New Pictures

These are some of Kaiya's 3 month pictures that Bekah took this weekend. We thought we would experiment with taking our own before doing studio photographs just to see how we could do. I'm pretty happy with these ones -- we'll do studio pictures at 6 months to see how those turn out.

Flower Power

Last night we went to Tony's soccer game. It was an outdoor game and about 90 degrees out during most of the time. Kaiya was pretty good -- just really hot. She did manage to pull out some grins for the camera while we were there...





She's still too little to keep her 0-3 month shorts up! :)

Pictures from Jen

These are pictures that Jen's mom took while watching Kaiya. AJ is Jen's son, who Kaiya stays with while I am at work. They have lots of fun together and like to lay next to each other and just giggle and smile at each other.

Nice to know she is having fun while I'm at work. :) So much for missing mom! :)

Look at her big lips while she is sleeping -- this could be Angelina Jolie's baby!

Friday night at Bekah's

Last night Kaiya and I came to visit Bekah in Rolla. Our friend Maurine was coming for a baby shower so we rode along. We didn't do anything exciting, just enjoyed relaxing together. We are going home this afternoon after lunch. Bekah took some cute pictures though, so I thought I would post them while I was here.
(The picture of her wearing blue is from May.)

Love this picture! It was taken about 3 weeks ago, but thought it was cute enough to post a little late. It's a hard life for these two -- gotta catch a cat nap when you can!

Funny Birth Announcement

Saw this in a parenting magazine and thought it was funny. I just filled in our names for fun.

Thankfully it's a complete exaggeration, but seems so true at times...

It's a baby!

(and a mom!)

Born: Kaiya Grace Hyser

Gave Birth: Rachel Lucinda Hyser

Date: March 12, 2006

Weight: Baby's: 5 lbs, 6 ounces. Mom's: Let's see: She's eating 500 extra calories a day for breastfeeding, plus half a pound of chocolate to stay awake, plus all the lasagna her friends can cook. You do the math...

Eyes: Baby's: Blue Mom's: Bloodshot

Hair: Baby's: Brown Mom's: Unwashed since last Tuesday and falling out by the handful.

Length: Practically forever -- at least 26 hours of labor, plus 3 hours of pushing. And that's not counting those eight visits to the hospital the week before, when Rachel thought she was in labor but it was really Braxton-Hicks; or the half hour after the baby came out, when her OB

kept doing things down there that are best not thought about...

Oh, and the baby was 18 3/4 inches.

Sex: Never again.

New Pictures

Not sure how these pictures will post... I think they will be small. You may need to use the link below to see them better but... here are some recent pictures of Kaiya. I found a new website called Shutterfly.com where I can upload pictures from our camera and then order prints from the website. Surprisingly, they aren't much more expensive than Wal-Mart and I have the ability to do a lot of editing, adding special effects, etc. And the price of enlargements is also very reasonable. I definitely recommend it for digital cameras. You do have the added cost of shipping, but they have a shipping plan that you can order. It's $30 and that covers shipping for a full year or 100 orders, whichever comes first. So that made sense for me. They also have prepaid plans for the 4 x 6 prints. You pay ahead of time and you get a reduced price for prints. Like 200 for $30 (15 cents each), 400 $56, and it gets all the way down to 12 cents a print. It's a fun thing. Here's the link to Kaiya's photo album, which include the ones here and several other recent pics: share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=0AaN3DJm4YsmLlo

If you sign up, sign up through me though... :) Cause then I get free prints. :)

Not just to the comedian I say... timing is everything!

Its been a little while so I guess its time to update. School has been busy for me lately so I've enjoyed the time over break that I got to spend with Kaiya. Her timing has been quite impeccable as of late. The first time, I dressed her up in a cute outfit and kinda went "oooohhheeee you look cute.... you're going to be a heartbreaker" and no kidding as soon as I finished saying that, she got this huge grin on her face kind of like saying "you know it dad". She has smiled a few times before but mostly just when she is letting a stinker out. It was great to see her do it for a different reason! Needless to say it was great timing. The other well timed event was last week when I was taking different pictures of her to put on the blog she did something funny. I was joking around a little bit with her trying to get her to look at the camera and I said "look beautiful for me sunshine" and the picture below is what her response to me was. Needless to say I got a kick out of it.
I also posted a picture of her in my soccer bean bag that I thought was cute!

