Sophie's First Encounter with Santa

So here's our family at the ward Christmas Party on the 19th, which was actually Sophie's 6 month b-day (she's getting soo big)! Josh looks a little drugged up, but that's ok because me and Sophie look cute, which is really all that counts. :)

So this is actually the second picture we took with Santa, because Sophie woke up for it. She wasn't scared of him or anything, she was just kind of indifferent. But still, fun memories none-the-less!

Here's the first one, where she was sleeping. So cute! (and I loved the elf, oh Taylor!)

Daddy and his girl! Apparently Josh's face tasted good--weird! haha

So funny!

The End!

I gradiated--It's Official!

So I got my diploma from BYU in the mail today. It was kind of anticlimatic because I've been now for awhile, but we still managed to make an event of it! So following are pictures of me "receiving my diploma." I worked really hard for this, by the way. It took a lot of patience, hard work, sleepless hours, and tons of determination to finish. My internship was really hard for me to do since I had to leave Sophie at home--but I finally finished! I officially graduated with a degree in the Recreation Management and Youth Leadership major with and emphasis in Therapeutic Recreation. Now all I have to do is pass my national certification test--it's always something. But now I must go because everyone's waiting for me to go get Papa Murphy's Pizza to celebrate! And thanks to all those who made this moment in my life possible. You all know who you are and I love you to death! I'm an alumni!! Woot woot!


Sophie with mommy and the diploma.


Dang it feels good to be a gangsta. :) G-Unit!

Woo hoo!

I wonder what could be inside. (And please disregard my muffin top, I'm still working on it!)

I felt like I was getting a mission call or something. Awesome!

So I guess after all that, this is all I get, a little piece of paper. But really I know I got so much more from the experience. I'M DONE! YAY!!! :)

Zoo Lights

Every year we're in Washington for Christmas we go to the local Point Defiance Zoo and Aquarium and go to the Zoo Lights. They decorate the entire zoo with Christmas lights and it's awesome! This year was no different and Sophie loved it! She loves lights anyway, so the fact that there were tons of them everywhere meant that she was in heaven!!! And our camera did a pretty good job of capturing the lights without making them too fuzzy or anything-awesome!

Speaking of Christmas, this Christmas was great for us. Because Josh has all brother we have to plan having Christmas in between missions with his family. His brother Adam will be serving a mission next Christmas, so we were in Washington this year for the Holidays. It was kind of nice not to travel, but we sure did miss my family! I'll be posting another set of pictures of Christmas Eve and Christmas morning later. Enjoy!

Fish!

We're the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow!


Josh's family under the rainbow.

So this isn't the Zoo Lights, but one day she was laying and playing on the floor and rolled herself up in the blankets and then fell asleep, how sweet!

Our family!

Us again, I love this one! (Of course we forgot the stroller, but Sophie's carrier worked out better anyway.)

Mirror!

Watching the Meercats. What a sweetie! You can see how tired she was.

Mirror images!

More lights! They really were beautiful.

Josh and his brothers in their natural habitats. :)

Daddy and Sophie.

Our cute little family.

Beautiful lights!

Mommy and Sophie, I love her bear hat and mittens!

Our Growing Girl

So I know it's been awhile since I've blogged, but here are some recent pictures of our little darling. She is now 6 months old, crazy, the time has literally flown! She sleeps pretty good through the night now, hallelujah, and hasn't gotten any teeth yet, although I always think that she's teething. She has the most adorable laugh! That's my favorite thing to hear. She doesn't do it very often, but sometimes, esepcially when she's tired, she really gets going.

She's loving her first Christmas and has been a joy to all. She's my little angel! Solid foods are still a little bit of an issue. Apparently she has an extremely strong gag reflux, like her daddy, so whenever she smells or tastes rice cereal, she gags, shivers, and then throws up. Apparently when Josh was younger, he used to throw up everytime he went to the dentists office. Oh joy--this should be fun! But she does like bananas, or nanners, as I call them. And we're slowly exposing her to more solid foods. Everyone in the family is always giving her tastes of things--they think I don't know. :)

At her 6 month appointment a couple of days ago her stats were: 17 lbs. 8.5 ozs. (75%), 25 and 3/4 in. long (45%), 17 and 1/4 in. for her head (85%). The doctor told us to enroll her in college because her heads so big. Haha! We are truly so blessed and will put up videos and things soon of our growing girl.

Also, something else really exciting is that I finally finished my internship!! YAY! I am so proud of myself, it was sooo hard to do it with Sophie. But thanks to my sweet husband, my in-laws, and my family, I did it!!! I'm officially gradiated!! Merry Christmas!! (pictures of her first Christmas will be coming soon as well).

Sophie getting a ring from her future husband--Landon. ;)

Sophie in her new highchair that Grandma and Grandpa Dickinson got for her. She loves it!

