Jumping Daisy

>Hanging in the classroom at Love A Lot is a little questionnaire about all of the kids in yellow group. Leila’s says that she has brown hair, and blue eyes (not so much).
Next comes the statement, “I live in a… car.” Yep, she told her teacher that she lives in the car. We do spend a fair amount of time in there, but come on!? Next comes, “When I grow I want to be… like Daddy.” That is our Leila…offer some comic relief and melt your heart all in one swoop.

I have a doctor’s appointment this week on Thursday. We should get to hear the heartbeat for the first time–as far as the doctor knows anyway. I am one of those paranoid people who has my own at home dopler so I can check in with my little one as needed. Aside from that I expect her to tell me not to eat so much and send me on my way. I will fill you all in if there is anything more to add, but I wouldn’t count on any excitement.

>So I started my blog when Leila was about 4 months old. I did it when I was at that point where I was starting to come down from the hormone surges of pregnancy and giving birth, and I found myself in a moment of morbid thought. I thought, what if something happens to me, and Leila never gets to know who I was? Sure, people will tell her about me, but she won’t ever have any of me for herself. So I started this blog, with my first order of business to share some of myself with my daughter, that she may otherwise never have. That isn’t the only point of my blog though. I have a lot of family that I love very much, but I don’t get to see all that often. I wanted them to have a piece of Leila that they may not have had the chance to know otherwise. So the blog became my way of sharing our lives with everyone out there on the internet who wanted to know us. I am an open person and I really do like for those that I care about to know how I feel about them…so this blog has felt right from the beginning.
I named the blog after Leila, and myself. Mommy to Leila Brianne Coobs. Now I am finding myself at an interesting crossroads, in a couple of ways. First of all…for the past 13 weeks, I have been keeping a big part of myself off of the blog. I have toyed with the idea of sharing my news, but what held me back was that I did not want to take for granted that I would find at the end of this 40 week period the promise that I saw on my positive pregnancy test. I am not one who likes sympathy. I am quick to give it, and I always try to empathize, but I would rather deal with my sadness alone. Now, 13 weeks later, I have nothing to be sad about, aside from my very first migraine, which hit me on Thursday and hasn’t left yet. I know that if something had happened to this new baby, not that anything is ever a garauntee, I would have wanted to blog about it, my blog is therapy to me in a lot of ways. But I gave up the opportunity to share on here about my feelings when finding out that Leila will be a big sister, and about my fears as I waited for the day that I could hear that little heartbeat racing away in my belly. I am a little sad about that, but I am also just glad to be here.
Now onto my other dilemma, mommytolbc. I have become pretty attached to this place on the web, so I don’t want to relocate to a less specifically named location. For now I will have to be Mommy To Little Baby Coobs’s. And as my little babies continue to grow, I wil have to come up with a new way to represent my LBC acronym. I hope baby number 2 doesn’t take it personally…as I already love him or her just as much as I do my first LBC.

Now, on to the big questions.
What is your due date? March 9th–Uncle Kim’s birthday. Aunt Sheila is hoping I hit her birthday (March 3rd) instead, and I have to say, I am down with earlier rather than later.
Are you going to find out what you are having?
No–We are going to wait and find out when everyone else does.
What does Leila think?
If you ask her about it, she will tell you that mommy has a baby in her tummy, but lets face it, she is clueless. We talk about when the baby comes and she seems cool with everything, but I am sure it will be an adjustment. We are going to take her to our big ultrasound with us so she can see the baby and hopefully that will help her understand.

What does Cory think? He is thrilled, we both are. We know we can’t afford a second baby, but we both very much wanted this, and we are excited.

