Logan's Room

I've begun thinking about what to do with Logan's room when we get to the new house...as you know, Jason and I created a wonderful mural of a scene at "Laubster Cove" for his current room. Logan loves the mural and says 'Hi' to some of the characters each day (he particularly likes the turtle and gives him high 5's). Jas and I knew that at the new place we wanted to give Logan more Laubster Cove, but we weren't sure how to do it. The Mural would take a LOT of time, and now that Logan is mobile it may just be TOO difficult to do it (he was resting nicely in my belly the last time). So, instead of doing a full on mural this time around, we thought it would be fun to capture each of Logan's favorite characters on to small canvases and hang them somewhere in Logan's room. I completed "drawing" the characters tonight and did a mock layout of how I think we'll place them in Logan's room - I think on the wall his crib is on will be perfect!

Along with that, I started playing around with another picture I think will look great in his room. Of course, this is merely the image and I plan on painting frame to complete the look. I want to do the frame in a butterscotch color so that it matches the "L".

Cute huh? I can't take all of the credit though, I'm completely ripping this idea off from both Pinterest and Etsy...oh well! Why pay someone else to do something when you can do it just as easily yourself?

Words With Friends

Over the past week, Mr. Logan has begun spitting out a plethora of new words - it's been so much fun to realize his usual babbling is beginning to form into actual words (And a little frightening for Jason and I as we are finally realizing the day of watching our language is here!). I thought it would be fun to list all of the new words our favorite little boy is saying:

- Duck (Kind of acme out of nowhere with this one...we were giving him a bath, I handed him his rubber duckie and BAM he said "duck!")
- Moon (Every night, he points to the window and shouts "Moon! Moon! Moon!" Unfortunately, for the past 2 weeks, the moon has not been visible from our apartment, so he gets a little discouraged when he can't find it - we tell him the moon has gone "night night" which seems to be a good reason for why the moon would not be "out"...it's pretty amazing, however that Logan has SUCH an understanding of the moon - one day we were out around 3pm and the moon was visible - plain as day, Logan looked into the sky, pointed and said "Moon!" right at the moon! Also, when reading books that have a picture of the moon (as long as its round) he can point to it and say "moon!" I'm just amazed by his ability to comprehend something like that...obviously, he's a genius, a perfect, perfect genius)
- Plane (This one was SUPER  shocking! Lisette was out at the park with him when a bunch of planes flew by overhead, Lisette looked up and then Logan looked up, pointed and shouted "Pane!")
- Go! (He likes to shout "Go! Go! Go!" While running around our dining room table...sorry downstairs neighbors!)
- Shoe (he'll grab his shoes and bring them to Jas or I to put on him)
- Brock (This is my favorite...Brock is my BFF's son and Logan knows just who he is! He will say his name and then run over to or point to Brock's picture which is hanging on our fridge...FBFF's...Future Best Friends Forever!)
-Hi (yes, it's just as adorable as you would think it is)
-Five (in response to a request for a "High Five"...awesome)

Those are all of the NEW words I can think of, but I'm sure he'll come up with more each and every day...he babbles and babbles with such focused determination I know he's going to just wake up one morning and say "Good morning Mother, would you mind making me a spot of tea?" oh ya, he'll also be British :)

Introducing Elmo

Here's a video of Logan meeting his new BFF for the first time...

Old Toys and New Toys

When we were up North this summer for Jason's 1/2 Marathon, Grandma Blakeman gave Logan a very special toy - a little pull toy that looks like a queen bee! I believe she said this toy used to be Jason's and she kindly passed it down to Logan. He played with it for a little while and then grew tired of it, but recently he's brought it back out for some fun!

Logan has also recently become obsessed with Elmo. It's weird because all he knows of Elmo is from a little book called Elmo's Ducky Day - after reading that a few times, he would call out for anything red, tall and skinny...a red teddy bear, a red fire hydrant - and every time as soon as he gets closer to it, he scrunches his nose and yells "NO! No ELMO!" as if calling it out as an impostor. So, finally Jason and I decided to give in to his obsession and buy him his very own Elmo doll. We've snapped a few photos of Logan and his new buddy...he's been VERY sweet with him; feeding him cheerios, brushing his teeth and just simply hanging out with his new furry buddy!

Buddies!

Would you like an O Elmo?

How about a nice tooth scrub? Let me help you!

Thanks, Elmo for making our little guy so happy!

Heeeere Fishy Fishy Fishy!

