Sippy Cup

We give Payton a sippy cup of water at dinner time so she can practice and of course drink if she's thirsty. She'll drink it if we hold it for her, but if she does it herself she really just chews on it.

The dogs love Payton's dinner time, it's like they already know she will be dropping food eventually, see Ryleigh waiting patiently?!

5 Months

Payton turned 5 months old on September 6th, and yes I realize we are now closer to 6 months than 5, but so goes the life of a working mom (at least that's my excuse). With each new month more of Payton's personality shines through, she is a happy, sweet little girl who can turn on the drama when she wants, she keeps us pretty entertained! We love you baby girl!

Payton @ 5 months

We go in for a 6 month check up in a couple of weeks and will get some measurements then.

Food: 100% on the bottle now, she sort of made this decision for us as she preferred the bottle over nursing, she's on a combination of mom's milk and formula to stretch out the supply of good stuff as long as possible. My goal was 6 months so we will revisit in a couple of weeks, The working/pumping mom thing is quite the commitment, but I'm happy to do it for her. We started solid foods just after she turned 4 months. So far she eats one meal a day, dinner. She's a pretty good eater and doesn't seem to be picky yet... A couple of weeks into it I decided to attempt to make my own baby food, to my surprise it was a lot easier and less time consuming than I thought. I started with 2 avocados, 2 pears, and 4 sweet potatoes, Kole and I spend about an hour and a half and we have over a month's worth of food, not bad! We're going to let her try banana in the next couple of days. She's just started getting excited about her dinner in the last week or so.

Sleep: Thankfully (we know we are lucky) Payton is still a great sleeper, she sleeps all the way through the night from 7-8pm to 7-8am, it is wonderful! She still takes a morning and afternoon nap, usually about 1-1/2 hours and 2 hours, but it varies.

New Tricks: She rolled over a couple of days before she turned 5 months, she can roll both ways if she wants, but still doesn't do it very often. She prefers to stand! She loves her exersaucer and is usually content to play by herself for about a half hour, it's great and allows us to get stuff done. We have started putting her in the pack n play on our main floor with some toys and she will play in there as well. The dogs are still by far her favorite thing and she has learned how to blow raspberries with her mouth, not so cute when she does it while she's eating!

Happy (belated) 5 months Payton Audrey!

Solid Food & Baby Mum Mums

Payton has been eating solid food for over 3 weeks now and it is going pretty well. We started with rice cereal and even got the very fist meal on video totally expecting her to react to the foreign happenings in her mouth with her usual dramatic flare and to our surprise it was a total non-event. With the very first bite, she "chewed" and swallowed and looked at us like "what's the big deal?". It was pretty funny! She has now tried squash, sweet potatoes, carrots, apples, and pears and she seems to be enjoying it. She really likes the fruit and carrots, not a big fan of sweet potatoes though. For now we just give her dinner, sometimes she's totally excited and eats really well and other nights she could do without. I was blog surfing the other day and came across a product called Baby Mum Mums. They are a rice cracker snack for babies and they can have them as soon as they start solid foods. Payton is always interested in what we're eating, opening her mouth and reaching for our food and drink if she's close so I thought she might enjoy something she could hold onto and eat like real food. She thought it was pretty neat and after only a couple of times of trying to feed her eyes, nose, and hair, she got the hang of it and quite enjoyed her little snack. we got a kick out of watching her and even snapped a few pictures.

After looking at these pictures I realized my child has no neck! Hopefully that will come with time...?

Click the link below to watch her first cereal video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSBsLXZZwGY

1st Road Trip

We spent Labor Day weekend in Pinedale, WY visiting Kole's friend Trey and spending some time in part of the state that neither of us had been, We packed up the car on Thursday when we got home from work and when it was time to get Payton ready for bed we gave her a bath and a bottle and instead of putting her in her crib we buckled her into her car sear and hit the road. We planned to leave at bedtime in hopes that she would sleep for the 6 hour drive and she did! We left about 7pm and made one stop to fuel up and get some caffeine and we pulled into Trey's house about 1:30am. Payton mostly slept, she woke up a couple of times and looked around, but never made a sound and went right back to sleep, we think she must have thought she was dreaming!

