And the Mother of the Year Award goes to...

I haven't had much to blog about lately, as busy as this new baby keeps me, there is surprisingly nothing going on. So I decided since I probably come off as the perfect mother sometimes (wink-wink), that I would post about my most recent imperfections to make all the other mother's feel better about themselves. (I hope you caught the sarcasm there.)

The other day I was leaving the grocery store and carrying my PLASTIC grocery bag in the same hand that I was carrying the car seat. The swinging bag of food hitting the baby in the face didn't bother him at all, in fact,  he found the bag to be pretty entertaining. As you all know, babies that age put everything in their mouths. I always feel bad sticking him in the back seat alone because he isn't interested in toys and I think he gets lonely back there all by himself. So of course I thought "Oh cool, this can keep him busy while we drive home!" I pull out of the parking lot and realize I just gave my 4 month old baby a plastic bag to play with. To stick in his mouth and cover his nose and suffocate on. So I had to pull over and take it away.

Today Oliver was getting restless and fussy and it wasn't time to eat and it was too early for bed so I decided to take him on a walk to make him chill out. He loves walks, thank goodness. His car seat clicks into the stroller so I set him in and picked him up. Go figure I didn't buckle the straps. The handle didn't snap into place so as I lifted the car seat off the ground gravity didn't do me any favors and poor baby Shark fell out and landed right on his face. He cried harder than he ever has. You know the kind of cry when their little face turns red and they don't breathe. Fortunately he didn't fall from very high and I think most of the trauma was emotional. It was a scary fall, not a painful one, from what I can tell. It still wasn't time to eat but I fed him anyway to stop him from crying. He's an emotional eater. A warm bottle can mend his entire world. He probably gets that from me...did I just say that?

Of course I should add a cute picture or two of my living, breathing, still healthy baby boy.

I will never get over this adorable hat!

 Love those rosy cheeks!

This picture is a little blurry but you can obviously see the intensity of the story being told here!

It's gripping. 

Be happy and don't beat yourself up over, well, beating up your child. I can't do any worse than my parents did to me and I turned out just fine. 

4 Months and Still Alive!

Today was Shark's 4 month well-baby visit. He weighs almost 17 lbs (wowie) which puts him in the 77th percentile for weight. He is 27.5 inches tall which puts him in the 99.9 percentile for height, he got mamma's genes..grrrreat. Good luck finding pants that are long enough, Oliver. He has successfully met all of the regular 4 mo milestones and this Thursday he has a consultation to get his circumcision which should have been taken care of a LONG time ago, like 4 months ago when he was born. I will be so relieved to have that all done. It makes me nervous that he will have to be put under general anesthesia but I will survive. It's funny that I can sedate people like nobody's business all day at work but when I'm on the patient side of it, or rather, my child, it is suddenly a major big huge scary deal. I will stop criticizing and complaining about the over protective moms that bring their children to me now.

A piece of exciting news--in the last month and a half Austin has lost 18 lbs and I have lost 25. If you count since last Decemeber I have lost 55 lbs in 4 months, but I think having a baby discredits most of that weight loss. But we are having fun working out and and feeling good about our bodies. I've probably eaten more vegetables in the last month and a half than I have in all of my 20 young years. I'm still adjusting to that. For some reason there are certain vegetables that wreak havoc on my gag reflex. I can't even look at them without dry heaving. It's juvenile and pathetic, I know.

Doc says Shark can start eating solid foods, which is funny to call them solids because its just soupy, pureed peas and squash and there is nothing solid about it. It's really cute to watch and along with Mom's long legs, Oliver also inherited that same gagging-at-vegetables trait. It's so cute! Probably not to him...

Austin has the summer off of school and I'm pretty jealous that he gets to stay home and do whatever he wants. He would kill me if he knew I said that because he works very hard. It just seems like when you work from home it's not really working. I find myself expecting too much of him, like having the house clean and dinner made when I get home and I get upset for a second when it's not done but I just have to remind myself that he is working too. Lucky guy could roll out of bed and work in his pajamas all day if he wanted. He doesn't do that though. He still gets up bright and early, showers, gets dressed and goes to "the office" which I have named Austin's Laboratory. He's so disciplined! He can stay in there working for hours. I could never do it.

