Mail for Sophie!

We came home today just as we did ever other day. Brock went to the mailbox and picked up our mail. But today wasn't just a "normal" day. Today, Sophie received a letter from a very important person. SANTA CLAUS! She has let us share this letter with all of you!
Also enclosed was a certificate, certifying that Sophie has been placed on Santa's good list. Looks like the elves are going to be very busy making sure Sophie's wish list is fulfilled.

It's beginning to look alot like Christmas

The Christmas Season has definitely started.

Yesterday morning, Brock and I headed over to the office but not for the usual day of work. Instead, we took Sophie along with us so that she could have her first visit with Santa. They had the atrium decorated all up for the holidays includin the EXTRA tall Christmas tree.

After we arrived, we were given a ticket for Sophie so that the elves knew which gift Santa had purchased for her. Then we got in line so that Sophie would be able to tell Santa everything that she wanted for Christmas. Here is a picture of Mommy and Sophie waiting in line for her chance.

After a short wait in line, Sophie was able to sit on Santa's lap. Where we are glad to say, she didn't even cry. Here are some pictures of Sophie sitting on Santa's lap. (Wonder what she told him she wanted for Christmas.)

They also had several props out for the occassional photo opportunity. Here are some of the ones that we took of our cute little girl!

So now we have to get our tree up and deck the halls. But wanted to wish a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all our friends and family from our little family.

PRAYERS NEEDED!

Brock and I recieved a phone call late last night. It was Laura, Sophie's babysitter. One of their girls, Rachel, had a seizure last night. That is all we know at this point.

However, when you say your prayers, if you can add Rachel and her family to them. As a mother, I can't even imagine what Laura and her family are going through.

Thanks! We hope that all is well with Rachel!

Changing of the...

In England, outside the Buckingham Palace, they have the changing of the guards. At the Boyd household, they have the lowering of the crib.

Now that Sophie is standing up on her own in her crib, we thought it would be a great idea to get the mattress lowered down in her crib before she figured out how to crawl out of it.

Holidays and more...

Since my last post, we have celebrated Sophie's first Thanksgiving. It is hard for me to believe that our little girl is 9 months old and we are already celebrating Thanksgiving. Before we know it she will be having her first Christmas and her first birthday (boy has this year flown by for us).

For Thanksgiving, Brock, Sophie and I traveled over to Danville. We got there about 12:30ish and had snacked for a bit. Then we all settled down (to the floor) for some good old fashion playtime with Sophie. (Sure looked like Sophie and Gramps were having a great time.)

After a great time of playing, Sophie settled down for a nap till dinner time. Wade and Crystal; and Brock's grandparents (Okie and Betty) all joined in on a great meal prepared for us by Brock's mom. Followed by great desserts and wonderful conversations.

We then followed it up with more playtime on the floor where Sophie told Uncle Wade who was boss :). It certainly seemed like it was a great time had by all.

For the remainder of the holiday weekend, we just chilled at our house. Brock raked leaves on Saturday to try and get the final batch of leaves out of our backyard. It took him a few hours to create this:

The following day we were greeted with this:

So now we have a big mound of what looks like a snow pile in our front yard but in reality it is a pile of leaves covered with snow. :)

Pictures-As Promised

As promised, here are some of the pictures from Saturday. I can't remember if we ordered all of the shots I chose off the disc. But you can at least see some of them.

9 Months!!!!

Well Sophie has hit the 9 month mark. She is just growing so quickly and always changing which has kept Brock and I really on our toes. Just when we think we have it down pat another loop gets thrown.

She is over the RSV which Brock and I grateful for. She still has a bit of a runny nose but that we can handle. She has gotten the crawling down very well and has now moved onto cruising. Over the weekend, Brock and I went to go and get her up from a nap and imagine our faces when we walked in and saw her STANDING up in her crib. Oh boy, we're in trouble now! She still has no teeth but her pediatrician is not worried about that at all so neither are we.

