Solid foods and Sleep

We started Reese on rice cereal yesterday and thought you might enjoy seeing her reaction.Happy Reese enjoying her highchair before her meal

Daddy, what's that you're sticking in my mouth?

Not sure I like that taste

But ok, I'll try it one more time...

That wasn't so bad

So as you can see, she is in the process of figuring out the whole spoon in the mouth, new taste thing.  It's a lot of fun to watch.

In other really really good news, Reese slept 6 hours straight last night.  Her schedule the last few nights has been to catnap off and on from about 8pm to midnight.  At midnight when we are no longer offering her any food, she screams her pretty little head off for about an hour (yes, our neighbors in the hotel probably love us).  Then she finally falls asleep and so far (all two nights that we've been forcing her to) has slept pretty well for 5-6 hours.  Unfortunately, two nights does not a sleep pattern make.  However, we are hopeful that we may have turned a corner.  Wish us luck! 

6 month stats

Reese had her 6 month check-up today and here are the stats:

Height: 27.5"
Weight: 20.4 lbs (we actually guessed she would be heavier!)

Both are in the 95-98th percentiles

The doctor gave us some tips for getting her to sleep through the night. Basically "don't feed her or pick her up" or the old "Cry-it-out" method. We'll see how they work at 3am.

Last weekend Nana (a.k.a. Carolyn) came to visit and we had a great time touring around. We walked around Park City and even made it to Cabela's (for CK, of course). Here are some pics from the weekend:

Reese and Nana cuddling at dinner

CK, Nana and Reese with the famous Park City main street

Reese making Nana laugh

Nana making Reese laugh

Reese being "escorted" around Park City by Dad

A nice family photo. No, Reese is not taller than me already. However, by the stats above, you can see she is getting close!

Our growing girl

Check out those legs! Clearly she takes after her daddy (at least when he was a baby). In the interest of full disclosure this picture was taken about 10 seconds before Reese peed all over me on the way to the bath. Needless to say we both got a bath that night. Ah, the joys of motherhood :)

Not yet crawling, but we like to spin in circles

Checking out Utah...by car and on foot

We set out this morning to explore Provo a bit. We started on a drive around town which resulted in seeing some beautiful views. This is from the Eastern mountain range looking out over the city.Then, because it turned into a beautiful day here (55 degrees!) we decided to take a walk on this trail that conveniently runs right by our hotel. A view from the trail. Not bad, huh?

Reese loves her stroller. Dad doesn't seem to mind, either.

Reese is getting better and better at sitting up on her own. The weight of her cheeks no longer holds her back.

And finally, we had no idea that CK's uncle Larry lived here...

First week in Provo

Well our first week in Utah is over and I think we are settling into our new digs pretty well. Although our space is, at best, "cozy", we are making the most of it. The scenery here is beautiful and so far the weather has been pretty nice. We're going to try to get out and explore a bit this weekend since we didn't get to venture too far this week while I was working. So far I'd say the top things about living here for me are: seeing my family every day, not having to get on a plane every week and the gorgeous mountain scenery. I'd venture a guess that CK's top 3 are: free breakfast every morning, free dinner 3 nights a week and free maid service every day. See a pattern?
Reese is doing great and moving more and more every day. Courtesy of the closet doors in our room she now has a mirror at her level so she enjoys "playing" with the mystery baby.

She also enjoys getting to nap with Dad.

The many faces of the scoot/spin

Reese can now spin more that 270 degrees of a circle (very slowly). It is usually to see something that had startled her (like Dad sneezing). I thought all of our dedicated readers needed to see "the spectacle" for yourselves. After taking a bunch of photos, showing no more that 90 degrees of spining, I started looking at the facial expressions that were beamed into the camera. As a result you have a completely different montage. Here are the many faces of hard work.

Note: There were all taken in the span of less than 2 minutes ...

"Moving" to Provo

As I type this we are on I-15 heading south to Provo. The trailer is packed up and stored, the pickup found a temporary home at Rick's in Helena and the Edge is packed so full we can't see out the back window.

We're currently about halfway there (Idaho Falls); the drive is about 8 hours door to door so not too bad. So far Reese has been traveling well although I think we are all looking forward to lunch in Idaho Falls so we can get out and stretch.

After spending all week in Portland teaching some people at our corporate office, mourning the Duke loss to those and visiting some friends, I got home Friday night and we've been packing ever since. We spent Valentine's day romantically (frantically) cleaning the townhouse. We must've done a decent job because our landlord came over to inspect yesterday and handed us a check for our security deposit.

So anyway..stay tuned for pictures once we arrive in our new digs. Happy belated Valentine's Day to everyone.

Mostly Packed and Ready to Go

I've received some harassment for not posting any new pictures lately. I believe I have two fairly legitimate excuses. The first is that I have barely seen my daughter over the past two weeks long enough to snap any photos of her. The second is that when I have been home we have been busy, busy, busy. Hopefully this post will make up for lost time.
As most of you know we are leaving on the 15th for Provo. We've been busy packing up our townhome here in Helena and sorting things into the "stays in the trailer for the foreseeable future" pile and the "can we really fit that into the Edge?" pile that comes with us to Utah. We had a lot of helpers this weekend and that made it go much faster. And, as you can see from the pictures, it was a gorgeous weekend...perfect weather for...well, for anything but packing. Oh well. Here's our 32 foot trailer parked and ready for loading and then almost full by the end of the day. The pictures really don't do it justice, CK is a master at filling every last little bit of space.

Of course, our trailer luck is not good and this one is no exception. The crack below will have to be replaced before we can tow this to our friends' house for storage.For those of you who haven't made it out to visit here is what we've been calling home for the past 7 months. Ours is the 3rd one from the right.
And the garage (the open one).
As I said, we had lots of helpers this weekend. Below are some of the pictures:

Reese and GrandmaAndrew and Kaitlyn
Val giving CK a sneak preview of his future as they work on Kaitlyn's Valentine's box togetherReese with two of her cousins, Andrew and Kaitlyn...they sure are entertaining

Thanks also to Jen and Steve who must've been working too hard to make it into any of the pictures. Tomorrow I'm off to Portland to do some training for work. CK and Reese are going to drop off the trailer and then go find a real bed to sleep in for a few nights since all of ours are packed :). I'm home Friday night and then it's off to Provo on Sunday.