My sweetie pie eating Santa :)

Sophie helping momma cross off the last day and week of her internship!! YAY! Woohoo! Finally!! :)

Sophie with daddy on his Birthday at Sushi Revolution--it was awesome!

So cute! I love this headband (Josh always takes them off, but then I put them back on :) haha)

Merry Christmas!!

Out on a walk with her bear hat and mittens!

Our cute girl in her Christmas dress--sorry it's kinda blurry!

Momma and baby!

Tummy Time

So here's a video of Sophie when she's exactly 2 months old (8/19/09) doing tummy time--definitely not her favorite activity. :) Enjoy! (Sidenote: these next few posts over the next little bit are going to be all over the place as far as Sophie's age and development go, so bear with me. I'm blogging whenever I have a free moment, which usually isn't for very long)

Here are some more pictures from after she was born!


Uncle Drew


Grandpa Clay
Grandma Dickinson
Dickinson fam, my mom came later :)
There are those lips!

She's Here! (as of 3 months ago that is)...

So about 3 1/2 months ago Sophie Ciera Dickinson came into this world. She was 6 lbs. 11 oz. and was 18 1/4 inches long. She was beautiful!! She had huge, pink lips, and a dark, full head of hair. She cried once when she first came out, but was quiet after that, just soaking things in. They put her right on my chest and nothing has ever felt so natural and good to me. It was a rough first couple of weeks--mostly on momma's end. I have never been so emotional, so overtired, or cried so much in my entire life. It was all soo overwhelming. But we made it! And she's such a good girl, we truly are blessed. She's healthy, happy, and grows by leaps and bounds everyday. I'll be posting more over the next weeks to catch up on the last few months we've missed.

Here is Daddy with his girl when she's only a few minutes old.



We were so excited to finally meet her!

Right after she was born.

Right when we got to the hospital. This is before the contractions really began. Don't worry, I looked and felt much worse later. Contractions truly make you feel like you are dying, or being split in two--the rumors are true. Both things suck, a lot. But I'm still alive! And I would do it all again, but not for another year or two. :)

This is right before we left for the hospital. My water broke at about 4:45 am. I got up because my stomach hurt, I know, the classic story. When I stood up I felt the water start to trickle out and I thought--no way! So I ran to the bathroom and sure enough, my water had broken. I got so excited I didn't know what to do first! So I kind of thought about the fact that I was about to have a baby for a minute and then I ran into the bedroom, threw the light on and excited yelled at Josh, "Josh, my water broke!" He sat straight up in bed and asked, "Are you serious?" No, I'm joking...:) He jumped out of bed and we both kind of ran around like chickens for the next little bit (I hadn't packed my bag yet--oops!)

I was grateful for my sister's advice, her water broke too, to take our time. Josh took a shower, I packed, washed my face, cleaned our room a little bit. Then we left for the hospital. I was shaking because of the adrenaline rush. I had minor contractions on the way to the hospital, but nothing too bad, about 7-5 minutes apart.

When we finally got to the hospital we didn't know where to go in. So first we parked across the street from where we were eventually told the labor unit was and walked around for awhile trying to read signs and figure out where to go in. Then we drove to the emergency room and asked, "Where do you go to have babies?" They started to tell us directions and then asked, "Are you in labor?" "Yep." They seemed surprised I wasn't screaming. They should have come into my room a few hours later--haha.

Eventually we found the labor and delivery unit and got checked in. It was pretty calm. My contractions were pretty regular but then they slowly faded away. So I walked, and walked, and walked to get them going again. But to no avail. So they gave me pitocin. I've decided that I hate pitocin. Boo! I went from 0 to 100 in about 2 seconds and it hurt! I didn't know what to do. I tried breathing through them, which sorta worked, but they hurt so bad they took my breath away. I had to really concentrate on breathing. Poor Josh. He said afterwards that I was so mean to everyone. I don't care. I was trying to survive. They couldn't get me the epidural fast enough. I LOVE epidurals!! What heavenly peace, especially after so much pain. Then, a few hours later, she was born at 5:52 pm. I only had to push a few times to get her out. Pushing was hard--especially to do it right. I finally got it toward the end, but it took some practice. The doctor was at his office across the street and had to run over because I was getting her out so quickly. He even had to yell at me to stop pushing at one point because she was coming out so quickly. I was so grateful for the epidural because I was able to enjoy the experience of having her more. I loved holding her afterwards--they let me hold her for along time after she was born without taking her away. I was surprised by that. I was pretty torn up, but I won't go into details :). Thank goodness for percocet! Nursing was hard too, I was surprised. But she was a good eater from minute one and we both caught on pretty quickly. I was soo tired and sore. And I literally cried all of the time, I couldn't help it. I loved her so much it hurt, I didn't know what to do with all of my new emotions and hormones. But we made it through the sleep deprivation and she's finally on a sleep schedule.

Sorry this is soo long! I'm making up for lost time. Love you all! I'll post more pictures in another post.

The end!