March update

So, we have few updates to share with you all. I think I will start with the most exciting though... MY BROTHER IS HOME FROM HIS MISSION!!! For those of you who are not LDS (does that apply to anyone who reads this?) My brother left in March of 2008 to serve a mission for our church. He spent the last 2 years (730 days) in south Washington D.C. serving the people there. Over those two years, the only contact we had with him was an email once a week and a phone call twice a year; one on mothers day and one on Christmas day. Casey arrived home this past Friday, the 19th. We are so excited to have him home and Leah was excited to finally meet her uncle. In all the craziness at the airport, I didn't manage to get many pictures, but I did get a few of Leah and my dad waiting for him to arrive. He will leave again in mid April to go back to school at BYU Idaho, but we're happy that we'll be able to seem him on breaks and holidays.

This is my dad with his dad and Leah

In Leah news, things are going great! Leah turned 10 months on Sunday the 21st. In my last post I mentioned that we were trying a new tactic to get Leah to take naps. For the first week and a half, her naps consisted of her crying/yelling for about 30 mins. Then she moved on to talking/playing during her naps, and then, she started actually napping. Initially we were trying to put her down once in the morning and once in the afternoon, but she would only end up sleeping for her afternoon nap and still crying for her morning nap. So however much I enjoyed the 30 mins to myself in the morning, I did not enjoy having a crying baby down stairs. We moved on from 2 nap attempts and decided that if we could just get 1 good nap out of her a day, that would be good. For about the last 2+ weeks I've been able to get her to take a nap everyday (with maybe an exception here and there) that lasts between 45mins and 2hrs depending on how tired she is. Its really been great. I've been reluctant to be too noisy in fear of waking her up, but I manage to get some house work done, and just the quiet time to myself has been great.

Leah has also seemed to grow up so much over the past 3 or 4 weeks. She's started saying a few words i.e. "bye", "hi", and our favorite "wow". She will also do the sign (sign language) for dog and fish, and she even says "do" when she does the sign for dog, it's too stinkin' cute! On top of the words, she's also started to show an interest in walking. She will stand on her own without holding on to anything, and you can see her little brain contemplating taking a step. On Monday the 22nd she took a couple steps between Nick and I, and today, she took 4 steps! We haven't been able to catch it on camera because she catches us of guard and won't usually do it if we try to get her too. She likes to do things on her own terms :).

Nick's internship is still going well, and he got his first paycheck this week. YEA! He's been on spring break this week and has had a good time hanging out with Casey.

So, I've been contemplating making our blog private. So if you're interested in continuing to read it, comment or send me a message with your email if you want an invite. No plans to go private have been made for sure, it's just something I've been thinking about so let me know!