Happy Birthday Elliott!!

So yesterday was the big day... Elliott turned 1!! I can't believe it's been a year since he's joined our family, it seems like we just brought him back from the hospital. He's been such a joy to our lives, he's such a sweet kid and we love him to DEATH!!

So on his birthday he slept all night (yay!!) and when he woke up he was his usual happy self. We ate breakfast and since it was a special occasion, I gave him a sugary cereal instead of the usual Kix (Boo Berry left over from Halloween. By the time he was finished, his hands and mouth were all blue... More things turned out to be blue than just the cereal, more on that later). So long story short, we just played until about 2 pm when I all of a sudden realized that I didn't know what to do for a cake. It was his first birthday cake, so I wanted it to be cute and homemade, so I looked online for some cute ideas and decided on something like this:

Cute idea, right? So I baked and crafted all afternoon (all while Elliott played away from the hot oven... He's such a good baby!!) and finally I was finished. The end result was a bit anti-climatic. I've decided that I'm not a creative baker.

Oh well, he doesn't care, right? It's the thought that counts... :) I'll just keep on telling myself that...

We're having a birthday party for Elliott this Saturday, but had the Jackson/Bugg family over because they weren't going to be able to make it this weekend. They have 6 kids so Elliott was having a BLAST!! Here are some fun photos from the night, please enjoy.
Elliott enjoying his Boo Berries breakfast. I didn't get a shot of the blue all over his hands and mouth afterward, too bad. It was pretty dang cute.

He just wanted to eat the paper, he could have cared less about what was inside.

After lots of eager hands to help him unwrap, he found a toy laptop from his adopted Grandma Bugg...

A train with tracks from Kim, Rodney, and the Jackson kids...

...which he then tried to eat...

Then he got mad when we took it away.

He got a box of tissues from his mom and dad (hey, we're poor, and he's easily entertained. We want to exploit that for as long as we can) :)

And finally, Jacob came home with a surprise present, Star Trek. Needless to say, it was even a surprise to me. Apparently according to Jacob we're not so poor as to deprive our one-year-old action/adventure movies.

Right here is where a video I tried to upload should have been. It was of Elliott starting to eat his birthday cake, but it was taking FOREVER to upload. I started at about 11 pm last night, waited until 1 am, went to bed, and in the morning it still wasn't done. I tried again, but now it's 1 pm so I've decided to give up. We have the video on our camera so if anyone is super curious, come on over and take a look. ;) So Elliott started off a little slow with the eating of the cake, but after a few minutes he wasn't so shy anymore. :)

...And he's done. He fell down from his sugar buzz pretty quickly, it was kind of funny to witness.

Behold the destruction...

After his bath he decided to start playing with one of his favorite toys. He's just recently discovered toilet paper also, we'll have to make sure to always leave the bathroom door closed. :)

He noticed me taking pictures and decided it would be more fun to play with the camera instead.

Resting on his bed of tissues right before bed.

It was such a fun night, hopefully the video uploading fiasco was just a fluke and I'll be able to post videos soon, there are a few that are really too cute to not see. By the end of the night it was clear that Elliott was sick, his little voice sounds like Copper from Fox and the Hound, all raspy and cute. I think he'll be feeling better by his party on Saturday, he'd better be!! :) The next morning he woke up cheerful as ever, and gave us one more happy birthday surprise by finding the contents of his diaper as blue as the frosting on the cake. I'll spare you pictures, but just know that it was pretty dang funny. All in all, it was a spectacular birthday, and we can't wait for everyone to party with us on Saturday!

Remember us?

So we've been having some good times as well as some bad ones. I'll start with the bad: Elliott's teething again, only now it's all 4 of his top front teeth at once so he's not a happy baby. I miss my sweet little man who would sleep when he was sleepy, and smile and be happy when he wasn't sleeping. It's been officially over a week since he's taken a full nap during the day, and both he and I are feeling it. So, to spare you with the un-fun details about this experience, I'll just share some cute photos.

Here he is having one of his little meltdowns. He's started to resemble Munch's Scream painting. What do you think?

(I think Elliott's cuter)

He does it every single time, it's just too cute.

