Fun mail

This came a few weeks ago...

It was big, so we knew it would be good.

It was! A present from our friends Kathryn and Marina.

There was also an outfit. Abby really liked it although her facial expression is a bit odd.

She and her dad had a nice time sitting together.

Check out her casual arm-on-the-arm-rest pose.

Thanks again, Marina and Kathryn!

Flashback: Barbeque Sauce

A year ago this month Spencer started to do some major couponing. For those who don’t know, he has a real talent for it… that, and he is crazy enough to take the time to figure out what deals are going on to combine with coupons we have. Last year there was some kind of 10 for 10 deal going on at Albertsons, and with the coupons we had coupled with a catalina deal they were doing, Spencer bought 10 bottles of Kraft barbecue sauce for 55 cents.

July 2009- lots of BBQ sauce

We may have also found really good deals on barbecue sauce since then too, and ended up with a few more bottles for pennies or for free… and given a few bottles away too… and we may still have 11 bottles left in our pantry a year later...

Receipt from August 2009. Take a look at the CPNS tendered. That means coupons given. As in we bought $60.70 worth of groceries for $16.01.

Receipt from August 2009. Take a look at the subtotal. If it weren't for the tax, they would not have made any money from our visit that day. $56.21 worth of groceries for $0.34.

But when your receipts can look like this, you don't care that you have 11 bottles of un-opened sauce. And 9 bottles of salad dressing. And 20 boxes of cereal.

(Is it weird that THAT is our only food storage?)

RIP, Reggie

Reggie Lewis died 17 years ago today. I still remember seeing the ESPN Special Report that broke the news, and having to stop my 13-year-old self from cursing. I asked my mom to let me shave the number 35 into my hair, but she refused. Instead, I drew 35 in chalk on the side of my favorite Celtics hat, and wore it as much as I could. In honor of Reggie, here is a video of one of his finest moments, 17 years after the death of the captain of the 17-time NBA Champions:

3 month stuff

We've had a long and stressful week here. We'll have to tell you about it sometime. But meanwhile, Abby is getting big!

This little girl is 3 months old. She is a lot of work; I sometimes feel like I have no idea what I'm doing and we are just winging it, living day to day. Play, eat, diapers, sleep, bath, repeat.

Luckily she is a good sport and she doesn't seem to mind. We are all learning here.

She is also a lot of fun. We love love love her and are so glad to be a family.

Here are some things about our baby girl at 3 months:

She grunts, kicks, and exclaims in delight when she is happy. I can't wait for the laughs to start coming!

In fact, when she is super hyper those many many kicks sometimes turn into full body flops- she looks like a fish on dry land.

She can follow objects with her eyes in an arc from one side to the other, and will follow our voice and track my movements around the room if her position allows. She has known our voices for a long time now.

She blows bubbles and has way too much saliva in her mouth. She chokes on it a lot. Her little coughs are super cute, though.

She can reach for and grasp her toys, and she can do so on purpose. She bats at toys on her activity arch (the "gym") and tries hard to grab objects we hand her. She is able to do it, but is still learning how to fine-tune it.

She smiles in response to us... when she started smiling, I couldn't make her smile, she just would. She has now been smiling in response to our smiles, faces, and noises, and noises for quite some time now.

She has started to smile big time when I am burping her in the living room. I’m wondering if she can see us in some pictures we have on the wall, or if she’s liking the red bowl of candy we’ve got on the counter right now… Maybe she is just loving life, but either way, several times I’ve been burping her and I stop to look at her face and have caught a humongous smile already in progress.

She loves to stand. She has strong muscles and will still stand herself up on my lap often.

She loves to go to sleep on us. She would happily sleep like that all the time if we let her. I suppose this is true for all babies, especially my nephew Colton.

Spencer puts her to sleep almost every night. He has the magic touch, I swear. We both bounce her to sleep most nights, but she goes much faster for him.

