Avery is 1 year old!

Yes, it's been much too long since I updated this blog with pictures of Avery.
So here are some fun ones, starting with a few from her big BIRTHDAY celebration.

Birthday Girl, ready for her first taste of pure sugar... birthday cake!

Checking it out, digging in

First bite!

LOVING it, scarfing it down

What!? No more??? Where did it all go?

(After finishing it she actually rubbed the chocolaty plate on her hair - and yes, we got it all on video.)

Bath time and bedtime with daddy

Fun afternoons this summer with the neighborhood playgroup!

Playing in the backyard with momma

Got up too early on the 4th of July for smiles

With Auntie Grace at the East Millcreek Parade

Fireworks in her PJs with Auntie Em

A fun day up at Holiday Park on the Weber River

On a beautiful hike being carried by Papa

Chewing on bamboo and being silly with Momma

More bedtimes with Dadda

Hair finally long enough for topsie-tails

Going up to visit Em and Nick in Logan and seeing the dams in the canyon-- beautiful!

Playing with her friend Caroline in the tunnel she got for her birthday

"Swimming" in our mini pool with Caroline... being nice most of the time :)

Not sure how she feels about Caroline (what a ham) having the other half of her blue egg...

And more to come later! Believe it or not, I still have quite a few to share because I need to upload all the pictures off my phone still.
So to my vast audience of about 5 people: stay tuned!! :)

Body Image

Even though I'm WAY overdue for pictures and an update on Avery, I wanted to first share something that I read this week and have thought about a lot since then. I read an article from the Power of Moms called "Mom's Body Image" that has had an impact on the way I see myself and feel about myself. Click HERE to read it. Then at the bottom of the article there is a link to "Mom's Body Image, Part 2", the follow-up article. I also listened to a podcast that goes along with it, with the woman who started Beauty Redefined. Click HERE to listen to it.

These articles have helped me recognize things that I never have before, and have inspired me to make some changes in my life. I was one who at first thought, "I don't really have a problem with my body image", but then started to get real with myself and recognized some very unhealthy thoughts and words I'd think and say about my own body! They also discuss how important it is for mothers to teach their children to value and love their bodies (for the right reasons, of course).

When I started paying attention, I realized that I needed to adjust my thinking. I'm  embarrassed to say it, but I could list so many criticisms I am quick to produce every time I look in the mirror or get in the shower, etc. (skin, belly fat, teeth, stretch marks, nose, moles, bum, legs, etc). After recognizing this bad habit, I wondered how I'd feel when I'm older, have had more kids and have even more body "issues" if I keep this up. Since I heard Dawn's suggestion on the podcast, I also made the decision to stop saying negative things about my body - even with small things. It has been hard, but in just a few days I can feel the difference! I feel less obsessed with my flaws, and more focused on more important things. I am shifting my focus, and it feels so good. And like April said, it's empowering! 

These women are not suggesting we become complacent about our bodies-- we still take good care of them by exercising, eating healthy foods and getting enough rest. They challenge us to learn to feel love and appreciation for our bodies-- for what it can do, what it can create, and how it is the means for us to live a beautiful life. 

The first step for me was to acknowledge my feelings. I decided to write in my journal a list of everything about my body that I don't like. Then I thought about why I don't like each of those things (is it because the women in the media don't seem to have those issues, or because I'm worried the mom next door might judge me?). Then I thought about whether I would realistically be able to resolve or improve each of those "issues" or not. Then for the issues I can't change, or at least not to be the way I'd like it to be, I decided I'll work on accepting that it is the way it's going to be. The last step I've been working on is being more mentally and verbally grateful for the wonderful, amazing body I have. I took some of the advice the women gave and said some things to my body out loud this week, such as "thank you back!" as I bent over to pick up Avery without feeling pain. Or "thank you belly, for holding my sweet baby until she was born!" It felt a little silly, but made me happy! 

I haven't finished these steps I listed above, and I know it will be hard to TRULY change-- not just have positive thoughts for this week. I have begun what I know might be a long road to a completely healthy view of my body, but I'm glad to have started it and so grateful for the deliberate mothers out there who have inspired me! I love my body and I'm SO thankful to my Heavenly Father for the amazing gift my body is to me.

Pre-Hebgen, Hebgen, & Post-Hebgen

I have so much to catch up on that it's not even funny. Where do I start? My worry is always that I have too many things to add into one post, but if I create two or more separate posts then people will just see the latest one and miss the others. Today I'm just going to put it all in one and give you fair warning that this will be a LOOONG post.

I feel like so much has happened in the last few months!  

