Scarlett started laughing this week.



It's music to my ears.

Labels: The Fam

One of Caleb's siblings, Toby, came to visit Salt Lake. Maybe this will encourage some more of his siblings to come and visit. Hint hint.

Labels: The Fam

I have decided to participate in NaBloPoMo this month. This means I will be posting every single day. I am actually really excited about challenging myself. I find that I had all of these goals that I kept postponing "...until after I have the baby." Well I've had the baby and now I find that my goals are on a much smaller scale. For example, I was going to learn how to cook. I had plans to research different recipes and try new things, maybe even watch a cooking show or two, but now I find I make it a goal just to clean my kitchen. I guess we all need to start small!

Yesterday was Halloween, which is a holiday I am starting to enjoy more and more. At work we all dressed up in our favorite decade and had a Halloween party, pretty much all day. This is one of the benefits of working with kids, the holidays are decadently celebrated. I was a hippie from the 60's. Caleb called me a tree hugger and Micaela told everyone her mama was a tree hugger for Halloween.

Micaela was a witch...



and Scarlett was a cow.



We took the girls trick-or-treating, which was a hit with Micaela. She asked after every house, "are we going to get more candy?" Finally I called it quits, much to the dismay of the other members of my family who would have stayed out all night.

Labels: The Fam

Micaela now has an imaginary friend. Her name is Dara. Which may sound familiar because it is only one letter off from every preschoolers favorite little espanol speaking buddy. Not sure if Dara also speaks Spanish. However, she is an amazing play date. Her favorite game is puppies, where Micaela will be Perdy and Dara will be Pongo. Yes my daughter plays imaginary games with her imaginary friend. Dara also has her own opinions. For example, Dara always wants to go to the playground or McDonalds. Sometimes Dara even says its alright to do things mama says no to. Today Micaela informed me that Dara was waiting at home, and when we opened the door she ran up and hugged Dara. She also told her that she missed her. Hmmm....I'm interested to see what Freud would say about my daughter's psychological need to invent an imaginary friend.

Labels: The Fam

So I just had my first parent-teacher call with Micaela's preschool teacher. She reported that Micaela is doing well, she transitions well, listens and answers questions, and appears to enjoy herself. This is not surprising, as Micaela loves interacting with other children, but here's the kicker, her teacher said she has a little boy in her class that she always hangs out with. Apparently they even walk with their arms over each other's shoulders! Her teacher said they are "the class couple!" Seriously I have to worry about this already? Is she too young to get "the talk?"

Innocent looking for now...

The following pictures are completely unrelated, but I know my mother will appreciate seeing new pictures of Scarlett. So here's some pictures of Scarlett NOT crying mom!

Spending quality time with dad




Jeans are very important to me so I had to take a picture of her first pair of jeans. I'm glad someone around here can fit into cute jeans.

Labels: The Fam

We are excited, another football win for the U!!


Touchdown!

We are upset, BYU had a win too:(

Labels: The Fam

Today Scarlett is one month old! I cannot believe it has already been that long. It's been a fun first month of life, visiting friends and family, but we are now home for a while and establishing a routine.
I am very excited that a few nights ago Scarlett started sleeping through the night! She eats at 11pm and sleeps until 6am! I never thought I would be so excited to wake up at 6am. Ok so I am not excited to wake up at 6am and just yesterday I was yelling and crying to Caleb about how tired I was, but I've been doing better. I've even begun doing my workouts in the morning, which helps me wake up and go to bed earlier.
In other news Scarlett has gained two pounds. She has been to the doctor a few times, and she is so much bigger every time. She had a nasty case of Thrush, which thankfully is all gone now, although it never seemed to affect her eating.
She also loves to be held. At first there was nothing or nowhere else she would want to be, but she's starting to like her swing, sleeps at night in her bassinet, and loves her car seat/stroller. She hates her bouncer. Especially the music and nature sounds it makes. She is most entertained when Micaela is playing with her. She seems completely in awe of Micaela and follows her with her eyes every time she's around. Micaela is hilarious because she says the same things to Scarlett everyday.

"Oh sweetheart you are so pretty."

"Look at that hair!"

"Good boy Scarlett" (She does know that Scarlett is a girl, but she always uses the pronoun "he" when describing her)

"You're fine Scarlett, you're fine."

She also wants to hold her. All the time. And she doesn't want to give her back. Which would be ok I didn't have to balance Scarlett awkwardly in her arms.

