Just another fun morning

Joel and I took Siena to a Men's Volleyball game last Friday night! It was so fun! She was so serious though it was hillarious! By the end of the night she was smiling though so that's good. Side note: BYU won. Go Cougars!

 This morning, Joel gave Siena some of his smoothie.  She LOVED it!

 Her mustache just kept growing up her face!

 and growing

 and growing

 Joel unbuttoned her outfit to change her out of her pj's, but then we ended up leaving her in them for breakfast..notice her tummy hanging out.

 She's also getting really close to crawling! Joel's just helping her out a bit.lol

 How does little miss sleep like this? She's always asleep on her side with her head way back. so funny.

On another note, I've been contemplating doing another blog for all the yummy food that we make and enjoy.  It would probably just be recipes that I found on Pinterest, but loved/sometimes tweaked a bit. We shall see.  I did mention that I love to cook/bake, but did I mention that I'm REALLY good at making messes?

EXAMPLE A:

Whoops..

Fun times and a 7 month old

Updates:
Things have been good here in the Reichert home. After weeks of new sicknesses, and a messed up sleep schedule, Siena has officially started sleeping through the night again! Wahoo!

Joel finally found out his start date at Dell.  He will be starting August 6th.  We are so excited for that!

The other day, I decided to try putting Siena's hair in a ponytail.  I know it's pretty short, but it actually worked! It looked pretty silly, but I am proud to say that Siena's hair is actually long enough to go into a ponytail!:)

Yesterday we babysat for our neighbors baby, and Siena had so much fun having another baby around!

She kept grabbing for his binky

She was working so hard for his attention.lol

Beckham loved the buttons!

Beckham found 2 of Siena's binky's, and man was he proud of himself! So funny!

Siena took a bath in our sink last night, and she loved it!

 

If you can't see it, she is concentrating super hard to catch the bubble.lol

She even attempted to drink out of the faucet..lol

Last but not least ladies and gentleman, we have a 7 month old! I can't believe how fast it's going! We took her 7 month picture, but unfortunately she didn't want to sit still, or leave the paper alone, but the pictures turned out pretty cute!

Baby Bow Tie

A couple of weeks ago it was a friend's little boy's birthday, so I decided to make him a bow tie! I took some pictures so hopefully you can make sense of how I made it.

Cute huh? Ok, here goes:
First I went and measured his neck to get an idea of how long I wanted it to be.  I believe it was 13 inches, and so I made it 15 inches and just made the velcro pieces longer so it would be adjustable and he could wear it longer.  After cutting the strip 15 inches long and about 3 inches wide I folded the strip in half and ironed it down.  Then I opened it back up and folded the edges in at about 1/4 inch on each side like so:

I then folded the end pieced in about 1/4 inch as well like so:

I then Zig-Zagged the Velcro onto the strap. I didn't want my Zig Zags to show through on my bow tie, so I did it onto only 1 layer of my strap and before folding down my edges and sewing it.  I cut my Velcro to 2 inches in length, and then attached it by Zig-Zagging around all 4 edges of both the soft and scratchy pieces of Velcro. These were my settings on my machine for the zig-zag.

After looking on Pinterest.com, I found a tuturial or the velcro that was pretty much the same way that I did mine.  Here's that link: http://southernlovely.blogspot.com/tie-tutorial

I re-folded the strip in half and sewed along the edges.

I made the bow using this tutorial: thepleatedpoppy.com/bow-tie-tutorial
I hot glued the bow onto the strap when I glued the strip onto the front of the bow tie.. Does that make sense? Instead of just gluing the strip down once you've gathered the bow, I stuck my strap underneath the bow, and then glued the strip pieces down. Sorry, not too sure how else to explain that. If you want a better explanation, let me know and I can give it a go.lol  

 

I think it turned out pretty cute though! Good Luck! Let me know if you end up making one, I would love to see!

My Favorite money-saving Tips and Tricks

Shave legs with Conditioner- It’s cheap and makes them soft.  Most of the time I don’t even have to put lotion on them afterwards because the conditioner does its job so well.

 

My favorite-cheap mascara- Loreal Paris Voluminous

Add water to Mascara.  This doubled the life of my mascara.  It always dries out and gets all clumpy, so a little while ago I decided to just try adding a drop or 2 of water to the bottle, and sure enough, it worked great! I’ve since added water one more time just to extend the life even more, and it’s lasted 2x as long as normal.  I also saw on pinterest another option of someone adding contact solution.



Baby powder for oily hair.  I have been using this for years.  If your hair is oily, but you want it to last just one more day, shake some baby powder into your hands and spread it through your hair in the oily spots.  Run a brush or just your fingers through the baby powdered spots until it’s well blended.

Brush hair in the shower if wearing it curly instead of brushing once you’re out of the shower.  Mine always looks less frizzy and also has a better curl if I do this.

In a hurry?  


Iron out little wrinkles in clothes with your hair iron..but be careful you don’t burn yourself!


Dish soap takes out oil stains.  Dish soap is meant to cut into the grease, so why not the grease/oil on your shirt? It works great!


Blood stains. My mom always told me to use cold water and bar soap to get out the blood.  Worked for me every time!


Use Vinegar to Mop your floors. Fill up your sink with water and add a couple of Tablespoons of Vinegar and mop your kitchen floors.  My mom taught me this and we would use it on our white tile floors and it would keep them cleaner longer as well as clean them really nicely.



Dawn foaming soap-As long as you don’t get your sponge wet, it only takes 1 pump and maybe a few half pumps to do all our dishes. We bought 1 bottle and 1 refill bottle at the beginning of our marriage and lasted for the whole first year of our marriage! We just bought another refill about 4 months ago.


Buy bananas when they’re on sale, cut them up and freeze them. Infact, I do this with most of the fruits and veggies that we buy. Then when you need them they’re ready for you!


