Baby #2 on the way!!!

Surprise!!! Baby Yost #2 is on the way... due sometime in June! On October 27 I decided to take a test just for fun. Well... it was a positive!!! I really had no idea, since my cycle hadn't returned yet. I just thought, what if....

We told our family and a few close friends. We wanted to keep it quiet until we went to the doctor. My first appointment was a couple days ago, Dec 27. We had the ultrasound first. The measured me at 14 wks 5 days, which put my due date on June 19! I guessed I was around 14 weeks, so I wasn't too far off :) The ultrasound tech gave us a guess on the gender, but she said it was very early yet, so we are keeping that quiet for now (until the next ultrasound). When I saw the doctor, she said my due date is June 19, give or take 10 days! So I could really have this baby any time in June... Since I never got my cycle back, it is hard to determine exactly how far along I am.

I have been feeling pretty good this time! I felt sick maybe 3 or 4 times total... and I think those times were either because I wasn't eating enough or ate something that didn't agree with me (orange juice). Much different pregnancy this time so far as far as the sickness... and I've been STARVING. I was hungry a lot with Claire too, but I feel like I need to be eating constantly. Tired too, but that's to be expected. I usually go to bed right after I put Claire down at 9. Not really showing yet, but some of my jeans are starting to feel snug.

So, they're going to be about 15 months apart. Yikes?? It's going to be a challenge for sure, but I've heard great things about kids close in age. Hopefully they'll be bff's :) Plus, Claire won't really know what it's like to be the only child, so there shouldn't be much jealousy going on. I am excited!!!

GOD IS GOOD!

Baby Y #2

Claire: 9 Months!

Our sweet baby girl is now 9 months old! She is doing so great... She is cruising all over the place. She pulls herself up on just about anything with no problem (including the Christmas Tree branches...) and walks all along the furniture. She occasionally lets go and can stand on her own for around 5 seconds! I don't think it will be long before she is taking her first steps! She is also crawling up on all 4's now instead of army-crawling.

Her first tooth popped through about 3 weeks ago! She acted fussy a couple days before it broke through, but that was it with the fussiness... I had to get up with her for a couple nights when she woke up crying. I felt her first tooth on November 24th :) Shortly after that, the second one on the bottom came in. So, we now have 2 tiny bottom teeth! She loves to chew on anything she can get in her mouth... including paper, dog food, and needles she pulls off our fake Christmas tree. She LOVES the organic puffs. Can't feed her enough of those.

Claire is still eating great. Not many changes since last month... still eating mostly rice cereal, avacado, squash, carrots, apples, bananas... I'll occasionally give her a small chuck of bread. I'm sure we'll be expanding in that department soon. She is on pretty much all formula now. I still pump at night and give her what I can, but it's only about an ounce... Will probably be stopping pumping all together soon. She does great with the formula, thankfully.

My biggest challenge with her is changing her clothes and diaper! She will NOT sit still. She immediately wants to flip over and hop up on her knees when I lay her down to change her. Really fun when she has a big poopy. I'm guessing this isn't going to get easier any time soon... oh well!

SO excited for her first Christmas :) We are blessed to have amazing families to spend it with! We will head down to Harrison this weekend and stay there through Christmas Eve. We're having a get-together at Grandma Jones' one night, and then Mimi and Papa's big event on Christmas Eve. Always a wonderful time :) We'll head back home after that and go to Christmas Eve service at our church... We'll open gifts at home Christmas morning and then head over to my parent's to spend rest of the morning/afternoon with them. We'll head to my Grandma and Grandpa's for dinner... It will be a busy few days, but we love our families and love spending time with them! That's all for now... Hope everyone has a very blessed Christmas! Remember the reason-JESUS!