Today, Brock and I took her for her 9 month well baby visit and here are the statistics:

She weighed in at a whopping 19 pounds 4 ounces (50th percentile and 7 ounces more then she was when we took her on November 11th) and was 29 3/4 inches tall (97th percentile). So it looks like she might be like her daddy (tall and thin), which isn't always a bad thing! They also tested her hemoglobin levels and she was AWESOME. She didn't even cry when they stuck her finger. Her levels were also awesome. They like them to be between 10 and 14 and her levels were at a 13.7. (Guess this means that we are doing something right). She also got her first dose of the flu shot and goes back the day after Christmas for her second and final dose. After that, she doesn't need to get seen until her 1 year birthday (which amazingly isn't that far away).

They want her on formula till she turns 1 year and then we can mooooove onto whole milk (LOL). We can start giving her mashed up foods (looks like we can maybe try mashed potatoes on Thanksgiving :)) and we've started offering her puffs which she hasn't shown much interest in. But we just keep trying and eventually she'll catch on.

On Saturday we took her over for her 9 month pictures. She wasn't very cooperative this time. While we got some cute ones, they weren't as good as they have been in the past. In fact, for most of them Brock had to stand in as prop where she is stilling on his legs. Although you can't really tell in the pictures that we had to do this, it left little options for us with poses. (I'll post some of them later).

Sickies Part Tre!

Luckily for us there are only three people in this household as I think I've been the third person in this house to have this nasty thing. I've been pretty well wiped out all weekend long. Brock was a sweetie this morning and let me go and take a nap while he cared for Sophie which helped immensely.

The good news is the Sophie is FINALLY starting to feel better. Her fever was gone on Friday morning when we got here up but the cough is still there. This weekend is the most perky that she has been in a really long time. I am so incrediably relieved that she is feeling better. When I talked to Laura last week, her girls were starting to get under the weather. Sarah was running a fever and Rachel had a runny nose and cough. Isaac (her nephew) also was really sick. Poor little ones, I can't believe something that we thought was a simple cold turned out to be so horrible to so many people. Hopefully all the kids will start feeling better soon.

Sickies Part Deux

Yes, we are still fighting bugs at our house and not the ones with legs and stuff. The kind that make you feel icky and such.

Yesterday morning I get a call from Laura that Sophie has just thrown up. :( Brock and I thought she was actually starting to feel better after her visit with the pediatrician on Friday. Well we were definitely wrong. I went and picked her up for the day around noon and brought her home to chill out be home with Mommy. Well that night we were giving her last bottle for the night and suddenly she started vomitting again (yes, all over me, the couch, and even a little bit on Brock). Brock and I were guessing that it was probably close to 3/4 of the 3 ounces that she had drank. We waited a bit and gave her 2 ounces of straight Pedialyte. Within seconds she was sound asleep and slept through the night.

This morning we took her temp again and it was up to 101.6 degrees. Poor little munchkin just can't fight this. So back to the pediatrician we went. This time they did a swab of her nose and turns out that our little one has RSV (Respiratory Syncytial Virus). You can tell she just feels absolutely miserable. She just sleeps all the time.

Needless to say, I stayed home with her today and Brock is staying home with her tomorrow and possibly Thursday depending on how she is feeling. We just keep hoping that she will feel better soon!

Poor little munchkin!

Bunch of Sickies :(

Sorry for the delay in posting. We have had a bunch of sickies at our house this last couple of weeks. Brock came down with a terrible cold at the beginning of last week. It started out as just a sniffle but ended up wiping him out. He took Tuesday and Wednesday off work.

Then on Friday, when we got Sophie up she really wasn't herself. I took her temp and it was pretty well normal. So we chalked it up to her teething so we dropped her off at Laura's for the day. By 9:00 a.m. she was running a fever and we pretty well knew that she had probably gotten daddy's cold. We took her to her peditrician and when they took her temp there it was 101.6 rectally (or 100.6 if we had taken it orally). Her peditrician confirmed she had a terrible cold so we pretty much have been laying low this weekend and letting her rest as much as possible. This morning she looks much better then she has been. Her little nose is still covered with the oogie boogies but she seemed alot better then she had all weekend.

