I can't believe it!

Okay, so I am still pretty behind on some posts that I would like to do before going back to updating (hopefully) daily, but I have to share the news!
The insurance paid the money back to us! Almost all of it. We aren't sure what is going on with the last little bit of it, but they paid so much of the remaining amount that we decided we don't care. I still can't believe it!
I am so thankful to my brother (a former insurance lawyer), my dad and other brother (who is kind of a genius) who helped me to make my appeal letter what it needed to be. I have no idea what made them finally pay it. The authorization letter they sent me months ago proving that they pre-authorized everything, or my sob story about losing our job and other such issues, or just playing that "Last Christmas we lost our job, please make this Christmas better by honoring your contract and paying us back our $4000.00". Don't know, and probably never will, but I am so glad that it is finally over and I feel like such a different person! I feel like I weigh so much lighter now that this burden is over and done with.
The funny thing is that the night before, I was having trouble falling asleep and I started having doubts that they would pay it and wondered how I would react when that happened. I finally had to make myself think of other things to be able to go to sleep. Then last night, James came home from work, quietly opened the mail and said, "Guess what I am holding?" Of the many things it possibly could have been, I laughed and said, "A check for $4000.00?" and he said, almost $4,000.00!" I couldn't believe it!
Of course, after making a few excited phone calls, I had to take a minute to cry. Happy, relieved, and thankful tears of course!
Now having said all this and shared this wonderful news, I also feel that I need to take a minute and express my love, fear and hope for all of those families in Haiti. My problems, so huge to me, are nothing compared to the devastation they are living right now. My prayers are with them.

Sleeping and other stuff

In my catch up post, I forgot some pretty big stuff regarding sleeping. About a month or so ago, I decided it was time to lower Landon's crib mattress. We did and he loved it. We took the bumper put and he loves to see us come in the room. Of course, it makes it all the trickier to leave sometimes. It was so weird to sit in the rocking chair and look around at the changes to Landon's room making him a big boy. I'll come back to sleeping in a minute.
Shortly after this event, I went to take a shower. When I showered I would put Landon in his bouncy chair and let him play with the toys that dangle and some others that he likes in case he gets bored. I'm sure you know, that after chopping off my hair, showers are pretty fast for me now. So this one day, I put the chair on the floor in front of the tv in our bedroom and turned on some show he really likes. When I got out of the shower, I heard some weird noises and grunting and looked over to see Landon had bent over to be able to pull himself up and under the hanging toy thingy and then sat forward and just grinned at me! What in the world! I laughed because it was funny and extremely unexpected, but then he started laughing too and did it a few more times. So the next day I went to take a shower and forgot about his new fun thing to do. Luckily, he reminded before I actually got into the shower. I deliberated for a moment as to what to do. There was no way I was fast enough to get showered and out before he flipped the chair over on himself and with my luck, I would be all soapy when it happened. So I finally decided to go downstairs and get his monkey jumper thingy, but of course I was ready to step right into the shower (if you know what I mean) and had to grab something to cover myself, but didn't grab the smartest thing when I was downstairs and realized that I had to use both hands to carry the awkwardly mammoth thing upstairs and almost killing myself because it hit the top stair and I almost got sent right back down them. I am just glad that our neighbors had not taken that particular moment to be traipsing through our yard by those particular windows to chop firewood from our back woods. Anyways, so he now plays in the monkey jumper thingy while I shower because I don't trust him not to kill himself while I shower in his bouncy chair.
Now, back to sleeping stuff. New Years Eve we decided not to have anyone over and just have it be the two of us this year. Well... it was an interesting night. Landon did not sleep at all! Ugh. We both spent half the night with him. Him screaming and us trying to comfort him. We think it was the teething (the 4 to 6 teeth on top I mentioned before). Of course, we had given him everything we could think of: Motrin, teething tablets, Orajel. He also had a little cold that he seems to get when the teeth are about to break through. Fun. I think I hate teething more than the hernia... maybe not...
Anyways, we decided the next night, both of us being sleep deprived and all to just put him to bed and let him scream it out because there is nothing that we can do. So we did. He cried for maybe an hour and slept until 3am. I nursed him and then he cried for about 20 minutes and woke up fairly happy. So we kept it up. A few nights later, his cry turned into a sort of different noise. I went to check on him and guess who was standing at the crib rail? So glad we lowered it in time. A couple of nights later, he was crying and then screaming. James went to check on him and his legs were both sticking out through the rails and he was on his back screaming. How on earth did he even get that way? So now, we can't just let him cry it seems. One morning after that,about 1am he had been crying for about 45 minutes and I went in to make sure he wasn't stuck again and he was just sitting there, FREEZING! I am pretty frustrated. Don't really know what to do. If it was summer and I didn't have to worry about legs and arms getting stuck in the rails, I would just let him cry and do the tough love, time to sleep thing, but I obviously can't do that now... any ideas? I am going on my third night of sleeplessness here today... barely functioning too. hope this post makes sense.
Landon just had his first food allergy rash. I really think it is tomatoes (let him try some of my spaghetti sauce), but James wants to go back to store bought baby food. I really don't think it was the home made stuff because he has had it for two weeks now... Anyways, Landon does not sleep with Benadryl, it makes him wake up. (Can you seethe smile on my face?) So tired....
I know that there was more to post about... Brain not functioning at 100%.
Wow, you should have seen the spelling errors I just fixed.... :)

