Berlyn's First Laugh

So after family pictures on Sunday we all went to my parents house for dinner (ham, corn, scallop potatoes, and homemade french bread. mmmmm). After dinner we were all sitting around the dining room table and Uncle Talor just starts doing his Donald Duck noises and all of a sudden she starts cracking up and couldn't stop. Bear hurried and got it on video. It was so funny we were all dying laughing. Towards the end it started to scare her, she didn't know whether to laugh or cry. She was pretty tired. She crashed right afterwards. AH we love her!

Family Pictures 2011

This past Sunday we had our family pictures taken by our long time friend Marci. She took ours last year as well. She does a great job. The lighting and location were perfect.

Now for picture overload....

These look amazing. I love my family!

Thanksgiving 2011

Berlyn's First Thanksgiving. This year we were with Bear's family. They all came down from Utah. Bear's siblings met Berlyn for the first time. They decided to start driving tuesday night and got to our house early Wednesday morning. CRAZY! They were all exhausted and pretty much passed out on the floor as soon as they got here. Bear's siblings were so excited to meet Berlyn. Only Bear's parents had seen her before when they came down for Berlyn's baby blessing at the beginning of October. So it had already been over a month since his parents saw her last. And man is she a lot bigger now. I think she weighed almost 9 pounds for her blessing, and now she is probably almost 13 pounds...maybe more. She is a chunk, but a cute one. They just kept passing her around and could not get enough of her...I don't blame them.
Well that Wednesday night we went to Bear's sister Brittany's engagement party at Aunt Marci's house. Brittany is marrying Rodolfo from Argentina. They are cute together.

Thursday, Thanksgiving, Bear ran the Turkey trot. He ran a best time in his Prefontaine tank and shorts and mustache.

While Bear was gone, baby and I went to the PACKED Walmart to get the ingredients we needed to make stuffing and candied yams to take for dinner. Bear got home a little bit after us and we made the stuffing and candied yams and quickly ran out the door to meet everyone at Grandma Crismon's house for Thanksgiving dinner. We had a great time. Lots of mashed potatoes, rolls, stuffing, candied yams, turkey, salad, olives, green bean casserole, and of course PIE, pumpkin, blueberry and apple. YUM! Even though I shouldn't have, I had a little bit of stuffing and mashed potatoes and pie.....and let's just say baby has been a little cranky since :/ oops... We stayed over there pretty much all night.

Friday we didn't really see his family at all. They came over that night just to see Berlyn. They had a busy day out and about. We all gathered in our front room listening to Bear, Lexa, and Brody play some music. Then it turned into just Bear ha he sure is like his dad...he loves to be the center of attention around his family...and they think he is soooo funny it's hilarious. Bear was trying to make up a song about Rodolfo, but it wasn't working out so great....but since then he has mastered a song they need to hear :)

Saturday, Bear and Grandpa Fred went on a long bike ride, 50 miles while the girls went to the Chandler mall to see Aunt Erica while she was working. We had a fun time. This was a great weekend. Glad the Behrmann's came down. We love spending time with them.

Here are a few photos....baby was sleeping, it was late. Uncles Brett and Brody are missing from these pictures, but there is Rodolfo, Lexa, Brittany, Berlyn, Michelle, Shelby and Fred.

 so they all pretended they were sleeping too...

Almost there!

So I only have ONE more pound to lose to be at my pre-pregnancy weight! ONE! Let me type it again....ONE! whoo hoo!!! AND at the beginning of the week before last, I FINALLY fit into my regular jeans again! LIFE IS GOOD!

ALSO...Berlyn's hair is long enough to put into a ponytail. haha Let's hope it stays that way!

I wish I would have gotten her whole face in there, but oh well... still cute.

ASU vs. USC

Today Berlyn went to her first swim meet ASU vs. USC. She was such a good baby (now that mommy is not eating dairy and wheat, yes it has helped A TON!). We dressed her up in her cute ASU onsie that my friend Kayleen gave her when I graduated. Daddy was sporting his new "fear the fork" shirt. It was pretty nice outside and not too hot, so we were able to stay the whole time. Berlyn cannot wait 'til she is able to swim! She is gonna be sooooo fast with us as her parents.

She even took a little nap :)

(You can't see it, but she is making the pitch fork sign with her left hand....She wanted ASU to win)

My Baby Diet

Baby is sleeping, so I am blogging :)

