12 Months of Oaklee// Month 5

Weight: 12.8 pounds

Diapers: Size 2

Clothes: She still wears 0-3 months/3 months clothes. I pulled out the 3-6/6 month tote the other day. I just haven't gotten around to washing the clothes yet.

Sleeping: This last month has been the month of transitions for Oaklee. She has been sleeping in her own room for a few months now, but she is now out of the Moses basket and in the crib. It wasn't all that big of a change for her but nice to have it over with. The biggest change is that she is no longer swaddled. She transitioned out of the swaddle easier than I expected her to, so I'm very grateful for that.

She sleeps 7-7:30ish. She is usually up once a night for a bottle, and then she immediately goes back to sleep. Which is just fine with me considering the 4 month regression last month had her up way more than that. She takes 3 naps a day. Her first nap of the day is always the shortest. We always wake her up from her last nap at 6 so she goes to bed with the rest of the kids. 

Eating: She eats 4 ounces of formula every 3ish hours during the day, and has a bottle when she wakes up at night. We are still supposed to be fortifying her bottles to help with weight gain. We wait until closer to 6 months to start solids, so she hasn't had any yet.

Milestones: First Halloween. Rolls back to belly. She has taken the longest out of all our kids to roll over. She still hasn't rolled belly to back. She's getting better at keeping a binky in her mouth. She really likes binkies but has been the absolute worst at keeping them in. She is never where I leave her anymore. If I'm being honest, I don't exactly understand how she moves herself, but she is always flipped the other direction and sometimes a little ways away from where I laid her down.

Likes: Sitting up- she prefers it to laying down for sure these days. We still have a ways to go before she can sit up on her own. Playing with toys. The jumparoo.

Dislikes: baths

We can't get enough of this sweet girl. Most of the time she is simply content and happy as can be to be along for the journey. She loves to look at everyone and any eye contact immediately makes her smile. 

She was the cutest tiger for Halloween this year.

  

That first picture is the worst quality, but that happy face is my favorite,

August 2020

  

Summer evenings have a special way of capturing your heart.

On this particular evening the primary presidency was driving around the neighborhood passing out ice cream to all the primary kids. The kids were so excited, and they loved that they got to stay up later than normal for it.

We had ourselves a little family work day to prepare for Oaklee's blessing.

We finished the rocks/landscaping area that needed to be done in our backyard.

After the bed of the truck was clear of rocks, Taylor cleaned out all of the construction garbage from the basement and took a trip to the dump.

  

Family started to trickle in for Oaklee's blessing

green teeth from a "Poppy treat" My dad always comes with candy for the grandchildren. His grandpa went by Poppy, and he wanted to continue that tradition so all of the grandkids call him Poppy. Hence why the candy he brings are called Poppy treats.

And my mom fixed Elsa doll's broken wrist. Ella was extremely thankful to finally get her doll fixed.

The kids' favorite game when everyone gets together is beat up Uncle Matt. It's a fairly simple game that almost always ends up with at least one child crying from Matt getting the tiniest bit of retalliation.

I couldn't help but laugh at Monkey Ella trying to fight him.

Oaklee was given a blessing by Taylor.

Our ward still was not meeting because of covid, so she was blessed in our home.

It was actually loved blessing her at home more than I thought I would.

We all gathered in the living room for the blessing and then grabbed some brunch and split up around the house and yard.

Oaklee wore the same dress as Ella and Avery.

  

After the blessing the grown ups chatted while the kids played.

Thankfully, the weather was absolutely beautiful that day.

  

My mom stayed with us the night after the blessing so she could help me drive the kids down to Utah the next day to go on an adventure for a few days. We stayed at my parents townhouse.

The favorite activity was swimming at my sister's apartment complex's pool.

We invited some of their cousins to come with us on of the afternoons and all of the kids had a blast.

We were quite a sight to see trying to get to the pool with 5 kids who could walk (and wander), 3 babies who had to be carried or toted there somehow, pool floaties, and all of our other swim gear. 

Hudson turned into quite the little fish while we were there. He spent most of his time jumping into the pool over and over and over again. Ella didn't get quite as comfortable with the water, but comfortable enough to think she could get in the pool without her floaties on. Shout out to Aunt Bekah for literally saving her life.

