An update of pictures!!

Tummy time

Bath time with dad.

Sick baby means extra snuggles!

She LOVES this thing. 

Our family Halloween party, we were bikers!

I spy with my little eye...

Uncle Justin's football game. 

Fall in all it's Glory

The weather this weekend was phenomenal!! Perfect weather for walks and football games. We had a good time at Justin's football game and just being outside enjoying it before it's gone. Fall always comes and goes too quickly. 

Happy Four Months!!

 Tatum is now four months old!!! I am loving this age so much. She is starting to like toys and grab things. She loves to watch football and is starting to laugh a lot. One of my favorite things lately is during her last feeding I lay down and feed her on our bed. After she's done she always gazes up at me and will just sit there staring at me. And then I tell her over and over again how much I love her, and each time I say it, she gives me the biggest smile. Of course that is always followed by a million kisses on squishy cheeks. Then I'll hold her little arms and say a prayer with her. Can't think of a better way to end my day, she fills my heart with so much joy.

Gahh I love those tootsies...

Is your baby sleeping through the night?

If I could only count how many times people have asked me.. "Is she sleeping through the night?" It's like a measurement of how good of a mom I am. I swear it's always the first question people ask me. And people seem to make you feel like if your baby isn't sleeping through the night by a couple months old then you must be doing something wrong. And the moms whose babies do sleep through the night seem to plaster it all over Facebook etc. (nothing wrong with that, I'd be pretty stoked about it too) but it always made me feel like I was doing something wrong.

I started noticing that the more pressure I put on myself to get her to "sleep through the night", the more frustrated I would get with my sweet Tatum. And when she'd wake up in the night I would always think what is wrong, why won't you just sleep through the night like all the other babies? Until I finally came to realize it's NOT THAT BIG OF A DEAL FOLKS. Once I actually thought about it, I realized I was more frustrated with the fact that I wasn't meeting these expectations than I was with the lack of sleep or getting up with her in the night. Once I took that pressure off of myself, I was so much happier. I'm not saying that sleep training your baby is bad, I think it's completely awesome and necessary. I'm also not saying that I will never let my baby "cry it out" etc. What I'm simply saying is, can we all just go a little bit easier on ourselves? I mean, I get woken up by the sweetest baby in the whole world. And it only gives me more opportunities to snuggle her. I feel like I spent a lot of those opportunities frustrated instead of fully enjoying something that I will NEVER get back. I will get my sleep back, but never those moments. She's already a day older today than she was yesterday. And I practically can't even say those words without choking up. 

I'm sure there will come a time where I will need to show some tough love, let her cry it out, or maybe once I have another baby I won't be able to get up in the night like I have been able to with Tatum. But for now I am content. I have my sweet little baby and I'm always going to do what I think is best for her and what is best for me. I strongly believe that every mother has a different way of doing things and every baby is different too, making it impossible to make a blanket statement about how things should be done. But isn't that what is so beautiful about being a mother? YOU are the one that knows what is best for you and your baby, mothers intuition is no joke. And I thank Heavenly Father every day that he trusted me enough to send me my sweet Tatum, now can I just learn to trust myself? I'm sure there will come a day where I will get a full 8 hours of sleep, but for right now I'm going to take the extra snuggles. 

Conference Weekend

This really is my absolute favorite time of year. I love everything about fall and I especially love General Conference time. It never disappoints and without fail I hear something that I needed to hear. I am so grateful for the inspired leaders of our church that take the time to prepare these talks. Conference is always such a testament to me that we truly do have a living prophet that receives inspiration from God on our behalf. What a beautiful blessing that is. It also doesn't hurt that Conference means we get to snuggle up on the couch in our pj's with delicious food. My mom always makes yummy food for us to eat while we watch. We had so much food it was ridiculous. This year she did caramel and chocolate fondue. What's better this time of year than apples and homemade caramel? We also enjoyed walking outside in the beautiful weather, painting pumpkins, and just spending time with each other. Byron FINALLY had a tiny breather from school and it was especially nice to have him around. It gave me just enough to make it through until his next breather. Me and Tatum are so grateful for all of his hard work, but we sure do miss him when he's gone.