>

>I have been pretty uninspired lately, which would explain the lack of updates, but the harassment of my family convinced me it was time to add a little something to the blog. There was a time a while back that I was planning to post a really cool video of Leila using her head to pop the bubbles in a giant sheet of bubble wrap, but it was taking FOREVER to upload so I abandoned that post. Sorry all, I wish I could share…it was pretty funny. Rest assured we have it saved on the computer so when she gets older we can remind her that even though she was a smart 2 year old, even she wasn’t above the occasional stupid human trick.
So, I can’t even begin to recount all of the fun details of the last part of our summer, so I will try to hit some of the more memorable moments. We have spent a lot of time out on the boat with Grandma and Grandpa. Leila is quite the fish, she can’t get enough of the tube! We even got to take out our friends Matt and Cindy and Bryce for some boating fun. Bryce liked the tube as much as Leila does. Cory also took Leila to the Hawkeye’s open practice at Kinnick. It was kind of a trial run in case we end up with an extra ticket for any games and want to chance bringing her along. It didn’t go as well as Cory could have hoped for, but I have to say that I REALLY enjoyed the couple of house I had to myself at home. I don’t think that has happened since Leila was born. I get plenty of time to myself to do stuff, I just rarely get to be at home by myself. I enjoyed the quiet, but I was also happy to see my family when they got back. Leila got a new Hawkeye shirt in preparations for tailgating. This last weekend Leila and I went to the Farmer’s Market in Iowa City for kids day and Leila got to sit in a firetruck and “drive.” She thought that was pretty cool. We also took a trip to the swimming pool. I am very slowly trying to prepare myself for the end of summer, and I wanted to be sure we got at least one more swimming trip in before it was too late. I don’t mind fall, I just hate that it means that winter is on the way. Ick. To help get us psyched up I am looking for an orchard in the area that we can visit…if you have any suggestions, let me know!
Last Friday night we came home from work to a pleasant surprise…our neighborhood park finally got our play equipment installed!!! Of course we had to go check it out almost immediately and Leila loved it. I think having all of the bigger kids around must have inspired her bravery because she went down the tallest slides all by herself, when normally we have to coax her to even try out the little ones!
The other big thing for Leila is that she has moved up to the yellow group at daycare! She graduated up to the next room, where they eat lunch with the preschool kids, use the potty chair and follow more of a structured curriculum
. I am excited for her, I think the challenge will be good. She was starting to get pretty rambunctious with the other kids in her room, and was known for pushing them around a little since she was one of the oldest kids.
Today was her first day in yellow group and when we picked her today her teacher told us that Leila is a very smart little girl! Apparently they went over the letters of the alphabet and the teachers were surprised that she already knows all of her letters. 🙂 She is a very smart little girl, I can’t argue with them there!
So, basically the summer has been spent driving all over to see family, attend reunions. We have played very hard with our friends Lilly and Bryce and Eli and watching baby Sawyer grow.
I am too tired or lazy, one or the other, to find and upload pictures, so you will have to continue to wait to see photo evidence that we are in fact still out here. Now I think it is time for a nap!

>while I am thinking of it 🙂

So, Leila’s books are all in her room (well, in theory anyway) and the other day I was reading to her and she wanted another book so I told her to go get one from her room. She grabbed my face and said, “I’ll be right back, no no cryin’!” So cute, I assume that the daycare teachers say that to her? I don’t know but I thought it was pretty funny.

The other day her daycare teacher asked me if Leila had been around little babies lately. I told her that yes, she has a baby cousin and Joy said, “ok, that makes sense. Today Leila took a baby doll and shoved it under her shirt. I asked her what she was doing and she told me that she was feeding the baby some milk.” I have to say, as a mother who nursed and am very proud to have done so, that made me very happy to hear 🙂 Now if only she would do it at home so I could get it on camera!

And one last nugget…we went out to eat a week or so ago with Cory’s parents and his sister Donna and Donna’s husband Chuck. After Leila had finished was really impatient waiting on everyone else so Donna and Chuck asked to take her to Build a bear, which is right down the mall hallway from where we were eating. Cory and I told them that if they wanted to they could, though I have to say I felt bad sending them into that adorable money trap! Anyway, we met them in the mall hallway and Leila had such an adorably sweet look of joy on her face as she walked towards us carrying her little bear house. She took it out so she could show us, this bear is so funny…i have to post a picture when I get around to taking one. She is white bear with tufts of pink fur and a pink nose. She is wearing hello kitty underwear, complete with a tail hole, a red and black pirate sweat suit, sparkly red shoes (think wizard of oz) and she carries a shiny pink purse with jewels on it. They let her pick whatever she wanted! And can you ever tell!!!! It is so cute though, I am really glad that they let her pick stuff out. I told Cory that if I had been the one to take her, I would probably let her choose from two or three outfits that I liked, I know..stifling, go ahead and call me Kate Gosselin. I love this bear, so funny, so Leila!

>I know that this is way overdue. I have been really exhausted and having a tough time getting back into the swing of things, but here I am with a few moments to spare!

