Hair cut

So from past pictures anyone can see that Matt has a whole lot of hair. The top is more or less straight and the back is curly. I saw his hair last night:



and I decided it was time for a REAL hair cut -- not just a trim. Up until this point he's really only had trims. The last (and only) time we took him to a professional hair cutting place he freaked out the whole time. So to save him the trauma (and to save money) I cut his hair myself.


Before:




After:

He got hair on his face and hands in this pic, so he wasn't very happy.


I think he looks a lot older with the shorter hair, but I really like it. It is a lot easier to manage for now. It will be interesting to see if he continues to have straight hair on the top of his head and curly hair in the back or if it all goes curly.

I thought he was going to be crying during the entire hair cut since that's what he did at the hair cutting place and especially since I was planning to use the buzzer. I figured the loud noise would freak him out but it didn't bother him too bad once he got used to it. He was too busy trying to watch me cut his hair.

Around the beginning of March my maternal grandma passed away. She was the last of my grandparents to pass so me and Matt (Mark couldn't come because of school and work) went with the rest of the family back to Victor, ID for the funeral. Up until then I had not been to Idaho since we moved back in 1999. So it's been a good 13 years since I saw any family from Idaho.

This winter in Missouri had next to no snow so it was kind of fun to see all the snow in Idaho. When we were going through the mountain pass from Wyoming to Idaho I took some pictures of how high the snow was compared to the signs on the side of the road.

We pulled off the road at the Wyoming/Idaho border and I got this picture. This was in a stopping area though, so the snow had been plowed. That's still a lot of snow though.



Even though these pictures are of the same sign, they were taken at different times. I didn't know this before, but the orange stick things are attached to metal poles that mark the side of the road. They have to put the orange on them for winter otherwise the snow covers up the metal poles.

And of course there HAS to be a picture of the mountains.

We were gone for about almost a week. I'm glad we went and got to be there for the funeral and to see everyone. (Everyone in my family was able to come except Anita, who is currently serving a mission in Nevada.) But I was glad to come home when we did. Missouri feels like home now.


In other news, Matt is officially a toddler now...I guess. Is walking what turns them into a toddler? Either way, he can walk now and he sure is loving it.

He started walking about a week ago (on Monday, March 19) he walked across the living room all by himself. Up until that point he'd take a step or two and then hold onto something. That time he didn't hold on to anything. By Thursday he was kicking a ball around and chasing it.

He's almost 14 months old and it doesn't seem like he should be that old. He loves jabbering, looking at books, "playing" video games (holding a controller and pushing buttons while Mark is playing a game) and walking. He still crawls but he's starting to get more comfortable walking. He also thinks it's funny when I roar at him. If he's walking when I do that he'll usually lose his balance.

Mark is currently in his last quarter of school before he gets his Associate's degree in computer networking. His school does quarters instead of semesters. Also his school is year round with a week or two break between quarters. Mark is planning to keep going to school to get his Bachelor's degree. We're both pretty excited for him to be getting his degree. It's been a long time coming and hopefully soon he'll be able to get a job in the field.

We have had a very unusually warm winter. We got our 2nd SNOW for the winter yesterday and most of it is already melted. That mentioned we had several days in January where we could go outside in jacket weather.

Since it was so nice on January 30 I took Matt to swing. He loves to swing...just like his mommy :)


He has 6 teeth now. He had 4 of his top teeth come in within the same week. They aren't completely in yet, but they're close.

Matt turned 1 in the first week of February. We had some of Mark's family come over to celebrate and Matt was kind of unsure what to do with all the people around. We recorded his birthday celebration with the cake and such. Before the end of the birthday song he was putting his head down on his high chair and after we blew out the candle and people started clapping he started crying. Mark had to get him out of his high chair to calm him down and finally convince him to try some cake. Once he tried the cake he really liked it. (I tried posting the video but it took forever to upload and then it wouldn't allow me to view it...maybe I'll try fighting with it another time to see if I can get it posted)

We decided to celebrate his birthday again with just the 3 of us on his actual birthday so I could get some pictures of him actually being happy instead of scared.

