February 25th

All winter long, Tony has been quite occupied by reffing hockey. Virtually every Friday and Saturday night he has been gone, in addition to 3-4 nights out of the week! This past Saturday was the last one of the season that we had to endure without him. Here's a little glimpse at the breakdown of our day via an instagram dump.

From left 1::morning wakeup 2:: before and after 3:: the face only a mother could love 
4:: picture for Daddy  5:: more mandarin oranges! 6:: froyo date with toppings! 
7:: crisis in the dressing room, Ezra nursing, Isaac needing to potty. 8:: Homemade club with smoked gouda, turkey bacon and AF sweet potato fries 9:: playing together

ps:: I have an unhealthy obsession with Target's smoked gouda. Very unhealthy I tell you.
pps:: We're still shopping at Aldi, but Isaac loves to just kill time, like his mama, at Target, thus the AF products.

So Long, Farewell

Allweedeshen, good night! [in realityAuf Wiedersehen, goodnight]

I can't be the only one who always fudged those lyrics. Admit it. :)

The time has come for my old photography blogsite. I was so excited to reveal it last fall, but it quickly became outdated and clunky looking to me. I reached out to a few talented designers for quotes on overhauls and had a bit of sticker shock.

They are worth every penny, but when coming toe to toe with a $4,000 pricetag, I couldn't help but be a little floored.

Maybe next year.

In the mean time, thanks to the lovely folks at ProPhoto4, I was able to put together this new gal for only a $90 upgrade [thanks Gina :)]:


If you aren't a fan of Leah Maria Photography yet on facebook, check it out!

I'd love to hear your feedback about the site!

Ezra: 8 Months

It's official, you've only got 4 months now until your birthday.


And the above picture is going to continue to be a challenge!

At the beginning of the month, you hammed it up with your big brother.


Big Chief, as Daddy calls you, you're just cruising around at warp speed. This past month you started napping in your pack and play, pulling yourself to standing, crawling up steps and now furniture cruising.


You have been getting along great with your big brother! You always want to be near him.


You were pretty much the cutest Valentine date ever.


Unfortunately you had quite a reaction to PC and Hib, giving us a little scare.


It took almost a full week, but it seems like you're back to your smiling happy self and have returned to your relatively good sleep pattern.You've been busting out a lot of consonant sounds, including "Dada" and "Mama." We can't wait until you actually understand the meaning of those words!


You're doing great with eating and love your mesh feeder! You've covered a wide variety of food in the past month, from sweet potatoes to avocado to frozen grapes.You have no patience for the exersaucer anymore, but are much happier to spend a few minutes in the highchair.


You also love this little walker your brother has been so kind to borrow to you.


We're fairly certain you're the sweetest boy ever and turning into a little bit of a mama's boy. You just light up when you see me, lunge yourself at me and have a little giggle that you do when you want me to pick you up. Unlike Isaac, you love to snuggle and will just rest your head on my shoulder. It's very precious.


Love you sweet boy.
 

Stream of Conscious

This week I have borrowed $8 from my coworker, her badge, 5 stamps and am now eating a bag of her popcorn because I was starving and ate my apple as 2nd breakfast.

Tonight I'm going to go look at a studio with Gina. I'm excited, but nervous. I keep telling myself that it's a great opportunity, but there's a lot of doubt creeping in telling me that I'm not ready.

Ezra has not been sleeping well this week. He won't detach from my breast, which means I'm sleeping with my arm above my head. Normally, I only sleep in that position for at most an hour or two a night, but now that it's become the majority of the night I have the most awful neck ache.

It's so brutal, Tony's neck massage actually felt good!

I dread going to sleep at night again. Ezra actually slept better as a newborn!

I'm really looking forward to this weekend. Tony and I were supposed to go on a makeup Valentine's Day date, but he had a playoff game added to his schedule. That said, this is the last weekend of hockey and I only have one session this weekend. I'm really looking forward to spending some time with my boys,  hopefully taking some sweet pictures and working on my site update.

I can barely handle looking at the current state of my site, which would explain why I haven't written a new blog post since the 3rd. Yikes, almost a full month.

I've been doing a Fab Ab February challenge, and through the result of positive peer pressure, am now up to 80 situps.

Tony and I decided on a preschool for Isaac and while we prayed about it, the confirmation for me was more in the fact that as I was writing the name down in my calendar, the same exact lyrics were heard in the song I was listening to.

This winter has been so weird.

I went shopping for the first time in 8 months without the boys in tow and I didn't find a single thing I liked.
 

On Confusing Loss

It's pretty crazy the profound impact my shortest pregnancy had on me. While I could imagine holding a newborn last year and was wistful for what could have been, it's an even stranger flux this year.

