Four Months

I'm pretty stoked that I'm actually doing this on the 23rd.  So, our little one is four months old today.  She's all grown up and wearing boots!

It's hard to believe how fast she's growing and it's fun to see her getting a little more mobile and interested in the world around her.  As you can see, she's quite the little chunk.  I have to be careful to clean in between her little rolls.  The double chin is particularly tricky because she gets spit up in there and then it's all I can do to get her to look up so I can clean it up.  But, look how cute she is!

We decided to try giving her a bottle.  She's going to have to take one eventually, so we figured it would be a good idea to get her used to it.  We give her one every once in a while and she does okay.  She sometimes has trouble getting started, but eventually she drinks it all.  And we're still figuring out which bottles she likes better.  So far the Phillips Avent is not a favorite.

As I mentioned, she's getting more mobile.  She rolled over for the first time the day after Christmas.  She went back to front and then she did it a few more times that week and decided that was enough.  She hasn't done it since.  She rolled over from her front to her back shortly after that, but only did it once and has given up rolling over for the time being.  She is excellent at spinning in circles, though.  I put her down to play and after several minutes of rocking back and forth and rolling onto her side and back again, her head is at the opposite end from where it started.  This is how I find her in the mornings most of the time now.

She's also gotten really good at grabbing things, especially her feet.  If there are no toys within her reach, she immediately goes for the feet.  As you can see, it's pretty adorable.

Everything she grabs, she immediately tries to put in her mouth.  Sometimes she misses and it makes me laugh.

You'll notice she's not really smiling in most of these pictures and in the ones where she is, she's not looking at the camera.  I've decided she has a healthy dislike of the camera.  She can be all smiles and as soon as you point the camera at her, the smile disappears.  In fact, sometimes she even cries a little.  We'll have to see if we can get her a little more used to it.

And here she is doing some tummy time with Scout's supervision.  Scout is always in the vicinity of baby because she's learned about spit up and has developed a taste for it.  Stella is most definitely a spitter, so Scout suffers no lack of little snacks throughout the day.  Yes, we realize it's disgusting that the dog laps up Stella's spit up.  But, it's super handy when she spits up and I can't immediately grab something to clean it up with.  I just yell for Scout.  And most of the time, I don't even have to yell for her.  She's learned what it sounds like when Stella spits up and she just comes running to help.  In fact, when I'm feeding Stella, Scout just sits expectantly at my feet because 99% of the time, Stella's going to spit up all over immediately after while I burp her and since she spits up so much, half of it will shoot right off the burp rag and onto the floor because the burp rag can't absorb that much spit up that quickly.  Did I mention Stella has a spit up problem?

And that's our little four month old.  She's pretty awesome.  I love waking up to her chattering in the morning.  She doesn't cry when she wakes up.  She just chatters away.  It gradually gets louder the longer she's awake - almost as if she's yelling to me that she's awake and ready to play.  And when I finally drag myself out of bed to go get her, she sees me, she stops wiggling and chattering for a second and gives me the biggest grin.  It makes all the spit up and dirty diapers worth it.  We love our little Stella!

A Project

Mr. Frisby and I have started a project.  This is a MAJOR project.  Bigger than our ceiling project.  We have begun a complete bathroom remodel of our master bathroom.  This is a project that I have been excited to tackle for awhile because the state of our bathroom when we moved in was, shall was say, pathetic.  Or maybe gross.  Dated.  Any number of adjectives along those lines would work.  It was in dire need of an update.  Well, an update is finally happening.  And this update has become even more exciting with the news of the massive tax return we will be getting (having a baby and paying a mortgage are great when it comes time to do taxes) that will allow us to do a little more than we had originally planned.  Now, don't get too excited.  When I call it a master bathroom, you must keep in mind that there's nothing "master" about it except the fact that it is off the master bedroom.  It's tiny.  Perhaps 5'x8'.  There's only so much you can do with that small of a space.  I would love to move some walls and make it bigger, but there's really nowhere to go, so the size of it will remain the same.  However, everything else that can be changed will be changed and we're super excited about it.  New sheetrock.  A new tile shower.  A new toilet.  A new vanity.  New lighting.  A vent fan.  A tile floor.  Pretty much, it's going to kick butt.  I'll save the pictures for a before and after when it's complete.  We gutted it yesterday, so it's all ready to go.  Our plan is to get sheetrock and backerboard up this week along with the ceiling lights and vent fan.  Next weekend we'll put in the new shower pan and get the floor ready for tiling (assuming they come in on time).  And the following week, Mr. Frisby is taking two days off work to give himself a long weekend to try to get the tiling and installations done.  It will probably be a stretch because we have a lot of tiling planned, but we'll see how it goes.  I plan to film the process so I can make a sweet video of the project.  Updates to follow...

