The weather has been really nice this last week but it is supposed to all change next week. So we figured we would get out one last time and enjoy the warm weather. We decided to go down to the greenbelt and feed the ducks, as Lucas loves that. It was perfect weather and the fall colors were amazing. To bad next week (and probably until next May) is supposed to be pretty cold with a chance of snow.
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We had a fun Halloween this year. Lucas got a cool monkey costume that Jill found for him and we actually found a smaller monkey costume for McKinley to wear. We ended up going to 4 different events, so Lucas ended up with a lot of candy. But he seemed to really enjoy it this year and didn’t get scared too many times! It was also really nice weather so that made it even better.
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Well we carved our pumpkins for FHE this past Monday. I don’t know if they’ll last till Halloween, but we couldn’t wait! We got a pumpkin for each of us from my parents house. They had a pretty good crop of pumpkins this year and Lucas loved picking them from the garden.
I did my own plus Lucas’ and Kryssi did hers and McKinley’s. Kryssi’s first one didn’t work out, part of it broke off, so she had to throw that one away. But the three we were successful with turned out really good, in my opinion. Lucas wasn’t sure about it at first because I told him he could help me get the pumpkin guts out. But once he saw the “guts” were just seeds and other slimey stuff, he helped out and liked it a lot. But he got bored with the actual carving part and didn’t stay around until I light the candles.
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Well I can’t believe that McKinley is almost a month old already! I guess time really does fly when you are having fun. She has been such a good baby, maybe not sleeping as much as we’d like at night but nothing bad at all. She rarely cries unless she is hungry and Lucas has been such a great help and he loves his sister. I think his favorite thing to do is look at her and give her kisses. He is learning to be gentle with her so that is good.
McKinley has been gaining weight good, or at least at last check she was. We had to bring her into the doctor at two weeks, and she was up to 6 lbs. 7 oz. I believe. So after dropping under 5 lbs. when we brought her home, she has gained weight well. If she keeps it up she’ll pass Lucas soon!
Our next step is to move her from her bassinet in our room to the crib in Lucas’ room. I think that will be a little harder adjustment for him to have to share his room, but hopefully it goes over well. I’m most worried about him bugging her and trying to play with her during the night.
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On October 9th we went to Bear World with my parents. They were having a discount that day and we thought it would be fun to get out and do something while the weather was still good. We had never been to Bear World so it was a lot of fun. After driving around the park and seeing the animals, they have a little gift shop, where we got free fudge samples, some carnival rides, baby bears, a petting zoo, and a place you can feed fish.
Lucas wanted to go on a train ride they had but first we took him on a car ride. I was going to sit with him to make sure he was okay, but a girl, who looked to be at least in her teens, decided to take my spot so he had to ride alone. Needless to say, he didn’t like it and was done with the rides after that. But he loved feeding the fish and petting the animals.
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We got to go home from the hospital on Thursday morning, so we’ve been on our own now for a few days. Everything has been going really good. We’ve had to take McKinley back to the doctor a few times already to check her weight and jaundice. Luckily she checked out better for jaundice the second time. Both times she had gained weight, so hopefully she’ll keep doing that.
Lucas has been great with her. I keep expecting him to have issues but so far he has been great. He loves giving her kisses and hugs, and he loves looking at her. He is a great help with whatever we need done. There’s only been a few incidents: he hit her with a ball, that I guess was more my fault since I pitched it to him and he hit it. He licked her after she was sticking her tongue out so I guess he decided to show her his tongue. And he tried to get her out of her bassinet, so grandma had to explain to him that only mom or dad gets her out. But all in all he’s adjusted great so far.
Getting her pajamas on. Nothing fits her very well, since she is so small. But she’ll grow into them!
Lucas checking out his little sister. He loves looking at her and every time she opens her eyes, he has to tell her “Hi, I’m Lucas.”
Her first smile caught on camera. She smiles a lot when she is sleeping. She has even laughed a few times. So she must have good dreams.
Brother and sister hanging out.
She sleeps a lot, like most newborns, but when she is awake, she is wide-eyed and loves looking around. She seems to have a pretty strong neck and she’ll look from side to side.
Well for those that haven’t heard, we welcomed a new baby girl into our family on Tuesday at 6:22 am. We chose McKinley as her name with Colleen as her middle name. She was small, only 5lbs. 7oz. but after how small Lucas was, and being 3 weeks early, we figured she would be small. But she was healthy and everything went great.
Lucas checking out his new sister with two happy grandmas!
After getting her first bath. All nice and clean!