As I said before, he's hated napping lately so I've needed to exercise my tough love muscles and let him have a good cry in his crib when he needs to sleep. Every now and then he is so exhausted that he cries hard for a minute or two and then promptly falls asleep. When I've gone to check on him I have found this:

He's so tired that while he's sitting up, he just kinda slumps over and falls asleep. It's too cute not to photograph. I have a few more pictures that I think are cuter, but they're on my camera and not on the computer yet so you'll have to stay tuned... :)

So there's surprising news too... Anyone who lays eyes on Elliott always comments on three things:

1. He's cute
2. He's got funny hair
3. He's chubby

All these things are true, his hair sticks up no matter what we do to it, he's the cutest little guy around, and he certainly is chubby. That's why we were so surprised to find out this news at his most recent doctor appointment:


I'm not sure if all of you can read this or not, but he's in the 19th percentile for weight for his age. I got home and asked a few different people in my family to guess what percentile he was in, and all of them guessed between the 95th and 100th. I try not to be one of those moms who can only talk about their child and how amazing and advanced he is (even though he is), but I thought that was pretty funny. He's a chubster, but apparently he's not as chubby as the rest of the 9 month-old kids. :)

So now I guess we'll talk about Elliott's parents and what they've been up to. Many of you know my friend Sarah, she's come with me to family events and I've known her for 15 years (am I really that old???). She's kinda had a bad hand dealt to her the past few years, what with marrying a douchebag only to have him prove his douchbaggery by leaving her and their child with disabilities (sorry for the language... I guess when provoked my husband's language rubs off on me... But it's true, I stand by my usage of the word douchebag). So anyway, she met her perfect match and they were married on September 12th. Here are a few pictures from the wedding:

Sarah and Jan right outside the temple

Awww... Family photo :)

Jacob's going to school, he's really enjoying this semester so far (sorry, no first-day-of-school pics to share). He's officially changed his major to elementary education and he's been shadowing my mom with her kindergarten class. He's great with kids, I think it's the perfect career for him. He feels really good about this change, so I'm thinking it'll stick. :)

... What better way to end a post than with a few pictures of my adorable son?

The famous bottom lip makes an appearance during a tantrum

A cute picture of one of my favorite outfits (it's kinda hard to see the electric guitar detail on his shirt though)

His first experience with ice cream... He liked it after he was finished pulling the face.

Well all, I'd love to upload all day, but it's 1:00 am and this mama hasn't had a very restful week and a half. I'll try to be more diligent in my postings to keep Grandma Ashley happy. Love you all!

Oh, shut up.

Yeah, let's hear it... I'm a slacker, I know. In my defense, Jacob still hasn't finished with all the picture stuff. But mostly it's just been me being lazy. There are, however, a few pictures on the computer that I'm more than willing to share. Elliott's getting so big and SO cute!!

Elliott's doing his part to help Grandma Ashley clean the sink. :)


Here he is at Niagra Falls. He was so hot and tired by the end of the day! Poor little guy...

Again at Niagra, here's Jacob carrying Elliott in the little sling thing we got for him. Jacob doesn't seem like he's in the correct frame of mind to be carrying a baby, does he?

Here's the cute little guy on my 30th birthday. He seems cheerful, probably reveling in the fact that he has his youth, unlike his mom.

Here's the cutest little plumber's crack you'll ever see.
I love him. <3 onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6qp-NUNJ5iLPd-dRj0MQla-gq2KPUJzvnymOElV15Lt28J6FpGFcU-tAYTRZkSXEeHzl8mnspSd_YmiNxuvtjYgrhpztKu0rz9qRMwSOkYevQHBaq5weZm3XHMnCZqw9KKLhYG7QaMQ/s1600-h/DSCN0610_561.JPG">Our friends Liz and Cody had extra tickets to the Salt Lake Bees game vs. Portland. The Bees got spanked, but it was so much fun to go to a game! I'd forgotten how awesome it is to watch baseball live.


After the game they had a fireworks show. For a minor league game the show was pretty rad.