Happy (almost) Halloween!!

Today we put our little Laubster in a very cute lobster costume and paraded him around our apartment and our neighborhood...

What a week!

To say this week was insane for our family is putting it quite mildly. This week was beyond crazy, but we've made it through and are all doing quite fine now :) Because this week has been so crazy we may not have been the greatest at notifying our friends and family of what exactly has been going on - I certainly haven't had time to blog and I've texted/emailed and facebooked things as I found minutes to do so here and there. But now that everything is almost back to normal, and I'm sitting at home alone at 11pm at night, I figured I'd take to the blog to give everyone a detailed recap of the last 4 days...wow, has it only been 4 days? Feels like 40. MONDAY Jason woke up with a REALLY bad headache. REALLY BAD. He'd had a head cold for about 2 weeks and had just recently realized that cold was going away. So when he woke up Monday in excruciating pain, he (and I) figured it was related to his cold and that it hadn't actually gone away. Logan woke up Monday with a pretty gnarley fever - 101.5+...Logan usually runs a pretty low temperature normally (As do Jason and I) so anything over 101 is pretty alarming. His mood was pretty normal for a 16 month old with a fever - not good, but other than that, all was good. TUESDAY Jason's still had his headache and it was as bad as ever.He decided to go to the Dr. that afternoon to get himself checked out. The Dr. told him that while normally, she sends any patient who describes their headache as Jason had (The worst headache he'd EVER had) straight to the ER, she decided to just prescribe him some antibiotics since he'd just gotten over a head cold and she assumed (like the rest of us) that his headache was somehow related. She told him to take sinus Tylenol along with the antibiotics and if the headache didn't let up in 48 hours, THEN he should go to the ER Logan still had a high fever today. We were watching that closely, but around 5pm both Jason and I noticed something OFF about him. He wasn't walking normally and he was refusing to run...very UNlike our little laubster. As we kept watching him we noticed that he was almost limping on his right leg...weird. I called the 24/hour nurse line for our pediatrician's office and they blew it off like it was nothing. I wasn't convinced that it was as simple as that. So as I was talking to the nurse, Jas was consulting Dr. Google. What we found online was alarming (shocker!) and we were convinced that Logan was having a REALLY bad reaction to the MMR vaccine he'd received on 10/14. When eh received this shot he'd had an immediate reaction (A reaction that the nurse had never seen before- lovely) - his leg immediately swelled up and he had to be given benadryl and a cold compress. We read that there have been cases of babies temporarily losing their ability to walk due to the vaccine - we assumed that's what Logan had. I planned on calling his dr. first thing in the morning. At about 8pm, after trying to go to bed, Jason couldn't take his headache any more. And said he wanted to go to the ER if only to get some heavy pain medication so he could go to sleep. I agreed that was the best thing to do, and we called our friend Carla to see if she could come over to watch Logan while we went to the hospital. Carla didn't hesitate to hop in her car, leave her 1 year old and her husband to come help us. She is an awesome friend who has helped us out with Logan more times than we can help. Once Carla arrived, Jas and I headed to the car and got to UCLA as soon as we could. They saw us right away and began asking Jason tons of questions. We were told that when someone comes in with a headache, it's really hard to diagnose the issue because the Dr. can't feel what the patient feel and can only go off of the patients own description of their pain to try and figure out what's going on. The Dr. decided to do a CT Scan on Jason to rule out any bleeding in the brain (NOT what you want to hear at 10pm at night...or I guess at ANY hour of the night...or day!) - thankfully that came out negative. So the next step was to do a Lumbar Puncture - a procedure in which the doctor extracts spinal fluid and has it tested for any diseases. Jason was hesitant to do this procedure because, well, it didn't sound like a whole lot of fun! I tried to assure him it wasn't as scary as it sounded and that the majority of all pregnant women have had something similar when they have an epidural and that I myself had a spinal block done the same way when I had my C-Section and that he would be fine, also ,what other option did we have? Jason agreed to do the procedure. I originally wanted to stay in the room while they did ti...but I was conveniently ushered out by the 3 member medical team that needed more room than was available with me standing in the corner. As they began doing their thing ,I realized it was best if I wasn't in the room...I was so nervous and uncomfortable I couldn't imagine seeing a needle being put in my husbands spine....the hallway became my new best friend at that moment. After the procedure was over, there was a lot of waiting. The results finally came back and it was positive for meningitis...we were shocked. What was more shocking was that the Dr. thought it was more than likely bacterial meningitis which was NOT good. Bacterial Meningitis can be very dangerous, very contagious and can have life long effects (Seizures, brain damage just to name a few...again, not what you want to hear at 10pm at