Matt has been growing so fast it's hard to keep up.

He was a puppy for halloween and wasn't too impressed with the costume.


We went to a ward halloween party (which was the day the pictures were taken) and then I took him trick or treating halloween night. He didn't seem to be too sure about why we were trick or treating. There were a lot of people who thought he was a lion or a bear. Oh well, I didn't really mind. He was cute whatever people thought he was.

Matt started crawling backwards around the beginning of November but hadn't figured out how to crawl forwards. We went to Darla's for her youngest daughter's naming ceremony. The three babies were adorable together, so of course I had to get pictures


While with the other babies it seems Matt learned how to crawl forward. He crawled forward on Sunday, November 13 and by Tuesday the 15th he was using furniture and such to pull himself up so he could stand. Now that he can crawl forward he's really hard to keep up with. We've had to bust out our baby gates and baby proof as fast as we can before he gets into stuff. Now that he can move where he wants to go he likes to chase Lily. Lily likes to lie down on the carpet a few feet away from Matt and when he crawls over to her and starts "petting" her (his petting isn't very gentle, we're still working on that with him) she'll get up and move a few more feet and lie down again and then look at me and meow when Matt follows her. You'd think she'd realize she needs to go somewhere he can't reach her...




Matt also likes to "help" me look at the newspaper by grabbing the pages while I'm looking at them and scattering them on the floor. Then he likes to play with them, of course. Lily decided to hide under one of them and it actually worked! Matt didn't find her.

A couple months ago I decided to make some rice crispy treats. Apparently the marshmallows I had were REALLY old because they browned instead of melted. I learned from the experience to never try to melt old marshmallows (seriously, these marshmallows were probably a year and a half old.) They never did melt down. they just got browner and browner until I decided it was hopeless...too bad I didn't have the stuff to make s'mores out of them.


I thought it was funny so I had to take a picture.

Me and Matt went to Oklahoma (Mark didn't come because of his work and school schedule) a few weeks ago for my nephew's baptism and we were finally able to get all the grandkids together to get a picture!

All 17 grand kids with mom and dad and some other adults trying to keep their children in place for the picture. Notice the three babies in the middle -- that's the baby group from December 2010-May 2011. The baby girl on the left side was 4 months old, Matt is in the middle and was 7 months old, and the baby girl on the right was 9 months old in the pic. The cousins had tons of fun together although Matt wasn't quite sure what to think about so many kids running around.

While we were in Oklahoma Matt got his first hair cut. The mohawk he was born with was a lot longer than the rest of his hair so it was starting to look funny.
Before:

After:



I think it looks so much better now. I think he looks a lot older now that it's been cut. It's amazing how much difference a hair cut can make.

Lately Matt has discovered his tongue and LOVES to blow raspberries and stick his tongue out.



In the past week or so he's started saying dada and mama, although at this point I think he's just making sounds, but it sure seems like he knows what he's saying sometimes. The other day I went into his room to get him up from a nap and as soon as he saw me come in he shouted "MOM!"

He's growing so much now and definitely is not having trouble gaining weight any more (yay!) While we were in Oklahoma he got to watch his cousin (the 9 month old baby) crawling around and he seems to have picked up a few things from her. He has started scooting backwards instead of forward, and it's pretty slow, but he's moving. He hasn't figured out how to get his knees under him yet but it doesn't look like it's be too much longer at least at the rate he's going now. He's sitting up by himself and is pretty good about keeping his balance.

What I've been up to

There's another post below so that I don't have one gigantic post...I'll just have 2 big posts :P This post is about me. The one below is about Matt.

So July 12 I had surgery. I have pictures of it, so if stuff like this makes you squeamish you might want to close one eye (so you can see when the pictures are over) and scroll past the pictures. They aren't THAT bad (in my opinion.) But first a description of why I needed surgery. I'll post the start and end of the surgery pictures in case someone wants to skip them. There isn't any blood. It's just presurgery, stitches and the scar.