Ok, so now the updates. We're all doing really well, Elliott is taking his sweet time to learn how to crawl. Not that I'm in any hurry to baby-proof everything... Right now he's getting around by rolling. He'll see something that he wants to play with and he just rolls to it, I've never seen anything like it. :) He's pulling himself up on stuff, but I really want to get him to crawl before he progresses too much, I guess it's pretty important for his brain development. Oh well, right now he just wants to go at his own pace which is fine by me.

Our friend Mari is staying with us for a few months and her family came to visit her for a few weeks. For those of you who don't know Mari, she's Japanese and the only one in her family who speaks English. Her family LOVED Elliott, but there was a pretty big language barrier so they would just play with him and that was it. So one day they were all talking about Elliott and Mari's 9 year old nephew asked who Elliott was. They told him who he was and he said, "Oh, I didn't ever know his name so I've been calling him Kevin." It was SO funny!! The day they told me I overheard him talking to Elliott in Japanese and I distinctly heard him call him Kevin, so now Elliott's got a new nickname: Kevin Smith. :)

He's still the happiest baby ever. He's starting to wake up again at night, but I imagine that it's only because he's teething. He's just the cutest little guy with the cutest little fat rolls you'll ever see. :)

Where have we BEEN???

So lately I've been slacking in my blogging duties, I am well aware. Let me shift the blame, however, from me to my wonderful husband. Recently he bought a graphics card so he can spend more time with his all important computer games, but when he installed it things went all kerfunky. First the computer was useless because instead of having everything all nice and normal sized, everything was about this big. No, that's not accurate. It was much, much bigger. Like, say I'm checking my email, and how things normally look is like the Keebler Elves Gmail. After Jacob was done, it was more like the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man Gmail. It was rediculous.

He fixed it of course, but in doing that he had to erase everything on our computer. He's slowly putting things back on (his first priority was iTunes), but my husband has a slight tendency towards procrastination (if you've never noticed before...) so I'm just waiting to be able to put pictures up again. As this is taking more and more time, I thought I'd just brave the blogging without any pictures. I hope you all can bear my rantings without photos of our adorable baby.

So, first things first... The bandage is off from Elliott's surgery, as it has been for a while. It looks pretty good. It's a small line, maybe a half an inch long, and it's red and still feels like there's cartelidge (I don't know if that's spelled correctly...) in it, but I've been told it's just scar tissue so it'll go down over time. After that first day of fussiness from it, he's been a champ. You'd never know that he had surgery at all, he's just a little trooper.

Elliott is doing really well with eating solids, almost all of it ends up in his mouth! He's also sitting up by himself like a champ, he rarely falls over any more. I think it must be because he's a genius.

He's fat. Even more so than he was when I was last able to post pictures or video. He's growing faster than I'm able to develop muscles, so it's difficult sometimes but we manage. :) So just so we're clear, just so there's no confusion, he's definitely fat. Obese. Large. Solid. Ginormous.

While we're on that topic, Elliott's parents aren't losing any weight either. We are trying to fix that, because lately we've been looking at our wedding pictures and we were hotties! We're still cute now, but it's more like a "Oh, look at that cute chubby couple. They're both so chubby, isn't that cute?!" type of cute. So hopefully by the time we see long-lost friends and family we'll be hotties again, but don't make us feel bad if you see us before the change happens. :)

Jenna's home now, looking for a job. If anyone knows of any job openings, let us know. Jenna's a really bright (like, REALLY bright) girl who just happened to graduate at the wrong time. She's got her degree in Political Science, but she's versitle.

I've had like 4 hours of sleep in the past 4 or 5 nights because Elliott's teething... again? I'm not sure if he was at first, but a little tiny tooth has broken through and the one right next to it is about to pop. Since I'm tired, I don't care to check my spelling. Hence all the spelling and grammar errors that are surely on this post. I apologize. At least I'm still better than 90% of the people who create Facebook quizzes (and yet, I still subject myself to the quizzes... I have a problem).

Jenna and I are re-watching the Buffy the Vampire Slayer series. It's funny.

Elliott's taking a nap right now. That means I will too. Hopefully we'll get pictures up soon, in the mean time if you could all do me a giant favor and nag Jacob I would appreciate it. I think he's starting to tune me out. :) Love you all!