She watches TV – intently- if it is on and it catches her attention. She hasn’t really cared about it until recently (I’m slightly bummed about that- I was hoping she’d be much, much older when she caught the TV watching addiction we have) She doesn’t watch it often, but if she is in the mood she will turn her head toward it, sometimes craning her neck waaaay over if I’ve positioned her away from it. She loves ESPN, just like her dad.

She complains. We call it complaining because it is not really crying with tears, she mostly makes upset sounds and yells, with the occasional grunt thrown in to get the point across that she is not happy about whatever is going on. She really only cries if something is wrong like she is in pain. If we ignore her too much then the complaints turn into actual tears.


She likes being put in her carseat. We get a lot of smiles from her this way.


She is a good eater, just like her parents. She has big cheeks, a few chins (visible sometimes more than others), and chubby legs as a result of her good eating.

She has sweaty feet! This she gets from me, unfortunately.

She loves to eat her hands. For a little while she also sucked on the inside of her wrist, but these days she just eats her fist. Sometimes she is content with sucking on a part of it for a little while, but other times she tries to cram the entire thing in her mouth.

She can almost fit it in… in fact I think if she had enough coordination she would totally get the whole thing in.

Abby likes tummy time more than she used to. Not that she absolutely loves it now… She used to cry through the whole thing, and I felt like an abusive mom for just watching her cry and squirm.

She likes it now and will even stop crying if she is upset to concentrate on pushing up. She is now content to do her push-ups and gets tired after 5 to 10 minutes. Then the crying happens again.

Doing her push-ups, she can lift her head about 90 degrees and push her chest off the floor as well. She has rolled over a few times.

Abby is very sweet. Sometimes she calmly plays with us and is happy to stare at us. If you watch till the end of this video, you will be rewarded with the sound of her taking a massive dump.

We love our little bug!

Pool Day

We took Miss Abigail to the pool last Friday. We thought it was a good day to try because it was super hot out, and Spencer was able to come home early from work. We were anticipating that she would either react positively to the water, or be upset by it; but it turns out she was sort of underwhelmed. Her general attitude was total nonchalance.

We wanted to take her while it was still hot out, and before we adults needed to get dinner ready, so we grabbed her after she had woken up from a short nap and slapped (gently) some sunscreen on her before she really could register what was going on. Spencer fed her a bottle

[side note: the bottle feeding is so far going well… she doesn’t like it as much as she likes nursing, but she does take a bottle of milk from both myself and Spencer. So far no formula has been needed or given, and a bad batch of sour milk is the only problem we’ve encountered in the last week regarding feeding. The strategy now is to feed her one bottle on the days before I go to work so she doesn’t “forget.”]

We dressed her in her swim diaper, which was huge. We have one swimsuit for her that is also too big- it was a hand me down without a tag so I’m not sure what size it is supposed to be- but it actually worked pretty well; she is such a chunk baby that I’m sure she will fit into it fully pretty soon.

She may have given us a different reaction other than indifference had we chosen to take her at a time she was in a better mood and more smiley, but overall I guess you could call it a success.

What do you think?

I was excited, even if she wasn't.

All things considered, it could have gone much, much worse.

She and I will be going swimming again very soon … is it too optimistic of me to hope to elicit a more cheerful response?

3 Months Old!

Our little bug is already 3 months old!

She is so much fun and we love her.

She is very good at smiling.

Fun facts at 3 months to come. I know you all can't wait!

She's a talker!

Abby has started talking a lot lately. It is so fun to watch her try to express herself. Sometimes she tries really hard to tell us something. If she is is in a talking mood she will make quite a bit of noise. She will range from little grunts and sighs, and lately she will upgrade to loud shouts. She talks to her toys on her activity arch and on her swing, and she will grunt to herself if we leave her to go to another part of the room, but she will talk even more when we are there in front of her to encourage a conversation.

She really likes having her diaper changed, and that is often a time we get some happy noises and kicks out of her. Several weeks ago as we were changing her she had something she obviously really needed to say so we stopped, mid change, so she and Spencer could have a conversation.

Sometimes when she is sleepy or asleep and starting waking up, she will give several high pitched sighs. It sounds like she is singing in her sleep- I love it.