Overall she's coping very well with our new addition. I think Caleb and I are coping as well. I'm starting to feel a little more normal and working on losing my baby weight. I have a goal to lose it all by Thanksgiving so I can enjoy stuffing my face without worrying about calories. Wish me luck!

Labels: The Fam

So after our drive to Reno and back we decided we needed a bigger car. Two car seats in our economy size car was not cutting it. We made it with just two cars for almost 6 months now. Let me explain the real reason why we have to have three cars, and I'm sure you will agree that it is all Caleb's fault.
Caleb loves cars, particularly mustangs. He has an older mustang that he just can't part with. Although it sat in our garage for almost three years, waiting to be repaired, he was never able to give it up. Which is a story in itself, as he had multiple offers but never found a buyer "worthy" of it. Seriously he wouldn't sell it to any of the people who offered to buy it because he didn't think they would care for it the way it should be cared for. Hence, I finally agreed (or gave up) and we decided to keep the car. So two cars would be fine. Except we live in a city that has snow during the winter and fails to properly plow the roads. This means that it is really not safe to drive the mustang in the winter. Although this is a point we disagree on, because Caleb believes that he can safely drive the mustang in the snow, and I believe that I do not want him to die.
Even though it is Caleb's fault we had to buy another car, I did agree that this new car could be his car. I agreed to this because every car we have ever bought has been my car. I even got his new car when we got married, which we don't mention because I "killed" it (aka totaled it). The funny thing is he still wants to drive the mustang until it snows, so he is letting me "borrow" his new car.
Here's a picture of the new car. Although this is just a picture from the website, as I am too lazy to go outside and take a real picture.

We now are an official Ford family, as all three of our cars are Fords.

Labels: The Fam

This last week has flown by so fast I can hardly keep up. For those of you who don't know, I am not a homebody. I prefer to be busy and on-the-go. So although it's been little more than a week since Scarlett was born, I have been out quite a lot. I've gone to visit friends and family members and I even went to work for an evening.
I am particularly excited about Micaela starting preschool. This has been quite the anxiety provoking situation for me, as I didn't start looking for a preschool until July, which apparently is crazy because shouldn't I have known that preschools start enrolling for fall during December of the previous year? Also, shouldn't I have known that preschool is expensive? Fortunately I found a preschool that I felt good about that put her on a waiting list and was just expensive, as opposed to expensive. More good news came when she actually got off the waiting list and made it in a class before school started. Even more good news came when I realized that we could go back to school shopping, and to top it off we got to go back to school shopping with grandma and grandpa.


Needless to say she absolutely loved her first day and constantly tells me that she is going back. Almost to reassure herself. Like "I'm going back to preschool." With a long pause as if she's challenging me to tell her otherwise.

I've had a lot of questions from people about Micaela's adjustment to the new baby. So far, it has been a lot better than I expected. She loves the baby, but she is gentle and not overly suffocating. She hates it when the baby cries. Whenever she cries, Micaela yells from wherever she's at "I'm coming baby Scarlett!" The other day she asked why the baby was crying, and I told her "I think she just wants her mama." To which she replied "no, I think she just wants her Micaela."
Although she loves the baby, we have noticed that the first few days were a little difficult for her. She started fake crying a lot more and requested to be held by both of us, something she normally doesn't want anymore. This has faded over the days, and we're starting to see more of our "big girl" Micaela back.


We're going out of town for the next week and I wanted to post some updated pictures of Scarlett before we left. I can't believe how much she has grown in just a week. And yes, I do dress her up and make her wear ridiculous bows in her hair. Someday, most likely when she is going through a rebellious phase and wearing all black, I will fondly remember the days when I could make her wear whatever girly outfits I wanted.

Labels: The Fam

I find myself at a loss for words to describe one of the happiest days of my life. On Monday August 11th, our second little princess was born. It began about 1:30am, when I woke up with terrible contractions. After the first two contractions I told Caleb I was in labor. Now I have said that phrase quite a few times over the past few weeks, mostly joking, but I knew without a doubt that this was for real. My contractions were about 15 to 20 minutes apart, so I told Caleb to go to sleep and I would wake him up in the morning and I camped out in the living room with the Twilight series until 7am. I had a doctors appointment scheduled that morning, and I called right when the office opened, explained my situation and was told to go to the hospital. It was then that it really hit me and I began to clean. Yes I was convinced I needed to clean the house before we could go to the hospital, even though I have been cleaning the house for the last month!