night...or any hour of the night...or day!). So once they figured out what was causing Jason's pain, they doped him up (Yay morphine!) and told him he would need to stay over night. At that point, it was 2am and i Needed to get home to Logan (and to let Carla go home!). So I kissed Jason goodbye and told him I would call him in the morning. WEDNESDAY I woke up with Logan at our regular time, and when Lisette arrived I headed over to the hospital to check in on Jason. He looked like a completely different person than he had just a few hours earlier...he looked like himself! He was feeling SO much better - but we weren't totally out of the woods just yet. The Doctor's still didn't know if we were dealing with Bacterial or Viral meningitis so they were treating him as if he had Bacterial Meningitis - which meant he was getting IV Antibiotics every 4 hours, he wasn't allowed to leave his room and anyone who entered had to wear a mask and a disposable gown. He was also getting an anti-inflammatory steroid every few hours which was helping his headache tremendously. While I was visiting Jason, I got a text from Lisette who said that Logan's leg seemed to be worse. I called the Dr. right away and made an appointment. The rest of the day was spent running back home to shower, running back to the hospital to bring Jason some essentials and then running back home to get Logan to go to the Dr. Logan's appointment took a ridiculously long 2 hours. We did X-rays, had blood drawn and had Logan strut his stuff several times for the Dr so she could see his leg. Logan was an absolute champ when they were drawing his blood. I was nervous at first because the LAST time we had blood drawn, Logan was a wreck (And I wasn't doing too well myself!) - if you're wondering how they draw blood from an infant, let me tell you! It's EXACTLY like they draw blood from an adult...turnakit on arm, needle in vein...yes, small baby vein...crazy. But seriously, Logan cried a little, mainly because he was being restricted, but once they got the needle in he just kind of stared at the nurses with an inquisitive kind of look as if to say "WHAT IN THE HECK ARE YOU DOING TO ME?!" but overall he was fine! He's amazing! The x-rays didn't show any broken bones which was good, but it meant we didn't know what was going on. The Dr. was nervous about a combination of fever and bone "pain" (I'm putting that in quotes because I don't think Logan had any PAIN - if he was in pain he would cry or scream - he never did that, he just kind of walked AROUND his leg and foot that were giving him trouble) - so she said she would call me if the blood work came back alarming in any way. Luckily, I didn't hear from her. I went back to the hospital that night to bring Jas some food and to have a good old fashioned DATE NIGHT with my love. We rented a movie and had a nice time. THURSDAY (today!) I got a LOT of sleep last night...which was awesome considering I got MAYBE 2 hours of sleep the night before. I think I got a total of about 12 hours. It was awesome. Once I woke up, I called Jas and found out some GREAT news...THE MENINGITIS WAS CONFIRMED TO BE VIRAL! This means it's NOT contagious and NOT as bad as the bacterial strand! Woo Hoo! So Jason was taken off antibiotics but the Dr's still wanted to keep him 1 more night to make sure his body did alright with out the drugs. So far he's doing great, and we're keeping our figures crossed for a clean bill of health tomorrow morning! When I woke up, Lisette and Logan were out at the store...but after a little bit, Lisette called me and told me she was coming home because Logan had suddenly broken out in a rash all over his abdomen and face...awesome. Logan had woken up with a temp of 102 again, so I gave him some medicine to keep it down and was worried that his fever was NEVER going to break. He's never had one this high for this long. As soon as Logan came in the door with Lisette I could see the rash. His font, back, neck and face were covered in red bumps...despite the rash HE looked better- his eyes were brighter and he seemed like himself again. For the past few days he'd been a muted version of himself which was just weird. so seeing him LIVELY again, bumpy or not, brought a smile to my heart. Even though he had a rash, Lisette informed me that he hadn't had a fever since 6:30 that morning - that was over 7 hours before so we saw that as a good sign. I called the Dr. and told her about the rash - as soon as I Told her he had a rash but no fever she sounded relieved and said she knew exactly what was going on. Logan more than likely had something called Roseola Disease...a common viral disease that begins with a high fever that lasts for 3-5 days, then abruptly stops and immediately brings on a red rash. The Dr. said as long as his fever doesn't come back while he has the rash then we're dealing with Roseola. If his fever DOES come back then it's something else and we need to get him to a Dr. ASAP. So far, so good. It feels SO nice to check in on Logan when he's sleeping, touching his forehead and NOT being shocked by how hot it feels. As for his leg...we think it was just a coincidence that he had it at the same time as his fever. Lisette informed me that he did get his leg caught in one of the baby gates and may have twisted it a bit, so that's probably what's going on there. It seems to be improving each day at least. Here are 2 pics of Logan from tonight...Rash in plain view:

So that's our week in a (long winded) nutshell...it's been crazy, but I am so grateful to have my boys on the mend and to have a good insurance policy!! Goodnight!

