September

We blessed our precious baby last Sunday. My mother-in-law still had the blessing outfit Luke wore, and Peter was barely able to squeeze into it, so he got to wear it! Just like Daddy. So cute!

Parenting has been amazing! So much has changed in our lives, and all for the better. It is without a doubt very challenging, but 90% of the time it is fun to meet the challenge. Even waking up several times a night isn't nearly as bad as I was expecting. The only time I find myself waning in enthusiasm is when Peter wakes up at three in the morning and decides to stay up for an hour or two. Luckily it doesn't happen often, and even when he does I am usually able to take a nap later on, so it's fine. Here are a few changes that are great in our lives:

We get up in the morning. Sometime between five and eight a.m. Peter wakes up, and therefore so do we. And it's wonderful! I have always struggled getting up in the morning, but once up I love it! And now that I have a baby to require it (sadly, school and work were never enough motivation for me to wake up on time), I wake up and get on with the day relatively early. Thank you Peter!

I am fearless. Just today I killed two spiders and a fly, and only let out one screech. Anything that threatens my baby will immediately be exterminated; questions will be asked later, if at all. Luke appreciates not having to wake up or come running every time there is a menacing insect now, although sometimes I still call him just to polish his knight-in-shining-armor skills. Thank you Peter!

We are far more relaxed about "gross" stuff. Poop, pee, burps, and farts no longer phase us. I am frequently soaked in spit-up or my own milk, and I just wipe it off with the nearest burp cloth like it's nothing. Thank you Peter!

We shop at the farmer's market. This is less as a result of having a baby than because we moved to Salt Lake to be closer to Luke's school, but it's a wonderful thing nonetheless. Salt Lake has the biggest farmer's market in Utah so far, and it's awesome! We are very much about supporting local farmers, and hope to learn a lot about gardening ourselves so we can have our own garden/orchard someday.

Here is Peter looking with great interest at Luke's friend Cory Smith:

Peter is a very smiley boy, but it's hard to catch him on camera. Here are my attempts:

And here I'm trying to catch him sticking out his tongue:

He has started to suck on his fist and notice his feet, which is adorable!

He also has a brand-new cousin! Blaze Williamson:

Who is much smaller than he ever was!

Peter and his Daddy are completely enamored of one another, as is apparent from the photos below:

P.S. I apologize that several of the pictures need to be rotated. By the time I figured out how, it wasn't worth redoing it.