Tuesday, January 31, 2012

PIG

You know that pig on the zip-line in the GEICO commercial that annoyingly goes "Wheeeeee!" over and over? That is Lila's favorite commercial. She can be eating and she'll turn her head to watch the entire thing. She can be playing on the floor and she'll turn to the t.v. to watch it. She can be crawling behind the couch and she'll come around it just to watch that commercial. So even though I think it's annoying, it's hilarious to watch Lila freak out over the commercial.

I know she's almost 8 months and so I'll be posting about her again soon, but I can't help but list some things that she loves. She now loves to crawl and is WAY more mobile than I imagined her being. I didn't think there would be much of a difference between her inchworm and crawling, but there is... a BIG difference. For the past week she's been pulling herself up to a standing position entirely on her own. She loves the diaper box because it has a picture of a baby on it. She says "mama" when she gets hungry and cries when we leave the room. She loves to get up on her knees and look around at things and she loves to give hugs to her mommy and daddy.

I guess I should leave some things for her 8 month post, although I'm sure I'll be repeating some of these as well.

Saturday, January 28, 2012

Let Virtue Garnish Thy Thoughts

Today Micah and I were supposed to go to the Temple, but I was really sick yesterday and today Micah had whatever I had so it has been postponed until next week. It's okay though because I was still able to make it to my stake's Relief Society Conference. I had been excited to go to it until just before I was supposed to go. I was feeling lazy and just wanted to spend the day with Lila and give Micah a break as he was sick, but because we weren't able to go to the temple I thought that it would be worth it. Sister Hilary Weeks and Sister Kris Belcher were the main speakers and they were so inspirational. I enjoyed every moment of this conference and in a way it made up for not being able to go to the temple. I love when I'm able to come out of a church function feeling so inspired and uplifted. I wish that I could have recorded it so that I could allow you to listen, but I'll just have to try and give you some of the highlights.

It began with a stake choir singing "The Spirit of God" and it was really beautiful. They had most of the choir up front, but then had some of the members gradually join that were spread throughout the congregation and then on the final verse they had us all stand and sing it. It was a great way to start off the meeting and to invite the spirit.

Sister Keddington from our stake gave a short talk first and introduced the other speakers. Even within her short talk what she had to say had an effect on me. The main idea was that we need to be women of hope (which was the theme) in a world that is expecting the exact opposite.

Next, Hilary Weeks spoke and she focused on the power of thought. She had a lot of wonderful quotes and sang several beautiful songs. I'll only share a few of her thoughts otherwise this post will be REALLY long. She began by having us picture ourselves in a kitchen, going to the fridge, pulling out a lemon, cutting it in half, and then licking one of the halves. While imagining this my mouth began to salivate and then she said, "I bet most of us began to salivate as we thought of the lemon. If a lemon could cause that much of a reaction, how much could the power of positive thought affect us?" She then talked about an article that she had read that stated people have on average more than 300 negative thoughts daily. After reading this, she decided that she was going to do an experiment where she would use a clicker to keep track of her negative thoughts. She started off the day explaining this to her kids. On the way to school one of her kids picked it up and said "Nine already? Really Mom?" And so she decided to cover the number with masking tape so that she couldn't try and skew the results. After the first day she had clicked it 145 times and she hadn't actually taken it with her everywhere. She continued on with her experiment into date night with her husband where she was constantly clicking it, because she was complaining about her day. She talked about how she couldn't take it to church with her as she was worried people would ask her what she was doing and she would have to click it in front of them as she explained, or she would be clicking it a lot during church while some kids spill their cheerios all over the floor and she would judge their parents. It got to the end of one week and she started to feel really depressed and down and she couldn't figure out what happened. Suddenly, she realized that it was probably because she was focusing so much on her negative thoughts and giving them so much attention. She then decided to flip her experiment and keep track of her positive thoughts. The first day she had 321 thoughts and by day four she had 1,262 positive thoughts, and she had never felt happier.

I'm really butchering the power of her talk, but I'll just finish with a last few quotes and ideas that she had.

Every day she tells herself that she is a "capable, dynamic, beautiful, healthy, courageous woman." She chose those five words as they are the things that she doubts most in herself and so it is her way of encouraging herself to be that way.

"Thoughts make us what we are." ~Pres. David O. McKay
"How can a person possibly become what they are not thinking about" ~Pres. Spencer W. Kimball
D&C 6:36 "Look unto me in every thought; doubt not, fear not."

She ended by talking about how positive Nephi was throughout his life even in times of hardship. She compared him to Laman and Lemuel who were constantly complaining and saying that things were impossible. When Nephi was asked to build a ship he didn't complain and talk about how he didn't know what to do, but instead had faith and was positive in his thoughts and accomplished the task that was set before him. Sister Weeks then asked us to think about the following question... "Have you been asked to build a ship, but have no way or no idea of how to do it?" This was probably my favorite part of the talk, because she related positive thought to real faith and that is how I feel right now in my life. Not knowing what is next for Micah and me is hard for me as I had my life somewhat planned out. I thought that finding a job would be easier than it is and so I have been somewhat struggling in my faith with this. I have SAID multiple times that I have faith that it will all work out, but then I have negative thoughts that I'll perhaps have to work for the next 30 years and I won't get what I ultimately want. I can't just say I'm one way and then think and act a complete opposite way. I actually have more faith now that things will work out and that I'll be able to "build my ship", since listening to her talk, than I did before. I have resolved to have positive thoughts as long as I hope to have faith in the Lord.

