Blog Has Moved

I merged this blog back with our family blog. You can read it and get all your Hadley fix at
thosepearlygates.blogspot.com
Hope to see you there!

September 12, 2011

Since becoming pregnant with Hadley, I have made some wonderful friends and I'm so excited to have Hadley grow up with these wonderful women and their darling babies. In January, we started our birthing classes at St. Lukes and that's where I met Laci. Laci and her husband Jason were expecting a boy at the end of March. We ended up hitting it off and now Laci and her adorable boy Axel are Hadley's and my favorite friends :)

Laci is beyond fit and she and Jason recently did the Bogus Basin hill climb on their bikes (it's insanely hard) and took little Axel with them. They are so awesome!

I love how his legs are as chunky as Hadley's!

After I had Hadley, I got a flyer in the mail offering a new moms group at St. Lukes. I went that next Thursday and had such a great time talking with a bunch of other women who had had babies within weeks of Hadley. After a couple of months, we figured we had got everything out of the class and decided to form our own group and meet up on the occasional weekend. I love these women. We are all working moms, we enjoy lots of the same things and we all have adorable, sweet babies.

This was our first meet-up in June. All the babies were right around three months.

This meet up was in July and we didn't have as many moms at this one, but still had lots of fun!

This meet up in August was lots of fun with nearly all the moms and babies. They are all around five months here. Can't wait for the next one!

Hadley was surprised at little Hazel sucking on her arm!

Hadley and Anna are NOT happy. (Within a minute they were both fine!)

Soon it will be too chilly to meet a parks, so we'll have to come up with an indoor idea. I still think Boise needs to create some indoor parks. Winter can be so boring!
I am so lucky to have all these wonderful women in my life and Hadley is going to love all her little friends as they all grow up together. How cute they'll all be!

August 20, 2011

Hadley turned five months old yesterday! She is becoming such a big girl and even sleeps in her big girl crib now!

I swear she actually sleeps in there...sometimes.
The first night that we were going to put Hadley in her crib with the monitor on didn't exactly pan out. We watched a scary movie earlier that night that had a lady listening to her baby monitor and she could hear voices on it...so it spooked us enough that we decided that one more night in the cradle in our room couldn't hurt. This turned out to be a good thing since our monitor is on the same frequency as other monitors in our neighborhood and it's not uncommon to hear voices, doors shutting, etc. on it. It's pretty dang freaky but last night took the cake. We woke up around 2:30am to cries so Levi went her her room and I heard him on the monitor say, "Carly, she's dead asleep." It was so creepy! The baby's cries kept going and we realized that it was probably our neighbor's little boy, who is the same age as Hadley. Even though we solved that mystery, hearing a crying baby in the middle of the night, who is not YOUR baby is unsettling to say the least.
On a lighter note....Hadley is eating "real" food! She can handle a few bites of baby food a day and has actually started to make "Mmmmm" noises when she eats them. Hurray! The price of the food is a little high for my taste, so we're going to make our own food and then start trading food with the other new moms from my St. Lukes group. Hopefully it pans out because I don't want to pay nearly $1 per jar of organic baby food. Sheesh!

Ready for the num nums!
Hadley has also started to recognize people and had her first instance of crying at a stranger. It was so funny! We were downtown and ran into Levi's cousin Jared and his wife Anna. Jared bent down to where I was sitting holding Hadley and said, "Hey there, little cutie!" and Hadley BURST into tears. It was hilarious because there is nobody nicer than Jared, but she just fell apart. I assume it will only get more dramatic as she grows.

Here are Hadley's likes at five months:
• She loves sitting outside in the backyard. If she's ever fussy, we just take her out in the sunshine and she calms right down. She'll probably be like me and crave sunlight and dry heat. She especially looks cute in her little sunhat and sunglasses. I also love the smell of baby Coppertone sunblock on her sweet skin. So far we've been successful in preventing sunburn. Wahoo!
• Hadley loves when we sing "Itsy Bitsy Spider"and do the hand motions with her. Her eyes get big when we sing the "Down came the rain and WASHED the spider out" part. Super cute stuff.
• She is now tracking things, like when the cats walk by her. One of the cats will walk by and you see her realize what she just saw about two seconds after they walk by and she'll do her best to turn her head in that direction to see where they went. I think in about a month she'll be grabbing for their tails, which could be very interesting.
• Hadley still loves going for car and stroller rides. If she's tired or grumpy, we can just throw her in the car and she'll be asleep before we get to the next block. Sometimes she gets so tired she actually keeps herself awake fussing. I know the too-tired-to-sleep feeling and it's nice to know we have an easy fix for her.
• She loves getting up about half an hour before Levi or I are supposed to get up. It's like she knows what time our alarm is set for and she'll wake up just before it, which is crazy and and a habit I hope will change with time.
• She loves all of her aunts and uncles and grandparents. Hadley is so blessed with family who loves her and she'll never know what it's like not to be completely adored.