Now that the concept of my 2nd son has only further been solidified in knowing Ezra, the idea of having another child who is not known to me is very odd.

The hurt and pain in wishing to have had Josiah to celebrate a one year birthday today on his estimated due date is juxtaposed greatly with the knowledge that I wouldn't have my sweet Ezra.

It's a very confusing spot to be.

God, as always, has the perfect plan.

And our family will be made complete in heaven.
 

PC and Hib

Friday morning, Tony took Ezra in to get some shots. I'm not sure where I fall in the vaccination spectrum, but I have several friends who do them no questions asked per the CDC guidelines and others who have sworn each and every one off from birth. Conspiracies are rampant, studies debunked on all sides and there is way too much money involved for any one to know the truth.

What I do know though is:

- My Mom has a 15 year old girl who has been disabled since 12 months, when she became a statistic of the rare occasions where vaccinations can cause more harm than good. Her case is not an implied reaction, but was carried through the court system and she now has a fund set up by the vaccination manufacturer. Her condition was directly caused by the vaccinations she received at 12 months.

- Vaccinations, as a whole, have saved 100,000's, in not millions, of lives.

- I am not a doctor. I am however, the best advocate of my child.

As the best advocate for my child, I feel strongly that you can't argue against this chart:


That's a huge increase in shots and vaccinations. So, we've decided to follow Dr. Sear's delayed vaccination schedule. Our boys will be fully immunized, just not the on the same hurried scheduled as the CDC recommends. It means an increase in visits, but it also spreads out the impact of the vaccinations.

Friday night, my belief in this choice for our boys was further resolved when Ezra had a reaction to the two shots he received that morning, PC and Hib. Unfortunately we don't go to an extremely delayed schedule friendly office, and once again Tony had to explain what shots they were there for, and that no he didn't want the Dtap-IPV-HepB and PC and Hib. Considering the alarming reaction Ezra had to just the PC and Hib, I can't imagine how he'd have handled the combo vax.

My Mom had been texting me throughout the day that Ezra wasn't very hungry and that all he wanted to do was sleep. Neither of these concerned me, as they're pretty par for the course in the aftermath of shots.

When I went to her house to pick him up though, I was immediately upset. He had at least a fever of 102, did not track me much with his eyes, didn't smile or react when he saw me [highly unusual], was breathing shallow and looked jowly, as his facial muscles were very relaxed and he it seemed like he had to remember to swallow.

I quickly called the after hours care line and they recommended I take him to the ER.

So off I went, leaving Isaac at my Mom's, since Tony was in WI to ref a college game. I had to pull off on the way there because he wasn't responding to anything. He was just blankly staring at the ceiling. I called AJ on the way there, my voice breaking as I shared how scared I was. All I could think of was my Mom's daycare girl, Danielle, and imagining my world without seeing Ezra's smile or enjoying his spunky personality.

It was like he was a shell of himself and I was very worried.

At the ER, he started to get a little better, only confirmed by the two nurses both asking "Is he your first?" I felt like I had to defend my choice to bring him in,  that he was my 2nd, and I'd never experienced a reaction like this before.


It took a few hours, with Ezra just sleeping on my chest, but we were finally seen by the pediatrician, who thankfully validated my concerns and said that one of her children had also had a similar reaction. Mind you, Ezra is still sleeping on my chest and hadn't even attempted to nurse, even though he hadn't eaten since 2:00pm and it was now almost 8:00pm.


We left with instructions to watch him and to have a follow up conversation with our Dr. Such a scary time, but so thankful all is well now.
 

Wild Game

Last night we went to the Wild game versus the Winnipeg Jets. I'm getting ahead of myself though, first up, we went to Cosetta's. It.was.amazing.

As I wrote yesterday, it was a pretty rotten day. I felt the urge to emotionally eat pretty much every 20 minutes, but held out, because I knew that Cosetta's was going to be worth it! And it was, oh it was.

I split a Cosetta's salad with Tony, ate a small mostaccoli with an Italian sausage, and the garlic bread. 

It was emotional eating done well.

So then, we get to the game with my family, thanks to Levi's sweet hookup on the tickets, and it was immediately clear that there were a few Jets' fans.

And by a few, you'd think that they were playing at home. It was ridiculous.

Per usual, both the Canadian and American national anthems were sung and I kid you not, I have not felt that patriotic since the few years past 9/11. My throat is sore today due to the amount of yelling and cheering I was doing.

My arms are sore from the amount of clapping.

It was very intense.

Unfortunately after a hard fought game we lost in a shootout, but I haven't had that much fun in a long time.

Valentine's Day

I had a great day with my loves, even though Tony had to ref and then play hockey Tuesday evening. He came downtown and delivered the prettiest bouquet. He even got major props for the arrangement, since he did it himself to save money!