First of all, there is a small pre-story to our Montana Trip. For a while there we weren’t sure we were going to make it. We had planned for months that we would be renting a minivan and making the trip with Cory’s parents. Perfect plan, but then Grandma Sandi took a spill on the sidewalk on the Monday before our trip and ended up with a dislocated elbow and ulna that was broken to two places! She was sent to the University Hospital down here in Iowa City and was told that surgery would be necessary, and they couldn’t tell her when she would have the surgery and when following the surgery she would be discharged. Well, Sandi was quite adamant that she not miss this trip and she must have made an impression on her surgeon because on Wednesday morning she had surgery, and then on Thursday at about 12:30 we pulled out of North Liberty in our Blue Van Car(BVC) (named by Leila, and she was right…it was a blue van) with strict orders to stop every two hours for Grandma Sandi to run around the BVC. The rental car was an interesting experience…it was a Sienna, which is in my opinion a dream minivan…if such a thing exists. The BVC served us well, but it had no bells and whistles and until we were able to settle in, it really smelled like a hotel room. I was happy to put the next 2800 miles on that car and not our Equinox.
Day one of driving had us stopping in West Des Moines, just north of Council Bluffs and then in Sioux Falls SD where I turned over the keys to Cory just in time for him to get to drive into the setting sun–yep, that is the kind of wife I am!
Here is Leila running off some steam in a Wendy’s in Sioux Falls. Yes, I let my two year old run around in public in her diaper. She also reacts to any paper bag entering the car with, “Fries! Fries!” Nobody is perfect.

At this point we are driving through Sioux Falls and Cory mentions that we have about 6 more hours to go until we reach our Day 1 destination of Rapid City. Shoot me now. Luckily it got dark, I got sleepy and no one had to listen to me complain (for very long anyway) until we found ourselves rolling into Rapid City at about Midnight after the hour we gained by switching time zones.
We stuck Leila in bed between us in our hotel room and we all slept hard until morning. The next morning was some planned sight seeing. Yes, it made it take that much longer to get to Red Lodge, but I really wanted to make the most of it and see what there was to see. So…Keystone South Dakota…I don’t really know what to say, or wait I do- What a tourist trap! The streets were lined with stores that screamed, “We have crap!!! Lots of crap!” We drove on through and up to Mt. Rushmore. I had never been to Mt. Rushmore before so I thought it was pretty cool. As we drove up towards the monument I was struck by how small it seemed. I guess when you only see it in pictures, people tend to zoom in. The faces themselves seemed to kind of blend into all of the huge rock formations, but as we drove all the way up to the monument, they started to look bigger to me. Leila also enjoyed the “faces in the rocks.”

Next was Crazy Horse. I loved that, I thought the story behind it was really interesting and I like Indian History and Art so it was right up my alley. This monument will be amazing when it is complete!

After Crazy Horse we were ready to hit the open road. We drove the Black Hills, which were pretty. Two observations: first of all, the rocky hills in South Dakota sparkle (very cool) and second, the trees grow so freaking close together it is no wonder that a forest fire can cause such long range damage! We saw a lot of forest fire damage on our trip, very sad. The terrain was beautiful in South Dakota, but the tourist trap towns made it seem like hickville USA. Oh well, on to Red Lodge! We drove through part of Wyoming on our way to Red Lodge and hit our destination in time to order a pizza, eat it and pass out for the night. We were all very glad to be rid of the BVC for a while!

Saturday in Red Lodge…we woke up and took a walk downtown. It was absolutely beautiful! It felt like a fall day in Iowa. Leila and I had some chocolate chip cookies from the farmers market and checked out a bunch of cute shops

Saturday afternoon was Cory’s niece Sarah’s wedding…this was the reason for the trip west. The wedding was at their family cabin in Red Lodge and everything was beautiful! It was a very nicely done, casual yet elegant wedding. Leila had a great time! The Cabin was surrounded by water. Though there is normally a small stream that runs next to the cabin, the surprise of the summer was the wide rushing stream that had developed from the snow melting and running down the nearby beartooth mountains! Cory’s brother Eric spent the day before his daughters wedding knee deep in freezing cold water building a makeshift scaffolding bridge for the guests to use to get to the wedding. What an adventure! Leila didn’t think they needed a bridge, she really just wanted to jump right into that water!

Oh, And Cory got to meet his brother Earl for the first time ever. Crazy huh? He was a very nice guy and thought it was pretty evident that he was a Coobs 🙂
Leila and I didn’t last too long at the wedding…with water on all sides and Leila being a little fish, I was very nervous. It took a lot of energy to chase her everywhere so we made a fairly early exit back to the hotel.

We spent the next day hanging out in Red Lodge with Cory’s family and walking around town a bit more…just relaxing on our last day of leisure before were back on the road.