When we got to the hospital I was sure they were going to tell us to come back when my contractions were closer together, but after examining me and noting I was almost dilated to a 6 they said I could stay. Fortunately I have an amazing family who dropped everything to make it to the hospital. My parents took the first flight out, my aunt left work, and my sister and brother-in-law drove down from Idaho. Oh and Caleb took the night off of work as well:)Thanks guys!

Surprisingly, my labor was kind of fun. We watched the Olympics and pre-season football (hoping that this baby wouldn't becomes a Packers fan by osmosis) and the contractions weren't as bad as I remembered. I had an amazingly nice nurse who said she would stay after her shift if necessary to see my baby being born.


By the way my father was the photographer, so there were many odd pictures of things like the TV, or my doctor's watch. This is me and my aunt Kristi, who was my unofficial labor coach/assigned to make sure Caleb didn't pass out.

We named her Scarlett Adele DeCremer. It took us a while to decide on a middle name, but we chose to name her after my grandmother on the suggestion of my parents. We felt it was a good fit, as both names are somewhat old fashioned.

Labels: The Fam

So Micaela was tagged by Grayson to do this survey. It was a little advanced, so I had to re-word a few things so she could understand. I was impressed she knew so much!

1. What is something mom always says to you?
Shake it (I think she is referring to the shake it song we always sing)

2. What makes mom happy?
Dada (how cute)

3. What makes mom sad?
cry (this is funny because whenever she is crying I ask her why and she says I'm sad, and when I ask why she's sad she says "because I cry")

4. How does mom make you laugh?
Tickles

5. What was mom like as a child?
She didn't quite get this

6. How old is your mom?
2 (in her defense she only knows two ages, 2 and 3 and she knows we're not the same age)

7. How tall is your mom?
As tall as hair

8. What is her favorite thing to do?
The water playground (aka the Herriman splash pad)

9. What does your mom do when you're not around?
Work

10. If your mom becomes famous, what will it be for?
For dada (maybe his groupie?)

11. What is your mom really good at?
being happy

12. What is your mom not very good at?
A bad girl (?)

13. What does your mom do for her job?
Toys (partially right, I do play with toys at my job)

14. What is your mom's favorite food?
Spaghetti

15. What makes you proud of your mom?
Making spaghetti (or buying it at The Old Spaghetti Factory and taking it home)

16. If your mom were a cartoon character, who would she be?
Belle

17. What do you and your mom do together?
Play outside

18. How are you and your mom the same?
She couldn't get this one

19. How are you and your mom different?
Or this one

20. How do you know your mom loves you?
Kisses

Labels: The Fam

This is Micaela's preggo picture of me. She just couldn't get my face, and when I told her to get my face, she got only my face and not my belly. We decided my belly would be more interesting than my face to post.

For those who haven't heard, I am scheduled to pop this baby out on August 13th at 7:30 am. Apparently the hospital doesn't realize that the majority of my family (Caleb and Micaela) do not arise at such an awful hour, but I'm hoping they'll make an exception. We were told we could only have 4 people in the labor room, and Caleb has gracefully offered to sacrifice his spot for anyone willing to come lend a hand. He gets a little queasy at hospitals, but I assured him that I would be the one doing all the work and he just gets to sit and look pretty.

Change of subject...on the 4th of July we got to go back to Reno! We had such an amazing time. We haven't been back since Thanksgiving and we were able to see almost everyone we wanted to see. Micaela enjoyed the fireworks, and Caleb and I went with Katy and my dad to see Boston in concert. I enjoyed the loud music, but was unable to stand the entire time, possibly because of my recent weight gain and the high heels I refuse to part with. Which could possibly have something to do with my constant back pain??

We saw movies, ate food you can't get in Utah (In and Out, El Pollo Loco, Super Burrito...) and visited with friends and family. Micaela played with her grandparents non-stop and had a chance to visit with her cousins.

Also, I have become more domestic. I usually shy away from building anything. I am not a handy, fix-it-yourself kind of person. I prefer to have things fixed for me, less chance of me making a bigger mess. I just don't have that intelligence that some people possess to be able to put things together. However, one day I decided to build all of the baby stuff I ordered. Here it is.

