FOOD FOOD FOOD!!!

I am trying to teach Phyn sign language. I have started just using simple signs like milk, cereal, food, sleep, mommy, daddy, etc. Pretty much the only one she really reciprocates of course is... MILK! She is becoming quite the "boob snob." She will rarely take a bottle anymore, especially if it is me giving it to her. She would spend the whole day with mom in her mouth if she could I think. She will only fall asleep from nursing now, unless she is totally exhausted. I need to break her of this, but I guess I am a big softy and enjoy the closeness sometimes. She won't be like that forever. She has completely given up the binky. I can rarely get her to take it. Usually it is in the car. We have started introducing cereal and sweet potatoes. She LOVES sweet potatoes, cereal... eh not as much. It is fun to see her start to eat more things than just mommy milk. She loves food so much she tries to eat it off the bib while I refill the spoon. Here are some pictures and a video.







The original cereal video is 9 minutes long, so until I edit it I will just put this shorter sweet potato video on instead.
sorry you get to hear my conversation with my brother on the phone.. Also the second video is her signing milk to me. She is teething as well so you will see her chewing her lip and signing. enjoy!

"Mr." Flower

So Phyn has a very fun, little toy that she got before she was born. It is a fun rattle with crinkly petals shaped like a daisy. I don't know why we started calling it Mr Flower, but as you can see... it is not a "Mr" but more of a "Mrs" lol. We kept the name since it's kind of an inside joke now. Here is a picture and video of how much she loves "him"

Smiles and Coos

So I haven't updated in a long time but with the holidays things have been busy.
In the last week or 2 Phynley has really started to react to things. She will follow things with her eyes and look around when she hears mine and Stephen's voices. She becomes fixated on lights. She loves looking out the window and looking at the christmas tree lights. Here are a few cute videos of her growing up *sniff*

Snowball Fight!!!

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My little sleepy Diva

Phynley likes to pose in her sleep.. We have caught a few of these poses on camera. I just love to watch her sleep sometimes. I wonder what she is dreaming about. She gets little smirks on her face and smiles (mom says it's just colic... ). Here are some pictures

gingerbread fun

Last Saturday we were up in Heber making gingerbread houses. It is a yearly tradition that my family does. Every year I make a gingerbread house with some type of theme. I have done a peppermint palace, all white "winter wonderland" house, red and green, all green.. etc. My mom has done some really fun houses too. One year she did the love shack (valentine's candy), The Nut House, and a few others. I decided since we had baby girl this year that I would make a princess house. I couldn't find a small cute princess to go in the front, but my mom was able to find a cute pink baby bottle candy. Here are the pics of the finished product.




It's always cute to see what the little kids do for their houses. This year gingerhouse day fell on the same saturday as the Utah and BYU rivalry game. Grace decided to make a BYU house and Tyson put a big U on his. Super cute. :) Sid kept coming up and telling me how much she loved my house. She loves to play dress up and be a princess. So I think this little house was fitting for her. I have to put my thinking cap on for an idea for next year.... any thoughts?

Purple Penguin Suit

Well, in honor of miss Phynley being born one month ago tomorrow, I am going to try to catch up on a few of the cute things that have happened since she was born. This one just happened yesterday.

We were up at Coby and Katie's house last weekend making gingerbread houses. Katie asked me if I wanted to borrow a few warm suits and receiving blankets for a while. I said sure we can always use more receiving blankets and warm stuff. Phynley got 2 suits at the baby shower but neither of them fit her yet, basically they drown her right now. I am sure by january that will change. We were going to take Phynley to Grammy's for a visit so Mommy and Daddy could clean up the house a bit. I thought, "well it's cold, so I will try on one of those suits so she doesn't have to have 5 blankets on." I laid her in it and it was within about 30 seconds of the initial cry that she had fallen asleep in the suit. She loves to be warm. Her cute little hands don't fit in the arms so she looked like a penguin... super cute :)




Not very happy in this next one...

Phynley Evelyn Hopper

She's here!!! Arrived Nov 5th at 12:01 AM weighing in at 7 lb 15 oz and 21 inches. I plan to post more about the labor and delivery soon :)

halloween time!

We had a really good friday night. We carved our pumpkins and just relaxed. We got the keys to the apartment and were ready to get moving sunday. Here are our cute pumpkins!

Wrapping up... and hopefully bringing a cute little present home with us this week :)

How far along? 38 weeks 6 days

Total weight gain/loss: about 40 pounds total

Maternity clothes? I miss my regular pants that aren't too tight and aren't falling off!

Stretch marks? Definitely adding to the collection

Sleep: Here and there... seem to wake up at 300 in the morning without fail nearly every morning.

Best moment this week: Getting all of our stuff moved out of the house and into the apartment. Her room is all ready :)

Movement: She moves a ton still. Feels weird this week.. prob because I am missing parts.

Food cravings: Just Ice continually.

Gender: baby girl

Labor Signs: Lots of little contractions. Had a scare last week for about 6 hours but nothing happened. Nausea.

Belly Button in or out? Well i think if i didn't have scar tissue there it would be an outie. It is very shallow right now.

What I miss: Being able to do normal stuff like walk up stairs without feeling like I might kill over.

What I am looking forward to: Having our little girl in our arms :)

Weekly Wisdom: Warm Baths are the best

Milestones: Induction tomorrow :)

So a lot has happened this last week. We are in the middle of moving. We found a little apartment in midvale. 2 bedroom 2 bath with an attached garage. We needed to downsize from our house. Stephen and I made the decision to do it now rather than later. We have a few weeks overlap time between being in the apartment and having to be out of the house. That has really helped us so far.

We also took gracie to the humane society this week. :( It was not a fun day for me. She had been so naughty the last week or so that I just knew when the baby came it would be worse. In one day she had pooed 2 times in the house and peed in the front room. All within maybe 6 hours. I had tried to let her out 4 times but because it was "snowing" she wouldn't go out. She was hiding upstairs (which she never does) and I found a poop at the bottom of the stairs. Later I went to the store really quick and came back to a poop in front of our bedroom door. She also had jumped up onto the coffee table and gotten into a bag of cookies and ate nearly the whole bag. She also got into candy that was in a bowl on the table as well. My fault for leaving it there, but it got me to thinking that if she is being like this now how will she be when I am taking care of a baby as well? She just needed more than I could give her. I also didn't want a baby on the floor with poop and pee spots everywhere... can you blame me? It was a hard thing to go with stephen to the Humane Society. I was going to stay in the car, but I thought I could handle it. I was fine up until we had to take her back to a cage. I lost it. I felt so bad leaving her. She was so scared and knew that something was happening. I just hope that someone will adopt her or if they put her down she just went peacefully. Maybe someday when peanut is a little older and we have a house with a yard we can try to have a dog again.

Thankfully our week will be getting a lot better and a lot busier! Tomorrow is induction day. I am heading to my appointment in just a little bit here. Who knows maybe we will be staying at the hospital today. I feel like I have dropped and been feeling contractions. On wednesday I had a run of contractions for about 6 hours that didn't get any worse but they sure were there. I was worried that we would be spending our "moving weekend" in the hospital.