So as you know (from the "gripe water" post) that baby has been a bit fussy lately. Even though the gripe water helped some she still is being a little stinker sometimes. So, as advised by my hubby, I went to talk to my aunt who pretty much knows anything and everything. We tried some "muscle testing" on baby and I to determine where the crying was coming from. (If you want to know what this is just ask). I knew something was upsetting her little tummy, but I didn't know what. (She has also had GREEN poo for the last couple weeks. Yes GREEN, not the normal mustard color it should be. The doctor said this is okay if she is still gaining weight, but I haven't believed her....). Anyways...we came to the conclusion of a food allergy. We decided I would cut out ALL dairy and wheat products for 2 weeks to see if this would help. So pretty much I can't eat ANYTHING. All I can eat are fruits, veggies, eggs, and meat (Yes all the healthy stuff I should be eating anyways, but where's the fun in that??? AND Thanksgiving is coming up. DANG IT!). The good thing about it is that me and baby will be healthier and I will prolly lose these last 6 pounds I've been hangin onto quicker....and maybe some more :) (That would be nice!). I am also taking some probiotics and doing a 20 minute trampoline workout everyday. She also lent me her power juicer so I can whip up some carrot/apple/spinach juice everyday. How nice is she? Well in two weeks I will let you know if this worked! Hopefully I can be as strict as I need to be on the diet. :/

NO Dr. Pepper (even though I haven't had one since I got pregnant, I have been craving one so bad!!)

NO Snickers



No cookies

No brownies

Everything I love I cannot have. Yes, I have a sweet tooth, but I can give it up for a happy and healthy baby and to be the trophy wife my husband deserves ;)

Just Because

So I wanted to show off some more cAute photos of our baby girl.

These are from her first trip to church when she was about 2 1/2 weeks old. She is wearing one of my dresses from when I was a baby :)

 

Berlyn in her cute shirt that her Auntie Sabrina gave her :)

Us at one of my best friend's wedding reception. (Kayleen's)

This was just last saturday :)

This was last Sunday. I love baby girls in tights. So cute!

Haha and then one minute later after taking these pictures....

 Fast asleep.

Hahaha! Yeah we put her like this....

WE LOVE BERLYN! (Can't you tell??)

Gripe Water

Wow! I have had a cranky baby lately! At first I had no clue why, then I started looking up stuff to try and find out what was wrong because it made me so sad to see her cry all the time. Whenever I would try to feed her she would protest and did not want to eat and it worried me because she was eating less. After much research I thought she developed thrush (a yeast infection in her mouth and on her bottom) and that maybe I had it on my chest too. I thought maybe it hurt her to eat, so that was the reason for her crying. I called the doctor's office and made an appointment because if she and I did have it I didn't want it to get worse. Berlyn's doctor is not at the office on Monday's so we had to see another doctor. She looked in Berlyn's mouth and in her doctor and confirmed she had thrush! OMG! I read that it was so hard to get rid of! She prescribed us some Nysatin drops and cream. When we got home I researched that and read that the Nysatin drops only work about 50% of the time to get rid of thrush in the mouth! Great! I didn't want those odds, I wanted something that worked! I went out and bought some Grapefruit seed extract that I would take to get it out of my system and I started taking some probiotics.
Berlyn's rash cleared up quick with the cream, but I still didn't know how her mouth was looking (she is very stubborn and would not open up wide enough to let me see). Well two days later we went back to the doctor for her two month check up and shots. We saw her regular doctor this time. I told her what was going on and what we were doing for it. She looked in Berlyn's mouth and said she did not have thrush! What?!?!?! So turns out she never even had it and the other doctor gave her stupid antibiotics for nothing! Gosh dang. Her doctor suggested maybe she just got collicy or she has gas/tummy troubles. She suggested to get Mylicon drops or Gripe Water.

So we stopped the antibiotics quick if we didn't need it in the first place. We also went home and researched both Mylicon drops and gripe water. We went with gripe water. It is made of all natural ingredients and it is not "medicine." It is supposed to help relieve gas bubbles and it has a calming effect on babies and let me tell you, she has been a much happier baby. Turns out all she has is gas and we've all experienced that. It can give you sharp pains sometimes. She is eating much better and definitely not crying as much. THANK YOU GRIPE WATER!

So when we were at my parents for Halloween and she was being so cranky, it was just gas. But seriously she was crying for a couple hours straight. I had pumped some milk to give her in a bottle but every time we would try to feed her she would scream. The one person who finally got her calmed down enough to eat her bottle was her Aunt Sabrina. Thank you Aunt Sabrina for helping us that night! We love you! :)

First Halloween!

Well Berlyn was two months old and one day on her first Halloween. We dressed her up as an ASU cheerleader (she also will use this outfit to go cheer on her daddy when he competes in triathlons for the ASU Triathlon team). Bear was Batman and I was Cat woman. Yeah I know Bear and I sorta match and baby has nothing to do with us, but the ASU cheerleading costume was too cute to pass up. I wanted to be an ASU fan and have bear be an ASU football player or swimmer (since he was on ASU's swim team last year he has a speedo with the logo on it), but that failed and we got the costumes you see.

Halloween night we went over to my mom and dad's house for dinner with my brother and sister-in-law Sabrina. We had some YUMMY corn chowder soup. We wanted to take baby around to a few houses, at least to the people we knew, just to say we did, but that didn't end up happening. She was a cranky baby that night and you will see why in my next post. But for now, here are some pictures...I will put up some better ones when I get them :)