Monday morning we packed up the BVC and prepared ourselves for the next few viewings of Ratatouille. I am so glad that we bought that mini DVD player to keep Leila happy but the big drawbacks were; 1. She would barely look up to see all of the cool things we were trying to point out to her on the road and 2. She really needs to expand her horizons and try some different movies. I have seen Ratatouille more times then I care to count.
We have so many beautiful scenery pictures from our first day on the road, but I will only post a couple since this post is already a photo overload! We first crossed the beartooth pass through the mountains. That was AWESOME! Leila got to play in the snow, was saw some absolutely beautiful sites and we reached the peak of 11,000 ft above sea level. It was a great experience. Cory and I enjoying stopping along the road to explore the terrain every once in a while and we were having a great time.

Once we were over the pass and back in Wyoming we entered Yellowstone National Park. That was also very cool! We continued to make all kinds of stops and checked out a lot of what Yellowstone had to offer, well, as much as we could in a half day. We saw Old Faithful, though we didn’t see it erupt. That was ok with me though, I preferred the smaller Geysers where you could see the beautiful blue water bubbling up and the clay pots (I think that is what it was called?) Anyway, there were a lot of things in Yellowstone that I will probably never see anywhere else. Including the brochure that they handed to us when we drove it. It had a picture of a man being attacked by a buffalo. I think they got their point across…we stayed in the BVC while taking pictures of the buffalo!

That last picture is from the Grand Tetons National Park. By the time we got to that park we were realizing how much further we had to drive before we reached our overnight destination of Laramie WY and were starting to feel very wore out and discouraged. It was a beautiful park, but by the time we got there, we didn’t really care. That last picture was taken from the moving BVC, if that says anything about the pace of trip and how it changed as the day wore on! 🙂

We did manage to make it Laramie at about 1:00 in the morning. Again we crashed for the night and the morning came too early! We were slow to get moving our of Laramie and we were wondering if we had set our goal too high to make it back home by the end of Tuesday, but my desire to sleep in my own bed really helped push me! We drove the Nebraska, snoozefest. Here was the highlight of day two of the drive home:

So we continued on and we finally rolled into North Liberty at about 11:30, and not a moment too soon! We were so glad to be home, but wow! look at all of the places we saw!

The next morning my mom returned Zoey to us (they were dog sitting). Unfortunately Zoey became the next victim of the Ulna curse. In one of her small dog syndrome fits she had attacked Molly, her aunt who happens to outweigh her almost 4 to 1. So our adventure began with a broken bone and ended with one.

Oh, and Zoey is doing fine…she managed to catch a sparrow on three legs, and with the painkillers she got from the vet, life seems to be dandy for her.

There you go, and I am not about to proofread this monster! 🙂

>I know that I owe a big Montana update, but I haven’t taken the time to think it out yet. Instead I made a DELICIOUS treat, recipe courtesy of The Pioneer Woman. If you aren’t familiar, check it out.

http://thepioneerwoman.com/cooking/

These Apple Dumplings are so easy and the most wonderful treat I have had in a long time and did I mention that they were so easy to make?

I followed the PW recipe with the exception of using twice the apple. Next time I may use even bigger apple pieces, but I love cooked Granny Smith’s more than the average bear.

>So we spent the last week in Warsaw Missouri enjoying some family time with my side of the family. We had a nice family reunion style BBQ with the Morgan family to kick off our weekend. We had a lot of fun and then we were able to check into a cabin that was perfect for our family vacation! It is so nice to be able to stay in a place where you don’t have to go out to dinner every night, since that is always a struggle with little ones, and we even had a washer and dryer! As you can see in the pictures below, we really had a great time.
Leila had a lot of firsts and she just loved everything. She is so bonded to her aunts and uncles and grandparents, it was no surprise that she LOVED staying in the cabin and waking up every morning to her family around her to play all day! I have to say I agree, it was a lot of fun to spend the week together. We went to HahaTonka State Park, which actually has some family ties for the Morgan side of my family, that was pretty neat to see, if only Leila had been in a better mood while we were there!
We went Golfing with Grandpa Mark and took turns watching the babies and going out on the boat. The lake was beautiful and we are already looking forward to our next trip!
Leila had her first ride on the tube, which she LOVED. She got to see her first fireflies. and then, when we got home we spent the 4th of July holiday with our friends Matt, Cindy, Bryce and Eli. Probably the best first of all, at least from my perspective was her first view of fireworks. When we first got out of the car to find a place to sit someone let off a loud firecracker and really scared Leila. She jumped up on her daddy pretty fast!
We found our spot and laid out blankets for all of us to sit on. It seemed like it was taking FOREVER for the fireworks to start but Bryce and Leila made use of the time by running around in circles around our blankets again and again until finally….a very loud bang sounded and Leila ran straight into my lap! 🙂
Bryce was a brave guy and didn’t seem bothered by the noises, but Leila was a little jumpier, which I had expected. We sat and watched the fireworks and the kids LOVED it! They kept yelling out what color the fireworks were as they appeared in the sky and loudly announcing which ones were their favorites.
I remember when I was a little girl, I was terrified of the fireworks. I have a memory of sitting on the bleachers somewhere during a fireworks display and hiding my face in fear. I remember looking up occasionally to see the bright fireworks after the boom had finished. Since then I have learned to really love fireworks. For the last couple of years, we haven’t made it in to see the displays, mostly because of Leila’s schedule, but as she gets older she is a lot more flexible and this year I was very happy to get to go again, and to share something that I really enjoy with my daughter. I was very pleased that she wasn’t afraid as she sat on my lap with her nigh nigh blanket watching with awe. I think I like them even more now, having seen them through the eyes of my very excited baby girl. I am so beyond blessed.

