My kid is Word Famous

The past few weeks have been some really great ones for us.  Thanksgiving was awesome.  Mike and I are starting a family tradition of doing a 5k/10k race every Thanksgiving.  This was our second year.  It feels good to start out the Holiday being active and healthy.  Plus all the money raised went to the food bank - so it benefited a great cause.  We spent the day with Mike's family, and I just have to say, I love my in-laws!

Mike has had quite a few good chunks of time off from work, I've started substituting again, and Sam has continued to grow and amaze us!  Right now I am blogging while the little guy is sprawled out asleep on my lap.  I love it. 

I always love this time of year, and I like to think back on Holiday Seasons in the past to see where I was and how far I've come. 

Christmas 2007 - Switzerland with the parentals.  So much fun, and definitley one of the biggest perks of my singledom.

Christmas 2008 - Christmas in North Carolina, secretly (or not so much) doing some planning for the not so official yet wedding the coming summer.  I remember sitting in my parent's kitchen and nervously dialing the temple to schedule the date for the sealing.  It was such a "grown up" thing to be doing.

Christmas 2009 - My first Christmas as a Sorenson, and also my first Christmas away from my Cheney family.   We had just found out we were pregnant, and I was trying SO hard to keep that secret.  I suck at keeping secrets.

Christmas 2010 - We are getting ready to head out to North Carolina to spend Christmas with my family this year.  It will be my first time traveling with a baby, and I'm terrified!  But oh so excited to see my family and spend some quality time with them.

Needless to say, I love the season!

Now on to Sam.  He is now four months old, FOUR MONTHS!  I can't believe it.  He has changed so much in the past month or so.  He is getting fat.  We can finally dress him in age appropriate clothing (meaning he is fitting into 3-6 month clothing).  He was stuck at newborn size for what seems like forever.  Then one day, he just chunked out. 

He is definitely letting his little personality shine through these days.  He is extremely happy in the mornings.  The other morning, Mike ran in to get him from his crib before I could because we both love to see him smiling up at us when we come in to get him.  We will often just sit in bed with him and play with him.  These are some sweet moments. He also laughs in his sleep. We like to think it's because he's dreaming about us smiling at him.

Our kid LOVES bathtime.  We hope he grows up to be a water baby like his cousin Logan.  Whenever Sam gets in the bath, he kicks and laughs and splashes around like a crazy man.

He is a stubborn little man.  He automatically assumes that if you cradle him that you are trying to put him to sleep and he gets ticked off!  The moment you hold him away from your body, he is just fine.  He fights sleep like it's his job.  Often times when he is super tired, he'll thrash his head around and then finally just zonk out. 

He has discovered his hands and often times prefers his fingers to his binky.  I will sometimes walk past his room while he is taking a nap and hear him loudly sucking on them.

He is laughing up a storm these days.  We have successfully found a few ticklish spots and we attack those spots as often as possible :)  

Life is good to us and we are so happy.

This next picture needs a little explanation.  I was nursing Sam yesterday and admiring how cute he looked in his little gray track suit.  It has a hoody with matching little pants.  We bought it at Old Navy.  Well, I noticed that his pants said "Word Famous".  I thought I was reading it wrong and it really said "World Famous".  Nope, word famous.  I checked the matching hoody to see if it also read "Word Famous," but no that one said "World".  Way to go Old Navy. 

Maybe my kid will be good with words and become Word Famous!



Guy Smiley

Sam has started smiling.  And, oh how I love this milestone!  He is such a happy content little character.  Mike and I will often look over to see him smiling to himself - I wish I knew what was going through his little head when he breaks out in these random grins!  He also has started waking up, not crying, but "talking" to himself.  The "talking" consists of coos and squeals of joy along with other happy sounds.  This morning, I almost didn't want to go in and get him because I love just hearing him have a conversation with himself.  I went in and he looked up at me with a big ole grin and started kicking his legs like crazy.  Did I mention how much I love it?  He's also pretty funny when he gets scared.  Mike likes to sneak up on him when he's sleeping and give him kisses.  This often results in Sam throwing his hands up, startling awake and giving out a little squeal before his face crumples and real tears come out of his eyes.  Is it bad that I think it's one of the cutest things I've ever seen?  We just laugh every time it happens.  I think Sam is more used to me mauling his little face with kisses, whether awake or asleep, because I don't ever get that reaction. 

