Snipped

We did it. We got Elijah's hair cut. Dan and I found a good compromise: his hair is now short enough that it doesn't get in his eyes, but long enough so that he still has some of the curls. He was not a happy man during the cut. As much as he's been poked and hurt lately, I can't blame him for being scared and upset.


The "before" pic. Could that face be any cuter?


The hair was definitely needing a trim (even I'll admit it)


I am NOT happy about this!




The keys helped, but they didn't stop the tears




This picture just makes me want to cry! What a sad little face.

Big anniversary

I forgot to mention that this past Sunday was Elijah's 1-yr. anniversary for his first surgery!


Taken by Ronda on Monday at the horse races

This morning, for the first time in 15 months, my alarm clock didn't go off at 6am. That's bad because I was late for work, but good because Elijah slept till 6:38! I guess I should stop relying on him to be my alarm clock.

Boot camp

Laying in our camper at the dropzone, again showing how big he is. Look, he still hasn't let go of his favorite car!

I always love leaving work when there's a long weekend ahead. On Friday morning I hurried to get some projects done at work because I had an appointment to go to in the afternoon and afterwards I went home to love on my baby boy. Friday night we relaxed at our house with some good friends of ours. Saturday we went to the dropzone (my first time there this year!). It was a bit too windy for my comfort, but Dan was able to make a few jumps. Maybe next weekend for me! Elijah did great at the dropzone. He loved all the stimulation and he slept very well in our cozy little camper. Sunday morning we came home and got caught up on some sleep. Then Dan went up north with his dad for the rest of the evening and for today as well. My friend Jess came over last night and we grilled up a yummy dinner and watched a movie. Today Elijah and I met our friends Ronda and Andrew for some more horse racing!


One of his cute new faces


He has been making these kissy lips for a few days now. It is so funny! He holds it like that for a few seconds at a time.



Elijah started boot camp today. I woke up and decided that since tomorrow marks 6 weeks post-surgery, we are LEARNING HOW TO MOVE AROUND. I spent the morning watching him REFUSE to roll to get a toy. He knows how to roll over! He is just being that stubborn! If I try to assist him, he fights it. If I don't try to assist him, he will either cry or play with his feet. This is going to be a huge challenge for us. But, sorry Elijah, Mommy is going to win so you may as well back down.

Here's a video of him, toys surrounding him but out of reach, contentedly playing with his socks. UG!!!

Lots of random things as I take a quick lunch break

Answering a few of your questions and offering some additional tidbits..

Dan and I did meet skydiving. We had known each other from the dropzone for a while, but because of timing and other people, we didn't start dating for a year or two after meeting.

Dan has been to about four different doctors for his rash, he has taken steroids, antibiotics, and he has applied many creams. Every doctor seems to tell him something different. One thought it was contact dermatitis and another thought it was a reaction to detergent or shampoo. Who knows?!? At one point earlier in the week it was all over his arm, neck, face and ears. The rash isn't welcome in our house anymore!

We are going on a babyless vacation in July! We have to get our yearly Vegas fix. And we have to meet the Roller family! We will be there July 10-13, so please join us as we unleash some pent-up stress on poor Las Vegas. We already have a few friends who are coming along. Plane tickets are getting more and more expensive, so book quickly! Good thing we've been saving up for this.

I think we've come to an agreement about Elijah's hair. I told Dan we could get it SLIGHTLY TRIMMED if he was willing to find a nice place that would make Elijah feel comfortable. It does get in his eyes a lot, so I feel bad about that. We're not totally getting rid of the curls, though! Who cares if people think he looks like a girl. That just means he has a pretty face.

I was able to find a picture of a very young Dr. Moga on the internet and LOOK! He has long hair! (Does it make me kind of stalker-ish that I googled our surgeon?)



We had the pleasure of meeting this beautiful baby boy and his mama, Lea. He is such a precious little guy. And so strong! They are hoping to get Johnathan home from the hospital within the next week or so. Please keep them in your prayers. They are dealing with a few little setbacks after he had open heart surgery a few weeks ago. While we were there visiting, we saw our beloved DR. G roaming the 3rd floor halls! He did a double take and said, "Just visiting I hope?" We chatted for a bit and he asked how Elijah was doing and said he looked great.

Only good things to report (with the exception of Dan's eternal, growing rash)

A few things about today:

Elijah is 15 months old!
We got an outstanding report from Dr. Judy at his 15-mo. well visit.
The cutting of the hair poll is closed and the NO HAIR CUT vote won (more on this in another post).
It has been exactly 5 weeks since Elijah's surgery.
In one week we can finally pick E up underneath the armpits again. Thank God!
You will be able to see a pretty, full moon in the sky tonight.
Dan's rash has officially taken over his entire body.

