Happy New Year!

Hooray for 2009! We have had some fun adventures already in 2009 and we're excited for many more. Unfortunately, we started out the year with a dose of sickness as Aaron and I were sick on New Year's eve and recovering on New Year's day. We did manage to stay up until 11 pm on New Year's eve so we counted that we celebrated the holiday central time. :) Sasha was expecially excited about New Year's as you can see from the photo below:
On January 2, we had a great time watching the U of U compete in the Sugar Bowl, giving Alabama quite a few slices of humble pie. It was especially fun watching the game with fellow Ute fans (Heath, Andy, Spencer and the Reese family). I guess it also didn't hurt that the U played an amazing game and beat the socks of Alabama.

Heather holding Spencer and Becky holding Sasha as they had fun getting to know each other. We decided to give Heather a break for wearing blue since her U shirt was dirty and she promised not to let it happen again. :)

Spencer is quite the charmer and Sasha was very impressed with his cute little smile. Spencer is 2 days older so he has taken on the role of being a good example to Sasha by talking and wiggling lots...they are both such cuties!

On January 3, 2009, Aaron and I took our family Christmas gift (our new hiking backpack for Sasha) for a test run. Thank you REI dividend! She had a great time looking at the scenery even though it was a little chilly. We love this model because it has a plastic cover that protects her from the elements. The plastic, protective covering goes over the top, sides and back of the backpack so the whole front is open (except for the adult's head blocking some of it).

Here's a great view of the mountains, the backpack and Aaron - the best 3 in 1 ever!

Sasha loved it so much she even fell asleep for about 45 minutes of our hike...what a champ! We're definitely going to be doing more of this!

Happy Holidays!

We had such a wonderful time over Christmas even though it was kind of crazy traveling in the snow. Here's the play by play of how our holidays went.

Christmas Eve:
We were able to join the Hensons in Layton to continue the caroling tradition. It was fun bundling Sasha up and going to around to neighbors' houses with the rest of the family. We had quite a group with mom and dad, Shelly and Rob and Jolie, Lys and John and Aussie and Sugar, Heidi and Michael and Abrie, and Troy, Ang, Tiffany, Sarah, Michael, Andrew, Jared and Amy...phew! What fun! This was Sasha's first time sleeping the entire night somewhere other than in her crib. She did pretty well, sleeping from 9 pm to 6:30 am.

Christmas Day:
The morning was spent taking turns opening gifts as we "ooohed and ahhhhed" over all the wonderful things everyone received. The topping event was chatting while eating Angela's AMAZING homeade sweet rolls and watching all the boys play with their remote control toys. From there, we headed to meet up with the Hull family in Kaysville at Wade and Steph's house. We enjoyed a delicious brunch followed by presents. Sasha received 2 gifts this year, a new outfit and a trike that Aaron got through a rewards program at work. You could probably have guessed that Sasha was bound to get a bike sooner rather than later since she is Aaron's daughter. :) Here's a picture of her on her bike...we'd like to think she loved it and is ready to ride, but we may have to wait for a little bit until she's ready to pedal herself.

Doesn't she look cute in her stocking?

This is a trick that Aaron and Sasha love to do, which usually terrifies and impresses me at the same time. Sasha is getting better at balancing so Aaron holds her while she sits up and balances.

We are so blessed to have such incredible families and we love spending time with them. Sasha is lucky to have so many loving grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins. Merry Christmas to all!

Our smiling cutie...

We have been having so much fun with Sasha as she learns how to smile and giggle. I can hardly believe that she's 3 months old and it's almost Christmas. Wow, time is sure sneaky. We've been getting more smiling and cooing over the past few weeks so we wanted to share it with all of you. I tried to post a video that shows how she's learning to move and talk, but have been having issues getting it to upload. Do videos have to be uploaded to youtube or another website before posting them here? Any help would be appreciated. :) Enjoy the photos below!

Sasha and me in our church attire. She tends to smile more when lying on the ground on her own. Once she's picked up, her curious nature takes hold and she mostly observes.

Sasha smiling and observing during two of her favorite activities - diaper changes and sitting in the swing.

We call this her Elvis smile. She kind of curls up one side of her face and squints one eye as she smiles - it's so adorable. This isn't the full version, but it at least gives you an idea.

This photo is actually supposed to be sideways as she's laying on her changing pad. Seriously, she LOVES the changing pad.

Happy Thanksgiving! We celebrate progress...

Happy Thanksgiving...tomorrow! Sasha is almost 3 months old and is progressing in so many ways. Aaron and I have so much to be grateful for this year, especially our cute little Sasha. She has been sleeping around 8 hours a night and is eating like a champ (as you will see from her chubby cheeks). We're now working on getting her to nap better and on a more consistent basis. I just read a book recommended by many friends called Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child so we're trying it out. I have my fingers crossed right now, hoping it will work. So far, his advice about only 1-2 hours of time awake after the feeding is pretty accurate. In fact, today Sasha has gone down for 3 naps, the first of which she didn't cry, just made a few babbling sounds. The second two she cried but for maybe 3-5 minutes. She slept for 2 1/2 hours the first one, 2 1/2 hours the second one and she's on her third nap about 20 minutes in. It will be interesting to see how things go with the holiday tomorrow, being away from home.

Sasha sleeping in her favorite cactus pose. Her little arms are so cute since they don't even reach the top of her head.Sasha playing with her favorite toy. Okay, so I put in her hand, which automatically goes toward her mouth to suck, but I consider it "playing."