"The Nenis"

I don't think I've ever formally introduced Elliott's skin tag, which we lovingly refer to as "Nenis" (Three guesses on how Mike and Cecily came up with the name. I don't think I need to tell you that it's a modified, more kid-friendly version of what Jacob calls it).

Here it is in all its glory... I guess I should correct myself and say, "Here is was in all its glory".

It's gone now. My son is no longer abnormal. No more the mutant that Jacob talks about, he is now the perfect baby. Or rather, he will be the perfect baby, once he isn't crying for any more pain killers, the poor kid. :(

The first time I became aware of his little skin tag was seconds after the doctor retrieved him from my womb. Jacob was all sorts of excited and was telling me that he was out, then as the nurses started to hand him to Jacob he said, "He's a mutant, Sara!" Of course he was kidding, and he knew that he was kidding, but I hadn't seen him yet. I didn't know what could be wrong with my baby to prompt Jacob into saying something like that. When I found out what it was, I don't mind admitting that I had a slight problem with it. I secretly wanted his pediatrician to take it off before we left the hospital, but when he saw it he said that it would be better to have a plastic surgeon take it off when he was between 6 months to a year old. Since then, I have not only accepted this little anomaly, but I've really grown attached to it (I like to kiss it. Is that weird...?). And now it's gone.

Of course I'm happy that he won't get made fun of for it when he's a little older by kids his age, but it turned out to be a cute, unique thing about my little guy.

So this past Wednesday we went to consult with the plastic surgeon that E's pediatrician referred us to. He said that if Elliott was 2 or 3 months old it would have been perfect, but since he's older we'd have to enlist the help of Jacob and a nurse to hold him down during the procedure. Jacob told him that Dr. Wynn had told us to wait until he was older, and the plastic surgeon said, "Hm. I'm going to have to write him a letter and tell him that in the future, it's much better to do it while they're a bit younger." I guess Dr. Wynn was thinking they'd need to do a general anesthetic but they just did a local. Oh well, you live you learn, right?

The plastic surgeon (Dr. Bishop) came out to tell the nurse who was checking us out to get us in as soon as possible because he didn't want to wait any longer just in case he got any bigger, making it harder to do the surgery. They looked at the schedule for what seemed like 10 minutes, trying to move stuff around, seeing if he could take a shorter lunch that day or not go to a conference this day, and they finally figured out that the only time that would work before the end of the month was today at 9:30. I was pretty anxious. Like, really, really nervous.

We gave him some baby Tylenol this morning to help things out, and I had Jacob give him a blessing right before we left (by the way, Jacob confided in me that he had a small impulse to say "Smith" again during the blessing but luckily, since I was holding Elliott and didn't want to drop him from laughing, he said "Ashley"). We got there and they whisked Jacob and Elliott back super fast, I stayed in the waiting room equipped with an iPod and listened to Jet's Get Born, I wanted to listen to something loud just in case I heard my baby screaming. It worked.

They came out after what seemed like FOREVER, but it was actually only like 30 minutes. Elliott was down to just his diaper because they had gotten blood on his outfit and the swaddler, why they didn't just undress him is beyond me (thanks for the advice by the way, April... Jacob said swaddling him helped a TON to hold him down). I could tell that he had had a hard time in there, his breathing was still a little uneven from crying so hard and he was sad and super cuddly, although that part I didn't mind so much. Jacob said that he was screaming big time, so it's a good thing I took the iPod. Jacob said that it was pretty obvious that he didn't feel anything, because he only complained a little when they stuck him with the needle to numb his neck. The part that he hated was being held down by everyone, the poor little guy. He's a trooper though.

So far today he's been okay, he's still tender and sad, and things that would normally not really matter to him are a huge deal today. I'm just keeping him drugged with baby meds, I figure let's get him good and addicted early. I still don't mind him being so cuddly though. :)



Here's a short little video of him today. He was playing and I wanted to show all of you that he's still a happy little guy despite being cut open today.

He's taking a nap now and we have this stuffed bear in his crib with him. Lately he's just noticed that it's in there with him and he's loved playing with it. When we were putting him down we had to keep on taking it away from him because he was playing with it so much. I think it's time to take the toys out of the crib, because he ended up falling asleep with it like so:

He must have just needed a shoulder to cry on about the surgery...