Landon's first Christmas

I didn't pick the best wrapping paper for a baby...
I had to unwrap it for him.

Look at that face!

James trying to decipher the assembly instructions for Landon's big toy.

Landon is helping out Daddy.

Until he found this really cool box...

All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth.

Our first Christmas together was all that I could have wanted it to be. We started the morning with the traditional Cowboy Coffee Cake and home made egg nog. Landon had bananas and then we did stockings and gathered around the tree and opened gifts. We didn't have many gifts, which is how I prefer it to be. Landon got one gift just from Mommy, a picture book. I put together a little album with photos of our family and friends all centered around him. Then he got a gift from Mommy and Daddy and then one from Grandma and Grandpa Alba. Later we went to Grandma and Grandpa Marker's house to be with the big family and have dinner and presents as well. It was a great day and the first Christmas I have been excited about in a really long time.

James and I agreed not to buy gifts for each other this year. As it got closer to Christmas, I was having a hard time keeping to that agreement. James kept mentioning a meat cookbook over and over. I knew that it was at Wegmans so on the day before Christmas Eve, I took Landon out to Wegmans and tried to find it. After looking for ever, the closest I came was to the free handout (which is actually a really nice and well made booklet) near the meat department. I took it home and decided that it would just stand in for whatever book it was he wanted. I wrapped it up and put it under the tree. Come to find out, when he opened it, it was exactly what he wanted! It turns out he misplaced the one we had and that is what he meant by getting the meat cooking book. So funny.

Catch up

Love this shot!
Landon loves to just chill out with James

I love my smiley boy!

Playing on James's lap

Checking out our musical Santa pillow

I love to watch them play together

He just whacked himself with the remote

Filling up the bathtubCuddling with a pillow

Chillin on James's lap with my phone

Cruisin

Watching Super Why on my pink lap top when our tv wasn't working

This month has been a whirlwind of things. Between Landon standing on his own, starting to enjoy more baby food flavors and finally getting over his gag reflex to be able to eat puffs, to sitting in the tub on his own, to getting 6 swollen places on his top gums to our first Christmas... etc, it has been crazy.

Let's start with eating. Landon loves sweet potatoes and carrots only. Fruit he loves only bananas. I thought that maybe he didn't like pears and apples because of the grittiness, and the peaches we had tried were super bitter. So, we kept trying and then one day, he ate some puffs (without throwing up from gagging) and then he just started eating the pears and applesauce. It has been amazing to see this just change over night. Well, now I have even started making his sweet potatoes and carrots on my own. He took a day or two to adjust (I am sure this is due to my needing to get the consistency right), and now he loves them. I tried doing bananas, but when the air hits them (pureeing and mashing), it just turns it into something funky texture wise and he gags. I'll just have to keep buying that one until he can eat pieces of banana. (which I am sure won't be long) I haven't gotten bold enough to make fruit yet. James has allergies to fruit and I don't want to push things yet. (besides, fruit isn't that great in the winter)

Making the baby food has been really fun. And puffs, boy are they magic! More on that later.