  I love this scared face!  

He loves his papa so much!

This little gem is his fist solids experience. Enjoy. 

This quick video clip was for Grandma but I like it :)

Picture Post

Not a lot is going on around here but I thought I should keep updating with pictures at least. Austin just registered for his last semester at BYU. Woo hoo!! He is almost done and I am so proud of him :] He is excited to get out in the "real world" (whatever that means) and start working. We are both successfully dieting and losing weight together. It's nice that I don't have to watch him eat all the good food while I am practicing self control. He's a good partner. Oliver is getting to be a lot of fun. Tons of giggles and blabbing. His legs move at about 100 miles an hour. As soon as they can hit the ground I will have a hard time keeping up with him. He is a great sleeper. He's made this whole having a baby thing a piece of cake. I keep thinking I am getting way too lucky and I'm sure I've got a new thing coming to me with the next baby. But for now I will just count my blessings and enjoy every little moment with Shark. He rocks.

This is Shark's little buddy, Cooper. Every time I turn around I find them holding hands. So sweet!

Getting cuter everyday!

He is almost able to hold his bottle all by himself. He just can't get the right angle yet. 

Loves lounging with daddy

He looks so old! And adorable. 

New Easter shirt. Holy smokes, cute or what?

Oh! I almost forgot. We also had Shark's baby blessing. It was so cool. Austin said a beautiful blessing. My kids are lucky to have such a hardworking and inspired father. There were so many people at the blessing showing love and support. Shark is one blessed baby. And I appreciate each of my family members so much. 

He is an angel!

Four generations of LeBaron

I can't wait until he grows into this adorable hat. Thank you Kyle and Emily! It is super cute. 

Don't make plans, they never work out.

For our anniversary this year, we had planned on going to my grandma's cabin in Swan Valley, Idaho for the weekend. Oliver was going to stay with his grandma. My mom called me a few days before our trip and said we couldn't go to the cabin anymore because my uncle would be threre. Okay fine, no problem. I still wanted Grandma to watch Oliver so we booked a hotel room right in Idaho Falls and decided to just do dinner and a movie. Went to the movie, sold out. So we went back to the hotel. It smelled really weird but we thought maybe it was because it was an old hotel (Red Lion). Side note: this entire hotel is "Smoke Free". About an hour later, the smell got worse. It stung. Our room had a connecting door to the room next to us. It was Marijuana smoke billowing under the door into our room. We started getting the munchies so we decided to change rooms. Kidding (about the munchies). There were no king rooms left so they put us down in the regular economy room without offering to refund any of our money. So the pot heads get to stay in the nice room on the top floor and us, celebrating our 1 year anniversary/ Valentine's day, get bumped to the bottom with two queen beds. We tried to get the same effect by pushing the two beds next to each other but we just ended up sleeping in separate beds. It was nice to sleep through the whole night without having to get up and take care of baby, but I sure missed him. I think he had fun playing with his cousins though. 

     Well, it started out fun anyway.

Regardless of our plans being rearranged, it was a great weekend and I got to spend some awesome time with my sisters as well. 

Extra! Extra! Read all about it!

It's an exciting week here at the LeBaron house, folks! To kick it all off, Oliver wanted to prove to Mom and Dad that he could handle the responsibilities of being a 6 week old so he slept all through the night. I'd say he's ready. It was probably an accident, we'll find out tonight. I think he's sleeping so much because he's having a growth spurt. It seems like he's been asleep for about 4 days now.

Our next piece of big news is our new car. We traded in the not so kid/wallet friendly Audi S4 for a more conventional PriusV. It's been fun watching Austin transform from thrill-seeking husband to cautious, gentle father. We weren't planning on getting a new car, test driving cars is just something we do for fun on the weekends. But the 50 MPG seduced us. It was a lot more alluring than the 13 MPG the Audi got. AND the car seat actually fits in the back seat. Our salesman, Jared, was awesome. By the time we had crossed all of our t's and dotted our i's it was 11:30 pm and he could have just handed us the keys, said "Congratulations" and kicked us out the door but he still took the time to sit with me in the car and explain how all of the techy stuff worked and helped me sync my phone with the Bluetooth and blah blah blah all AFTER he washed and detailed the car and filled it up with gas. I'm sure he wanted to get home to his family but it was important to him that we were happy. And we were. It was a good experience. So that's my shout out to Jared at Brent Brown Toyota in Orem.

Exciting news #3. I get LASIK this week! Wednesday morning I'm kissing my blind eyes goodbye forever. And my scratched up glasses. 

And the last piece of news, Austin and I are celebrating our 1 year anniversary next Sunday, the 12th. Everyone says the first year is the hardest and I hope that's true because it was the most amazing year ever! I have a ton of mushy, lovey-dovey stuff to say about him but everyone who has met the love of their life already knows how I feel, and everyone who hasn't doesn't want to hear about it. So, I'll just say this, I haven't stopped laughing for 12 months. And it's good. 

A big "Thank you" to Hane's Fruit of the Loom, and an "I forgive you" to the fruit of my womb

I didn't make a New Year's Resolution but rather a New Year's Motto. I'm flawless. That's it. I am flawless, you are flawless, we are all flawless. As I stand on my soap box and preach confidence and self worth I feel like I'm hiding behind a giant mask, but it's a mask I'm trying to grow in to.

In the beginning of my pregnancy I was so nervous about getting stretch marks. Duh. Who's not? I was just worried about what it would do to my already damaged morale thanks to the post high school 20 pounds I adopted. When the stretch marks started showing up, I panicked. With good reason. I didn't get stretch marks, I got stretch stripes! Then, the Hane's Underwear guys swooped in and saved me. I don't know if you've seen it, but during the holiday season last year they ran a commercial with women of every size waltzing around in their undies with smile's on their faces talk/singing that they were flawless. My favorite lyric, “I can't imagine how your embrace could be any warmer on a 20 inch waist, I'm flawless”. I decided to adopt the phrase and start seeing how beautiful I, and all women, really are. Now, one month post baby, I am pleasantly surprised that my stretch stripes don't bother me at all. I can almost say I like them a little bit. They are my body art. I look like an Animorph in mid morph! Half woman, half tiger. And I don't mind. So remember girls, you are flawless! I really believe that.

I've survived my first month

I can't believe already a month has gone by. I am really enjoying having Oliver in our home. Being a mom is like nothing I've ever done before. Austin is the best help a girl could ask for. There is no way I could do this on my own. I am very tired and worn out but always smiling. Ollie is growing way too fast. Today he graduated out of newborn size clothes. RIP cute tiny things. Thank goodness he is still in a newborn size diaper, that would just be too much to handle.

He is starting to find his voice, slowly but surely. He makes little cooing noises and flaps his arms around. It melts my heart. He still screams like a banshee at nearly every diaper change but he's getting a little more used to that cold wipe on his bare cheeks. But boy can this child wail! His entire body will turn bright red and he will just belt it out. Fortunately, he makes up for it with all of the cute things I catch him doing. He's almost got the smile down and sometimes I'm able to coax it out of him. This morning I was feeling especially sleepy and he started fussing so rather than get up, I just put him in bed with me and crossed my fingers that I could keep sleeping. And I did. At one point I opened my eyes to check on him and he wasn't even asleep, he was just staring right back at me, watching me sleep. What an angel! I needed that extra hour this morning and I am so grateful he let me have it.

At his two week check up, he weighed 9lbs 14 oz which put him in the 78th percentile for weight, his head was in the 68th percentile, which is surprising because I feel like Austin and I both have pretty huge heads, and his height (still 22.5 in) was in the 95^th percentile. He's such a long baby! I love every inch of him.

I'm still learning how to function and live a normal persons life. My house gets messy very quickly and I get agitated when I'm not able to pick up. It's especially frustrating that Ollie loves to blow out his diaper every time I change him into clean clothes. Dirtying everything I put on him after only a few minutes isn't the annoying part ( well, not the MOST annoying part) because I expected that to come with a baby. The annoying part is that I live in an apartment with no washer or dryer. I have a laundromat on the other side of the complex. It's tough to find a few minutes to run all of my stuff over there and it gets so expensive trying to keep up with all of his poopy clothes and all of my shirts covered in baby barf. I tried hand washing things for a few days but I can't keep up with that either. So for now, I'm just throwing things in a pile on the floor and hoping they disappear.