Nose, Eyes, Ears, Clapping, Waving, Pointing

The Many Faces of Logan

Logan the Mechanic

Where's your nose?

 Right here, Mom!

Well, what about your ears?

Yup! Got those figured out too!

Milk + O's = CEREAL!

One day, Logan wasn't jiving on any food I was trying to feed him for dinner...so I got a brilliant idea. He loves eating dry Cheerios, and he loves drinking milk...would he love the two combined together (Even though it would mean I was mixing a solid and a liquid...I know, I know...dangerous territory there!)...I think we've got a winner!

Solid and a liquid together in harmony

There isnt' a rule that says you have to eat cereal with a spoon...is there?

Reaching for it!

Satisfied.

How could I forget THIS little gem in my last post?

Another new skill of Logan's...he likes to put on shoes...Mommy's shoes in particular (only because they are easier to get in to than Daddy's clunky work boots)

Yikes! Long time, no post!

Wow...I can't believe it has been this long since I posted last...I've been a tad bit busy and a lot bit tired...so unfortunately, that means the Laubster Tale got pushed to the side while everything else (aka LIFE!) got some much needed attention! I know that Logan's Grandparents and GREAT-grandparents and other family members somewhat depend on this blog to get updates on their favorite little laubster, so I'm sorry for keeping you all in the dark for so long! I'll give a quick summary of how the little man is doing, what he's up to and of course, upload tons o' photos for you to giggle over :)

Logan just had his 15 month check up and while I wasn't able to take him to this appointment (First one EVER!!), I did get the stats from Lisette - he is 32.25" long (75%-ile...HOLLA!), and 26lbs (50%-ile). She didn't remember his head circumference, but I know at his 1 year check up, the doctor was happy that his head had stopped growing as fast as it had been and was placing on the growth chart at more normal levels.

From photos I've posted on Facebook, once comment keeps coming up "Wow, he sure does look like his Mommy now" or "I can see Underhill in him for sure" (Underhill is my Mother's maiden name)...I don't see it as much. Probably because when I look at Logan I still see that smooshed up little face that was wrapped up snug as a bug in his hospital blanket when they first wheeled him to me and all I could see what Jason. From the nose, to the chin, the little ears and his eyes- it was as if someone had shrunk my husband and swaddled him in a baby blanket. Some days though, when I look at Logan and see his bright blonde hair, or his big round eyes, and those chubby cheeks, I do see my side of the family. I hope that he'll be a good mix of both of us as he continues to grow.

Here are some other stats on the little man:

- He can currently tell you where his NOSE, EYES, EARS, and MOUTH is...and on a good day, he'll tell you where his belly button is (But he likes showing you where YOURS is more)

- He can "do his hair" in the morning while watching Mommy or Daddy (Rubs his hands along both sides of his head...I think it's more of an impression of Daddy)

- He is RUNNING basically, who needs walking when RUNNING gets you there SO much quicker?

- He is wearing 18 month clothing

- He loves imitating words you say: Earl ("ooool"), Bird, Water ("Wa-Wa"), Bottle ("Baa-Baa"), Door, 

- He can OPEN doors now (Jason experienced this this past weekend as they were reading books in Logan's room, then Logan signaled that he wanted to get down...Jason put him on the ground, he walked over to the door, opened it and walked out to the living room....awesome!)

- He loves turkey spaghetti, milk, water, Gerber puffs, string cheese, eggs, quiche, hummus...really anything, he's a VERY good eater!

I think that's about it so here are some recent photos of the little guy to give you all some insight on how he's doing!

He loves bubbles!

Wearing Daddy's shirt is fun!

I hope he's not laughing because he's about to run over his stuffed animal...

Boxes are fun to play in!

REALLY fun!

Don't mess with me Kitty

So handsome!

A Laubster loving Laubsters

Love

Love

This is Logan "Blowing his nose"