Echo Dawn

Finally! I didn't want to post pictures of our beautiful little baby if I couldn't attach a name to them. But now that we have the official birth certificate back with a finalized name, I can post these.

I really appreciate my sister jumping in and helping me with these pictures. I've always wanted to have an infant photo shoot, but I didn't really know how to go about it, and I really didn't have the energy to stop and do it. But Shado stopped by, and on the spur of the moment, she threw some things together to bring over. It was just the motivational boost I needed. The more we played around, the more creative we got. We are by no means professionals, but I had such a fun time doing them, and the important thing was that we did it. So thank you Shado, these wouldn't have happened without you.



Echo Dawn Stotlar



Sleeping under Daddy's hat



Watchin' over Baby



One of my favorite props we found to use.



Just peacefully sleeping

Playing around with some photo editing

Oil painting   =)

Belated, yes. But Happy Valentines Day!

We were really getting creative at the end. "Little Island Baby"

The rest of these are just different variations of the poses. I couldn't pick favorites.

Sweet dreams, lil' cowgirl!

Already lassoed my heart

This rocking horse was her great-great-Grandma's!

Brrr. It's cold, Mama.



She let us play with her for probably 4 hours and she just slept through everything.



Are you done yet?

ZZZZZZZZZZ

Boots and Saddles! All ready to ride.

Just a little note about the cute boots in these pictures. My good friend Janessa made them for my little girls. She is so crafty and talented. You can hop over to her website and see the other cool things she and her sister make at Huckleberry Hazel or her cake website. Amazing!

Sleeping on Daddy's hat.
We decided the hat band was too pokey to make her sit in the hat, but she would've fit.

Echo just had her 2-Month Well-Baby Checkup and here are her latest stats:

Height: 22-1/4 inches     50th percentile

Weight: 11 lbs 1.5 oz     50th percentile

   Head: 15 inches            Who knows?  =)

Echo has been a very sweet, mellow baby. She is usually very happy, with only a touch of colic now and again. She is very smiley and interactive, and she typically gives me a good 5-7 hour stretch of sleep every night. She already loves her sisters and loves it when they play with her. We love her so much!

These Days

I'm having a hard time getting new entries posted. Not because I don't have anything to say, but because I feel like if I can't write the "perfect" post about something, and usually in about a 5-10 minute timeframe, I don't write it. Throughout the day, I see things happening around me, or I have thoughts, and I think, "That would make a good blog entry" and then I go about my merry way and never even write it.

So, I've have to rethink my purpose in having a blog, and that was to help me cherish each day with my girls--on good days, yes, but more especially on crazy days, trying days, slow days, sick days, and BLACK days. Black days are the ones that I wish I could just erase from my calendar. They are usually days when I lose my temper, or I am so wrapped up in the latest "emergency" that I neglect to give the attention to my girls that they deserve, or I am overwhelmed and I run around all day trying to catch up from the day before, and by the time I get to the part where I get dressed for the day, it is time for bed--and usually later than I wanted to go to bed in the first place, which bodes evil for the next day as well. But I guess I have black days, partially because I create them for myself by going to bed late, or not planning ahead well enough, but also because I am human and they are part of this earthly experience. Every time they come around, I get to practice being patient, being humble, being charitable, and enduring them WELL.

The other quandary I have with blogging, is finding the balance between recording "real life" and recording what I want to remember in life. If I dwell on the black days, then I tend to have more of them, but if I only blog the positive things, then I feel like I am painting an insincere picture of my life. Is it fair to only paint pictures about the positive days on my blog, or will doing so, actually help me have more positive days? So my question is, how do I stay postive, but stay "real life"? Or am I totally missing the picture altogether? Is there something wrong with me?

So, aside from my own personal struggles, the girls are growing quickly and I love them.

Rain is forever finding little things and poking them places. I should have taken pictures, but whenever I go to use my sewing machine, I find pins poked in all the little holes on the machine, or foil wrappers shoved around the knobs, or jingle bells in the bobbin compartment. She also sprinkled the pins all over the carpet. This might have been okay if they were the decent kind of straight pin with the bright yellow head or something. However, those are still packed somewhere, so I've been using a few cheap, flat-headed, really short pins that I dug out here and there so I could do some sewing. It's a miracle we haven't embedded one in anyone's foot yet.

She also has a certain fascination with "pokies". This includes pins, stitch-pickers, screws, forks, and a myriad of other items that I can't seem to recall at the moment. It you don't believe me, I will issue a warning that you should check anything you are eating at my house before you eat it. See pictures below for a better expanation.

Here is Rain eating an innocent cluster of grapes.

Here is what I found when she was "FINISHED"

Need a closer look?

YUMMY!

Need a little iron in your diet?

Mesa is getting so grown up, too. Since I was on a blogging hiatus and didn't post results from Mesa's last Well-Baby checkup, which was a month and a half ago--ack!--here they are:

Head Circumference: 18"

Length: 30-3/4" ---97th percentile

Weight: 22.2 lbs ---95th percentile

She's been horribly sick for a week now, and doesn't really appear to be improving, even after a round of antibiotics. Not good. I have my suspicions that it might be RSV since there have been some cases popping up. But she has been amazingly good-spirited and I am thankful for that.

(Stealing Rain's sippy and feeling pleased about it.)

Poor sick baby, but still has a smile for Mom.

But I guess that will have to do for now because it is WAAAYY past breakfast and I'm headed into another "already-behind-but-I'm-okay-with-it" kind of day. Thanks for bearing with me through my long and comma-punctuated sentences.

Six months already

Mesa went in for her 6 month well-baby check-up at the beginning of the month. (It's taken me so long to post this that she is only a few days shy of 7 months--unbelievable). She is growing a lot -- I know, because she is getting super heavy to pack around. It's no wonder my hips are always out of wack, when they are always cocked one way or the other with almost 20 lbs latched to them. I take that back, not latched, more like balanced, because for some reason my children don't know how to hold onto ME, I'm always holding onto THEM. So anyway, here are some stats:

Weight: 18.5 lbs  (90th percentile)

Height: 27-3/4 in  (95th percentile)

Head: Sorry, didn't catch what she said.

I was trying to entertain Rain at the moment.

This little girl is just as loveable as the first one. Mesa is actually probably more laid back than Rain was. Mesa likes to chill with Daddy and she is very forgiving of Rain who tries to love and take care of her, but does a good job of mauling and squishing, sprinkled with hugs and kisses. Rain even occasionally shares her binky with Mesa. Pure sister love, that's all I can say.

Mesa LOVES to eat graham crackers. She has an obsession with food. She eats at least two HUGE bowls of cereal with applesauce or a pack of baby food--and screams when it's gone. At in the middle of there she eats pieces of bread, mom, bananas, graham crackers, mom, and anything else she can get her little chubby fingers on. She is getting more precise at grabbing things between her finger and thumb.

She has kept me up at night a lot lately but hopefully those stubborn teeth will poke through and we will once more see a little less of each other during the wee hours of the night. Last night was a major improvement since she had very little sleep throughout the day and was exhausted. But I still love her to pieces and her little giggles make it all worth it.