Want to make your house smell clean and fresh for cheap? Throw an orange peel, or the peel of a lemon in your disposal and grind it up for a bit.. voila, your hubby, or friends will think you just put in the work of cleaning your house, but you didn’t even break a sweat!:)

Add a little bit of oil to your pot of boiling pasta and it won’t overflow. I also saw on pinterest that if you place a wooden spoon on top of your boiling pot it won’t overflow as well. Haven’t tried that one yet though.


Birthday treats website. This site is awesome for helping you get the most out of your birthday! All you do is put in the info about where you’re located and when your birthday is..etc., and you can find out all the birthday promos in your area! It’s awesome! I’ve gotten free Denny’s, Red Robin, Cold Stone, Smoothie King, Etc. Here’s the website: http://www.freebirthdaytreats.com/

Hdmi cable. Ok, so this has been a great thing for me and my husband.  We don’t have cable, but we have some shows that we love to watch.  You can buy HDMI cables in Walmart or something like that, but we just went onto Amazon.com and found one that was $0.01 and that has worked fantastic for us! My husband read reviews and said the cheap ones work just as good as the $100 ones.  You can watch most shows on either the network’s website like NBC.com, or on hulu.com. Most newer tv's ad computers have the slot fo the HDMI cable. Check to make sure yours does before buying it. HDMI cables on Amazon.com


Sell old things, buy new. This has saved us so much money over the last year.  When Joel or I would run across something we weren’t using like an old coat, or backpack, or anything, we would go on KSL.com and sell them under their classifieds section.  When Joel needed a new computer we went on Amazon.com and sold his old one and then his new computer was pretty much half off because of the money we got for the old one.


Old stuff you want to remember, but don’t want anymore? take a picture.  This has saved us SOO much space! I have made lots of things over the last few years like an afghan, sweaters, dresses, etc. that I didn’t want to get rid of, but I never used any more.  I took a picture or 2 of each thing, made a file in my computer called “Old things”(real clever huh?lol), and took that thing to D.I.  I still had the memory, but didn’t have the bulky object anymore.  Joel did the same with old trophies, souveniers..etc.



Swaddlers. These things were AWESOME when Siena was first born. We used one until she was about 4 months old.  They have Velcro, so they hold SOO much better than wrapping your baby.  Siena started breaking out of all of her swaddles because she was so strong.  I found out about these, and they were fantastic! Swaddleme 2 pack on Amazon.com

“Diaper genie”.  I loved the ideas of a diaper pail that kept the stink in, but I hated that most of the diaper pails had bags that cost a fortune.  One of my friends suggested the Baby Trend Diaper Champ Deluxe.  With this one you can use your own trash bags.  You don’t have to buy expensive bags, and I think it works just as well as the Diaper Genie. Diaper Champ on Amazon.com

Hospital Stay and a Club Foot Update

On Sunday night we went in to our doctors because Siena was acting strange and we had known she had had 2 ear infections.  They had given her amoxicillin about 5 days before, but when we got in to the Drs they said one of her ear infections had gotten much worse.  They gave her a shot for it and said to come back in on Tuesday just for a check-up to make sure it was working.  Between that visit and Tuesday she had started throwing up and was actually acting VERY lethargic.  When I brought her into the Drs they said she was dehydrated and therefore she needed to be hooked up to IV's to get some fluid into her.
We went in on Tuesday morning, and she was released Wednesday night.  We took some pictures, and it's crazy the difference in her attitude and her coloring from when we got there to Wednesday night when we left.

She would just lay on our chest for hours! Poor baby!

She just looks so miserable!

By Tuesday night she was already acting a little better. She at least would sit up for about 10 minutes each wake-time

By Wednesday morning she was starting to feel better and was therefore curious about all the cords.  We had to put a very large kids hospital gown on her to keep her hands off of all the wires and such.

This is Wednesday afternoon.  She was playing with toys and acting MUCH happier.  I think we even got a smile out of her that afternoon.  We literally hadn't seen a smile from her since Saturday night.

 Here is the saddest little video.  She did this a lot on Monday and Tuesday.:(  Just broke my heart!

So there's the update on that.  She is doing much better and is acting pretty much normal! So glad to have the happy Siena back!lol

This is a video of the next day after leaving the hospital:

Club Foot Update:
On Thursday Siena had her appointment in Salt Lake for her club foot. She got new shoes because she had out-grown both shoes.  We also found out some interesting info about future things for her club foot.

Siena's right leg is shorter than her left, but until she's older we won't know how much shorter, and they won't do anything for it until she is older.  The Dr drew out a couple diagrams for the 2 scenarios on the medical paper on the patient table thing, so I ripped it off and brought it home so I could explain it to Joel.  I'm glad I did that too, because it's a little hard to explain without a diagram.

If the difference in her leg length is a smaller amount then they would shorten her longer leg.  They do this by putting brackets on the growth plates to stop it from growing for a bit and then take them off once her legs are approximately the same length.

Can you see the little brackets he drew? The 2 long lines across the bone represent the growth plates.

If there is a bigger difference then they would lengthen the shorter leg.  This process is longer and I think a little more painful even.  To be honest, I can't really remember too well how they would lengthen, but I do know that it would be about a 6 month process and would require a brace.  I think he said something about cutting the bone and then stretching the leg a certain amount each day.. I'm going to have to get more info on that one..

Timeline: He said that they typically don't do the lengthening or shortening until they are about 8 years old, and then they have to do it again at 10-12 years old.  So this is still far in the future, but still interesting and good to know.  I didn't even know that was an option. Kind of a creepy, but we thought she would just have to wear a platform shoe for the rest of her life, so this is kind of cool to know about.

So anyway! There's the update! Hope you're having a great day!