Hadley's dislikes at month five:
• Being put down. Period.
• Getting out of the bathtub. She'll probably stay in there until she's wrinkled when she's older. My sister's daughter Sydney is the same way.
• Being away from home when it's her bedtime. She is now used to having a bath at the same time every night, followed by pajamas and a big bottle, so being away from home during this time can really mess with her.

Other than that our little angel hardly has any complaints. Hadley is more and more fun with each passing month. I can't believe that in a couple of months she'll be crawling! I don't think I'm ready for that, and our house certainly isn't ready. We need to do some serious childproofing!
Here's a little montage of Hadders at five months old. Enjoy!

August 17, 2011

Hadley has become such a funny little girl! She's enjoying life so much and has found favorite things like her teething toys (she's not teething yet, but she still loves them), her Johnny-Jump-Up and, shockingly, laying on her stomach.
On my mom's birthday, July 28th, Hadley rolled over from her tummy to her back and she has refused to do it since. That's fine with me, it makes me worried to think about her rolling all over the place. Even though she's not rolling she loves to lay on her tummy and look around and kick her legs behind her. It's the cutest thing you've ever seen.

Hadley in her Johnny-Jump-Up. She loves to sit in this, although she hasn't quite figured out how to "jump" yet.

Here are some more things we adore about Hadley:

Her tight-lipped smile...

...and her good smile.

The way she plays with her toys. If the toy has a hard part on it, she'll find a way to slam it against her forehead, stunning her for a minute and then making her really mad.

The way she grabs her feet. She started doing that regularly on August 11th. She can now get her foot to her mouth, which is about the cutest thing ever.

Her bald spots. She has rubbed the hair on the sides of her head off, creating an interesting hair pattern.

THESE THIGHS! Don't you just want to eat them?!

Grandma Katie was in New York with Laurie, Justin, Ryan and Carlie for this past week and Hadley missed her so much. When Grandma came home Hadley just smiled and smiled at her. It was great to have her home. While Grandma Katie was gone, Hadley got to spend some time with Abuelita Maria and the two of them had lots of fun together.

Earlier this month, Hadley also got to take her first trip to Redfish Lake. She was a hit there, with all sorts of people approaching Levi and me and telling us how adorable she was. We had to agree!

I still can't believe little Hadley Finola is almost five months old! Pretty soon she'll be crawling and keeping us on our toes even more! Love that little baby.

July 28, 2011

Hadley has the gift of gab. This isn't surprising, with her heritage being both both the Gates family and the Allen family. Here she is trying to tell me a story:

Love that sweet voice!

July 23, 2011

On July 19th, Hadley turned four months old! She is such a big girl! She had to get her immunizations done again and that was very sad, indeed. She got a fever and was achey all day, but tried to remain sweet, which made the whole thing even more sad!

Hadley at her four-month checkup, before being stuck with the needles :(

Here are some four-month Hadley factoids:

• Hadley has started to laugh and smile at just about everything. Uncle Zane can make her laugh pretty hard and she likes you to make funny faces for her amusement.
• She hasn't rolled over yet, but while she's in her swing or her bassinet she can turn completely on her side, which scares me a little bit!
• She definitely prefers to be held and can't understand why you wouldn't be holding her if you're in the room. She has a dramatic cry that she'll use to get you to pick her up, which we always fall for.
• She has just started to try rice cereal, which we put in a bottle at night since her spoon skills aren't all that great yet.
• She has determined that 8:30 is her bedtime and we are hard-pressed to get her to stay up past that, unless we're away from the house. While it's nice that she's going to bed at a regular time, she has decided that 5:30am is the perfect time to wake up, which we don't agree with. We can usually get her to go back to sleep until about 7:00am if we put her in bed with us (I know, I know. I swore I would never do this, but at the time I made that vow I didn't have a happy four month old cooing away at 5:45 in the morning.)
• She can now face forward in the Baby Bjorn and she likes to suck on the fabric of that carrier. Actually she's now sucking on just about anything she can get her hands on. Between the sucking and the spit-up, we go through about eight bibs per day.
• Her hair is turning a gorgeous auburn color and her eyes are bright blue. BEAUTIFUL!
• She loves to look you in the face and talk. It's as if she's trying to tell you a story. You can see her thinking so hard about how to form the sounds and she looks like a little angel.

Hadley continues to blow us away every day. We are so blessed to have her sweet spirit in our house and I can't imagine it any other way (even at 5:30 in the morning!)
We love you, Hadley Finola!!

July 18, 2011

This post is called, "Holding Hadley."
I maintain that there is nothing better in this world that holding little Hadley, so here are a bunch of pictures people doing this exact thing!

Aunt Heather

Grandma Maria

Aunt Bonnie

Kate

Aunt Laurie

Rachel

Grandpa Jennings

Aunt JaNae

Uncle Pat, who makes special trips over to hold Hadley.

Aunt Sayaka is visiting from Japan this month.

Aunt Avery

Grandma Julie

Uncle Zane

Eliza

Aunt Sevy

Uncle Chris

Papa Brad
This is just a tip of the iceberg of pictures of friends and family who love and care about her. I have to fight to hold her whenever we take her anywhere and I love seeing her cuddle with all of these wonderful people. I love you all!