Elijah's well visit went as good as it possibly could have gone (aside from all of the screaming and tears). He is in the 50th percentile for weight (24 lbs, 3 oz), the 30th percentile for height (30.5 in; sorry Elijah, looks like you got my short genes) and the 70th percentile for head circumference. We were given clearance to totally drop the nebulizer treatments. WOOHHHOoo! We are completely drug-free! His O2 sats were at 95%, which is excellent, heart rate was 125 bpm. His development aside from gross motor is right on track.

Gross motor is a whole different story, but we already knew this. The only thing he can do well is sit on his own. He can roll, but he doesn't do it much. He can't crawl, stand, pull himself up to a stand, get on all fours or get himself into a sit. He basically just sits in one spot and cries if he wants something or wants to move. These milestones will all come with some patience and hard work. We are starting physical therapy again next week, so that should really help. He lived the first 14 months of his life exhausted and not doing anything he didn't need to do. Now he's not exhausted anymore, but he doesn't understand that moving around is an option. We will get there. In the meantime, he can't run away from me as I kiss on that delicious chubby neck.

More on the Hair Poll later. Dan is upset because someone at the grocery store told him that we should enter our beautiful daughter in a beauty pageant because she would definitely win! But then Dr. Judy told us DO NOT CUT THOSE CURLS. So we are negotiating right now. I'll let you know the official compromise once we figure it out.

Horses and a BIG baby

We had a very good weekend! Elijah is doing as good as can be expected. He is still napping poorly but he is sleeping very well through the night so that is what is important. Yesterday we had some friends/family over and had a good time catching up with everyone.


I love my sombrero!


Jess and Eli


Senor Andrew


Daddy and Elijah...playing with the toy car he got from his buddy Ben and his mama. Thanks, you guys, he LOVES the cars! Couldn't you just eat up that cute belly?


Carrie-Ann showing off her pretty eyes!


The ice cream truck even stopped by! Little Andrew was so excited.


AAAaaaawwwww, Dan loves Tim.. Manlove!

We went to Canterbury today (horse race track) and had a great time. Elijah loves being outside so he was in heaven. We aren't huge gamblers, only betting $2 or so per race. We had fun! Dan won $25 on one of his bets. We were giving high fives like lunatics!


Chilling out, drinking some juice and taking in all the horse racing.


It's so funny....every time Elijah sees the camera now, he knows he should "pose" so he throws up his arms in the SOBIG pose. I took the camera out a few different times today and each time he instantly did SOBIG! We have the cutest and sweetest boy EVER.

Because Dan is jumping today and I'm not

I have almost no pictures of myself in freefall, but I have a lot of me under canopy. I'm in Eloy, AZ, in this pic. I had just gotten done doing a jump with the famous OMAR!


On cloud nine. Omar?! Really?


Dan is in the front, doing a 4-way (or 5- or 6-way?) jump out of the Beaver (airplane)


Dan in a sit


There's Skydive Twin Cities! Our small little cozy dropzone. Hey, you can even see our camper in this pic!


That's the balloon we jumped out of a few years ago. Best jump ever!


Right before jumping out of the balloon into the corn fields of IOWA!


Our entrance into the balloon basket was not a smooth one. See the drag marks we left in that field? Oops, sorry farmer!


Our failed raft dive! The raft we are sitting on was inflated in the plane. We were going to attempt to "ride" it down a few thousand feet, but it broke instantly upon exit.


Bill Rehm is in the middle and I'm on the right in an awkward looking stand.


Joel and Joe exiting the Cessna.


Exiting the Otter for my second tandem jump, way back in 2001!


Thinking: Aaaaahhhhh, I love this, how am I going to afford AFF?


After a good jump with Dan and Pinky!

Stuff

Please make your vote to the right! (You love curly hair!!)

Yesterday was Dan's and my SECOND anniversary! Can you believe it? I feel like it has been 10 years... only because we have been through so much. It's hard to believe that a year ago, we hadn't even been through Elijah's first surgery! A lot has happened in our two years of marriage.

I was jealous because Dan went skydiving today and I was sitting at my boring desk at work. AND...his first jump, he got to jump with JOEL! Not fair!!


SOBIG... I got to spend a fun evening with Elijah. He is so proud of being SOBIG.




Yeah, he is the cutest..




TWO years?! We have been married for two years. WOW!

