Easter

Easter was fun this year. We went to an Easter egg hunt with some of our friends from the ward on Saturday and it was pouring rain. Luckily (for the kids) it only started raining hard once the hunt was over and we were under cover. A little girl from my sunbeam class, Allison, gave Cade his first Easter Egg! So sweet! Sunday morning, I got up early with Cade (as usual) and set up an Easter egg hunt for him and Darren. But we ended up running out of time to do it in the morning so we had to wait to do it until later. After church we went to my aunt and uncle's house and had dinner with the fam. Everyone seemed to have fun with Cade (mostly because he was either smiling and cooing at them or making vibrations on their laps :) if you know what I'm saying...) When we got home, we FINALLY did the Easter egg hunt. It was a lot of fun!

Here's our smiley boy with his findings from the hunt! What a chunk!... I mean... hunk? :)

Side note: this is a 3 month outfit... what the heck??

Random Stuff

Most people say they don't realize how big their baby is getting while it's happening since you see them every day. Darren and I, however, are the opposite. Every day we can actually SEE that Cade is getting bigger. He no longer fits his newborn clothes, which is simply depressing. I used to be able to lay him in my lap with ease, but now when I do he pushes off my stomach with his legs. What the heck?? Can he really be growing this fast?! Not only is he getting taller, but he is getting MUCH fatter! More and more rolls show up all the time. I know his cheeks were chubby to begin with, but now I'm pretty sure they hang lower than his chin... is that normal? :)

Anyways, since Cade is getting so big, I am able to try new clothes with him. A week ago we put him in his overalls for the first time. Darren didn't like it because he thought they made him look too old! But when we took them off, Darren practically peed his pants:

According to Darren, Cade "looks like the old man that walks down the stairs, all dressed for the day, that forgot to put on his pants"

Here are a few pictures of Darren and Cade. I didn't want to talk about them all, but wanted to post them, so I just put them on a slideshow.

It's so fun to see Darren play with our little baby. It has almost been two months since we had Cade and Darren still gets giddy when he plays with him. Before Darren and I were even seriously dating I knew he would be a good dad. It all but melted my heart when I saw him playing at the park with the kids I was nannying at the time. It was at that moment that I knew I wanted Darren to be the father of my children. He's such a good dad to Cade and I'm so happy I married someone who loves his child (almost) as much as he loves me!

Oh yeah, I almost forgot to talk about other developments! Not only is Cade growing, but he's starting to DO so much more! He holds his toy rings, sucks on his hands, follows us with his eyes, rolls on his side and a bunch of other fun things. But my favorite new developments are his smiles (which he does in response to US instead of gas) and coos (umm... is that how you would spell that?)! He smiles and coos at us ALL the time now! Even though it happens all day long, I still can't help but smile and laugh every time I hear it. Below is a video of him cooing. Unfortunately, this is more of a sad cooing instead of a happy one, but is cute nonetheless.

Is Spring Here??

We were tricked by the weather last week and enjoyed a few AMAZINGLY sunny and warm days! I thought spring might be here, but the sun was short lived. We are now back to the typically rainy weather, but have high hopes the sun will be here to stay soon! While it was sunny, we enjoyed a little family outing to a nearby park. We packed up a mini picnic and took Cade on a stroller ride. We went off-roading in the stroller to get to the park, which Darren enjoyed thoroughly! Once we got to the park, we ate our mini dinner and tossed around the football. After that, we took Cade down the slide for the first time. I think he had fun!

The scary part was actually getting UP to the slide. The normal way up included a tube which I couldn't go through with Cade in my arms so I had to climb. Do you see that metal "ladder" in the background of the above picture (to the left)? Yeah, that's what I climbed up... with one arm (since Cade was in the other). Now that I'm thinking about it, I probably should have had Darren hold Cade until I got up and THEN had him hand him to me... whoops! Maybe next time.

We can't wait for Summer to be here so we can do this more often!

Family In Town

So this was a couple of weeks ago, but my younger brother Brock and older sister Brooke were able to come home for a few days to meet Cade! It was so much fun to have them in town. Darren, Cade and I packed up our bags and stayed the weekend at my parents house so we could enjoy their stay to the fullest :) Naturally, we were really bad about taking pictures, but I DID get one of Brock:

Cade and Uncle Brock were dancing to Bailey's piano music and had a blast! Here they are making the same face :) Ok, Cade was actually yawning, but it's practically the same...

Sadly, I got none of Cade and my sister Brooke... my bad. I think my mom got some; so at least someone was responsible! We spent much of our time watching movies. Mostly Twilight (which my younger sister Bailey didn't want any part of!), but one of the movies we watched that WASN'T Twilight was Outsourced, which turned out to be... interesting. But while we were waiting for everyone to get downstairs to watch it, Cade danced to the DVD menu music:

It was so much fun to have you guys here! Thanks for coming! We can't wait see you all again at Brock's farewell! Next month baby!

P.S. Ben and Melody - wish you guys could be here too :( Can't you just forget about school?? Come ON!!!