First, Bryndon graduated from Medical School!!! Pretty much everyone knows this now, but I want to write it anyway. His graduation was on May 19th at Kingsbury Hall at the U. It was a long program and Avery didn't last very long at all, but luckily I could watch parts of it on a TV outside in the hall and then my awesome sister Grace helped take care of her when I needed to be in there filming, etc. Bryndon and one of his classmates got to sing the National Anthem as a duet at the beginning of the graduation, which was SO amazing! Everyone was so impressed and many of his classmates told him they had no idea he could sing so well (or sing at all!). It was really fun to see and hear.

Avery was proud of her daddy!

 Happy family

Ever since that day, he's been on a break until he starts Residency on June 24th! (Actually he has a few days before then when he has to go in to start his training, but close enough.) It has been so great to have him home and to be doing fun things together!! We have a bucket list of what we want to do in this month. Want to hear what they are? Ok. The highlighted ones are what we have already done and the bolded ones are what we definitely plan to do and the rest are things we'd like to do...

Living Planet Aquarium

Hogle Zoo

Lagoon

Camping

Hebgen Lake (June 2-7) and Yellowstone National Park

Picnics

Hikes up the canyon

Hike Ensign Peak

Walk along the Jordan River Parkway

Roast hot dogs and s’mores up the canyon

Holiday Park day trip

Museum of Natural History

Laser Quest laser tagging

Park City outlets

Bowling

Swimming

See “The Avengers” in theaters

See Kennecott Copper Mine

Gardner Village

Have friends over for dinner 

The picture above and below are when we took Avery swimming at the Holladay Lions Rec Center for her first time ever! She LOVED it-- splashing, kicking and playing in the water! :)

This was us at Kennecott in front of one of their famous tractor wheels.

Here we are on the roof of the Utah Museum of Natural History:

Fun, huh? We've had a great time so far. My favorite has been our one and only trip up to Hebgen Lake in Montana. It was definitely shorter than I'd like, but we came back on the 7th because Bryndon had eye surgery that afternoon. It's called PRK, which is similar to LASIK, and we decided to do that for him as a graduation present. He's doing well and thankfully hasn't had much pain at all! This time of year in Montana is still very cold, but we lucked out for the first few days with great weather. The best time of year up there is in August, when the sun is hot (although it still gets cold at night) and the water is warmer. But in June, the water is FREEZING!!! Even with a full-body wet suit on, the water numbs your limbs and takes your breath away. I only went waterskiing and wakeboarding once each, and Bryndon went skiing twice. I wish the weather had given us time to go a couple more times, but it was still great.

But Bryndon and I had a few little moments to ourselves when Avery was napping or another family member was watching her, which was really great. We took a canoe ride over to Bird Island (a tiny island really close to our beach) and another time we went on a walk down the beach to a private dock that is surrounded by trees where we skipped rocks (Bryndon "rocks" at skipping rocks, by the way) :). We also played some fun beach volleyball games with the cousins, which is always great. Avery didn't go in the water at all (she would have gotten hypothermia) but she had her first experience playing in the sand on the beach. I set her on a towel, but she'd crawl or reach over to the sand to pick it up, examine it closely, then stick it in her mouth if her momma wasn't being vigilant. She loved it!

And here she is in her cute new swimming suit (same one as when we went swimming before):

Avery having a fun time playing in the cabin with her adorable cousin Sadie (even if their faces don't show it).

                                     

And of course time with daddy...

Bison right outside our window on the road in Yellowstone (that's Bryndon's arm). It was cool to see them so close! They are huge.

AMAZING views of "The Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone" (nice name, huh?)...

...and the gorgeous Lower Falls, which were our favorite sites in Yellowstone.

Fun with Old Faithful

Twilight over Hebgen... breathtaking!

Sunrise at 6:30am the day we left, with plenty of fog and mists over the lake.

Avery on a bad hair day (and from her scowl, she knows it):

 Avery after a bath (with an even more exciting hair-do):

We are determined to use these last 2 weeks (more like week and a half) to spend as much time together having fun as possible! It's not that we won't have any fun after Bryn starts Residency-- it's just that we won't have much time together and when we do he'll probably be tired from long days and hard work. So we're taking advantage of the time we have now and are very grateful to have it!

Yes, it's been a while

The post after this will be more for catch-up on what has been happening, but first I wanted to share a few fun pictures of Avery...

Just a couple of days after Avery started crawling I put her in her room to play and put her "monster" (what we call it) in front of her door to block the way for her escape. A minute later I turned around and saw her just like this-- standing up! I was SO surprised because she had never pulled herself up to standing before, and had just barely started crawling! 

Cutie patutie

Avery loves to crawl under/through/on top of anything she can. Here she is crawling on top of her basket of toys in the corner. :)

And this is her descent after crawling up, over and then off my suit case after our trip.

