Leah @ 1 Month & Heber Valley Girls Camp

My how time flies! Leah turned one month old last Friday. Here are a couple of pictures I took of her that day. Here she is with the blanket I made for her and her first Elmo doll that her Grandpa Tucker gave her. Despite what it may seem from these pictures, she is actually getting to be more alert now. Although people don't believe us because she usually just sleeps when we take her places. Just come to our house anywhere from about 9 to 11 in the evening (or later) and you'll see a very alert baby! Here I've caught her in the middle of a yawn. I tried to take more pictures after this one, but she woke up and was too fussy for more. That same day we had been invited to go with the Turner family to the Heber Valley Girls Camp. This is a very nice camping facility that the LDS Church uses for girls camp during the week and lets families or other groups use on Fridays and Saturdays. Since Leah is still so young, we only went up for the day. But we still had a good time.

They had several Challenge Courses that groups could complete. In this challenge, the group had to get from the "boat" to the "island" using a rope to cross the "shark infested waters." The rope was hanging from two trees above the water. So first you had to figure out how to safely get the rope and then everyone had to swing across.

This picture is kind of funny because if you look closely you can see that they have a hold on Ross's feet and his arms and head are hovering over the "shark area."

Here is Ross swinging to safety.

They also had a zip line challenge. We ran out of time, so Ross didn't get to do this one. But I thought it looked like fun. Here I am all geared up to go.

To get to the zip line, you had to climb a cargo net and then walk across a rope bridge with the boards being about 12-18 inches apart. It was about 30 feet in the air, but the height didn't really bother me because they had you harnessed to a rope that was hooked to a cable. I didn't get nervous until it was time to step off the platform to go down the zip line. Suddenly it seemed a lot higher than I really was. But I jumped off anyway and zipped down the cable. It was a lot of fun.

Here I am on the platform getting ready to jump.

And here I am zipping down the line.

It was a beautiful day to be up in the mountains and we were really glad that the Turners invited us to spend that time with them. Thank you Turners!

That night when we got home wasn't as fun. Leah had been wrapped up and held most of the day to protect her from the sun and wind. Consequently, she slept most of the day. So when we got home she was wide awake and didn't want to go to sleep. When we finally got her to sleep, she got fussy whenever we put her down. I think she got too much air from the wind. So it was a rather rough night with a lot of interrupted sleep. But she is so sweet and cute that we won't hold it against her.

Three Weeks with a Baby

Our sweet little Leah is 3 weeks old now. The past three weeks have gone by so fast that it's hard to believe. Leah is such a good and content baby and we love her so much. Here are just some of the highlights from the past three weeks...

She is only a few days old in this picture. When we first brought her home, it seemed like all she did all day was sleep. She would wake up to eat and then just sleep again. She now has times when she is awake longer, but sleeping is still what she does the most. Ross thought it was so funny when I would burp her when she was this little. She would lay so limp over my hand that he thought she looked like a little Muppet with her arms and legs just dangling. Now she moves her arms and legs around a lot when I burp her and she's even starting to hold up her head more. This picture is from when she was one week old...sleeping as usual.
We've started teaching her early...She doesn't know it yet, but she's going to be a BYU fan. Although she probably won't ever truly appreciate the BYU / Utah rivalry now that Utah will be changing conferences. This is one of our first "family photos." I didn't ever think to have someone take a picture of the three of us together at the hospital. Oh well.

We took Leah to my grandparents' house to meet her Great Grandma and Great Grandpa Putnam. It didn't take long for her to win their hearts. She's such a sweetheart!

This is a picture from her first bath. She loves her baths. She lays there so content while Ross and I awkwardly try to bathe her. (We are getting better at it though.) She only cries when we take her out of the water. Probably because she gets pretty cold by the time we get her dressed again.

Here's some more pictures of her adoring fans. Morgan and Madison could not get enough of Leah when we went to their house for Madison's birthday.

We've started putting her in her swing more. Overall, she seems to like it and will usually fall asleep in it.

Here's one of her most recent pictures. She's a little over three weeks old here. This was during one of her really alert times. When she's awake, she's pretty chilled like she looks in this picture. At her two week appointment she was 7 lbs 13 oz and just over 20 inches long. I'm pretty sure she's well over 8 lbs by now. In the past week or so, we've noticed a lot of growth in her.