Things We Do

lright, I'm not even going to get in to excuses for not blogging... because I have none. I feel like my days are busy because I'm always doing SOMETHING, but mostly my "somethings" consist of staring at my baby, holding him, rocking him, feeding him, changing him, bathing him, and watching TV (namely CSI or House) or a movie while I do the activities listed above. So technically my day is pretty full. HOWEVER, there is no reason why I can't do some of these activities while I blog... other than the fact that I'd rather be watching TV. But for those of you who actually check this thing, I suppose I should give you a little something to look at every once in a while! Here are some pictures of our recent activities:

When we first gave Cade a bath he FREAKED out! Since then, he has gotten much better. I think he may actually even enjoy them now!

We try to make sure he gets "tummy time" but found that he enjoys it much more if he can do it on the boppy. Our doctor told us this was a better way to do it because his stomach is upset a lot of the time and apparently this doesn't hurt as much.


I also put him like this in the boppy so I can try to get a few things done every once in a while. I just love how he's holding his hands! So cute!


About two weeks ago we thought we'd give the bumbo a try. He did so well! It was a little hard for him to stay sitting straight up (after a little while he'd start falling to the side), but he's getting better at it all the time!


I just LOVE this face! He gives us this look all the time! It is usually accompanied with the most adorable cooing sounds!


We are now starting to find him sleeping in funny positions. I love when he sleeps with his arms sticking out like this! Who can sleep like that???


So do you guys remember his cute little cry that we posted a video of last month? Well, it's gone. Here's his new cry:

One Month Old!

So I'm posting this two weeks late... but here Cade is at one month! We're REALLY going to try hard to get pictures of him at every month mark for the first year so we can see how much he grows/changes. We'll see how well we do!

Our Little Model

So here are ALL the pictures (that turned out somewhat decent) from Cade's first photo shoot! I know, I know... I took WAY too long to get these up here, but better late than never! I may be somewhat biased, but DANG our little boy is cute! Enjoy!

Baby Cade

Once again, our wonderful friend Mandy took pictures for us! Unfortunately, Cade was being a punk the whole time. He kept crying and wouldn't fall asleep. Dang child! We kept having to stick in his binky and let him suck on it for a few seconds and then pull it out of his mouth and quickly get a few shots. How annoying... but it worked! They turned out great! Thanks so much Mandy!

Here is a link to some of the pictures she took. We'll get more in a little bit!

Family Visits

Naturally, we've had more visitors in the past week than we have in the two years we've lived here :) Guess that's what happens when you have kids! We've been loving it and I think our families have too!

Here is Cade with his cousin Brooklyn. She used to seem so small!

Since Cade has so much hair, we decided to style it like daddy's :) This is Auntie Bailey's favorite hair style on Cade

One night when Ryan and Cindy (Darren's Parents) were over it started to get a little late. I think Cade was looking for his bedtime snack. We caught the end of Cade's hunt for food:

Our little Peanut Face is here!

Cade Darren Litchfield (dubbed Peanut Face from the womb)
Born at 11:56 am Thursday February 19th 2009
7 lbs 10 oz, 19.5" long

He's FINALLY HERE!!! And I'm FINALLY not pregnant... though I may still appear 4 or 5 months along... dang it.

Anyway, after having contractions for more than 24 hours, they were finally consistent enough to head to the hospital. We arrived there at about 11:30 on Wednesday night. My contractions were getting more and more painful by the minute.

Here I am BEFORE the epidural. I would like to say that I was posing for this picture, but apparently this is actually what I looked like. I was having major back labor and wanted the epidural ASAP.

This is me AFTER the epidural :) Fake cheesy smile! I felt MUCH better! Best decision I ever made (which I made LONG before I was pregnant)! Since I got a total of maybe 45 minutes of sleep the night before, I was exhausted. Once the epidural started working I went to bed. Darren had a little bed rolled in for him to fall asleep on too!

The next morning, my mom and Bailey came to the hospital and brought Darren some breakfast. We kind of just hung out while I tried to keep my eyes open. After a while, my dad surprised me by walking into the room! He was out of town on business, but changed his flight so he could be there when the little guy was born! What a wonderful treat!

Once it was time to push, everyone but Darren cleared out of the room and the nurse came in. I pushed for about a half hour and the nurse said STOP PUSHING! He was coming quicker than we expected so we just sat around and waited for the doctor to show up. Once she arrived, I pushed a couple times and he was out! We had a little scare when he came out with the cord around his neck. Unfortunately the doctor had to cut it in the middle initially to get him out safely, but Darren got to make the final cut later. I had always imagined having the baby placed on my chest right after he was born, as I cried tears of joy and forgot about everything else going on. But when Cade was placed on my chest, his body was limp and his arms flopped lifeless at his sides. They quickly took him off of me and rushed to get him oxygen so he would start breathing. Everything was normal within a few minutes. It's amazing, the instant love you have for your baby. He's everything we could have ever hoped for!

We fall more and more in love with him every day! He makes the cutest faces, especially when he's sleeping! We can't stop staring at him and I don't think you'd be able to catch us without a smile on our faces! It's crazy to think that we're PARENTS and we have a BABY! It's still very unreal, but feels natural all at the same time.


Below is a slideshow of some of the fun pictures we've taken so far.

We just HAD to post this video of the cute little squeal Cade makes as he works his way into an all out scream. We can't help but laugh every time he does it :)