Here's why: I had something weird start growing on my right leg about a month or so after Matt was born. At first I thought it was an ingrown hair, and then it got bigger so I thought it was a wart. It just kept getting bigger...I was watching the news one night and it talked about skin cancer being on the rise and showed a picture of carcinoma. I was like O_O because it looked just like (at least to me) the thing on my leg. I called the doctor the next day and scheduled an appointment. (This was in June when I did all of this.) I had my doctor appointment and the doctor said it wasn't carcinoma (hallelujah!!!) but it appeared to be an "infected hair folicle" and if it wasn't removed it would keep getting bigger and bigger. The doctor referred me to a surgeon and I decided to get it removed a couple weeks later. So on July 12 surgery took place and they removed it. By then it was starting to itch and hurt a little...and indeed it was getting bigger. I'm glad it got removed when it did. Here's before, during the healing and after pictures.

* START OF SURGERY PICS *



Here it is pre surgery (that was actually taken in the doctor's office via cell phone camera right before they were going to remove it.) I took a side picture so it can be seen how thick it is.


View from the front. Looks like the bottom part of the pic got messed up a little in transmission from my cell phone to computer.


A few days after surgery. 5 stitches.


After it's all healed up. This pic was actually from earlier today, so this picture is about a month after the stitches were removed.

* END OF SURGERY PICS *

They sent the removed thing to a lab to have them verify it wasn't cancer (it's standard procedure when something is removed to send it to a lab for tests.) It wasn't cancer. The surgeon confirmed it was totally random and there's no sort of increased risk to get another one. The surgeon said my leg was a really weird place for one to be though. So hopefully I won't ever have another one.

In other news, I went skydiving!

We (me and Robby, my younger brother) were going to go skydiving in June but the day we were planning on going it was cloudy and raining and when the rain cleared up it was super windy so we weren't able to jump. We rescheduled for July 23 and that's when we were able to jump. I've got a few pics of it. Let me start off by saying it was fun and I would go again if money wasn't a factor. Also as a side note, I had the stitches I posted about above while I was skydiving, just to clarify the timing. The stitches were in but weren't getting removed until the following Tuesday.




Getting all rigged up. We did tandem jumping, which is basically we aren't in charge of anything besides following directions. Total we had 5 people inside the plane and the pilot...so 6 people total. We had to get up to 10,500 feet elevation before we jumped.



I was first to jump. When it came time to jump they opened the door, and the instructor (the person I jumped with) sat on the very edge of the plane so my butt was in the air, 10,500 feet IN THE AIR and tipped forward, backward, forward and we were out of the plane. On the way down I was thinking "maybe this wasn't such a good idea..." (kind of a little late) and then after a few seconds it became more fun once I convinced myself I may as well enjoy the ride xD. It was too loud to be able to talk because we were falling at least 100 (I think actually 110-120) miles/hour.


The free fall part lasted maybe 10-15 seconds and then the instructor opened the parachute and it was amazing. We could talk without having to raise our voice...it was just like talking on the ground. We did a few 360 turns (which was a whole turn). Oh my, get ready to live! Those turns were more fun than a roller coaster x 2398579823785. I'm not sure who is who in the picture. One is me and one is Robby.


The ride down lasted maybe 12-15 minutes...? I'm not sure but it was super fun. As I said earlier I would go again if given the chance and money wasn't an issue. It cost well over $100 but I figured you don't get a chance like that all the time, so I decided to take it. I don't know that I'd ever want to go solo because I'd be very concerned I'd mess something up and die. (You have to go through extensive training to be able to jump solo though.) I also didn't get a video because that would have been an extra $100 or so. No thanks.

At the beginning before jumping you have to fill out a bunch of paperwork which basically says multiple times that you could DIE or get severely injured and if that happened you/family members/anyone could not sue them and knew that if they tried they would lose because of the documents you're signing. I thought that was pretty funny. They also had about 45 minutes worth of training which they said again multiple times that you could die. They also said like 97% of the time someone dies it's because the passenger wasn't following directions and messed it up.