It seems like Leah is growing so fast right before our eyes. And Ross and I are getting better at this parenting thing as the days go on. She sleeps pretty well during the night. She does wake up a couple of times to eat, but will usually go back to sleep pretty quickly. We love to see all the funny faces she makes. She often makes a face where she kind of grimaces and closes one eye. We call it her pirate face. Ross likes it when she makes a face where her eyes are open really wide and she rounds her little lips into an O shape. She has a really cute smile, but her smiles still only come randomly rather than in response to us. We are so glad to have her as part of our little family. We love her dearly!

Two Wonderful Years

Sunday, June 6th, Ross and I celebrated our 2nd anniversary. With an infant only a week and a half old, our celebration this year was pretty low key, but still good. Saturday we took Leah to her Grandma Leslie's house to get baby sat for a few hours while Ross and I went out to lunch. We decided to go to Texas Roadhouse - after all, you can't go wrong with a steak house! Then we went to a nearby park and just talked while we enjoyed the beautiful weather. Leah was very good while we were gone and it was so nice to just have some time for the two of us.

Sunday, our actual anniversary, was very low key. Lesley, Brian and Hannah came over and brought us a very yummy dinner and we enjoyed spending some time with them.

Our lives have changed a lot in the past two years - definitely good changes, especially with the addition of our precious daughter, Leah. It has been an incredible journey so far and we look forward to many more years and even an eternity together. I love you, Ross! Happy 2nd anniversary!

Leah's Birth Day

So I'm finally getting around to updating our blog with news about the arrival of our newest family member. Our sweet Leah surprised us by deciding to join our our little family on Tuesday, May 25th. She decided to pick her own birthday rather than waiting to be induced.

That Tuesday morning started out very normally. Ross left for work around 7:30 and then I got up and started getting ready for work when I realized that my water had started to break and was leaking. So I called Ross (who hadn't even opened his office yet) and told him he better come back home. By this time contractions had started and were already coming five minutes or less apart. I also called my dad who works near by and he came over to help Ross give me a blessing before leaving for the hospital. We got to the hospital around 9:00 and by then the contractions were already very steady and intense and only a few minutes apart.

We thought it was odd though that our experience was nothing like what you see in the movies or on TV. The receptionist didn't seem in any rush to get us to a room. We were expecting hospital staff to come quickly to our aide with a wheel chair or something. Instead she told us to have a seat in the waiting room area and she would be with us in a minute. I was so glad that Ross was there at this time because it would have been extremely difficult to answer all the receptionist's questions (which I had already answered TWICE through their pre-admission process) while I was pacing the floor waiting for the contractions to subside. She finally took us to a room and left us there to wait for a nurse to come. We waited for what seemed like way too long (again not like the movies) before a nurse finally came to help us out.

When the nurse checked me, she said my water had definitely broke and that I was dilated to a 3 and 1/2. I was in a lot of pain by now and was ready for an epidural. We found out later that the baby was was sitting posterier at the time, so the contractions very painful across my back. (Luckily she got herself turned back around in time for actual delivery.)

After getting the epidural, I felt so much better and could just relax and wait for things to progress on their own. And that they did...at a very quick pace. An hour later I was at a 5 and another hour later up to an 8! The nurse was surprised at how fast I was progressing considering this was my first baby. Before long I was pushing and at 3:54 pm our little Leah was born. And our lives haven't been he same since...they've been better!!!

She was 7 lbs and 7 oz (exactly what I weighed) and was 18 inches long. She was born with lots of black hair (also just like me). I was so excited when the nurse told us our baby had lots of hair!

The proud Daddy!The exhausted mommy!Getting cleaned up.All cleaned up and looking cute! Ross picked out the blue bow for her hair. Here's just a few picutres of her admiring visitors. She had lots of people excited to finally meet her...

Getting ready to go home. Leah is such a good baby. We LOVE her so much already!

The Latest News...

So we had our regular appointment with the doctor on Wednesday. Everything was pretty routine and pretty uneventful until the doctor asked if we had any questions. So I brought up the gestational diabetes and asked if I would need to be induced early. Apparently that had been a slight oversight until this point, and to make a long story short, the doctor realized that we needed to get on top of things quick.