We also have enjoyed Sophie's first Halloween. It was such a cool night. We woke up in the morning and all headed over to Mommy's work (Daddy had the whole day off but Mommy had to work in the morning) to see Mommy's co-workers and show off Sophie's costume. Then Daddy headed over to South to see his co-workers. After Mommy got of work, we headed home and got a few things done prior to heading to Danville to "trick or treat"


And now for the exciting news of our family....



Sophie has started crawling. She doesn't do it consistently but she has started which is just so exciting for us. Below is a short clip we were able to catch of her crawling.

The OMG moment of the day!

So Brock and I got a copy of the police report from the incident yesterday and the lady actually told the cop that the reason she didn't report it to security or the police is because she "didn't know that she had to".

This my friends would be a moment that as Bill Engvall would say...HERE'S YOUR SIGN!

But for now, Brock and I are fortunate enough to get to deal with her insure anyone type insurance company!

Just another MANIC Monday

Today was definitely a day that was just not meant to be good.

I started out this morning as normal, woke up, got dressed, dropped Sophie off at day care, drove to work, parked my car and went up to work. No sooner had I sad down and really started my fun filled day as I get a call from the security at work! I'm thinking okay, I know I didn't park in the 2 hour lot. I parked within the lines, what could they possibly want. Well...they informed me that they had just received a report that someone had hit my car in the parking lot and left the scene of the accident(and it wasn't the red rocket that was hit, of course it had to be the better of our two vehicles)! FORTUNATELY, someone had seen it happen, saw her drive away and got down her license plate number and went to security. I had them call the police department and spent most of my morning out with security and the police. They ran the plate, got the person's information, took my information and pictures of my damage. The cop was awesome! Told me that if the person didn't call in the time that they were there that they would be towing the car (if they found it) and that they would have to pay $260 for the tow and $85 per day for impound fees. I was completely hoping that they wouldn't call but they did! They fessed up to the whole thing and the police gave her two citations. After getting her information (noting that she lived out of state but worked for the same company in the same town), I emailed her and asked her for her insurance information so that I can get my car repaired. And believe it or not the lady had her husband try and convince Brock and I to get our vehicle fixed without going through insurance. I'm thinking to myself! What the heck are these people thinking! Hello, you just hit my car, moved your car to another part of the lot, and the only reason I even have your information is because a good Samaritan took down your infomation and reported it and you now want Brock and I to trust you to pay for the repairs in full. Hmmm let us think about this for say 2 seconds! NO! Brock and I called their insurance and made the report. We get a estimate done for their insurance company tomorrow (although we may go through our own repair shop) they require that we get a estimate through one of their vendors. Below are pictures of the damage to the car :(.

This all added to the normal craziness of work! What a whirlwind for both Brock and I. Hopefully this insurance company does well and this all behind us before we know it!

On a good note! Sophie is still growing like a little weed! She turned 8 months old on October 18th and just make leaps and bounds! She is so fun to spend time with. Even after a bad day (such as above), to come home to her smiling face and giggles truly makes it all seem better! For those who may not have known. She has started to do a bit of an army crawl. Brock and I are in alot of trouble. We no longer can lay her down for a bit to run to the other room and expect her to be there. Enjoy a short video of Sophie making a big move!

This week we will celebrate Sophie's first halloween! While we don't have much planned, we'll be sure to take lots of pictures! Won't be long now and it will be Christmas!

Family FUN!

Brock and I have been busy for the past couple of weeks. Every weekend we have had something planned to do. Although we've been busy, we have had alot of fun.

To start, a good friend of mine at work won 4 tickets to see the Lipizzaner Stallions here in town but she was unable to go so she gave the tickets to me. We invited Wade and Crystal to go with us. What an amazing show. The horses were absolutely beautiful and were truly talented. Below are some pictures from the show!




