Smiles and more

We've managed to catch a few of Myla's beautiful smiles, now that she's doing it all the time. She's a really happy baby, and Matthew and I are just loving these interactions. Here are a couple of good ones:






As cute as those are, my favorite recent pictures are some of the other ones we took while trying to capture the smiles. What a face!

We also held Myla's baptism last weekend in Northern Kentucky, and she got to meet her great grandmothers and other family members for the first time. Thanks to all who came, especially those who made the trip from E-town and Nashville. Here are some beautiful pictures of Myla with her family:

Myla and Great-Grandma Joyce


Myla and Grandpa Blaze


With her Godparents, Kelly and Andrew


With her grandparents


Myla and Great Aunt Maria


Myla and Great-Grandma Blaze


Three generations of Buckles women


Finally, Myla and her Daddy. So sweet!

Why is my baby on the cover of OK Magazine?

Hmmmm...Jessica Alba's baby was born just 2 days after Myla, and their similarities are striking. I've heard of twins separated at birth, but were these two somehow separated before birth? Of course, it could just be that Jessica Alba and I are so similar, and the two babies look like their mamas. Ha!

Six weeks old?!?

It's so hard to believe that Myla is almost six weeks old! But we can certainly tell by looking at her--she's gotten so much bigger and just doesn't look like a newborn anymore. The best new development is that she's started smiling and cooing at us, which is as wonderful as everyone says it is. We're trying to capture it on camera, but we usually don't think about it until the mood has passed. When we get it, we'll be sure to post it. Another funny thing Myla does lately is suck on her forearm whenever we're carrying her with her head on our shoulder. We didn't think too much of it, until I noticed yesterday that she's given herself a hickey on her arm! Hopefully that will be her first and last!

Here are some pictures of recent Myla moments:

Matthew gives Myla her first bottle. We started giving her one bottle a day at around 3 weeks because we wanted to be able to go to our friends' wedding (congrats, Nick & Anna!). She took to it like a champ, and it's now one of Matthew & Myla's favorite times of the day.


Manicure time! I've been filing Myla's nails rather than cutting them, and surprisingly she doesn't seem to mind at all.

Myla has also met a lot of her family over the last few weeks:

Matthew's siblings Jonathan, Jennifer, and Godfather Andrew


Kasey's Granny and Pa and Uncle Tim


Kasey's sister Kelly (Godmother) and her husband David

We really appreciate everyone coming to visit us--Myla loved meeting all of you!

Finally, we just celebrated Matthew's 31st birthday. Myla wore her "I Love Daddy" shirt for the occasion:


We'll leave you with a funny picture of Myla--it's as if she's posing for her senior portrait (except hopefully she'll wear a shirt for that!).

Little Firecracker Surfer Girl

I know I promised a video this week, but I'm still having technical difficulty. I can't figure out how to download just a certain clip from our camera. Right now I can only download the entire disc and Kasey and I aren't too eager to share video from the delivery room. I will continue my quest this weekend because there is some good video of my little girl.

So last weekend we celebrated the Fourth of July and our Little Firecracker was kind of bored by the whole fireworks scene. You would think that the constant explosions, especially the ones that made you feel like you were in Afghanistan, would at least make Myla jump while she was sleeping. Nope. We took her to Judd and Laura's picnic and she basically either slept or was held from 5:00 until 10:00 without making so much as a peep. Here's a picture of her in her first patriotic outfit.

"And I'm proud to be an American, where at least I know I'm free..."

We snapped a couple pictures of her sitting on the $25 "Riding Shotgun" firework that I bought, but Kasey is a little worried about Child Protective Services coming after us so those won't be published for public viewing.

One of the new things that we've tried with Myla is "tummy time." As you can see from most of the pictures so far, she loves to sleep on her tummy while being held. Well, I don't know what we would do without our tummy time surfboard because she just loves it, at least for a few minutes. This is another one of these ridiculous things that we absolutely don't need but it's pretty funny to pretend that she is paddling on her surfboard.

"Paddle, paddle!"

"Those girls from Blue Crush make it look so easy."

"Put your hands out like this...."

"...then you lift your head and...no, no, no. Lift your head up straight. How do you expect to be a champion surfer with such weak neck muscles!"

While we've really enjoyed having all of our visitors come meet Myla, we're looking forward to some quality Matthew/Kasey/Myla time this weekend. On the agenda for the weekend is taking Myla to her first baseball game at the Silver Hawks and maybe buying a slip 'n slide. Despite what Kasey says, I think that Myla has shown enough progress on her tummy-time surfboard to take the next step on a slip 'n slide.

Myla is so easy going, we've found that we can get a lot of things done around the house and even around town. On Wednesday night we were itching to get out of the house, but couldn't find a babysitter. So we just propped Myla up in this big soft chair and ran out to get something to eat.

Don't worry. We were only gone for 45 minutes and this chair is so soft she couldn't hurt herself if she fell over. If the TV is on she'll sit there for hours.

Dad's Update

Let me start by apologizing for my prolonged absence from the blog. My good buddy and expert dad, Brian, recently told me that once you have kids you realize how silly you sounded when you said you were busy before you had kids. I used to think I was busy. That was nothing. There are still only 24 hours in a day, but you need to find time to do all the things you used to do as well as caring for this new person living in your house. The #1 thing that goes...pointless television watching. No time to watch the seven different episodes of "Friends" that are on between 6:00 and 8:00 every night. Instead of watching "Sportscenter" four times per day, I only watch it once. Don't get me wrong. There is still plenty of television watching going on when you have a four-week-old, but now we just pick our spots.

Here are some of the highlights from the last few weeks:

• Myla had a doctor's appointment today and checked in at an even 9 lbs. We're not even going to get hung up on these silly comments about what percentile she is in. She's healthy, happy, and a good eater.
• In the last few days, Myla has started to smile while she was awake. She started off smiling while sleeping which was great. Now we feel like she is smiling at us which makes us feel like she finally appreciates what we've done for her.
• I would guess that very few babies can say they have had the varied ethnic experiences that Myla has had in her first three restaurants. She has now come with us to dinner three times - a Japanese, Italian, and Mexican restaurant. The waitress at the Mexican restaurant looked at us kind of funny when we put a handful of chips in Myla's carrier to make her be quiet.
• Speaking of eating, Myla has taken right to the bottle that I give her every night. It is fun for me and gives Kasey a bit of a break.
• Myla has come to watch two of our softball games. The bad news: It's hard to get her to focus on the game because she keeps asking her mom for money so she can go to the concession stand and buy $2.00 Coors Lights and Popsicles. The good news: Her dad got five hits in the first five at-bats that she was there for. Can you say good luck charm!!
• Kasey is awesome. She's an absolute natural with Myla and we've been a great team so far. At nights, I put Myla to bed, Kasey takes care of the middle of the night feeding at 3:00, and then I will help with the 6:00-7:00 feeding/changing before I go to work, hopefully getting Myla back to sleep so that Kasey can get a couple more hours in.
• Myla's colors are definitely more yellow and green than pink. It's not just me refusing to conform to society and dress my girl in pink. Kasey agrees.
• We aren't quite sure about this idea that babies fall asleep as soon as they get in a car. It seemed that way at first, but now Myla seems to be more interested in just sitting there quietly looking out the window. She's actually had some of her more serious outbursts while in the car. One in particular came when we were driving back from a walk on campus. The one-mile drive between the bookstore and our house never seemed so long.

That's all I've got time for now. I'm working on trying to upload some videos to the blog, but the DVD drive on my laptop is not cooperating. I hope to get that fixed soon. We'll also try to get some pictures of Myla lighting her first fireworks this weekend! She's been bothering me all week about getting some bottle rockets and roman candles.