Claire: 8 Months

Claire is 8 months!! This past month has been major in terms of development. Claire is now pulling herself up on everything she can, and with that comes many tumbles. She usually lands on the soft carpet and the falls don't phase her, but yesterday she took a spill in the bathroom  tile while I was in there cleaning and that wasn't so fun :(  I just do my best to chase her everywhere she goes and sit behind her when she stands up. She is EVERYWHERE. It is amazing. The other day I asked Ben, so what did you do today? He said... I chased, and chased, and chased, and changed a poopie, and chased, and chased, and chased....

She is babbling quite a bit more and saying lot's of "dada's" and "mama's" :) She hasn't associated us with her words yet, but it is quite adorable when she is in her crib saying "mamamamama!" She will get in little shouting matches with Ben which is hilarious. She will yell, and he will yell back, and they go back and forth for awhile and she has the biggest smile on her face. So sweet :)

Whenever I get home from work, she clings to me for quite awhile. If I try to put her down, she will often cry... and of course I pick her right back up. It makes cleaning and cooking dinner challenging sometimes, but I've learned to do many things one-handed. Ben is in the U.P. hunting and his mom is here watching her today, so I will take tomorrow off and have a nice 3-day weekend with her. Next week is Thanksgiving as well, so I'll get 4 days off then. Love the long weekends!

Claire is a great eater. She eats rice cereal, squash, carrots, avocados  apples, bananas, and we're about to start making some green bean purees for her too. We are still feeding her my frozen breast milk  but that is about to run out... I am going to start mixing with formula soon to start that transition. When I went back to work, my supply quickly diminished. I am so thankful I was able to store so much to keep her on breast milk this long. I wish we could keep her on it longer, but it just isn't going to happen. She is very healthy and happy, and I know the Lord will always take care of us :)

At the end of October, I decided to join Premier Designs and become a jeweler! My wonderful friend Stacey Walton has been with the company for a few years and I decided to join her team and give it a try. So far, it has been beyond what I've expected. I was nervous about doing a presentation in front of people, but after the first show, it was much easier. I went to Fall Round-Up which is a training/conference in GR, and had an amazing time. This company is all about God and serving others, which is just so awesome to me. They teach us to focus on enriching lives and spreading love, and selling really great jewelry is our tool. I am so glad we made the decision to join Premier, and I'm really excited about the possibilities with building my own business :) If you or anyone you know would like to help me out by having a home show and earning lots of great free jewelry, please let me know! :)

God has blessed our family SO much!!!

Claire: 7 Months

Claire is now 7 months old! Still army-crawling all over the house. She will pop up on her hands and knees sometimes and lunge back and forth, but hasn't quite taken off in the all-out crawl yet. She can climb up on Ben or myself when we are sitting on the ground and she pops up on her feet :) Ben lowered the crib yesterday .. it will be very soon when she will start pulling herself up on things.

She had her first cold last week :( She had quite the runny/stuffy nose... the bulb suction thing is not her best friend. Sometimes we would have to pin her down... poor baby. She is getting better now though and finally slept through the night last night for the first time in about a week.

Claire is in 9-12 month clothes. A few of the big 6 month clothes still fit. It is incredible how fast you go through clothes sizes!

All is going great with Claire! She loves being home with her Daddy all day :)

Oh, I decided to become a Premier Designs Jeweler... more on that soon!

Claire: 6 Months!

6 months already!!! Wow, time has flown. Claire is doing so great... I'm such a happy momma. Last month (about 5 to 5 1/2 months) she started crawling everywhere. Not quite up on her hands and knees yet, but she is army-crawling all over the house. We really need to watch her more closely now since she can be across the house and chewing on a shoe within a minute. She is still super-active. Won't sit still unless she is asleep :) Whenever we go on stroller rides, she always has one or both feet up on the tray infront of her. Cracks me up!

At her 6 month appointment, she weighs 16 lbs and is 27" long! 55% for weight and 90% for height. Perfect :) Shots weren't so fun... but we managed.