We are so grateful for amazing family, supportive friends and lots of fun events to keep the spice in things. We have been blessed with a beautiful home, Aaron has a good job (and fabulous benefits), I have a good job (10 hours a week as the wellness coordinator for Regence) that starts back up beginning of December and we're excited for the holiday season. We send our love and gratitude to all of you!

By the way, Sasha isn't quite holding her own bottle as she eats just yet, although we still consider her our bottle prodigy. Now she just runs her hands up and down it to feel it while she eats. We'll keep working on getting her to hold it. :)

Sasha the bottle prodigy

Sasha likes to have her hands close to her face and, most of the time, touching the bottle with one hand and holding a finger with the other. Aaron was feeding Sasha last night and decided that Sasha looked like she was holding the bottle herself. So, he gave it a shot and stopped holding it up for her. Amazingly, she actually held it up and kept on eating away, happy as a clam. Yes, Sasha is our little bottle prodigy. We're hoping she'll hone this skill over the coming months, but only time will tell.

Eventful Weekend...First Halloween and Baby Blessing

This weekend was pretty action-packed for us with Halloween on Friday and then Sasha's blessing on Sunday. Both were lots of fun to experience together and it was fun to be able to include family and friends as well.

Halloween was fairly low-key since it was fairly chilly and Sasha doesn't really even know what candy or costumes are at this point. Nevertheless, we dressed her up in a Halloween outfit complete with an orange shirt that said "BOO" on it, cute little black pants and striped orange and black socks. That night we then put her in her little lamb costume (courtesy of grandma Henson) and off we went to brave the cold weather. We only visited a few houses, but Sasha enjoyed being outside and it was a fun time had by all. Aaron and I even got a piece of candy to eat when we got home. Isn't she the cutest in her costume?

Sasha's blessing was a beautiful event and a wonderful day for us. Aaron and I were up much of the night due to some unexpected partying by our next door neighbors, but luckily we had prepared everything at the house on Saturday so we could operate on autopilot. Church begins at 8:30 am for us and sacrament meeting was at 10:20 am so Sasha's blessing took place around 10:30 am. Of course, we were worried about her blowing out a diaper or screaming through the whole thing, but she was just drowsy through the blessing and slept through most of sacrament meeting. Both Aaron and I were able to share our testimonies of the great blessings we have experienced over the last 2 months and for the incredible peace that the Gospel of Jesus Christ brings. We are so blessed to have Sasha, our sweet, healthy, beautiful daughter. We were so grateful to all of you who were able to attend the blessing (and those who expressed support in so many other ways). Thank you for all of your support and for helping Sasha and us to know that we are loved. We are truly blessed to have you in our lives! Here is a photo of our family:
3 generations...my mom, me and now Sasha. My mom came this morning to make sure everything was ready to go and she has been such an amazing support to us. Thanks, mom, for all you do to help us - we love you!

Blessing and updates...

It's hard to believe how fast time flies...Sasha is already 8 weeks old and we are blessing her this coming Sunday. Wow! I sent out an email, but unfortunately I don't have everyone's email addresses. Hopefully, if you didn't get the email, you'll see this or somehow find out about this great event. I just thought I'd let everyone know the basic info so let me know if need the address or any other info:

Sasha's Blessing

Sunday, November 2

10:15 am.

I'm learning so many lessons that it's sometimes hard to keep up. I am so grateful for Aaron and how supportive he has been through everything - how lucky I am! We have had some ups and downs over these last 2 months and he has been a rock. Since being diagnosed with a rare syndrome called Raynaud's Syndrome (which makes breastfeeding or pumping extremely painful), he has helped with feeding Sasha so that I can get more sleep (what a champ) in addition to changing his share of diapers, keeping the house in working order (no small task since having to get a new dishwasher, winterize the sprinklers and swamp cooler, get the garage door fixed, etc) and keeping me sane. I can't imagine going through this amazing experience without him.



Here are some of the updates on what Sasha's doing now at 8 weeks:

• She weighs around 10 pounds (her last weigh-in was about 1 1/2 weeks ago so she could be more now)


• She is now playing with her tongue a lot and smiling more and more each day. It makes everything so worthwhile to see her beautiful, smiling face look up at us.


• Her sleep patterns continue to improve...she actually slept from 9 pm to 5 am last night - yippee! Now we just need to work on some consistency so I can actually have some semblance of a schedule or at least something kind of close to it.


• She loves the changing pad and enjoys getting her diaper changed.


• She's enjoying baths more and more. We even tried her first shower and she did great.


• She loves to sleep on one spot so it's definitely flatter than the other side, but we're working on that one. We are constantly amused by all of her facial expressions and sleeping positions.


• For Halloween, she has a little lamb costume that her sweet mother-in-law gave her. We'll take her around to at least a few houses so Aaron can have some candy to eat. :)


• She loves music so we play music while feeding her and sing her a song ("Teach Me to Walk in the Light") at bedtime.


• She's starting to notice her hands more and bring them to her mouth, occassionally drooling all over them in the process.


• It looks like she might prefer the Evenflo bottles after drying a number of different bottles and nipples...phew!


• I'm speaking to her mostly in Russian so hopefully she'll pick up on it.


• Her frowny face is probably the saddest expression I've ever seen and makes you want to fix whatever could possibly be bothering her at the moment.
• Her 2 month appointment is next week so I'll be sure to update with all of her stats.

That's all for now. Love to all of you!