For the love of Autumn, it's time for a change!

I love the Autumn. The leaves are changing, weather is changing, soon the time is changing. So much change. I love how pretty everything looks as you drive down the streets. Even the overcast skies are pretty to me against the bright orange, yellow, red and some green leaves. The streets are lined with leaves falling. It's just a great time of year. So many holidays to look forward to! Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas and then New Years.

Ironically, this Autumn, we will be figuring out a big change for us! Where Nick will work after graduating in just a few more months! He has only 7 and a half weeks left of classes towards his Bachelor's degree. He has had interview after interview this month and we are waiting in anticipation to know all of our options and then make our decision. In the next few weeks we'll know if we're staying here in Utah or if we'll end up moving to Arkansas, Idaho, California, Ohio... or any other number of places. So many options that may pop up for us. It's exciting! I can't wait for the next couple of weeks to come to a close so we can have a plan set in place for what we're doing after he graduates! Meanwhile, I just get so excited about the future that I look at houses on Zillow in our main potential locations. :) It keeps me occupied.

In other news, Harvey must've got something from watching all the other babies and little ones at the Shreeve Halloween party we went to on Sunday because he is a lot more interested in practicing sitting up now. We'll see how much longer it takes the little guy to catch on. Some things about him right now. He is a 110% Mama's boy. If someone else is holding him and he sees me, he just loses it and throws himself in my direction. A skill he's getting good at is turning the pages in books when I read him. He also enjoys knocking. He makes a fist and hits everything these days. When he wakes up from a nap in a good mood, he will sit in his crib and knock on the backboard until I get him instead of cry. When I'm changing his diaper, he knocks on the wall or changing table. He knocks on the toys, his books, the side of his car seat, pretty much everything he can. I have no idea where he got it either because we didn't teach him to do that, but he sure is cute when he does it! He's also very much into trying our food. If we are eating, even if he just ate, he tries to pull the food out of our hands and shove it in his mouth before we can grab it from him. He grabbed a huge piece of cookie the other night from right out of my hands. He loves stuffed animals, music, and anything electronic. Another recent thing is his love for paper. He likes to scrunch paper and try to eat it before we catch him. He is a sneaky little guy who can be perfectly content playing by himself if he is getting into trouble, but he would rather be around people. He loves to talk with us and cuddle too. He is starting to catch on that Nick is "Dadadada" and I am "Mamamama". He will say "Dadadada" when Nick comes home and if he's sad or wants to be picked up he says "Mamamama." He loves to be held and probably would be fine in my arms all day long if I am standing. His perfect day would be me carrying him around all day long on one giant outdoor walk, letting him take bites of whatever I eat, letting him eat paper and also my phone, and skip all of his naps. We love our little guy AND I cannot believe he's going to be 8 months tomorrow! His first birthday just keeps getting closer and closer! This first year of his is going by way too fast.

Vegas & Other Updates

Our Vegas trip turned out to be a lot of fun! Nick's mom was kind enough to watch Harvey for us last Monday and Tuesday. Monday we drove down to Vegas. First, we went to the Atomic Testing Museum, which was really cool. The Area 51 exhibit had some cool stuff. There were a few "what if" sections that had testimonials from people who used to work in certain sections and swore they were working on an alien craft, but the rest of the other people said it is basically a military weapons/aircraft test facility. It started up during the cold war when the U.S. was trying to keep up with Russia. They thought Russia had all this technology so they were trying to build it. Then they'd steal Russia's more advanced technology and reverse engineer it. There were a few cool things we read about and saw in that. One was a plane that basically has this camouflage exterior that changes to it's surroundings and scatters radio waves to go undetected on radars. Kind of neat! The other thing we watched a video of was this plane that went so fast you could SEE it breaking the sound barrier. That was pretty cool. It looked like a ripple effect, only in the sky!