Wanted to post some pictures from our trip to Indiana this past weekend. (1) Kaiya (2) Mom & Kaiya (3) Dad & Kaiya (4) Aaron (Tony's brother) & Kaiya (5) Bekah & Kaiya

Tony's Grade

Just wanted to let all of you who have been praying for Tony's midterm that he had to make up from when Kaiya was born. He FINALLY got the grade for the class back. He passed the class with a C! We both would have been happy with a D+. :) That would have been enough to pass, so we are pleasantly surprised with his grade.

Pictures from our weekend home will be coming soon. Still trying to fall into a routine with being a working mom! :)

More misc. pictures

Here are just a few pictures that we took over the weekend. Ruthie was so proud of the cake that we made for Easter she had to get a picture of it. :)

Easter Sunday

Here are the pictures from Easter! We had company, which was really nice! Our friends Austin and Kristina came for the weekend and we had a great time. After church we joined some other couples for a late lunch and then relaxed the rest of the evening.

Botanical Gardens

On Wednesday, Ruthie and I went down to the Botanical Gardens with Kaiya. All of the tulips are in bloom and they were so pretty. We tried taking some pictures of Kaiya in the flowers -- and weren't too successful. Mainly because we were trying not to get caught by anyone working in the gardens. We didn't think they would appreciate me plopping Kaiya in the middle of the flower bed. :) In the picture with the pink flowers Kaiya isn't too happy with us because we decided that laying the blanket down was too much of a hassle and took too long (again - not wanting to get caught...) so we just plopped her down in the mulch. She didn't like that so much. And I'm still trying to forget about the little pieces of mulch that were in her diaper when we got home. :) Bath time!

Easter Dress

I found an Easter dress for Kaiya at Wal-Mart! It's a preemie dress so it actually fits her. And the weather is supposed to be in the mid to high 80s so I don't have to worry about finding anything to put over it. Anyway -- thought the picture was kind of funny. Aunt Ruthie says this is not a good sign -- I may not be able to get her in dresses very often. I'm still holding out hope. She does make it seem like torture, though...

Sleepy baby

See post below for info on these pictures. Now... it also looks like we put Kaiya to bed without clothes on. Not true... she just manages to wiggle right out of her clothes too... :)

Interview and more...

I was watching Kaiya this morning as she was sleeping in her crib and while I was standing there she managed to wiggle herself up so far on the sleep positioner she was sleeping on that her head fell off the back of it. So like a good mom, I ran for the camera to take a picture before fixing her. :) She slept through the whole thing.

This morning I had my interview at Westminster. I think it went well. I left feeling like it was really easy -- should it have been so easy? They asked me to share my testimony, asked what I think the needs of middle schoolers are, why I want to work with middle schoolers, why I chose counseling as a profession, how long will we be in St. Louis (ahhhh!!), and then how comfortable am I with the Reform Christian theology -- That was the hardest question because I don't know a lot about it -- and really didn't think it was a whole lot different than what I'm used to. So I told them that I don't know a lot about it, but I feel like if this is where God directs us that I'm very open and will see it as a learning process. They seemed to like that answer. And that was really about it. As I finished, the lady that I met with a couple weeks ago told the others involved in the interview that I came very highly recommended from several individuals. I really felt like she went to bat for me during the interview as well. She commented after asking me the question about the theology that when she was first hired at the school that she didn't know much about it either. Almost reassuring me that it wasn't going to be a big issue.

They said they would let me know as soon as possible. I'm hoping by the end of next week or beginning of the following. I would appreciate the prayers!

That's about it for us! We don't have much planned for this weekend -- actually I should say "I" don't have much planned for this weekend. Tony has tons of school work to do. Still playing catch up from the week he missed from Kaiya. He's pretty stressed out with all the exams, etc. And he sweetly took the night shift last night so I could be well rested for my interview today. Kaiya decided she wanted to stay awake until 3 a.m. for him too. Probably cause she misses him so much when he is at school during the day and studying at night. :)

I'm having trouble getting the pictures to post... so I'm gonna post this paragraph and try the pictures in a separate post...

Sunbathing

Here are some pictures we took today with Aunt Rebekah. It is gorgeous out -- probably in the 70s and so we took Kaiya outside to get her in the sun a bit. It will help her jaundice go away quicker. She turned into quite the little sunbather.