So I went back to the doctor again today. He did a quick ultrasound to check the amniotic fluid. That was normal. Then he did a non-stress test. She had a good heart beat - I could hear it all through the test. But she squirmed around so much during the test that the monitor was having a hard time getting a consistent reading. The doctor was glad that she was being so active. That's a good sign. But it was making the test take a lot longer than normal. He finally just held the monitor tight against my stomach and tried to follow her heart beat around until he could get a good consistent test reading. In the end, we did pass the non-stress test. Another good sign.

Then when he realized that I am 38 weeks today he decided to check to see if I was dilating yet. I wasn't exactly expecting that today, and wasn't too excited because I knew it would hurt (and I was right) but I figured "Sure, why not." He said I was dilated to a 2 or a 3. So things are progressing. Yet another good sign.

The next step is to have a growth scan this Wednesday morning at the hospital. This will measure the size of the baby to help determine if she is still small enough for a normal birth or if a c-section will be necessary.

The doctor doesn't like his patients with gestational diabetes to go past 39 weeks, so he went ahead and scheduled for us to be induced next Thursday. So if she hasn't decided to make an appearance on her own by then, she will be "helped along" so to speak. Regardless, she will definitely be early.

That means Ross and I are down to our last week (or less) of just the two of us. Soon our sweet little girl will be here and we will finally get to meet her! EXCITING!!!

An Update on Ross

I don't want people who read this blog to think that life with the Leslies is all about me and the pregnancy. So I'm going to do a post that is all about Ross.

In addition to putting up with a pregnant wife, Ross has been quite busy lately. Most of his time can be summed up in two words...Elders Quorum. In the past month or so he has helped prep and paint a sister in our ward's home, helped move concrete from another family's home, helped with a neighborhood clean up, helped clean the church a few Saturday mornings, locked up the church every night for a week, held weekly presidency meetings, attended MANY meetings on Sundays, prepared and planned a Sunday lesson, updated home teaching routes and made more phone calls than he'd ever like to in order to take care of Elders Quorum assignments.

As busy as that sounds, Elders Quorum is not his whole life. Now that baseball season is in full swing, Ross likes keep tabs on what is going on in the world of baseball. He has a fantasy team, so he'll often check up on the stats online at the end of the day or in the sports section of the daily newspaper. Sometimes he'll watch part of a game on TV. When the weather has been good enough, he as also attended a few BYU baseball games or even an occasional high school game.

As the school year comes to an end, things are slowing down a little bit for him at work. March and April were more busy for him. That is when they took care of most of the students' IEPs and started getting things wrapped up for the year.

On days when the weather is nice (which is really hit and miss lately), Ross likes to get outside and go for a run. He also likes to go to the library and check out books, movies or books on CD.

In addition to all this, he also takes the time to be a good husband and help out around the house. He does most of our grocery shopping, helps me carry loads of laundry up and down the stairs, vacuums and helps with setting the table and cleaning up after dinner. He has been very helpful in making sure we are getting things done to prepare for the baby including shopping for baby gear which I'm sure isn't his favorite thing to do. He's also very good at making sure we hold FHE every week and daily scripture study and family prayer.

Life with the Leslies wouldn't be the same without Ross. He is a wonderful husband and I'm sure he'll be a great dad. And if he knew I was writing this post, he'd probably try to talk me out of it since he typically doesn't like extra attention. But he rarely remembers to read our blog...so I should be safe.

Baby Shower

My mom and sisters threw a baby shower for me over the weekend. First of all, a BIG thanks to my mom and sisters (that includes my sisters-in-law) for all the hard work they put into it. And thanks to everyone to came, or sent a gift, or wished us well even if they couldn't come. I really appreciate all the love and support we have got throughout the pregnancy.

I have to start out with this picture for my dad. This is me and my sister, Lyndsee. I am 35 weeks along and she is 31 weeks. My dad always wants us to "belly bump." So we humored him for this picture!

Here are a few more pictures from the shower. Most of the pictures turned out blurry or else I'm talking in the picture, so I don't have very many good shots. I have lots of pictures of the guests too, but I'll spare each of them the possibly unwanted pleasure of being posted on our blog...

Our little girl got lots of blankets and outfits! She will be very warm and well dressed in very cute clothes for quite a while!
A special "Thank You" to my sister-in-law, Melissa, who made these adorable decorations for us to keep. There's a cake, giraffe, monkey and two elephants all made out of diapers, socks, wash cloths and other assorted baby commodities. She is so creative and good with this kind of stuff!
Thanks again to everyone for everything. Only a month left...at least we are a little more prepared now.