After the museum we checked in at our hotel, the Stratosphere. Neither of us had ever been to Vegas before so the Casino atmosphere was pretty funny to us with all the lights flashing, videos playing, card games going, SO much going on in all different directions on the main floor. And how many different kinds of slot machine themes do people need?? Seriously! Wheel of Fortune 1, 2 AND 3, Bay Watch, Beach Boys, Michael Jackson, etc etc etc. JUST in slot machines!? We were there on a Monday and Tuesday and it was still pretty packed. Aside from that, we had a few things we wanted to do but nothing else set in stone. We ended up eating at the buffet, walking towards Fremont street, giving up 3/4 of the way there and stopping in the pawn shop from the show Pawn Stars instead, and riding the "Big Shot" ride at the top of the Stratosphere. It was a lot of fun even though we didn't have time to do everything that we thought would be fun. Maybe we'll go back again some day and we'll have some more stuff to do on our list already.

Meanwhile, Harvey did pretty good for his first night away from us. Grammy Potts took great care of him even though the second day he was being a little stink and decided he had had enough of taking milk from a bottle so she had to squeeze the bottle into his mouth to get him to eat the milk. He was fussy for a day or two after that but now he's back to his happy, bubbly self. Goofing around, trying to crawl, stand, sit up and grab everything in sight. I can't believe he had his half birthday already too! His first birthday seems like it's just going to sneak up so quickly since the past 6 months went by so fast!

Where is August going?

August is going by so fast! I seriously can't believe it's already the 14th. Our 2 year anniversary is less than a week away. Those two years went by fast, but have been great! We decided we wanted to actually go do something this year so Harvey is going to have a sleepover with Grammy Potts while we go down to Las Vegas for a night. We're really excited! We've never really been to Las Vegas so we thought it'd be a fun little overnight trip. We're going to be staying at the Stratosphere (and I am SO going to ride at least ONE of those crazy rides on top. I haven't decided which one yet.) and a dinner buffet came with our hotel room too. Then our main planned thing is going to an Area 51 exhibit in the national atomic testing museum. It's the only exhibit ever made about area 51 and it was made by people who used to work there! We are totally interested in that kind of a thing (especially after the hundreds of episodes of Star Gate) so we're pretty excited to "see what 'the truth' is behind Area 51". Oh and you can't bring cameras in to that one so you're all out of luck, but I will tell you all about it. :) Aside from that though, we haven't got much else planned. A few free things to go see and some frozen custard. A nice relaxing day.

On the Harvey news front... As many of you saw on facebook, Harvey was sleeping so awesome until he was about 4 months old. Unfortunately he got the sleep regression bug. It also didn't help that his little molar poked through the side of his gums and made him the incredible hulk baby for a few days around that time too. We figured it was just a short-lived thing, and we didn't want to start sleep training until we could be consistent with it. We were going out of town for Nick's family reunion and then just traveling around a lot in July so we figured we'd put it on the back burner and maybe he'd grow out of it. Well. He kept up his yucky sleep habits for a few weeks and I was trying everything. Crying it out with time intervals, without time intervals, rocking, walking, going outside, etc etc etc. The crying it out methods did NOT work for us at all, even after a few days of consistency it did not improve or anything. Harvey would just roll around his crib for 45 minutes to an hour, usually end up with his arm or leg poking out of the side and then scream louder. He never cried less than 45 minutes if we tried to let him cry it out and when he did fall asleep after an hour of crying, he'd only sleep 10 or 15 minutes and then wake up screaming. With the time intervals it was just the same, except we'd go in every 15 minutes one day, 20 the next, etc etc. With that, he hardly ever fell asleep and again, when he did, he wouldn't sleep long. He slept longer than he did with just crying it out, but still no more than half an hour. We needed to figure out what to do.

Well. When I took him in for his next well check/shots, our doctor (who I absolutely LOVE by the way) suggested just changing ONE simple thing. Only feed him once at night and decide when that's going to be. Have Nick put Harvey back to sleep when he can if it's not a feeding time, especially the first few nights, and then if Nick's not available, then just put him back to sleep myself. Well, within two days, Harvey was back to only waking up at 1 to eat like he was doing before. Now he's sleeping amazing. He still been waking up about an hour or two after he goes down just from being startled or natural waking or something, but Nick or I will put him back to sleep and then he'll sleep all the way to 6 or 7. YAY! It's been SO nice to get back to a good amount of sleep and without any crying too.