Esther's new favorite toy

Several years ago, Margo and I bought our future child something. I am guessing it was 5-6 years ago. The Razorback shop was having a big 50% off sale and they had something for a baby that we could not pass up for our future baby. We never would have thought at that time that it would have taken so long to get to this point but it was worth the wait. And we finally get to use this awesome toy. We put it on her changing table to give her something to look at when we are changing her diaper and dressing her.

It is a razorback mobile. The little hogs go around and it plays a nice little tune that is supposed to be the fight song but Margo and I can't really make it out. Esther loves it. She kicks and smiles and watches the hogs go round and round. It is a lot of fun to watch her watch it.

3 Months!

Today Esther is 3 months old! We can't believe how much she's grown and changed. She is such a sweet baby and is so fun. We are loving every minute with her.

Here are a couple of pictures of Esther sporting her Halloween outfits this week.

Toys

Margo and I went to a couple consignment type sales for children's clothes and toys. We found a few clothing items but we also came across a couple toys we could not pass up. As some of you may know, Margo and I really like old stuff/antiques. I don't know if Esther will also, but we will do what we can to push her in that direction. I think these types of toys are much better than the electronic noise makers they make today.

Margo and I both had one of these growing up. It is a Fisher Price School Days Desk. It has a magnetized chalkboard and comes with magnetic letters and cards with simple words you can trace with chalk on the chalkboard. It is missing a few letters but we were really excited to find it. It was made in 1972

This one Margo found. It is the Fisher Price Two Tune TV. It is from 1966 and you wind up the yellow knob and it plays row, row, row your boat and london bridge while the picture stories with words scroll across the screen. They still make this today as a "retro toy"

Sleep!!!!!!!!

I don't know if it is a fluke or not but on Friday night, Esther slept for 7 hours straight. And last night she went 6 hours. She had only been going 4 hours for the past few weeks. If this continues it would be awesome. She is now sleeping in her own room which helps me sleep more because I am such a light sleeper, which meant I did not sleep much when she was in our room. We have also started swaddling at night when she sleeps. We could not do it when she was younger because she could get out of it so easy but now that she is bigger it works better.

Here are some new pics. Which by the way, I have a random question for you pertaining to pictures. I feel like we (and people in general) take too many pictures these days. For instance, we have taken over 300 pictures of Esther so far. After I take them, I put them in a folder on my computer and then at the end of the year I back them up on my large capacity external hard drive. I just wonder if I will ever look through all of these pictures in the future. And it is just not of Esther. Pictures of the farm, vacations, holidays, etc. Will Esther ever care to look at all the pictures we have taken over the years? Will they get passed on to future generations? I cherish old pictures of my ancestors. It is really awesome to see how they looked back then. But there are very few pictures of them. If there were hundreds of pictures I think I would still be interested but only of the good ones/interesting ones or the ones with lots of people in them. I am just worried that we have so many these days that it is just too overwhelming to go back and try to look at them. Any thoughts? I know, I know you just want me to shut up and to show you pics of Esther.

She is so very sweet, how could you not love this little girl to death.

Rockin some awesome hair

She smiles a lot at us these days but it is hard to catch on camera. She also likes to smirk.

Out like a light

Here is the baby burrito in her swaddle blanket

Esther's World

I thought I would post some pictures of Esther's room now that we have it pretty much set up (it was one of our guest rooms before). I still need to hang some stuff on the walls. It took a while to get it set up since she was such a surprise and we had nothing ready. I was in the middle of painting the furniture for her room when we got the call about her.

We bought the little bookshelf for her. We love books (even though I don't read a whole lot) and have got a pretty good collection going for her. We have started reading to her some, I can't wait until she gets old enough to understand. The rocking chair was my grandmother's rocking chair so it means a lot to me. It is kind of hard to see but the canvas on top of the bookshelf with Esther's name was made by a good friend and is really cute.

Here is her crib and changing table. Some awesome friends gave them to us and I repainted them. I also repainted the dressers that were in this room to make everything the same color and somewhat match.

The little wooden cross above the bed is a dutch cradle cross that one of my good friend's dad got for us. We really liked it.

This is a canvas painting a girl at our church did and gave to us. It is really awesome, Margo cried.

I also thought I would post a picture of Esther's favorite place to be, from her perspective. She loves her swing and this is her view. It is a toucan, a monkey, and a frog that spin around.

I might be a felon

Before I get to the felon thing I wanted to share a funny video. Do you remember the funny old spice commercial that came out several months ago? Here is a link. Well Sesame Street made a spoof of it that I thought was pretty funny so I thought I would share.

Now to the felon thing. Over the weekend, four kids (ages 17-21) got arrested and charged with a felony for making a sparkler bomb and setting it off in an empty field on private property (read news story here) in Farmington. If you don't know what a sparkler bomb is, it is when you tape a bunch of sparklers together with duct tape or electrical tape and light them. It makes a loud explosion. You can search it on youtube and find hundreds of videos of it (you might even find one of me and another guy(who I won't name since we might be felons)). I can't tell you how many times I have made these. I think it is ridiculous that they would be charged with a felony. I think the Farmington police are being stupid like small town police can be and I hope the prosecutor does not follow through with the charges.

Family

We took a little trip down to Little Rock on Wednesday to spend a couple days seeing my (Josh) extended family. This was Esther's first time to meet her great grandmother (my grandmother on my mom's side) and some of her great aunts and extended cousins. It was a fun time seeing family.

Esther with great granny.

Esther with Great Aunt Diane

Esther with Great Aunt Sherry (I know she will love being called Great Aunt)

I am not sure how the cousin numbering/naming works but this is Esther with my first cousins Kelly and Nikki

Again not sure about the cousin numbering thing (are they second cousins, third cousins, or great cousins? it is too confusing, can someone help me with this) but this is Esther with one of my first cousin's two girls (Sydney and Lorelai)

Here she is with another of my cousin's kids (Jacob), who is 3 months older than Esther

Cutest Picture Ever and a Visit to the Doctor

Esther had her first doctor visit with us yesterday. She saw Dr. Jackson who was great. He said she seems to be doing great, no problems. She weighs 10lbs 11.5oz, and is 21.81 inches tall. She is around the 20-30 percentile in height and weight and everything is proportional like it should be. She weighed 6 pounds at birth (and 7 pounds when we got her 5 weeks ago), and was 18.5 inches at birth.

Here is the super cute picture. She is in her little monster hooded towel after a bath.

Recent Pictures

Esther and I swinging on the front porch.

Esther is getting big, not only in size but in development. She is doing really well holding her head up. She still does the bobble head thing some but she is doing good enough we can set her in her bumbo for a little while.

Her cool tie-dye shirt that she wore to the car show we went to on Saturday.

Our good friends Adriel and Emily and their daughter Eliana were in town this weekend. They moved to St Louis a few months ago. This was their first time to meet Esther. Eliana is 10 months older than Esther. I am sad they do not live here anymore so that the girls could grow up together but hopefully they will know each other and be friends in the years to come.

Today is our first doctor appt with Esther. Stay tuned for details.