I have to admit, at the end of the paperwork and training I was seriously reconsidering if I really wanted to jump or not xD. I decided I may as well since I wouldn't get that chance every day and that was something I wanted to do in my lifetime...Mark's mom also jumped as well. She was the first of all of us to go which I thought was pretty funny. She wasn't planning to jump when we went in June and couldn't due to the weather. She went through the training and decided that she waned to jump. xD

So, I've officially been skydiving! It was fun. It's funny to me that I was too scared to ride the Ripcord at Worlds of Fun, yet went skydiving xD. Haha. I imagine I won't be so scared now though if I decide to ride the Ripcord.

About Matt March-August

It's crazy how much time has passed. I can't believe the last post I made was when Matt was 6 1/2 weeks old...he's now a little over 6 1/2 MONTHS old. I guess that means lots of pictures.

So, since my last post in March I've quit my job and become a full time stay at home mom =D. I was required to go back to work for two weeks if I wanted to be eligible for rehire in the future...so I went back in the beginning of April and my last day was April 16. (I really enjoyed that job overall, so decided I'd rather leave on good terms just in case I want to work there again in the future.) I love being a stay at home mom.

Matt now laughs and smiles all the time. I LOVE it. He has a very easy going personality. He jabbers a lot and loves to play with rings and toys that "crackle" (I guess paper is inside the fabric so when he moves his hand it makes a crackle sound.) I also just found a few days ago that he likes to play with paper and wrinkle it up. He also loves his pacifier and can pick it up and put it in his mouth.

He sits up by himself for 30 seconds or so...sometimes a bit longer if he isn't trying to reach for something. He loves it when I sing songs and do actions with him. His current favorite is I'm a Little Teapot.

He sleeps the night and is an excellent sleeper.

We started him on solids at 5 months (so about a month and a half ago) and he likes everything we've given him. He was unsure about all the vegetables I gave him until he tasted sweet potatoes. Sweet potatoes are definitely his favorite but he will eat the other vegetables now without spitting it out. (Veggies he's eaten so far are carrots, yellow squash, butternut squash, zucchini, sweet potatoes, peas and green beans.) He's now tasting fruits and likes them without a problem at all. (So far he's had banana, pears, peaches and applesauce.) He is a good eater although at times he'd rather jabber than eat.

His last doctor appointment (the 6 month check up) a couple weeks ago we found that he had lost 1 1/2 pounds since his 4 month old appointment. He weighed 13 pounds at his 4 month check up and was 11 pounds 9 ounces at his 6 month check up so the doctor suggested we put him on a mostly formula diet -- and a high calorie one at that -- which basically means we add extra powdered formula. So normally for a 4 oz bottle it takes 2 scoops of powder, we add 3 now. (I was breast feeding him) Apparently my milk had mostly dried up which is why he was losing weight. (My guess is it started happening around the time he began sleeping the night through.) We've decided that he'll just be on formula now because it's too hard to try and keep my milk supply up to where it would need to be while he's drinking formula. It was kinda sad and hard for me to deal with and accept it in the beginning because I wanted him to get all the benefits of nursing...but at least he got 6 months of it so that's better than nothing.

He's started gaining weight back (yay!) and according to our scale is at 14 pounds just 2 weeks later. He actually has an official weigh in at the doctor tomorrow as well as his 6 month immunizations. ** EDIT: He weighed 13 pounds, 12 ounces at the doctor appointment today **

It's amazing how much he has grown and is learning. Here's some updated pics since my last post.


2 months old


2 months old


3 months old


3 months old


4 months old


4 months old


4 1/2 - 5 months old


4 1/2 - 5 months old


5 1/2 months old.


5 1/2 months old


July 4. We FINALLY were able to get him to fall asleep. We were celebrating the 4th of July with family and he was convinced if he didn't stay awake he was going to miss something. He finally fell asleep and guess what...he didn't miss anything.


Trying carrots. LOL. As you can see from his expression he was not a fan at first.


6 months old