>Leila and Baby Sawyer, look at how big he is getting!!!!

Here are a buch of pictures from our week in Warsaw and the 4th of July. We have had a wonderful time over the past week or so and we are already looking forward to our trip to Montana next week!

Pop pop Carey skiing! Leila loved to watch Daddy and Pop pop and Dani ski!

Daddy and his little fish

Playing in the water with Cassie

Leila even got a ride behind the boat on the tube…she loved it and didn’t want to come back in!

Fun with fireflies!

My Grandma and Grandpa Morgan 🙂

Board game fun during the family vacation

Leila wouldn’t get out of the pool, even though her lips were starting to turn purple!

A picture of me, as taken by Bryce 🙂

>Exhibit A for why I love Leila’s Daddy.

You may wonder what about this picture strikes me, and I am going to tell you. Look at how happy Leila is? This picture was taken on Friday afternoon. Cory stayed home from work on Friday for a couple of reasons. First of all, he had been up half the night out helping the sandbagging effort in Iowa City and secondly, Friday is normally Grandma day, but with the flooding we didn’t have any daycare available so this Friday was “daddy day.” Though Leila did tell us that she misses Grandma, she had a wonderful day with her daddy.
Aside from the smiling face on my baby girl, look at how cute that hair is? 🙂 Who do you think put in those pig tails? That’s right…Daddy. When I came home from work today I passed Leila and Cory out for a walk and I couldn’t help but smile at how happy and cute they both were.

When I first met Cory back in the summer of 2000, we spent a lot of time talking to each other online while I lived in Coralville and he was home in Elkader for the summer. We weren’t dating at the time, but just friends that talked occasionally and while were talking online one day he told me that he had to go and help his neighbor set up her window air conditioner. That was probably the first time since I had met him that I thought, “wow, what a nice guy!” I have to say that since that day in 2000 that phrase has crossed my mind several times.
They say that women look for a man to marry that reminds them of their father. I have to say that I agree. When Cory and I started dating, I knew that he was the one for me for a few different reasons.
He is the kind of thoughtful person that will nearly always put himself out to help out someone in need. That may be helping an elderly neighbor set up her air conditioner, or going out in the middle of the night to help sandbag people’s homes and water sources.
Something that has always been important to me is family. Anyone that knows me knows that my family, immediate and extended are precious to me. When Cory talks about his parents, brothers, and sister, I know that he understands. In the time that we have been together I think that Cory’s love of family has only been strengthened, and we are both lucky to have joined loving families with our marriage, and I am so happy to have all of that love and all of those connections to share with our daughter. My love of family is something that I learned from my dad, and that is something that I knew I would need to find in a mate.
Before I ever decided to marry Cory I knew that he would meet my final, and most important criteria. I knew that he would make a wonderful father.
I grew up with a dad who played with me as a child and taught me as a young adult. My parents have both influenced me tremendously and I look to them and how I was raised as we raise our daughter.
Cory takes wonderful care of his daughter, so wonderful that he is even willing to try his hand at pigtails. I remember my dad putting my hair up when I was a little girl too. I have to be honest and say that it wasn’t quite like mom, but my dad could still do a pretty impressive braid! I know that Leila is going to grow up with a super dad, just like I did.

See, I told you it wasn’t quite like mom 😉