If she is not in the right mood to talk, however, she will just stare at us while we talk to her- she will watch how our mouths form the words and sounds we are saying. It is amazing how she will observe us talking- you can see her trying to learn how we speak and she will move her mouth with ours. I love how babies are constantly learning something almost every second they are awake. They really are so smart.

She was pretty talkative with Spencer on Saturday while I was at work. He took these while he was playing with her: the second one is a little bit longer than the first, but they are pretty short.
Look at those chubby legs!!

A blessing on the 4th of July

We had a fantastic 4th of July with our families. We blessed Abby in church that Sunday with several family members in attendance. My parents were both able to be there from Arizona and Spencer’s parents Marti and Dennis, as well as: my sister Carrie and Daniel with Abby’s cousins Chloe and Colton; Darrin and Andrea with Kyra, Callie, and Brynn; Dave and Jenny with Zack, Sydnee, and Ashlyn; and Charlie and Dara with Sadie and Taylor. That is a lot of extended family love. The Lythgoes. Somehow my camera didn't get any pictures of my parents or my family. Sorry, guys!Everyone met us at our church for sacrament meeting at 10:50am for the blessing, which all the men were able to participate in, as well as our bishop. We dressed her in a white sundress with a little white sweater. I was hoping to take better pictures of her later in the day, but it turns out that the only pictures I got of her in her little outfit was when I changed her diaper during sacrament meeting. Spencer gave a beautiful blessing and Abby did very well. Afterward we all changed clothes and headed over to a nearby park to eat lunch. Later that day both of our parents hung out a little at our apartment and my parents spent the night. They were good enough to pretend to not care about our lack of second bedroom for them to sleep in- they slept on air mattresses in the living room.

We had a great day with everyone and I am so grateful for everyone’s participation and willingness to come up to Ogden to spend the time with us.

Testing 123

For some reason, my videos that I have taken don't want to work when I try and post them. We'll see if this works.

Miss Abigail did very well for the most part while I was at work yesterday, but she was a little cranky I am told. She was happy to see me when I got home, which made me glad! Spencer was very excited to have her all to himself yesterday because when he left for work in the morning she was eating, and when he came home for lunch she was sleeping. When I handed her off as I was out the door, he said to her, "This is the first time I've been able to hold you all day!"

If the video doesn't work, you'll at least get to see her smile.

Back to work

I am going back to work today. I will be starting off slow, only a 4 hour closing shift. We'll see how I feel about being back... running around on my feet all day long again may take some getting used to!

Saturday is a special day

Mom is working a 10 hour shift today! It is sad for us all. We all wish she would stay home instead. Wish Spencer luck!

We appreciate cows (but we still eat them)

Last week we celebrated (I use this phrase pretty loosely) Cow Appreciation Day at our Chick-fil-A.
This wasn’t our first time doing so; I am a little embarrassed to say. Last year we also dressed as cows to receive a free meal. When we got to the counter, the cashier told us that we were only eligible to receive an entrée, and not a full free meal.

Apparently we weren’t “cow” enough. We pretty much just wore neutral clothing and I made us some spots and signs with permanent marker, and I even made us tails (pictured in my left hand). I drew the line at wearing a nose and ears though, which may have been my mistake. Either way, they said entrée only; we needed to be head to toe. We disagreed with that, and after a quick flash of our tails, they gave us each an entire meal.
Feel free to call us dorks, or at least think it to yourself. Or just think it of me, as it was my idea.
This year Spencer came home for lunch in time to take me and the babe. He wasn’t really feeling up to dressing up this year (I can’t imagine why not, it is crazy fun) but I did. I wanted to dress Abby only as an additional accessory to my outfit.
We got there and they gave me a meal, then asked if we wanted one for Abby. I thought the cashier was at first kidding, then possibly unaware that a baby her age can’t eat anything solid- but he said she was dressed as a cow and therefore was qualified for a free full sized meal. Awesome! I didn’t even need to show them our tails! She got the nuggets and we enjoyed them very much.