#arleyupdate week two

Two weeks! Holy Moly that flew by. But at the same time, just today we were saying how it feels like she's always been here. Funny how that works.

Big week for Arley girl.

Thursday I was doing dishes and thought I heard B giggling from our bedroom…. only I knew he wasn't in our room…. I went in to check and sister was giggling out loud. I didn't believe it was possible but she kept doing it several more times. I googled it to make sure I wasn't crazy and finally R got to see it in real life too. We've yet to capture it on video because we are usually too busy laughing about it when it happens but it's about the cutest thing ever. She really is the smiliest baby and she literally LOLs. :)

Friday we had some awesome friends come hang out and she got her first scratch cupcake (via mommy of course). ;)

Saturday she 'participated' in her first egg hunt… actually she sat in the car while mommy and B hunted for eggs. It was good for B to get some mommy time in and A got some daddy time in. Win win! Some cousins came up to hunt eggs with us and she got some cousin time in before they left. Later her uncle Todd's fam came up and we celebrated his birthday. Big bro cried when they had to leave.

Sunday she went to church for the first time. There was a lovely grandparent set behind us that commented on how fresh from Heaven she was. :) It was Easter too! We ate lunch with some grandparents and had a mini egg hunt in the front yard which ended in B finding baskets for him and sister. He was excited to give hers to her. It was filled with gifts other people had given her… that Easter bunny sure is clever. ;)

Monday is a blur. I have no idea what we did and instagram pics aren't giving me many clues.

Tuesday the talented Destri Andorf came to capture some real life shots. This pretty much sums it up….. ;)

Of course after she left B decided he was in the mood to pose for pictures so I ended up taking several more that day. One of these days I'll get around to uploading and editing them.

Wednesday we headed out to the library and 3Cs so big bro could run off some energy. He loved playing with every single toy there but missed his friends that are there during story time. Thursday night we went out to eat at Chic-fil-A for the first time ever (we had only been through the drive thru before) and B got to play in the play place for the first time ever. He loved it. Sis slept, ate and slept through it. Afterwards B headed to Target to spend a big brother gift card someone had given him. He bought Optimus Prime (and Bumble Bee and two other Transformers I have no idea the names of). We've discovered becoming a big brother is a bit like Christmas and he is going to be sorely disappointed when the gifts stop coming in. Kid is getting spoiled.

Thursday B ran a fever and felt mopey all day so we bummed on the couch nearly all day long. (Is this a common side effect of the play place or just a coincidence?)

Friday sister had her official two week check (just a couple days late) and weighed in at 7 lbs 6 oz!! That's way past her goal of getting back to birth weight (6 lbs 8 oz). Way to pack on those pounds girl! :) That jumped her up from 10-22% in weight. And her height is now 21.5" putting her at 90%. Not bad for such a little peanut.

That said, we've definitely noticed she looks so much older these days and it's a little sad how fast these newborn days fly by. The plan for week three is more snuggling and less running.

Happy two weeks, little girl. You are loved!

Oh and then there's this. It doesn't have much to do with this post but it is the first mommy/daughter pic we have (on a real camera) and I don't even look like a zombie. I remember hating every picture of myself during B's newborn days so I know I'll love having this shot. That said… for more real life pics, feel free to visit my instagram. ;) 

B's Baby Book

I know I should probably be promoting the printed album that my print company sells but the truth is I don't own any. I know I would love them- the sample pages I've seen are awesome and I know their quality is the best of the best but.... great quality printing is expensive. And spending a lot of money on a photo album I want to be able to let B sit down and enjoy reading just didn't sound like a great idea to me. And okay.... I'm cheap. ;)


So instead of ordering an awesome professional album of B's first year, I settled for a pretty good version from Blurb instead. (I had actually planned on ordering through My Publisher but they didn't offer the square size I need and my templates were already designed so I went with Blurb for the square pages.) I was pleasantly surprised with the quality of the photo book. Held next to a Shutterfly book (which I've gotten lots of free ones of and FREE is always good!), the weight and quality difference is definitely noticeable. The paper is thicker and the pictures are clearer. The photos are sharp and the color quality is great. I was impressed!

But I'm getting ahead of myself......

To get organized for the album I went through my folders by month and pulled my favorites. (I store my photos on the computer by year, date, name i.e.: 13MAR Hicks. Sometimes I put subfolders in the monthly folder i.e.: 13MAR31 Easter.) The easiest way to gather the info for the text was pulling it off the blog. Unfortunately, I hadn't been blogging the entire year so there were a lot of blanks to fill in. Fortunately, I had a lot of it written in his actual baby book and well baby check papers. If you're trying to condense the information in your book, try to choose just the pictures and/or info that tell your story. If the picture doesn't strike emotion or memories in you, you can leave it out.

To design the book (I used Photoshop), I used the same basic template throughout and added a little text to help jog my memory down the road. I tried to keep it to 20 pages but I was nowhere close to that. (I did cover from birth to December 2012 though so it was a bit longer than a normal year and also that first year has all kinds of things that most years wont have so I was okay with it. In the future I plan to order them for the year so this year will cover Jan-Dec.) I tried to stay away from putting too many pictures on a single page but there was just no way around it for some pages.  If you don't want to design your own template, you can just gather a folder of images and drop them into the album designs online. Super easy!


In his book I wanted to cover major milestones, big events, favorite things and every day moments. I think we did a pretty good job of hitting all the major bases (and this isn't even all of the pages!).

Here's a sneak peek:

 

Have you recorded your story lately? Do you print photo books or make a fancy scrapbook? Do you keep a Smash journal or share your story in another way? I'd love to see how you record your story.