One more cute, cute story. The other night Jacob had gone out to a LOST season finale party with some friends and I was at home playing on our new laptop (oh yeah, we bought a laptop finally!). Elliott woke up and wanted to eat, so I got him and was feeding him his bottle while I was still playing on the computer. He was finished, but I didn't want to put him down quite yet because I was just enjoying holding him, and all of a sudden I hear this noise coming from him. At first I figured it was a cry, so I started rocking him but when I looked down at him I saw that he was laughing, totally asleep! It was so, so, SO cute!! I just sat there staring at him, it lasted for about 6 or 7 minutes. It was so sweet, I really wanted to record it but I was in my bedroom and if I would have gotten up to get the camcorder it would have broken the spell. It was just the cutest thing. Oh, and also last night Jacob was playing some Bob Dylan for Elliott on the guitar. I wasn't there, but Jacob said that it seemed like he really enjoyed it. He was looking at Jacob and being mesmerized by the guitar, and then he'd kick his legs and get all excited. It must have been so cute.

Before I leave, here are a few more pictures to satisfy Becky's Elliott cravings:

What gorgeous baby blues!

The babies are GRADUATING!!

Both the babies in my family have graduated!!



Seriously, what's up with that?! Jenna is 8 years younger than me, and even if I decided to go back to school full-time, it would take me years to actually graduate. It must be something in the water, because my other sister (also younger) and her husband are graduating on Friday. My mom was obviously emotional.

(If you can't tell, my mom is crying and my sister is laughing at her... With love, of course)




Also, if you have a few minutes, take the time to witness Elliott's first time eating SOLIDS!! My little guy is growing up... Our first attempt wasn't very successful, and since then he hasn't fared much better. Apparently it takes babies his age a few weeks to figure out that the solid stuff is food.

AAAH! So I saved this post from May 4th. Yes, it's been that long. I was waiting for my sister to email me some pictures from the celebration and festivities, but forget that. This is a partial post, part 2 to come sometime soon, hopefully...

I know, I know...

So it's been a while. I guess my time management skills need some improvement...

OK, here's what you've been missing:



Each night before we put Elliott to bed, we sing lullabies, read a story, and say prayers. The other night I had Jacob get started without me and I walked in on him singing Erasure as his night-time lullaby. I guess he's getting started early, nothing wrong with that...



He was laughing so hard before we started recording him!! He just loves to get lost in the lens I guess... :)



And another video of him being camera shy. :) He's cute though, so I'm okay with putting videos up of him just moving and squirming. He's just so awesome. :)

The other day we were getting ready for church and we sat Elliott on our bed while we were getting dressed. He's normally just fine if we just prop him up with some pillows, but lately he's been wanting to sit up even more than we let him. If he's reclining even a little bit he uses his little tummy muscles to pull himself up so he's just straight up and down (he must get this from his Grandma Ashley... I've been in a car seat after her, she certainly isn't a recliner! :) ) He did this the other day and fell over, but he didn't start crying. He was too busy looking at what we were doing.
This was the first time we had dressed him in an actual church outfit, so I wanted to record it as well as I could, hence all the pictures of him on our bed. :)

The other day Taz and Elliott were playing together. E is at that age where he likes to just look at people, and Tamsine looooves other babies, so they have a blast when they get to play. Elliott was just laying on the floor and Taz crawled over to him with her cute little Army crawl (just like her daddy) and laid down and played with him for a while, it was super cute.

Grandma Ashley wanted some FBI pictures, and he certainly fits the shirt!!

In this last one you can get a glimpse of Albi (Jacob named him... if you don't already know Flight of the Conchords, there's a reason for the name. We want to teach our child tolerance). E loves Albi, it's his favorite. It plays Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star and teaches him how to say "good morning" and "good night" in French and Spanish. He's already liking the educational toys, that little genius man of mine. :)

Ladies and gentlemen, a new development since I started this blog post yesterday: Elliott now rolls over BY HIMSELF!!



OK, blogger won't let me add anything else, so I guess until next time! :)