 

Her first tooth finally showed its face after 3 months of teething! She started having all the symptoms (fussy, drooling, chewing on everything, etc) at about 5 months, but didn't get a tooth until about 8 months! You can see one little tooth on the bottom popping through in the picture below. Soon I'll post a current picture since she now has 5 and is working on her 6th tooth!!

 This picture was taken a couple of months ago when Avery started waking up earlier with the sun coming through her window. We tried putting up some blankets to make it darker in her room, but the only blankets we had that were light enough not to pull down the blinds were her baby blankets, which are mostly white or pink, small and thin, so they didn't do the best job blocking all the light. So one morning I had an ingenious idea to put this hat over her head when I fed her around 6am and put her back to sleep. I pulled it all the way down so that it covered her eyes. She fell back asleep easily and didn't wake up until around 9:30am! It was awesome. I did that for a while until she got too hot with it on and learned to take it off. But we finally figured out how to make her room dark, so we no longer have the problem. She looked so cute though with that hat over her eyes.

You may not be able to see this very well, but here is a picture when she had a lop-sided mouth. After her bottom middle teeth came in, one of her top middle teeth came in and was alone up there for a while before the other one came in to balance things out. It actually looked pretty funny. :)

I love babies in sun hats. I found this one at Kid to Kid and it is perfect for taking her outside in the sun! And it's darling on her.

More pictures and updates on the Hatch family will be coming soon!!

Lots Happening!

Avery is learning so much and growing up! 

She's been teething (if only those darn teeth will push through so we can get past this!)... so she bites and chews on anything and everything she possibly can. :)
Here she is biting the side of the laundry basket she's sitting in...

 Minnie Mouse! J/k-- it's Avery. :)

 She discovered the grass and LOVES the texture!!! She intently looks at it as she softly touches some of the pieces and is so interested!

 She has enjoyed the few times we've sat outside, now that it's getting warm (yay!)

 She go berserk when she's around other babies-- she giggles like crazy when she gets close to them and flails her arms and legs. Here she is with a darling friend and neighbor, Caroline Bardsley when she came to play.

 She has more hair now (I know-- you may not be able to tell), so sometimes she'll wake up with some crazy hair like this....

 She had a fall :( and it scared me TO DEATH. (Ok-- almost to death)
But here she is with her fat lip, just minutes after it happened, as if she wasn't phased at all!

 Here she is with her daddy-- she loves him! This pictures doesn't show it very well, but her undershirt says "Pooped. (And I don't mean tired.)" Hahahaha... I love it. My parents got it for her in West Yellowstone, MT last summer.

 Here she is in her yellow dress for Easter (although I forgot to get a better picture of the dress). She's "reading" an Easter book she got from Grammy and Grampy Hatch!
She loves it and will hold it open like she's reading it! :)

 She is OBSESSED with this big blue egg-- and any other plastic egg she can find. She holds on to it like she'll never let go, and even if she's not trying to bite it, she'll just hold it up to the side as she's paying attention to something else. Once she was holding something in each of her hands and saw another egg in front of her, but she wouldn't let go of her other things (one of them was already an egg) and tried to pick it up using her arms and already-full hands so she could hold all three without letting go of anything. :) It was hilarious.

 Another with THE EGG.

Just last week Avery started army crawling!! It has been SO fun to see her go from trying so hard to scoot herself a little bit around the floor to army crawling pretty darn fast!! She's getting so good at it, and I'm sure before we know it she'll be crawling the right way on her hands and knees. She often pants like a dog when she's trying to get something and is excited. :) She's such a big girl! Here's a video (although not the one I originally tried to upload, but it wouldn't work)... it's not a great video, but I'll upload a better one later.

These next few photos were taken this afternoon, and Avery was in such a happy mood. She sits up super well and loves playing in her room with her toys. Notice in this photo and the fourth one down how she curls her toes up tight-- I'm not sure why!

Check out the blue egg again-- she doesn't want to let it go! 

Sweet girl-- she recently started giggling out of nowhere as she's playing by herself and it's adorable. I got some photos of when she would randomly start doing that. 

Notice the toes... 

No, this isn't a crying picture... this is the face she made as she bit down as hard as she could on this bath book. She scrunched up her nose and closed her eyes-- I guess it feels good on her gums! 

Happy girl! 

And even though this entire post was about Avery, I wanted to add that we had a lovely Easter. I felt a sweet spirit throughout the whole day, and got emotional many times as we sang in church with the ward choir, heard lessons and testimonies of others, watched church video clips about the resurrection and spent time as a family. It was really special for me, and I am determined next year to prepare and plan better so that the whole week (at least) leading up to Easter we are celebrating Christ and remembering all he did in his last mortal days on earth.
I'm so grateful for him! I believe in Christ!