My mom says I am the MOST doting mother she has ever met.  She may be right.  I freaking love my kid.  Love him.  I will leave this post with a picture of my smiley little man....

Happy Halloween!

I love Halloween, especially since Mike has come into my life. He loves to dress up just as much as I do, and it's always fun to come up with costumes that we could wear.  This year, we got to include Sam in the mix.  I had the idea to go back to our days in Boston and we came up with this....

A Red Sox player, a super fan, and the Green Monstah!

We were pretty proud of ourselves.  We also had family pictures taken recently.  They turned out awesome.



All dressed in white

Yesterday, we blessed Sam.  This is one of those moments that I think I looked forward to as I thought about becoming a mother.  I am so grateful that Mike is a worthy priesthood holder and could bless our son.  It was a beautiful blessing, one that blessed Sam that he would have unconditional love for those around him among other things.  We had Mike's family in town for the blessing, and as always it was so much fun to just hang out with them and laugh!

I love my husband, and I love our little guy.

Here is Sam in his little blessing outfit.  He has the sweetest little smile, and I'm so glad I was able to catch it on camera!

 Mike's mom let us borrow Mike's blessing outfit from when he was blessed.  It was really fun to put Sam in the outfit. We considered blessing him in this, but decided that we better use the outfit we bought.  I love this though.

 Our little family.

 Sam with Grandma and Grandpa Sorenson.  We missed you Nana and Papa Cheney!

 I had to put this on because I thought it was hilarious.  Mike's dad was really tired, so after the blessing, while we were all sitting around eating lunch - he found a nice little spot on the floor and took a nap. :-)

 This one isn't from the baby blessing, but another one I had to share.  Today, Sam was being a little sleepyhead and we were trying to keep him awake so he'll sleep well tonight.  When this kid falls asleep he is out!  You could have a band playing by his ear and he wouldn't wake up.  One sure fire way to get him awake is to make him cold by taking his clothes off.  Well, I told Mike to take Sam's pants off to see if it would wake him up.  It didn't, and the pants ended up on Sam's head.  He still didn't wake up :)

Then and Now

Sam is 9 weeks old.  These past 9 weeks have been quite the adventure.  We have successfully learned a lot of things.  We know when Sam is giving us his hungry cry, his "I peed myself, and I'm NOT happy about it" cry, and his gassy cry.  We have learned that our baby loves his bink - sometimes.  And when he loves his binky, oh man does he love it.  We learned that he likes to be held really close and really tight and will often fall right to sleep. 

My baby started smiling and I can't even describe how much I love this milestone.  In the mornings, he'll just look over at me and give me a little grin.  He's such a happy baby.  He is starting to sleep better at night.  His all time record is 5 1/2 hours.  Some days are better than others, but we're getting closer and closer to nights of glorious sleep, I'm hoping!

Sam has grown so much!  He was born at 5 lbs. and 9 oz. and 16.5 inches long.  When we left the hospital, he had dropped to 5 lbs. 1 oz.  By his two week appointment, he hadn't gained one ounce.  We were nervous.  Let me rephrase that... I was nervous.  Mike had this great sense of "everything will be fine." where I was freaking out and crying my face off every night because I was worried my baby was going to be 5 lbs for the rest of his life.  At his two month appointment he was 9 lbs. 6 oz and 21 inches long!  I was shocked and SO happy.  My baby is a fatty!!  Here are some pictures so you can see the difference between then and now....

Sam with his cousin at 10 days.

Same with his cousin at 9 weeks!

Sam in his Boppy right when he came home from the hospital.  His little legs didn't come anywhere near the end of the pillow.

Same on his Boppy now-a-days.  He practically hangs off of it!

Sam's little body was so... well, little!  I felt like he was so fragile everytime I held him.

This is our little chunker these days.  The first place I started noticing the weight gain was his little thighs. 

Our little man is all Sorenson!  I think he looks so much like his dad.  Except for his chin and mouth.  I think those are mine:)

Mike as a baby.  Can't you see the resemblance??  They have the same eyes and nose.

 We tried to prop Sam up for tummy time, but he fell asleep instead.  Just like this.  I love it.

