The Newly Mormon Idalifornian: First Smiles & First Houses

My baby smiled her first real smiles this morning. Oh, melt my heart! Last night, I probably spent close to an hour making faces at her, trying to get her to smile. We got close, but not quite. Then this morning when I laid her on our bed and was talking to her, she started giving me this big grins! So we spent some time smiling at each other while I snapped away with the camera. Now, excuse me while I be a new mom and post a dozen nearly-identical shots ;)


"Kay, Mom, I'm done now."

Ahh, I just love that little face. Anyway, she is doing great! She's finally gaining weight, and a lot of it at that! Between her weekly weight check and meeting with the doctor about her acid reflux (a Friday to Monday) she went from 7 lbs 5 oz to 7 lbs 9 oz. Then we went back a week later to see the doctor to check if her reflux meds were working (that was this Monday), and she was up to 8 lbs 1 oz! So she's gaining more than an ounce a day, which is great. And we're not even giving her that much formula lately, she's mainly breastfeeding. We just give her maybe three 2-3oz bottles of formula a day to supplement her, usually mainly when we're out running errands or something (I can't bring myself to do the whole public BF thing. I see these women with these cute nursing covers, but I just don't think I'm coordinated enough. I'm sure I'd end up flashing some poor, innocent people while trying to mop up the milk Brynleigh thinks is fun to spit out down my stomach every single time.) and at night so she'll stay fuller longer, then I'll nurse her to sleep. We think her meds are helping her acid reflux, though now she's into a phase where she has a super fussy time every evening. Fun stuff, I tell you.

Aaaaand, we bought a house! Well, we haven't closed on it quite yet, but everything is all sorted out and taken care of, so we feel pretty darn safe calling it ours now. A couple of months ago, Stoddard Farms asked Sterling if he'd want to come back and work for them. So we went down to Grace, talked it over with them, and decided that's what we want to do. So we started frantically looking for a house to buy (since there's nothing to rent in that town). We fell in love with one, then it sold before we even put in an offer. Then we actually put in an offer on another one, but we didn't get that house. Then we started freaking out a bit because there wasn't really anything left in Grace that wasn't either a shack or double our budget. Then we heard about a house that wasn't listed yet, and it sounded great and we got super excited, thinking we found our new home. Buuut, we went and looked at it and it was awful. Great potential, but currently awful and would be until we spent a looong time renovating. So we felt super defeated and stressed (this was only like 2 weeks ago, btw) because we needed to find a place ASAP but there was literally nothing else.

THEN my wonderful father-in-law remembered that there's this elderly couple in the ward that had been thinking for quite awhile they wanted to move down to Utah to be closer to their kids, but there house wasn't even for sale or anything. So he called them up and asked if they wanted to sell their house to us (it sure helps having a bishop dad who knows everyone in town). They said they were interested and let us come over to check the place out. So we did, and we made them an offer and they accepted it right then and there. We should be closed by the 1st of March, though we told the couple they could take until the 15th to move out if they needed to. We have to be out of our apartment on the 1st, so it looks like we'll be staying in Sterling's parent's house for a little bit.

I'm super excited to have a house we own and can do whatever we want to! It's a nice house, but it definitely needs some updating. The living room has orange shag carpet, so Sterling promised me that we can get that replaced the moment we move in. And there's lots of wallpaper, so I'm planning on doing some serious painting. There's a bunch of things that need updating, but everything is nice and clean, so it's definitely liveable for now and we'll just do little projects along the way. We don't have any pictures of the house yet, so those will have to wait until we move in. It has 2 bedrooms plus a big loft, 2 bathrooms, a living room & family room, and a really nice mudroom that used to be the garage. So since there's only 2 real bedrooms, this obviously isn't a forever home for us. We plan on it being a starter home for now, then once more kids start coming along we'll have to upgrade to a bigger house.

Anyway, that's about it for now. Here are a few more pictures!