A Holiday Post

I thought I was doing pretty good at keeping up with blog posts with my monthly Stella updates plus a couple others here and there.  Then I had a few minutes the other day to actually sit down and check up on other people's blogs.  Turns out I'm a little subpar on my blogging.  I saw everyone else's Christmas posts and realized I hadn't done one.  I saw everyone else's New Year's posts and realized I hadn't done one.  I saw all the fun things everyone has been doing for the holidays and realized that, not only did I not post anything, but we just really didn't do anything.  Indeed, it was a pretty low key holiday season for us.  Stella isn't old enough to understand anything of what was going on and not even really aware enough to be kept interested by festive lights and decorations.  And, she won't remember even a second of this holiday season.  So, it seemed a little pointless to bundle her up and head out on fun holiday adventures when we didn't even want to do it ourselves.  (And when I say ourselves, I really mean me.  Perhaps Mr. Frisby wanted to go out and do fun, festive things for the holiday season, but he was too busy with bishopric duties, so he was never available.  So, that pretty much just left me and I was more interested in relaxing this year.  Judge me if you want, but I thoroughly enjoyed a low-stress holiday season).

That said, this Christmas season was immensely more enjoyable with Stella around.  Funny, since she didn't have a clue what was going on, but it was still much more fun.  Even if she won't remember her first Christmas, I will, so although we didn't go out on fun holiday adventures, I thoroughly enjoyed shopping for her and making her as festive as I could.  So, without further ado, here is how The Frisbys celebrated this holiday season.

It started the day after Thanksgiving when we headed up to the Santa Cruz mountains to cut down our Christmas Tree.  We didn't take many photos because Mr. Frisby had his hands full with a saw and a Christmas Tree and I had my hands full with a baby and a dog.  But we snapped a couple photos and had a good time.

I think my sister may have taken a photo with all of us in it.  Maybe I'll get that from her someday.  But, for now, this is what I got.  Cutting down our Christmas Tree is a tradition that I've grown up with and it's really fun to be able to continue doing it with Stella.  And, just like last year, Scout was in dog heaven running around the tree farm.

Next was our ward Christmas party at which Stella got to meet Santa.

She charmed everyone at the party with her cute reindeer socks, rock star hair and pleasant, happy demeanor.

On Christmas Eve, Stella played Baby Jesus in the Nativity.  Aside from spitting up in the middle of the performance, I think she did pretty well.  No crying and she even tamed down her hair so it wasn't sticking up in the back.  I didn't get any pictures since I was playing Mary myself, but I think maybe someone in my family did, so we'll at least have some photo documentation.

Christmas morning was pretty exciting.  Mr. Frisby had no church meetings, so we got to sleep in until Stella woke up.  Then it was time to see what Santa brought.

Maybe she remembered a little from last year, but Scout caught on very quickly to what was happening.  But, like a good dog, she didn't touch any of her presents until we told her it was okay.

We helped Stella open all her presents, then we opened ours, and then it was off to church where everyone oohed and aahed over her general adorableness.

After church, we attempted a little photo shoot with the timer on our camera before we changed out of our church clothes.  Stella was hungry, so it didn't go well.

After that, it was off to my parents' house where we opened more presents and enjoyed a delectable Christmas dinner.

It was a lovely Christmas.  Stella loved all of her Christmas presents.  Here she is with one of her (and our) favorites:

And after Christmas, my sister and her husband came to town so we had lots more fun with them, though no photo documentation of any of it.

Okay, on to New Year's.  We enjoyed a small New Year's Eve celebration with family and some family friends.  We ate, we played games, we counted down to midnight, and we drank Martinelli's.  Well, Stella didn't.  This is how she rang in the new year:

And, admittedly, that's how I wanted to ring in the new year.  As a true mother, I thought about the planned festivities for Saturday night and I thought, "do I really have to stay up until midnight?"  But we had a good time.  And, on New Year's Day, we went to church where Stella again charmed the masses.  I must say she is adorable.

And that is how we Frisbys celebrated the holiday season.  Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to everyone!