This last week I was lucky enough to have my sister and my niece come visit me. We had so much fun, and I learned so much from Nellie. She helped me get Sam on a schedule, gave me reassurances that my kid doesn't spit up any more than other babies and that he's just fine, let me sleep while she snuggled him, and just generally made my week fantastic.

My niece Riley also got to come. What a funny kid! She's all girl - loves princesses and ponies and pink. But on the other hand, she loves bugs and dinosaurs. I love it. She was super excited to come to Vernal - the land of dinosaurs and would often say, "Trisha, I think I just saw a Tyranosaurus Rex in your back yard!" or "Was that a Long Neck over there!?" It was pretty funny. We went to the Dinosaur Museum, the Reservoir, and made many trips to our favorite ice cream place, Farr's.

Here are some pictures of the fun.

We made Nellie help us pull up the dead sod in our front yard.  She was nice enough to help, and we got a ton done!  Thanks Nell.  Riley was loving it too as everytime we found worms she would come and get them and put them in a dirt pile so the whole worm family could be together.  She would say things like, "I think this one is grandma."  She is very concerned about animals being with their families:)

Sam has this little hoodie that we love.  Riley one day said, "Sam is just so cute.  He looks like a mean little dinosaur."  He is cute, Riley.

At the Dinosaur Museum you can try your hand at searching for dinosaur bones.  Riley was way excited.

Sam stayed in his carseat the whole time, but I think he still enjoyed the experience.



They had this little quiz to see if you could identify the dinosaur.  Mike gave it a try...



And....

He got the right answer, to which he gave himself a little fist pump.  Way to go, babe.

My cute sister and niece

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Riley loves horses so we tried to make horse cupcakes.  Didn't work out so much.  But Riley was way happy.

Since the horse cupcakes didn't work out, I let her have at it with all our cake decorations and she had so much fun!

Nell getting some Sam snuggle time.

... and finally, just because my kid is cute :)

Bees suck

I've never been stung by a bee.  Never in my entire life.  A little bit of fear - ok, a whole lot of fear surrounds any encounter I have with those blasted bugs.  I run and scream and jump and generally act like a complete idiot whenever I see one.  I feel like they sense my distress and like to torment me.  Anywho.  When I got back to our house after spending a few months in Salt Lake, I discovered we had 15+ hornets nests on our house.  Every eave had one.  I called pest control and they came and sprayed.  Mike knocked some down, but those hornets were bound and determined and started rebuilding immediatly.  Where am I going with all this?  Well, today, I was out helping Mike work on the yard.  I stood up to come inside and check on Sam when I felt a sharp pain in my behind.  I started jumping and yelling and maybe teared up.  I ran inside and ripped off my pants, and you guessed it, out fell a bee.  I freaking got stung by a bee! On my butt!  I guess there is a first time for everything.  Stupid bee. 

Long post!! Sam moments

Sam meeting his cousins.  Zach was a pro at holding little babies!  He wasn't afraid one bit.  When I asked him if he was done holding the baby, he said he wanted to hold him a little longer.  I thought it was pretty sweet.

We think of all the cousins, Sam looks the most like Landon.  He's a cute kid and I wouldn't mind it if Sam grew up to look like him!

Pilly was keeping track of how many turns everyone was getting holding the baby.  She would get all bossy when she thought someone else was getting more turns than her.  It was really funny.

Caleb is the biggest baby lover!  He told me that he will be calling Sam "Sammy".  Caleb is the one who comes up with the nicknames that the kids ususally end up going by.  As everyone was leaving, all the kids came to say goodbye to "Sammy".  I think it'll probably stick!

Logan was SO sweet with Sam.  He kept giving him kisses and was very concerned that Sam had his binky with him at all times.  He would pick the bink up and give it to Sam, trying to put it in Sam's mouth. 

I kind of love Monkey butt pants for babies.  Ok, kind of may be the understatement of the year.  I freaking adore them!  We found some preemie pants and they make Sam look less little than normal newborn clothes do.

Sam does this little folding his arms pose all the time.  I think it's pretty cute.

My friend Chip's baby is 4 months older than Sam and significantly bigger.  I now refer to her as "The Beast".  All in love of course :)

Sam is not to fond of bathtime.

Bu,t oh man, does he love being snuggles up afterwards!