Sitting in the tub on his own, bath time is just so much more fun now! Okay, so about that chair that I posted pics of earlier. Totally overrated. I hated it. Used it once, maybe twice. I don't get the point of it. The bath lounger that we had was more than enough for him until he could sit on his own. And it is cheap at Wal-Mart and easy to wash. We just got a non-skid bath mat and he sits on that. It is fun to watch him scoot around to get toys and try to lower his chest into the water when he gets cold. Sometimes when he think he is cold we lay him back and he loves that too. He can play in there for hours. The other night, he spotted the drain and just started going for it. Two days later, he started crawling. Go figure!

Swollen gums: right before Christmas, I noticed his upper lip was much farther out than his bottom lip. Having my jaw grow incorrectly when I was a kid, and having to have surgery as a teenager, I started to worry. Then I noticed that his gums were super swollen. It took me a little prodding, but he finally let me look and he had his 6 top teeth all swollen. The first two are finally out, the next two on top are starting to get close and I am not sure about the bicuspids next to those. We shall see. My little boys smile is about to change some more.

I know that there is more than I am forgetting, but for now, this is all I can think of.

Ward Christmas Party

Grandma and Joan singing with Haley, Bailey, Caitlin (the primary kids) and Natalie and Landon went along too

Elf ears

For our Ward party this year, we were not part of the activities committee (yippee!). But we decided that we wanted to help out by setting up tables and chairs. It was a good thing that we did because there was a lot of snow that day as well and we were the only ones there to set them up. The party was great! It was extremely simple and after years of our ward parties being "over the top", and killing myself to make it over the top one year (James and I even made a life size Santa's sleigh), I just sat in awe. It was simple yet perfect. My father in law even said that it was the best party so far. There was no Santa, which led me to think about whether or not it was a big deal that Landon didn't have a picture with Santa for his first Christmas. After about a week and listening to every one's opinion, I decided that it would be okay to not have one.

The outfit Landon is wearing was a gift from my Aunt Donna. I actually got it the day after he was born and thought it looked HUGE. Well, I don't know if you can tell, but it is too small for him. Oh well, atleast we got the picture! It is so cute!!!

Snow Storm 2009

There was at least two feet in the backyard. You can kind of see from this pic.

Ready to catch snowflakes on my tongue!

Having a tough time getting the Binky with all the extra padding.

Finally, I am free!

This is Landon next to some snow by our back door. Over to the left, the snow drifted up against the house up to James's waist. (sorry, didn't get a pic)

What do you think, Landon?

This is our driveway. The snow didn't pile as high in the front of the house.

Driveway and sidewalk and porch under the snow.

Our picnic table in the side yard.

More of the front porch.

You can just see our neighbor in the orange tractor to the middle left of the picture. On Saturday night, he started to plow the dirt road we all live off. (about five families) He then proceeded to plow our driveway, how awesome is that?! It turned out to be a huge blessing because James had to work the next afternoon.

Well, we still have snow here from this storm. It has been in the teens and twenty degrees at night, so everything is icy. It has been nice that the days have been sunny, so there is some melting going on. I was a little sad because it was too windy for Landon to be outside and he couldn't play in the snow, but I know that there will be more snow for him to enjoy later in his life.

Baby Bear

Sorry in advance, but I had a really hard time picking my favorite picks, so there are a LOT on this post. On the 18th of December, we had a huge snow storm and got about 2 feet of snow. The day it started was a Saturday. We took the day and worked on our secret quilt project, me sewing and James getting the dates and quotes embroidered onto the squares. Landon's Aunt Bethany visited this past summer and gave us this adorable Bear outfit. We decided that since our house can be cold that it was the perfect day to try it out. Well, it fit perfectly! And I have to say, James I and kept giggling all day at how cute he looked. (Me more than James, and come to think of it, I don't know that James giggles...) Anyways, thanks for the outfit Bethany, I hope you enjoy the pictures! xoxo