super proud of how fast she is picking up new words and that for the most part she even knows what she is saying. Not Bad for a 25 month old.

Week in Review

Today is Patrick's first day back at work after his 2 weeks off and home with us. Besides Kaiya not taking a nap and Leah having a few screaming bouts, it hasn't been too bad. Hopefully things will continue to go well. This week finally feels like we're getting out of the fogginess of having a newborn and resuming somewhat of normal life. At least sometimes. We took Leah to church Sunday for the first time. Here's a photo of the girls in their matching dresses:Too cute! I hope they don't hate me for it, but I like to dress them up to match. Leah did pretty well for her first time. But I remembered why heels aren't the greatest when you have to pace the hallways. We also tried giving the girls a bath together. We had only one incident, where Kaiya tried to help rinse Leah's hair by dumping a cup of water over her face, but besides that She was really good, and you can tell by the photo that Leah seems to like the bath just as much as Kaiya does. We took Leah to her two week checkup last week. She's gaining weight and doing great, but we were a little concerned that she was becoming very much like Kaiya was as a newborn. Kaiya began crying more and more every day and at about 3 1/2 weeks we knew she had colic. So we spoke with the doctor about that, and he suggested I eliminate dairy from my diet for 4 days, then on the fifth day start eating it again, and see what happens. So I did. Leah seemed really happy for those 4 days, and we thought maybe we were wrong and she was going to be fine. Then I went back on dairy the fifth day, and everything fell apart. It reminded me so much of Kaiya as a newborn. So we had a difficult day and I'm back off dairy. And now Leah seems fine again. Unfortunately for me, this means no ice cream or chocolate, not to mention all the rest of it, for some time. But it's definitely worth it to have a happy baby. Otherwise, Leah is getting bigger everyday and finally filling out her newborn clothes. Kaiya is (most of the time) liking her new role as a big sister, and Patrick and I are trying to function on less sleep. But we've survived the first 3 weeks!

More Leah

Here are a few more pictures of the newest addition. She's already a week old! Also, the results for the baby game are in, and Laura Rasmussen is the winner!! Amazingly, she was only off by 2 hours on the birth day and time, and 3 ounces on the weight! Hopefully she'll be that close on guessing for her own baby! By the way, I can't believe I came in absolute last. So much for motherly instincts.

Leah Rachel Taylor

She's here!! Our little Leah Rachel was born Monday morning at 5:48am. I started having contractions Sunday afternoon, and by dinner time I knew it was the real thing. I wanted to stay home as long as I could, so after washing dishes, sweeping the floor, picking up toys, and putting Kaiya to bed, we tried to relax a little and watch a DVD. I still didn't feel like I was ready to go to the hospital, so after a while we tried to go to sleep. I couldn't sleep at all, and at about midnight I decided we were definitely going to have to go to the hospital before morning. So I got up and started fixing Kaiya's food for the next day, since we were going to leave her with our neighbor, and we finished packing up and got ready to go. After our neighbor Nathalie came to stay with Kaiya, we started our 2 hour drive to the hospital. after a few bathroom stops and one very curious gas station attendant, we made it to the hospital around 3am. When we got there, I was only dilated to 3, but the contractions were coming really close together, so we were admitted. I didn't want to be hooked up to anything, but the nurse insisted I wear the fetal monitor and come back to the machine every 20 minutes to check it, so I wasn't able to walk around as freely as I had hoped. Patrick was so amazing during the whole labor. He rubbed my back during every contraction and helped me stay focused. After about 2 and a half hours the nurse came to check our progress, and said I was at about an 8. I was so relieved. I never thought during the labor that I couldn't do it anymore, but there were a few times I wasn't sure if I wanted to do it anymore. But once I heard how far along I already was I knew I could make it without any drugs. It was only a few minutes later that my water broke, and right away I needed to push. I told Patrick to go get the nurse, and when she came in she started yelling at me to stop pushing and wait for the doctor. I told her I couldn't help it and when another nurse came in to help she said "it's too late, she's crowning". So they flipped me over and the nurse delivered the baby as I lay sideways on the bed. It all happened really fast, but everything worked out great and the baby and I were totally fine. The doctor showed up about 15 minutes later, a little surprised that everything was overwith already. It was an amazing birth and this recovery has been so much better than it was the first time around. We're all home now and getting used to having a family of 4. Kaiya loves her little sister and wants to help out all the time. I realized when we were putting these pictures up that we don't even have a decent picture of the child yet, so more to come. But that's the good news for now!!