The following weekend we made a trip to Danville to see Brock's mom and dad. Brock's mom has been really sick so we decided to come out and bring them dinner and visit with mom. Since we were out there, we called our good friend Rachel and Ian Brown who also just had a little peanut in April. This was the first time that we have been able to get together since our little ones were born. It was so good to see them.

Daddys and Babies!

Austin giving Sophie a hug!

Playing with Austin's Toys

Playing with Gramps

This weekend Brock and I decided it was time for the three of us to get out of the house and do something as a family. So we headed over to Speer, Illinois to Tanners Orchard. What a great time we had! For those who may not have been out there. It's a apple orchard where you can go through their market and buy products (apple of all sorts, apple pie, homemade applesauce, fudge, and lots of knick knacks). There is also a play area with pony rides and things for the kids to go on (Sophie was too young as of yet but it looks like alot of fun for next year). They also have a self pick area where they let you go out into the orchard and pick your own apples off the tree and also to the patch to pick pumpkins. Brock decided we didn't need to get a pumpkin this year but we did pick a peck of yummy apples. It was a ton of fun! We really enjoyed ourselves as you can see below!

Sophie riding on the "hayride" out to the orchard to pick apples

Daddy and Sophie in the orchard

Sophie after a long day at the orchard!
All tuckered out!

With Christmas right around the corner, Sophie has already been getting into the Christmas spirit. Below she is looking through the catalog to make her list for Santa!

SLACKING....

Okay so we have been slacking in regards to blogging. Alot has been going on in our lives and I'll try and recap as much as I can.

Sophie is doing great. She turned 7 months and is in the grabbing everything stage. Everything that is in her path it grabbed and 9 times out of ten ends up in her mouth! :) In the last month, she has also started sitting by herself unassisted. She's been sitting for a while for short periods of time unassisted but now we can sit her up and she will just sit there. It's just too cute.

Toward the middle of the month, we were blessed with the residual effects of Hurricane Ike. It was nothing but RAIN for several days. This brought our family a nice little bit of fun! Last winter our mailbox was hit by one of the plows which knocked the clasp to open our mailbox off. We hadn't had any problems with it till we got the boatload of rain. Then suddenly every day our mail was soaked. So our family headed off to Lowe's and bought a new mailbox. Here's a picture of Sophie getting ready for our outing :)

After Lowes, we made a quick run to Toys R Us for some diapers that were on SALE! YIPPEE. Of course, as soon as we got to the store Sophie fell asleep so Brock and I decided to walk around for a bit and just relax. (especially since it was raining outside SURPRISE SURPRISE). While were were looking around, we found a toy for Sophie that every kid has had at some point in their life. Here is playing with her new toy :)

So here is the riddle of the day! What do you get when you cross oatmeal and raspberries??? (See below for answer). A child covered with oatmeal. Sophie's lastest trick it to do raspberries. She can be sitting there happy as can be and you'll start hearing "pppllllffft" over and over again. One morning I was feeding her oatmeal and she decided it was a great time to start and ended up with oatmeal all over her face! How did she know that oatmeal was good for the skin ;).

The final going on of our family was a wedding. A dear friend of ours from back when Brock and I first started dating over 8 years ago got married yesterday. Brock stood up as one of his groomsmen. Friday night, we headed to the rehearsal as a family and then the rehearsal dinner at the Ozark House afterwards. Then Saturday was the official wedding which we decided to get babysitters for Sophie for. (thanks again Gma and Gpa Boyd). It was the first night that Brock and I have been out alone without Sophie since she was born in February. We had a really good time.

My handsome hubby in his tux!!

The Happy Couple

Good Friends!!! Good Times!!

We have.....

POOOOOOOP!

I know many of you would not be so excited about the topic of poop! But in our household, this is a wonderful thing!

Ever since we put Sophie on solid foods, she has had bouts of constipation on and off. More so on then off! She just couldn't get over it. It would be fine for maybe a day but then it would be back to constipation. Brock and I were basically at our whits end. We felt so bad when her cute little face would go red and you could tell she was just trying so hard. Our hearts would break.