Curls and travel dialogue

Please see the poll to the right and vote on whether or not to get rid of these curls. I don't want to cut off Elijah's hair but Dan does. I told him that if the results from this poll weigh in favor of cutting them off, I will take Eli to get a haircut next weekend. If the results weigh in favor of not cutting his hair now, I will get it cut in two months. Dan says if we wait two months, he will grow out a mustache until the day of the haircut, I think as an attempt to lure me into changing my mind. Oh well, I guess he'll be the one with the sweaty upper lip in the middle of the summer! EVERYONE reading, please vote! We need a wide variety of people included (we can't have only my close friends voting, to be fair).


On a completely different note, I found some of the communication between parents and children in airplanes/airports this past weekend interesting enough to share here.

Sitting in the MSP airport, I overheard a mother tell her 12ish-year-old daughter to turn off her ipod because "once we get on the plane, you'll need to do it anyway."

The daughter ignored her mother and continued to listen to her ipod.

Mother: Fine! The plane is going to crash and EVERYONE IS GOING TO DIE! All because of YOU! WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE!!

I giggled because I thought, she has to be kidding, right? I turned around to see that based on the looks on both of their faces, she was not kidding. A few minutes later, just when our flight had started pre-boarding, which means there was still plenty of time before the coach class would begin boarding, the daughter said she was going to run to the bathroom quick.

Mother: You can't go to the bathroom NOW!

The daughter got up and went anyway. The mother yelled after her, "Fine! MISS THE FLIGHT! See if I care!"

Shortly after, I heard the father call their other daughter a moron. Nice.


Then on the airplane from Ft. Myers back to MSP, there was a baby about Elijah's age crying in the row behind us. The ride was pretty bumpy for a while and every time it got really bad, she would cry harder. I didn't have a problem with the crying. I have a lot of patience for that because I know how hard it is to fly with a baby. It was the mother who was annoying me.

She kept telling her baby to "STOP THAT!" Dan and I kept looking at each other like, Really? Does she think that's going to work? Then the loud SSHHHHHHH-ing started followed by more STOP THATs.


Good, so now we know what works! I have a few things to work on: I need to turn up the drama, I need to start calling Elijah degrading names and I need to yell at him to STOP THAT whenever he is upset. You can all thank me now for sharing this parenting wisdom!

Awesome weekend

Happy Mother's Day to all of you wonderful mamas out there. My boys were wonderful to me today. I'm the luckiest mommy alive! I could not have a better baby boy and I'm so thankful for where we are all at right now. A year ago, Elijah had not even had his first surgery yet! So much has happened in one year. We have come a long way and like I said, I'm an incredibly lucky mama. I LOVE YOU, ELIJAH, and thank you for choosing me.

I was worried about Elijah missing us too much while we were gone this weekend but now I'm worried that he appears not to not have missed us at all! He seemed to do great, which is acually very reassuring. He loved spending time with his cousins and auntie. We drove down to Cannon Falls, where Lissa and her cute family live, late last night after our plane landed so we could spend the night and be there when Elijah woke up in the morning. He was so cute when I got him out of bed this morning. He looked slightly confused to see me, but then started giving me the flirty smile. I have been kissing his juicy neck all day long.



We had the absolute best time in Florda. Mike and Julie's wedding was like a fairy tale. The ceremony took place on the beach, a few feet away from the water. I loved that I could watch my good friends say their vows while listening to the crashing waves and while scooping my toes through the sand. Mike and Julie were so cute and their wedding was touching. I shed many tears.


Dan and Lisa had to drag me away from the water because this is what I was doing until the wee hours of the night...gazing out into the ocean..


Sand, ocean and MY lucky toes!

We were able to stay with our friend Lisa and her mom at their condo, not far from where the wedding took place in Ft. Myers. Lisa and Ruth were THE MOST WONDERFUL hosts we could have ever imagined. They took us to and from the airport, they made us food and drinks and let us get sunburned by their pool. They thoroughly entertained us in every way imaginable. We are so thankful for your hospitality, so THANK YOU, Lisa and Ruth! You made our trip so much more enjoyable than we thought possible.


Pretending to be half as tall as Lisa and Dan


The beautiful sunset, the evening of the MJ wedding

Hanging Out At Auntie's House

Hey Everyone! It's Elijah here. This weekend I have been hanging out at Auntie Lissa's house and spending time with my cousins. My cousin Emma took the day off of school and played with me and fed me and helped change my diapers. (I'll bet she brings that up over and over when we are grown-ups.) Auntie Lissa had a bunch of ladies over last night to show me off and I flirted shamelessly with them all. This afternoon my cousin Erik is going to chill with me. I'll bet I can get him to watch Veggie Tales over and over. (Auntie says he loved them when he was a little guy like me.) Okay, I better get going, I've got a busy day planned and I need to pencil in time for a nice poop before lunch. Thanks for checking in!!