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.

Our Very Merry Christmas

December 25, 2011

What a beautiful Christmas morning! Today Austin and I were blessed with the most amazing gift from our Heavenly Father; a strong, healthy baby boy. Oliver Shark LeBaron born at 10:45 AM—weighing in at a whopping 9lbs 7oz and a tall 22 ½ inches long. He wasn't supposed to come today, but I am sure happy he did.

I went to see Dr. Judd on Tuesday (Dec. 20) and my cervix wasn't doing ANYTHING. I was very disappointed and frustrated because I wanted to meet my baby so badly. Austin and I kind of like to do our own thing, so when the doctor told us that there was only a 5% chance that this baby was coming out this month, we decided to drive to Colorado to see our nephew, Garrett, get blessed and to spend Christmas with our LeBaron family. No one in their right mind would get in a car at 39 weeks and drive 8 hours across Wyoming. That's nuts. But Dr. Judd sounded so confident and almost guaranteed that I wouldn't start labor until the first week in January so we went anyway. I-80 proved to be the only effective method of induction. All of those bumps and curves must have got something going in there.

About 3 or 4 hours into our trip I started feeling very mild contractions. So mild, I didn't really think anything of them and I didn't notice them very much. We got to Loveland in one piece at about 11:30 on Friday night, and besides my sore bum from sitting so long, I felt fine—until I went to bed. Every thing I had read about labor and contractions told me that I would definitely know when the contractions were the real thing because I wouldn't be able to walk and I wouldn't be able to breathe through them blah blah blah. Not true. It felt like bad gas. Every 10 minutes it felt like major gas pains, which have been a common part of this pregnancy anyway. I was up the entire night, it really wasn't very bad, just bad enough to keep me awake. I felt a tiny bit of tightening in my tummy with the gas pains but not enough to convince me it was a contraction. The next day, sisters-in-law, Jen, Emily, and Brittney all reassured me that they were just Braxton Hicks contractions and I would definitely know when it was the real thing. Saturday night came and the pains were getting closer together. Austin wanted me to time them but I thought it was a waste because they were still too mild to be labor contractions. By 1 in the morning on Sunday, they were 3-4 minutes apart and lasted for about 2 minutes each but STILL not convincing enough. It just didn't hurt bad enough! To pass time and try to distract me from the annoying aches and pains of pregnancy, I woke Austin up and asked if we could open our Christmas presents. He's so sweet, he said yes and got out of bed (2am) and came out to help me. Craig (father-in-law) came out to turn off lights and lock up before bed and we told him what we were doing, he woke up Cindy(mother-in-law), who also didn't think I was in real labor, and she suggested we go to the hospital just to see what was going on. She thought they could give me something to take the edge off the pain of these “braxton hicks contractions”.

I was feeling a slight sense of urgency at this point that Austin just did not share with me—surprise surprise. He wandered around looking for keys and shoes, brought me another present to open...basically not hurrying at all. He took his sweet time following all of the traffic laws on the way to the hospital even though the roads were completely empty. We got in to McKee Medical Center in Loveland, Colorado at about 3 o'clock on Christmas morning. I told them we were from out of town and a brief history of my pregnancy. They checked to see if my water had broken...it had. I don't know when or how I missed that. They checked my cervix...I was dilated to an 8. How the heck did that happen without me knowing?

And to speed things up—a quick epidural, a nap, and half hour of pushing later, my baby was here in this world with me! I teared up, Austin teared up. It was a very magical experience. Something I won't ever forget and that will give me warm fuzzies every time I think about it. I am so grateful for this chance to be a mother and to raise one of God's children. I hope to be a strong example to him always and to teach him to love the gospel with all of his heart. He is so pure. My heart has never been more full.