Lucas has been a great big brother. He loves give her kisses and he loves telling everyone about his little sister kinley
She has more hair then Lucas did and it is dark. She has even more hair on the back of her head but it will probably wear off.
After being born, she was wide-eyed for at least an hour. Now every once in awhile she wakes up and is wide-eyed and loves just looking around. She is so amazing!
Well we’ve had a rather interesting last few days. On Tuesday, Kryssi was having some pains so she went to the doctor and found out she was in early labor. This was rather unexpected for us both, and it definitely got my heart racing. They told her it could be any day, or it could stop on its own, but they thought it would happen within a few days based on how far along she was.
Well on Wednesday morning she was having worse contractions and they were pretty consistent so we went back to the doctor. We should have just gone to the hospital as we waited at the doctors for probably an hour before getting in and then waited some more in the office. But she wasn’t any farther along then the day before so they sent us home.
Now today she is feeling a lot better with not nearly as much pain so I don’t know what will happen at this point. I wish this little girl would just make up her mind! But before all this happened, Kryssi was having a lot of dreams about the baby coming and I think on Friday or Saturday she dreamed the baby was born on a Sunday so maybe that will be the day.
So I went from feeling unprepared, thinking I had stuff to still get done and what not, and now we just wait and wait so it would be nice to have resolution one way or the other. But Lucas has been great with it all. He knows he gets to go play with Grandma when baby sister comes, so he is way excited for that.
Lucas got this awesome BYU jersey from Grandma Kotter and he loves it. He wants to wear it all the time.
Both of us dressed for the game. I thought it would be lucky but they lost anyway. Oh well.
Kryssi thought this was pretty funny so she had to take a picture of both of us reading at the table, waiting for lunch.
A couple weeks ago, Julie and Julisa threw a baby shower for Kryssi. I wasn’t there (except at the end for some pie, which was great) but Kryssi had a great time and was very thankful to both Julie and Julisa for the time and effort put into the shower. We got a bunch of nice clothes, as well as a lot of blankets.
This was the “cake” they had at the shower. Julie made it out of a bunch of different baby items. Most of it was made up of diapers, but there are wash clothes, a pacifier, bottles, toys, etc. that make up the rest of it.
Here are the various clothes that we got. Kryssi was happy to get some nice girl baby clothes.
The blankets that Kryssi got. There is a lot of them, and we got a lot with Lucas, but they are all nice. I believe most, if not all of them are homemade, or handmade, however you want to look at it.
The baby blessing dress that Kryssi’s sister Katie made for her.
Well summer has come to a close and I am back in school. I was excited to start again, as I’m anxious to learn more and grow my skill set. This will be my third semester and after this one I’ll have one more to go. It wasn’t looking like it would be a very hard year but I ended up adding a class that normally would be taken next semester. It’s called Supervised Work Experience and it is basically just an internship. One came up and my teacher gave me the option to do it so I decided I might as well. So that makes my schedule a lot busier!
Kryssi is getting closer to the end of the pregnancy, which is really hard to believe. Time has just flown by! Her due date is Oct. 19th, so not many more weeks left to go. So far everything has been going great, no real issues. She’s had problems with heart burn lately, so hopefully we can find something that will help with that.
Lucas is growing and changing every day it seems. He is so smart and seems to learn new words every day. He is always making us laugh and we love having him around. That was the hardest part of going back to school, leaving him here. But it is wonderful to come home and see how excited he is. He has such a wild imagination and he seems so much smarter then I’d ever expect a 2-year old to be. I think we’ve finally got him sleeping in his toddler bed for naps as well as at night. He hasn’t slept in his crib for a while, so that is good. We are working on potty training him, which is coming along fairly well. He loves using his potty, and even tells us sometimes he has to go. I think if we worked a little harder at it he’d be trained fairly fast.
Lucas with his cheesy grin sitting on his chair he got for his birthday. He has a new shirt on that was part of a bunch of older clothes Great Grandma brought us that were stored at their house.
Lucas was taking some pictures with the camera (one of his favorite things to do) and he wanted pictures of himself taken so this is what we got.
Lucas dressed up in his Superman costume from last Halloween. It’s small on him but he has been in a Superman/superhero kick lately. He watched The Incredibles, and since then he’s loved pretending to fly around as Superman. I reminded him he had a costume, so he had to have it out and try it on. He flew around in it for a while. It was pretty cute!
A recent picture of Kryssi. You can’t really see her pregnant belly at this angle but it is there, trust me. Everything is growing at a normal rate and hopefully this baby will be more then the 6 lbs. Lucas was.