But over the last 24 hours she has pooped a total of 7 times! And this last one was softer then it has been in a long time! We're hoping this is the end and maybe her little system has finally gotten over this!

Keep your fingers cross for us!

Big Day with the Lincoln Family

Brock and I decided a while ago that we wanted to go and see the Lincoln Museum. So Brock took of Friday, we packed up the Honda, and headed to Springfield. It took us SEVERAL hours to get through the museum and we were just amazed at how well this museum was put together. We both had a really good time. The two movies that they show were amazing and well put together.

The Boyd Family with the Lincoln Family.
(Don't mind Brock's closed eyes:))

Afer the museum, we headed over to Wade and Crystal's for a visit. It has been several months since we saw them last. They cooked us a fabulous dinner (thanks again Wade and Crystal). Unfortunately, Sophie was a bit fussy by this time. I think the long day along with the unfamilar enviroment added to it all.

Even with this, it was a GREAT day! I would definitely recommend this museum to anyone

6 MONTHS

Well today was Sophie's six month check up which went very well. You all will be happy to know that the doctor says that Sophie has a perfectly shaped head :). She got her six month vaccinations, which she did not like one bit. But within a few minute she was content and suggling with the mommy.

So here are the stats for today's visits....drumroll please:

Sophie weighed in at a whopping 15 pounds 11 ounces which is the 50 percentile for weight.
She was 26 3/4 inches long which is the the 80 percentile.

For now she doesn't have to go back till she is 9 months old. YIPPEEE

BUSY WEEKEND!!!

Well this weekend was crazy busy for Brock and I.

Brock took Friday off so that we would be able to go up to Chicago to see my dad who is in the hospital and was having surgery. (For those who don't know my dad was diagnosed with cancer about a month or two ago while he was living in Kentucky. He now has moved back to Chicago and they were doing surgery to determine what was causing blood in his urine. Turns out he had several tumors on his kidneys. They have removed as much as they can and he will begin radiation as soon as he is able to.) We got there about 1:00 p.m. since we new that he would be in surgery most of the morning. When we got there he was still in the recovery area. After being at the hospital for almost 2 hours they finally wheeled him out into ICU for the night. We got to see him briefly in the hallway and for about 15 minutes each in the ICU unit.

After visiting with dad, we headed over to Portillos (YUM) for dinner. And then we stopped at a store call "Buy Buy Baby". For all you mom's out there, this is the best store in the whole wide world if you have a young baby. They have EVERYTHING. For those of you have Babies R Us nearby, this store has MORE then Babie's R Us. To give you an idea. They had one whole wall of their store full of BIBS. Floor to ceiling, every kind and sayings that you can imagine. It was a great store. I was going to stop at Gymboree but after 2 hours in that store, I figured I would be pushing my luck if I made Brock go to another baby store so we headed home.

Saturday morning, we got Sophie ready for her bit day of six month pictures. Which was another 2 hour event. Sophie did well for the most part till she got hungry then we had to take a breather to feed her quick and pick up the rest. We got some really cute pictures, below are a few of them.

After her photo shoot, we headed back home and made preparations for Brock's parent to come over for a visit. They arrived around 3 p.m., we had dinner about 4:30 ish. and then just chatted till they left around 8:00. All and all it was a nice visit.

Now here it is Sunday and we're getting ready for another LONG week of work. This Friday Sophie goes for her 6 month check up. The Saturday we head over to one of my dear friends houses for her annual Luau. The fun just never stops at our house :)

Head, shoulders, knees and TOES

Well Sophie has officially found her toes. She has been playing here and there with them for several weeks but now she is full fledged grabbing at them. And of course, now is the time that whatever she grabs is attempted to be placed in her mouth. :)

New Veggie - New Adventure!

This afternoon Brock put the high chair together with some help from his friends.

Right afterwards Sophie tried her new seat out!

The switch has been made. After one week of having squash, we have moved on to sweet potatoes! Which she loves! She wiped the container clean!

With this new veggie, we also tried out the new seating arrangement. Below are the pictures: