This morning I went into Leo's room and found this:

And my (finally well rested) heart swelled with love. Hooray for sleeping through the night!

Monkey Boy

Last night Leo was being a serious crank. (He's getting tooth #2.) This was the only thing that would stop him from crying. (Believe me, we tried everything else!) As soon as Ty would stop swinging him he would start crying and trying to get upside down again. You can't tell this from the video, but he's just laughing hysterically the entire time he's being swung around. What a crazy kid!

Hooray for Sunshine!

Today is a beautiful day. Leo and I went for a little walk because the sun was all shiny and the sky was all clear and I was sweating a little even after I took my sweater off. I loved it. In fact, I loved it so much that as soon as we got home I grabbed a blanket and we hung out in the back yard for a while. Leo, of course, grabbed a handful of grass first thing and shoved it in his mouth. Gotta love that. After I explained to him that cows eat grass and goats eat grass but people don't eat grass he immediately grabbed another handful and shoved that one in his mouth too. Apparently I didn't get through to him.

P.S. I love steam-in-bag veggies. Especially now that we don't have a stove. I can eat an entire bag (which is supposed to serve four people) by myself (and I do it quite often).

Catch Up

I've been planning on blogging about a bunch of stuff and just haven't gotten around to it until now. Here goes. . .

Leo is getting better and better at eating non-pureed food. He really likes this little mesh bag fruit thingy. Also, as of today he can eat whole cheerios without choking on them. It's nice to be able to throw him in the high chair and distract him with crackers/baby cookies/cheerios/etc.

After the surgery we had to give Leo baths (instead of showers) because we weren't able to get his eye wet. This probably wouldn't have been a problem with any other kid, but Leo absolutely loves taking showers. If he hears the water running and he's not naked he just screams until he gets naked. We've had to shower while he was asleep to keep him from freaking out. Well, he got his first post-surgery shower today and he was thrilled. Honestly, I don't know if I've ever seen him so excited. It was pretty cute. Here he is taking a sink bath. (We don't have a tub.)


A little over a week ago we had dinner upstairs with Lana. Leo was sitting in his high chair eating crackers and then he just slumped over. It was so crazy! He's never fallen asleep in his chair before but he must have liked it because he stayed asleep for about an hour. It was really nice to not have to worry about him during dinner.


Lately I've been dressing Leo in just a long sleeved onesie and socks. (Unless we're going outside, of course.) I just think these little legs are so darn cute. I can't get enough of them.



Leo has now started getting stuck under the couch head first. I think this picture is hilarious and vaguely reminiscent of The Wizard of Oz.

Mine Too

I just looked at this picture for the first time since Leo was born. He does look like me! (Not as much as he looks like Ty, I know. But my genes are in there too!)

I forgot to mention that Leo's first tooth finally broke through the surface yesterday too. It was a busy day!

Surgery Day

Leo had his cyst removed today and it was quite the adventure! Ty and I didn't get much sleep. We had no idea how long we were going to be at the hospital so we stayed up late getting things prepared for today (Did some grocery shopping, ran to the library to return books that were due today, got tonight's dinner in the crock pot . . .). Leo had to go into his surgery fasting so I woke him up at 3:30 a.m. for a last meal (to prevent extreme, surgery-day irritability), and then we woke up at 4:45 in order to make our 6:30 check-in time. The opthamologist provided us with a map to the Children's Hospital and, of course, it was terrible and we got totally lost. We missed the exit on the freeway and ended up getting off at the rock quarry and having to go through this creepy tunnel to get back on the freeway. And it was still dark because it was the crack of dawn, so that was a lovely little adventure. Then we ended up at the University of Utah hospital instead of Primary Children's. It was a mess! We finally made it though, and things went a lot more smoothly from there. 

Here's Leo in the waiting room. He was pretty happy in spite of his lack of sleep. (When I woke him up the second time this morning he looked at me like, "What the crap, mom?" and  then cried almost the whole way to Salt Lake.)

They put a mark on his eye to make sure they didn't cut into the wrong one.

We thought this tiny little hospital gown was so cute! We would have stolen it but the post-op nurse had her eye on us. (Apparently we exude the "creepy thieves" vibe.)

Based on the information we got pre-surgery we were expecting to see Leo around 10:00 and to be able to head home around 1:30 or 2. (He went into the OR at 8.) They ended up finishing the surgery around 9 and we were out of there by 10:30. Once he woke up he was able to eat right away and he didn't seem to be in any pain so we didn't have to hang around except to pick up the antibiotic for his cut. It was a lot easier than we were planning on.

Here's Leo post-surgery with his eye patch. Let me tell you, he did not like it one little bit. We were going to leave it on until we got home but we only made it about five minutes from the hospital. 

And here's the gruesome wound. It looks pretty horrible, but it's supposed to get better quick. The doctor used skin-colored, dissolving sutures so they look like they're made out of blood. It's not pretty, but his forehead is so nice and smooth. It's going to take some getting used to. (The cyst-less spot, not the black eye.)

25 Random Things (Courtesy of Facebook)

1. I love reading and can do it all day and through the night.
2. I always get disappointed when I rush through a good book. I can't stand waiting to find out what happens, but I always wish there was more.
3. Being married makes me so, super happy. (And being a mom isn't too bad either.)
4. My second toe is (way) longer than my big toe. Ty thinks this is so gross, and I think it's the best. (We were both hoping Leo would get our toes and he ended up with one long second toe and one short.)
5. I love getting into a bed that's been made. We don't make our bed very often these days because our ghetto box spring makes it treacherous and it makes me sad.
6. I love, love, love to bake.
7. Eating what I bake is really good too. (Especially cookies. I love cookies!)
8. I really like blogging/writing in general because I think I'm funny and I like talking about myself. (And I don't think that makes me at all conceited.)
9.I hate being wrong and will almost never admit that I am, even when it's totally obvious that I am.
10. When I read a book that I like I try and read it again at least once to make sure that I didn't miss anything important.
11. I used to be a total T.V. junkie but now I hardly watch it at all. I don't like having to wait a week to get another piece of the story and commercials make me crazy. (T.V. on DVD is pretty much the best thing that ever happened to me and if we ever get DVR I'll be spending WAY to much time watching the T.V. again.)
12. I love Arizona more than any place in the whole world.
13. I hate Utah more than most places I've been. (And I've been to quite a few places.)
14. When I was twelve (or maybe ten or eleven) I cracked my wrist in a roller skating accident that was, I believe, way more dramatic in my head than it was in real life.
15. My imagination is incredibly overactive and I tend to scare myself silly over nothing quite frequently.
16. Some times I wake up scared in the middle of the night and have to practically beat Ty to death in order to get him to wake up enough to make me feel safe. (I never hesitate to do it.)
17. I love chili flavored Fritos and Mc Donald's quarter pounder with cheese but I almost never eat either one because it kind of grosses me out that I like them so much.
18. I've been sewing since I was a little girl and I love it. I also love to crochet, quilt and I'm learning to knit. This sometimes makes me feel like an old lady trapped inside of my too young body.
19. Half way through the seventh grade I became obsessed with colored socks. I had a pair to go with every outfit I owned. Then in ninth grade I stopped wearing socks altogether and had to throw out more than one pair of shoes because they smelled too bad. Now I wear plain white socks.
20. I wore glasses for about six months and it was one of the worst things I've ever done. (I hate, hate, hate cleaning them every other second.) Now I wear contacts.
21. My favorite number is 3.
22. I am slightly OCD. I don't wash my hands all the time and I'm definitely not a clean freak, but I do have a thing for repetitive sounds/motions and I'm super obsessed with having everything in its place.
23. I use two kinds of conditioner and three kinds of lotion every day and I moisturize my lips obsessively.
24. I am slightly (super) afraid of guns, but not all the time.
25. I started coloring my hair in the eighth grade (thanks for going to beauty school Jules!) and, aside from a small and necessary 18 month break, I haven't gone back.

Perspective

Do you ever hate being a mom?

I do.

It usually happens when I'm sick and/or running on two hours of sleep because Leo has decided that 2 a.m. is the perfect time to get up and play for four hours and then decides that he's going to get up for the day an hour earlier than usual on top of that. As I'm trying, in my half-conscious state, to keep him entertained I'm often bombarded by memories of my pre-baby life. "I remember what it was like to sleep through the night," I think to myself. "And sleeping in . . . that was the best." And then I wonder why on earth I ever wanted a baby in the first place. "People lied to me," I think to myself. "No one ever told me it would be like this." I'm sure if I knew I never would have done it. And if there was a way to undo it? I would be first in line. And then Leo will laugh at something I do or fall asleep (and there's something miraculous about falling asleep that transforms even the most demonic of children into little angels), and I'll look at his sweet, innocent face and remember. "Oh," I think. "This is what it's all about. This is what makes it all worthwhile." And in that moment I'm so grateful that this:

is a part of my life for just a little while.

Day

Someone broke into our house while we were in it! They stayed upstairs and we didn't even know they had been here until Lana (the owner of the house) came back from visiting her sister in the hospital. She came down stairs and asked us if we had locked ourselves out because the screen was off the laundry room window and it was unlocked. I guess some of her things, including her safe, had been moved but nothing was missing. Ty went outside to see if he could see anything unusual. I guess some of the motion sensor lights had been covered up and the gate was opened! Maybe they're planning on coming back? Any how, Ty and Lana are upstairs talking to the cops right now and I'm down here guarding Leo. (Just in case.)

Favorite Things

Eating crackers has joined Leo's list of favorite things to do. This boy loves his crackers. (And we love that the crackers keep him quiet even though they're messy.)

New Friend

Leo has a new friend: Ty had a huge bear like this when he was growing up and has been wanting to get one for Leo since before he was born. Since Valentine's Day is coming up the stores are filled with over sized stuffed animals and we thought it would be the perfect time to get one. We even let Leo pick him out. Every time we held Ted (get it? Ted E. Bear) up Leo would laugh and kick his feet. With the other stuffed creatures he just gave us a token smile. So Ted was the one and Leo just loves him. (Don't worry. Even though Ted's bigger than him Leo lets him know who's boss.)