I gave Avery her first french braids!

We were sad to leave all of the fun in Utah, but I was ready to get back home to Taylor and get the kids back into their normal routine and sleeping habits.

We built a barn door for the hallway closet in the basement!

It was a really fun project to work on and was the first time we had ever made something like that.

We finished up the bedroom in the basement and carpet was installed.

We worked our butt's off getting the room done, and Hudson and Ella were super excited to get a new room.

Backyard baseball was a frequent evening activity.

Grandpa and Linda surprised us with a little visit one afternoon.

They got to meet Oaklee and see our house for the first time.

The kids and I went on one last summer hoorah to Rigby Lake.

Taylor and I got a smidge crazy and took the kids on a hike.

Overall, they had a good time, but there was definitely a fair share of complaining as one can always count on when doing anything with kids. One complaint from both Hudson and Ella was that we didn't go to the top of the mountain. They complained enough about being tired, so I was glad the trail didn't go to the top of the mountain.

Tana was kind enough to take Hudson to crossfit with them. Hudson LOVED it!

I put together a video of random short clips from our summer. These family videos are one of the kids' favorite things. I absolutely love watching them watch it for the first time.

Thank you for being so crazy and wild and weird and good to us Summer 2020

July 2020

We all spent a lot of time snuggling sweet little Oaklee

Hudson and Ella finished their t-ball season.

Having the two together on a team proved to be a bit interesting at times.

The 4th of July was on a Saturday this year which meant Taylor's day off of work for the holiday was the Friday before giving him a three day weekend.

On Friday we went to Rigby lake for a few hours to play in the sand.

The 4th of July was A LOT different this year.

Because of COVID 19 the city parade was cancelled.

Some people in our neighborhood rallied together and put on a super small parade.

It didn't last more than 5 minutes, but the kids loved it anyway. And i loved that I got to watch it from the end of our driveway instead of loading up the kids and going across town.

Taylor ditched us for a few hours in the morning to go mountain biking at Kelly Canyon.

WHile up there, he wrecked hard on his bike. 

He scraped and bruised his arm and his side pretty bad and hurt his wrsit, but otherwise he was okay..

While Taylor was gone, my brother and his family stopped by for a short visit while traveling back to Utah. The cousins spent a lot of the visit hiding out from the dogs in the play house eating the candy that Hudson and Ella got at the parade.

Uncle Matt came back from camping and spent the day with us.

We mostly just hung out aruond the house, but there were some good games of corn hole played, and a barbecue dinner.

Another thing that was different this year was the fireworks.

The big fireworks show was cancelled because of COVID, but the people of Idaho Falls showed up when it came to fireworks.

We bought a small pack of fireworks and some sparklers. The kids were not very impressed.

As the sun set everyone around us began lighting off big fireworks. Everywhere you looked there were fireworks going off. It was really cool to watch.

After t-ball ended, we switched gears and had swimming lessons every week day for two weeks.

I was worried with how Ella would handle it because she doesn't typically like getting wet, but she did awesome!

And these two girls had a good time hanging out together on the sidelines.

 

Taylor's cousin had a baby shower down in Grace, so the kids and I packed up and headed down there for the day. Taylor came down after he was done with work for the day.

The kids played at Taylor's parents house while I attended the shower.

We had a cousins' get together and campout at Aunt Jeanie's house.

There was a big barbecue dinner, and then we set up tents and camped in their backyard.

The kids absolutely loved it, and I'm pretty proud of ourselves for camping with a 1 month old- even if it was just in a backyard.

 

  

  

Ella became obsessed with lady bugs this summer.

She would happily let one crawl around on her until it flew away every time she found one.

   

We got to work on Hudson and Ella's room in the basement to hopefully get it done before Oaklee's blessing so some family members could sleep in the room.

 

We had the kids write their names on a stud, so if someone ever took the drywall down they would find it. They thought it was pretty cool to get to hide their names and have them be there forever.

We busted our butts staying up until midnight or often later working on that dang room and hallway.

We got 80-90% of the work done in about 2 weeks. It was so exhausting, but so awesome to see it all get done.