"We become what we want to be, by consistently being what we want to become." ~Elder Scott

I'm so grateful for opportunities like this where I get to have my spirit uplifted and my testimony strengthened. What a blessing to have the gospel in my life and feel hope in a world that is dying without it.

**I was going to post about the second speaker, but this one was already SO long that I'll save it for tomorrow.

Tuesday, January 24, 2012

Finally

Lila crawls! I knew I was just being impatient. ;)

Sunday, January 22, 2012

Laughter

Lila is getting more and more fun and is getting really good at responding to us on purpose. She has been crying for the past little while when one of us leaves the room, and although it's sad to hear her cry, it's good to see her notice things more. I now am certain that Lila is ticklish and she has the funniest little belly laugh when we really get her going. She also likes to blow raspberries on my stomach, as we discovered last night. She was rolling/crawling around on our bed when she face planted on my stomach. She blew a raspberry and it made me laugh so hard that she did it over and over, looking up each time to watch me laugh at her. The last raspberry she blew was the funniest because it was so loud! She's getting really close to being able to pull herself up to her feet. If we hold one hand on the couch she call pull the rest of her body up to stand next to the couch. She's getting so strong and seems to STILL be doing everything out of order for other babies at her age/stage. It makes it hard to predict what she'll do next, but gives us something to look forward to. Everyday she gets to be more and more fun with her babbling, screaming, giggling, rolling, scooting, eating, sleeping, bouncing, and dancing.

Tuesday, January 10, 2012

Growing Up!

There has been so much change around here for Lila and all of us. She is now 7 months and there's not much to report in that area as she doesn't have another appointment until 9 months, so... no statistics. Despite this, she has come so far in her development. She has SO much hair, but it's all really fuzzy so it looks funny/adorable. I'm happy about this as I was sad when her hair she was born with all rubbed off. She still doesn't crawl, but I don't know when that will happen as she is moving all over the place by scooting, rolling, flopping, etc. She also can sit herself up. It's so cute how she does it, too! She gets up on all four and swings one leg across her body in front of the other one and then sits down. I don't really know how to describe it, so sorry if that didn't make any sense... just know she can get from lying on the floor to sitting up by herself. She really wants to stand and tries to pull herself up, but can't quite do it. She pulls on everything trying to get up, but she doesn't have the strength yet. It will be interesting to see how she continues to work on that. On Sunday I noticed the very top of a tooth coming through her bottom gums. You couldn't feel anything, but I knew I saw something. I mentioned this to Micah and he looked (although she made it hard:)) and was also able to see it. Finally today you could feel it and so I don't have to feel like maybe I was just picturing something. I know I mentioned earlier that she also says "mama" along with "baba", but I love it so much that I thought I would mention it again. She also already loves other babies and smiles, giggles, and "talks" to them every time she sees one. It's really cute to watch babies smiling at each other. She's becoming so much more vocal and is constantly letting us know she is around. She's even started to cry when we leave the room, even if the other parent is still with her. It's sad, but fun to see her cognitive development. Well this is just a jumble of stuff, but it's been a lot of fun watching Lila grow.

Also... guess what arrived!... her bookcase! Yay! It looks really cute in her room and I'm excited to have books in her room at such a young age. Now, the majority of her books still don't fit in it because I have so many for her, but I'm just going to rotate them out. I really do love being a mother.

Monday, January 2, 2012

A New Year

I know New Year's resolutions are stupid to a lot of people, but I love them. I think it is a great time to think about how I can make myself a better wife, mom, daughter, neighbor, sister, saint, person, etc. What I usually like to do is come up with overall ideas and then break down the goals into smaller ones for each month.

Some of my goals this year are:

Be healthier
Do more service
Improve on being a homemaker
Strengthen home and family

For the month of January and the goal to be healthier, I have chosen to drink more water. The only way I'll do this is if I don't drink anything else. I have a hard time doing this because at work I'm talking and working with the students all day, but I'm determined and so will be carrying a water bottle around with me. Other teachers do this and I need to do this because I know I am dehydrated.

I am unsure about what service project I want to do so suggestions are welcome, but there are always great ideas at work so I know I'll come up with one for January.

Being a good homemaker is important to me even though I am not a stay at home mom right now. Because of this I want to work on vacuuming every room. I know this is simple enough, but there are rooms, mainly just one, that I am not good at keeping up with. Lila's room just doesn't come to mind when I think about vacuuming as we don't eat in there, she doesn't play on the floor in there, we don't go in there much other than to take her to bed, but I still want to make sure my whole home is clean.

Finally, to strengthen my home and family I am focusing on FHE and have a great resource to help me be organized and not feel overwhelmed. I found it on pinterest (of course, haha) and am so excited to start it up! This is the blog that I am following:

I didn't link the website, but I can if you'd like me to.

So here's to a new year and a better me!

On an unrelated note Lila now says "mama" and is incredibly close to crawling. She now moves both knees once she's in position and she can move her arms, she just needs to get them in sync. She's really mobile in other ways though so she is a little less motivated. :)