We then grabbed lunch together and indulged in Caribous BOGO.


The evening then, I had the sweetest two Valentine's all to myself.


Isaac's cherry red sucker stained cheesy smile was my favorite.


I had a shake for dinner and got to avoid the overkill that normally goes with the night!


And then got to splurge on some super yummy wine.

Rotten

Today is one of those rotten days.

I have a migraine.

I'm starving, but feel like I'm going to throw up.

My Mom and I had an argument yesterday about Ezra napping on his stomach.

It ended with me telling her, "Fine, he can sleep on his stomach."

Today we learned that an 8 month old in the same city failed to wake from his nap and is suspected to have died of SIDS.

I feel completely rotten.

I want to snuggle my family. 
 

A Valentine's Day Offer from Ezra

To my beautiful baby friends:

[I must warn you though, you've got to meet my mama's approval . . . she's got high standards!]

If you accept,  this is my loving message:


Mom! Are there any takers yet?

 

Totally Random.

Ezra has just a few crazy long hairs and I love them.

 

Preschool [and the random thoughts associated]

There have been a few challenges lately with Isaac. Every parent thinks their child is a genius, yaya, yada, yada, but turns out, Isaac is pretty bright. I'm not saying he's exceptionally gifted or anything along those lines, but the kid has been doing 60 piece puzzles by himself for the past six months and bores easily, so I feel like I can safely say he's got something going on.

It's turned into quite a double edges sword though.

He's intelligent + strong willed = my Mom at her wits end.

And I don't necessarily blame her. Isaac tests boundaries incessantly and my Mom has reached a point in her daycare years where she doesn't want to necessarily deal with the exasperating phenom known as the determined toddler boy. I'm not saying that there are not defiant toddler girls, just that in my experience as a mom of boys and the ratio my Mom curates in her daycare, toddler boys seem to be an obstacle best avoided.

It's brought about some hard conversations between my Mom and I. At a base level we parent differently. Then you add in the whole daycare provider dynamic and the grandparent dynamic and it gets ugly fast in certain situations.

One thing we definitely agree on though, is that 3 year old preschool has Isaac's name written all over it.

He's social.

He loves to learn.

He likes structure.

Perfect fit.

And so the search begins. It pains me that I don't get to be a part of this process more than the selection. I guess it was an unknown plan of mine to be a part of my children's education [think minivan in pajamas], but this will start without me.  Tony will be the one to drop Isaac off at preschool and to bring him back to my Mom's. That hurts me in a way I didn't anticipate.

Those darned feminists.

Turns out I don't want to have it all.

I just want to enjoy the time I have with my family now, because it's entirely too fleeting.

Disclosure.

This post brought to you by the remainder of my Diet Dr. Pepper.


Apparently a little splurge for Mama is good for everyone and bought Isaac's cooperation. Up until that day, he'd never been given pop, but had only stolen sips from empty cans.

15 Minutes Outside

I used to read, a lot. When I was in grade school I would often be grounded to my room, which was fine by me, as I could just hole up and read. My Mom quickly grew wise to this though and in addition to being grounded to my room, she grounded me from reading! My teachers were horrified to hear this in high school, but thankfully it didn't cause any damage. It just made for an effective punishment.

When I started riding the bus to work, 5 years ago, my love of reading was in full force. As Tony just recently reminded me, I used to go through a new book a week. At the beginning it got expensive! But then, I remembered my love of the library and soon it became a monthly trip to get stocked up.

I'm not sure what happened, but when I came back downtown 3 years ago, after a hiccup in the suburbs, I stopped reading. I'm going to blame it on my blackberry. Countless rides, just mindlessly refreshing facebook or checking up on the local news.

And then, Tony got me a book for Christmas. A physical hard cover book by Jon Acuff, called Quitter. It's reignited my love to read . . . and spilled over into downloading the Kindle app on my phone.

I'm not even sure who recommended it, but a blog I've never visited before recommended 15 Minutes Outside: 365 Ways to Get Out of the House and Connect with Your Kids. And I bought it, for $1.99.

And I love it.

The premise is so simple. The author resolves to spend at least 15 minutes outside with her family. Regardless of the weather. Can you imagine the possibilities? I can and while I won't go so far as to institute that it be daily, it's surely going to be more than weekly!

Because this kid?


Love to run.


And kick.


And just be a boy.


And I want to enable him to have adventures, like unexpected turkey tracks.


And I want this little one, to expect the turkey tracks.


Last night we went for a walk.

It was chilly.

It was past dusk.

And on any other day I would have said it was too late or too cold, but last night I was motivated by those 15 minutes it took to walk around our block. We got more done last night than we normally would have and got to enjoy each others company.

I can't wait to do it more.