I built the baby bouncer, swing and bassinet all by myself. Except for one mistake that would have been fine, but Caleb noticed it and decided to fix it. No, I didn't have to use any more tools than a screwdriver to build this stuff, but I am proud of myself and I plan on building even more things...things that come with instructions and labeled pieces.

While in Reno I also made some baby blankets. I have been wanting some bright and unique blankets, so I made them myself, after shopping in my mother's sewing room and enlisting her help. Once again, this may be something that most people can do, but I have never used a sewing machine before so this was a big step!


The baby's room is pink and brown so these should match well. I'm also working towards making a bag. By working towards I mean my mother showed me a picture and I thought it looked cute.

So much else has been going on, but I think this is a long enough post. I'm excited to have Internet access again and look forward to blogging more often. I'm hoping this baby will be here soon and promise to post pictures ASAP when she makes her debut!

Labels: Just Me, The Fam

Ok I have been a horrible blogger lately. I have had so much to blog about and so little time, and everytime I thought about everything I had to blog about it seemed like too much work. So I am going to have to prioritize. I would say the most eventful thing that happened this month was our five year wedding anniversary. Caleb and I have now been together for 6 and a half years. That half year is important because I keep joking that we will be getting "the seven year itch" in the next couple of months.
I've talked about our relationship before on this blog and if you haven't heard the story about how we met you can read that here. Basically it all still applies. We are still in love and our relationship has only gotten better as we are both (finally!) done with the stress of school and he has given up video games!
For our anniversary we went to Vegas for the weekend. You may wonder what a pregnant woman would do in Las Vegas, and I myself was wondering what I would do as I don't drink or gamble, but we had a blast. I haven't been to Vegas in years and I forgot how much fun it is. The abundance of shopping and good food is amazing. Oh and the weather, let me just say how nice it was to be in warmth, as Salt Lake has apparently decided that Spring is not a season worth celebrating, let's just keep winter for an extra three months. Still bitter. So our anniversary weekend was great and child free, as Micaela stayed with family while we went and celebrated.
I found these pictures of us and scanned them in the computer. If anyone were to ask, I would say that Caleb and I still look the same, but after looking at these pictures I realize that we have aged!

This is our first official date when I was 19-years-old.


This was one of our engagement pictures


May we make it past the seven year itch and celebrate many more anniversarys!

Labels: The Fam

Micaela has a new favorite game. I take full responsibility for it too. I believe most kids enjoy playing with plastic food and pretending to cook and serve dinner. Well it is no surprise to anyone who knows us that there is very little cooking or serving dinner going on in our house. We do, however, often go out to eat. Micaela can now even order for herself. It's the same every time. Chocolate milk and noodles please. So I guess I shouldn't be too surprised that her new favorite game is taking orders. She will come up to me and Caleb, with a little notepad and pen and say "what do you want?" Lately she has engaged Caleb in this game and he will order, and then ask her in return what she would like. I found the notepad that he wrote her order on and thought it was too funny. I just had to share.
Micaela ordered:
red juice
cake
noodles
ice cream
chocolate milk
cereal
bike
playground
disneyland
baloon
cinderella
popcorn
airplane
ball
baby
golf clubs
Meet The Robinsons

With this kind of an order I hope she planning on leaving a large tip.

Labels: The Fam

This has been a good week for our little family. The most exciting thing would have to be Caleb passing his commercial license exam! This basically means that he is done with all of his flight training. This is a huge deal for us because he has been working on this for the past four and half years and it has been a huge sacrifice of time and money for us. He has been studying non-stop for the past few weeks and he has been such a joy to live with as he has been stressed out. I was honestly wondering what he would do if he didn't pass, because there is no way I would have let him come home. Fortunately we got to have our celebration date night this Friday which was an opportunity for us both to de-stress. The best part was the play we were going to see was actually not a play, but a ballet! I was thrilled and Caleb didn't think it was so bad until he realized that there is no talking in ballets. He was pretty much done with it at that point, and I let him leave early to walk the 10 miles to get the car. The worst part about this is there is absolutely no way he will go with me to see The Nutcracker this Christmas, as he has sworn off ballets for the rest of his life. I am already strategizing to start Micaela in ballet, therefore he would be required to break his vow and attend her dance recitals.

I have been eating and growing at an alarming rate. I decided it was time to post another preggo picture, and soon realized how much I hate these pictures. Especially as I decided not to put on makeup or do my hair, so pardon the "just got out of bed look."



25 weeks in, 15 to go!

Labels: Just Me, The Fam