Mike and I are alternating who goes to church and who stays home with the little guy until he's bigger and stronger.  Today I got ready to go to church, and when I came out, Mike had dressed Sam in his church clothes.  I love it!  We had to take a mommy/son shot before I took off.  Then Sam got to hang out with dad in his Sunday clothes until he peed all over them and he had to wear something else.

What a handsome little man!

1 week

One week ago I was looking at my sweet baby boy for the first time. Today I'm still in awe. This past week has been incredible. I am exhausted but so happy. Sam is amazing me every day. Breastfeeding has been my biggest challenge with this little man. He cries when I try to feed him and for the first few days I had to be very creative trying to get him latched on and eating. Today we he made the biggest leap. He is nursing unassisted. I am so grateful. My mom is still here for a few more days and she has been an incredible help. She has cooked our meals, done our laundry, cleaned our house, and offered words of encouragement as I run through the dialogue that I'm sure every new mother is familiar with -

" am I feeding my baby enough?"
" why isn't he eating?"
" should he be sleeping this much?"

.... and so on.

I love my mom.

I have seen such a sweet side of Mike as well. His face lights up whenever he sees his little guy. At night when Sam wakes up, Mike (who treasures his sleep!) will gently rock Sam and give him hugs and kisses. He is so loving with him and shows his love and gratitude to me as I try my best at mothering. I love Mike so much.

Life is fantastic.

Welcoming Baby Sam

On Thursday August 5, 2010, Samuel Aquilla Sorenson was born into the world! He weighed in at a whopping 5 lbs. and 9 oz. He has a head of reddish blonde hair and the most alert little face I have ever seen. He's a snuggler who only cries when he's got a messy diaper or when I try to feed him. He's doing much better each day at letting me feed him and I'm hopeful that at his follow up appointment tomorrow he will have put back on some of the weight he dropped after his birth. Mike and I are absolutely in love with him and we find ourselves just looking at him in awe. Mike updated his blog with some awesome pictures and more details about the delivery and the few days that have followed.

Home sweet home!!!!

I am home! And it feels so good. It feels good to just wake up in my own bed. It feels good to drive around town. It feels good to just sit here and relax. The past few days I have spent time cleaning and being all around domestic. It feels peaceful, and I am so happy. I love my life. I love my house. I love my husband. I love it all.

Finishing Goals

I am the type of person to set a goal for myself and then forget that I ever set it. I have a cross-stitching project from 16 years ago to prove it. All it would take would be maybe an hour or two, but it probably won't happen. That's ok.

When I came out to Salt Lake, I suddenly discovered that I had a lot of time on my hands. I started making goals. One goal that I made was to read the Book of Mormon all the way through in the 12 weeks that I was here. This is something that I have never done in less than a years time. It would require me reading multiple chapters every day. Also something I have never done. I have always had a testimony of the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon, but I never really took time to think about the lessons to learn while I was reading. This time around has been an incredible experience. I finally started to make connections and realize that the entire Book testified of a loving Father in Heaven who desires for all of his children to be happy and live lives that will lead them back to him. Repentence is real. Even some of the worst and most vile sinners through the atonement became new men and turned their lives to God. They became prophets who brought many to the knowledge of the truthfulness of the gospel. Heavenly Father doesn't give up. Throughout the Book of Mormon, he always offered opportunities for repentence and growth. Even at the end, when the people had pretty much destroyed each other completely, He had Moroni bury the plates so that later generations would benefit from the knowledge of the Gospel. Heavenly Father loves us. So much.

I love the Gospel. I love the scriptures. I am so grateful that I had the opportunity to read and learn and find out even more about what my life should and could be. I know this experience will help me be a better parent. I also know that I have a desire to keep reading and to learn more.

Maternity Pictures

My friend Alicen has been trying to get me to take some maternity shots for the past few weeks. Today we finally did it, and it was so much fun! I told her that there would be no bare belly shots - just not really wanting to document that so much. So we went out to Wheeler Farm in Murray and it was such a nice day for pictures. We tried to get out early so as to have good lighting. By the time we were done, there were tons and tons of people out with their photographers. Family pictures, engagements, etc. I guess it's a pretty popular spot. Anyway, here are some of my favorite pictures. Here I am in my 8th month! Can't believe I'm this pregnant and that he will be here so soon.