She is eating usually 3 servings of solids a day. We have fed her zucchini, apples, and avacado so far along with the rice cereal. Just started squash too a couple of days ago, and she likes it! Love the Baby Bullet. So easy to make her food, and it saves $ and is healthy for her. She has been sleeping all night! Sometimes she gets up once sometime between 3 and 5, but the last several nights she has slept from 9pm til 7 or 8am. Can't beat that.

The transition of Ben staying home now while I go back to work has went quite smoothly. It is still very hard for me to be away from her, but its so nice knowing she is home with her Daddy :)

We have been busy almost every weekend between going to the U.P. and Harrison, or weddings and other events going on. Hunting season is pretty much here, so Ben will be occupied with that for the next couple of months. Overall, things are great at the Yost household... so blessed :)

Claire: 5 Months

Our beautiful baby girl is now 5 months old! She is reaching new milestones and is as healthy as can be. She just recently started sitting up on her own for short periods of time. She is on the verge of getting up on all fours. A few weeks ago, I started her on rice cereal because she started waking up at 3 or 4am hungry. The rice cereal keeps her full for longer at night, and lets me sleep as well :) It is pretty hilarious watching her try to eat from the spoon. Her tongue is all over the place and she wants to play with it. We go with about 4 spoon fulls before adding more milk and putting it in the bottle for her... but we are getting the hang of it.

Claire is a VERY active little girl... won't sit still :) This is challenging at times, but I can always get work done around the house when she naps :) Her sleeping schedule is still great. She goes to bed at about 9, wakes up at about 7, and has 3 naps during the day that last between 1.5 and 2 hours. Can't ask for much better! Found out that she does not like the harmonica or when my parent's house phone rings. She cries every time... poor girl. Other than that and the occasional naptime fussiness, she is a very happy baby!

I go back to work next week... and it is going to be hard. I'm used to being with Claire all the time. BUT... Ben will be done with work after today, so he gets to trade and stay home with her :) Makes me feel so much better about returning to work!

Got some good news... Ben's sister is pregnant so I will be an aunt again! With this one coming around the end of March and Chuck and Cassie's new arrival coming in February, we will have 8 nieces/nephews! The family sure is growing :)

We are so blessed!!!

Eternity is a long time... are you ready?

I have felt a pretty big nudge from God recently to write this. There has been news about a lot of death lately, and some very close family and friends have been affected. It has me wondering and asking myself what some of my closest friends and family members believe when it comes to faith. I know that all of my immediate family and many of my close friends are believers and have been saved, because we openly talk about it... but there are also those I'm not sure where they stand. So here it goes.

Any of us could die at any moment. We see it happen all the time... car accidents, cancer, heart attacks, a random shooting in a theater.... people die, and many times it is totally unexpected. If you were to die today, do you know where you will go? Where you will spend eternity? God loves us all so much, that he sent his one and only son to die for us to take away our sins so that we could spend eternity in Heaven with him. A place so majestic and incredible that we cannot even image. He did this because HE LOVES US. More than we could ever know. All we have to do is accept that love and ask Jesus to enter our hearts and save us from hell. We all deserve to go to hell. Yes, I know that is bold and scary, but its true. We all are sinners and fall short. I will be the first one to admit that I have made plenty of mistakes and I sin often. I also ask for forgiveness all the time and ask God to help me live the way he wants me to live.

God gives us this totally free gift of salvation. All we have to do is accept it. I pray that ALL of my friends accept this gift, because I want to see you all in Heaven some day :) It just breaks my heart when I hear of someone who died and not knowing if they were a Christian or not. When I say Christian, I mean someone who has accepted the Lord as their personal savior. I hear so much about "religion" and it being about a list of do's and do not's... That is not what it's about. That is what turns many people off to the idea of being a Christian.

The bottom line... GOD LOVES YOU. He has offered you a free gift of eternal life in heaven. I pray that everyone reading this will search their hearts and accept him before it is too late. If you already have, that is wonderful and I am so glad :) I hope I didn't offend anyone here or lose any friends... I have just felt God asking me to do this for awhile now. I'll say it here one last time- God loves you, and so do I! I am praying for you all :)