We tried to sleep in on Friday, but since Payton had gone to bed at her normal time she was bright eyed and bushy tailed at about 6:45am and so our weekend getaway began. Trey had to work so we hung out at his house and relaxed for the morning. I took Koda for a walk to explore what we had missed when we arrived in the dark. Pinedale is really pretty and Trey has gorgeous views from where he lives. When Payton woke up from her morning nap Trey came home and took us to lunch on Freemont Lake. The lake is about 5 minutes from his house and has a resort and restaurant right on it. Lunch was great and the view was hard to beat. After lunch we took Payton home for a nap and we were pretty beat from our late night so we decided to join her. Friday night we grilled and just relaxed after Trey got home from work.

Saturday we went exploring in the Mountains (15 min from Trey's) and took Payton for her first hike. I carried her most of the way in the Moby wrap and she did great until about the last 15 minutes and she started to get fussy so Kole carried her and within a few minutes she had crashed in his arms. I guess the fresh air and exercise (we were getting) wore her out! Saturday afternoon we drove up to Jackson and spent the afternoon and evening in Jackson Hole. The drive was only a little over an hour and it was beautiful scenery. We walked around the town for a while and then Trey and Tyler met us for dinner. They treated us to a wonderful dinner at a great restaurant and then we made the trip back to Pinedale.

I have a funny story to share from dinner that night that I don't want to forget. Payton was sitting in her stroller and I was feeding her dinner (cereal w/ apples and squash) and I turned away from her to tell Tyler that she had started this new thing where she spits her food at us sometimes and thinks it's funny, I then proceeded to mimic her and Tyler started laughing and said "she totally just saw you tell me that" I turned back to look at Payton and she flashed me the biggest grin like she totally knew what I had just told him. We all laughed at the thought and then I continued to feed her, I kid you not, the very next bite a gave her, she took one look at me and then spit it all over! We all laughed so hard and I would never believe it had happened had I not seen it myself. Payton is a sweet baby, but I tell Kole all of the time I think she is going to give us a run for our money as she grows up. She has so much personality for a 5 month old, sometimes too much for her own good, it's crazy!

Sunday we went to lunch at the Pub that Trey always tells Kole about and had more good food and locally brewed beer. Trey took us to see the land he now owns, which is beautiful and then we ended up at the softball field right by his house. Kole had found a bucket of balls and a glove in Trey's garage and decided he wanted to play, so we did. We hit balls, fielded said balls (really I just ran back in forth in the outfield, didn't really field much), played soccer and tossed the football. Payton hung out in her stroller in the dugout and watched the festivities. After we were completely worn out which seemed to take far less time than it used to, we headed back to Trey's and parked ourselves on the couch and watched a movie while Payton napped. We grilled dinner again and just relaxed, it was a great day!

Monday morning we woke up, packed up the car and when Payton was ready to go down for her morning nap around 9:30 we hit the road again. She slept until about 11am and I joined her in the back seat and gave her a bottle. To my surprise she had a major blow out so I had to change a pretty messy baby on my lap on I-80, something I will never forget! We made it to Rawlins, WY which is about half way and we were hungry and Payton was ready to get out of her seat so we stopped at Subway and ate and let her stretch on the table. We fueled up got back ion the car about an hour later, I joined Payton again and have her a bottle. Without a fuss she fell asleep about 1:30 an slept until 4:40 when we turned on to a street near our neighborhood, we pulled in the driveway 5 minutes later!

The weekend was awesome, just what we needed! It was relaxing, the weather was great, we saw beautiful places and we went into it with only a few plans and did what sounded like fun the rest of the time. Our first road trip no longer just the two of us was a complete success, Payton couldn't have done better!

These pictures make me laugh, after we finished playing on the softball field Payton was ready for a bottle, but wouldn't take the one I brought for her because it wasn't warm enough ( a bit of a battle for us) so I just let her hold it so she wouldn't freak out until we could get back to Trey's and warm it up. She was so thrilled with herself and I think it should be an ad for Tommee Tippee!!

4 Month Professional Pics

Liz was in town for a weekend of photo sessions and had a couple of hours free on Saturday April 7th so she stopped by to take some pictures of Payton. Liz is so sweet about making time for us when she is in town and taking wonderful pictures. She is an amazingly talented photographer and we are very lucky that she likes us! Thank you very much Liz, we love you! These were some of our favorites.