candy graham

Introducing: Graham Blake Leininger

Born April 4, 2015

7 lbs 9 oz, 19 1/4 inches long

We are so happy and in love with our new baby boy, born just over a week ago. We are tired but all of us are doing great. Graham has been very sleepy and sweet this past week--we are just waiting for him to wake up and rock our world even more. He is a champion eater and seems very patient and calm during many of his awake times. We feel so lucky to have him here and to have him be so healthy and strong. He has been very spoiled this week with someone holding him all the time--we'll see how things go the next weeks coming up!

Dane has been SUCH a cute big brother. He ran into the hospital room to see Graham for the first time and said, "My BABY BROTHER! Can I hold him? Can I hold my baby brother? HI BABY BROTHER!" And he hasn't stopped being excited since. He only wants to refer to him as "baby brudder" and asks to hold him about 25 times a day. After his nap today, he came out and ran over to Graham and said, "Baby brudder, I came back! I woked up to see you!" It makes me so happy that he's so in love with his brother. They're going to be best friends.

Tommy went and got balloons for Graham and Dane the day we came home from the hospital. Dane loves trying to share it with Graham and make sure he's truly appreciating his balloon.

The last picture of us as a family of three:

The first picture of us as a family of four:

We've been lucky this last week with my mom visiting and taking care of us. Tommy has been on paternity leave this week and will be this upcoming week, and then his mom will be here visiting and helping us out the week after. So we are feeling spoiled with a few weeks worth of help! I know it will be a rough adjustment after that, but I am feeling optimistic. We love our two boys and can't wait to see Graham grow and get to know him.

playing the waiting game

We totally got thrown for a loop two weeks ago when I went into my OB for an appointment at 36 weeks and she said I was already four centimeters dilated and 50% effaced. Now, I don't know much about giving birth (other than having done it once), but I know that 10 centimeters is the golden number for HAVING THAT BABY, so 4 cm already sounded pretty far along! The doctor was very non-committal about whether he was going to come early, but I of course panicked and spent the whole week being worried that I was going into labor or that the baby was going to just fall out of me before I could get to the hospital. But here we are, two weeks later, and no baby has come yet! So we're still just waiting, but I'm not so worried any more. It'll work out, however it happens, and I'm just glad that now we've made it to 38 weeks and that we've gotten a lot more done this past week than I thought we'd be able to finish before the baby came. Now I just need to make it to my class tomorrow night, and then I will really feel like I've made it. Let's make it to April!

One of the major things that we finally accomplished this week was... buying a car! We've only had one car ever since we left North Carolina (Tommy's good old trusty '98 Corolla died before we left) and I've been shuttling Tommy to work ever since, but it just doesn't seem like that's going to keep working with a newborn. We've been talking about how we need to do this--and trying to do it--for months now, but it just never worked out. We were so stressed about it, and couldn't find anything that worked for us, and felt like we needed to find the cheapest clunker car we could find, since we'd probably only need it for two or three years before upgrading to a larger car, so spending more than a few thousand on it felt wasteful. 

And after months of being stressed out by looking and talking about finding a car, we had a thought: why not buy a minivan now? It's totally not necessary, but we need a second car now, and we obviously hate car shopping so much that we're just punishing ourselves by knowing we have to do this process twice (now, and again in a few years). Immediately, once we started talking about it, we both just felt so, so much better about this whole thing and knew it was the right decision for us right now. So we spent a few days test driving and looking at some used minivans close to us. Dane was a champion minivan tester with us--we totally wore him out:

And we ended up finding "the one!" A nice blue Honda Odyssey with low mileage and a decent price tag.

I am thrilled about the convenience of it, and so happy that we found something--anything--that will work for us right now--and so soon before the baby comes too! It's a little earlier than we thought we needed it, but it will hopefully last us for a lot of years and we'll eventually be fitting into it a lot better than we do now (it feels silly for me to drive around with just Dane in the backseat). It will make road trips so much easier for us, with so much more storage space, and since we're tentatively planning on driving to Utah and California this summer, this will be a godsend for us come July.

We were joking about how we now have a house and a minivan and (almost) two kids--it's like I'm 36 instead of 26! My mom and sister were teasing us that we're doing just the total typical BYU grad thing, which I'd sworn in my teenage wisdom that I would never do--married super young, staying at home, having babies fast, living in suburbia (and driving a minivan!). And it's true! It sounds so boring and typical when you say it all like that, but it feels so much more important and interesting when it's your life and you're doing it yourself. Everything is so much more important and meaningful than it may appear when you're working with your money and your body and your family. And even though I wanted to be more adventurous and different when I was my wild teenage self (ha), I can't imagine a life I'd fit better in, or one that would be happier or better in. It may be a stereotypical life, but it's mine, and I'm glad I'm living it!

Keep Austin Weird

We finally got to accompany Tommy on a business trip! He had to go to Austin last week to go to South by Southwest, which is a famous music and film festival but it also apparently has a techie side to it, which is the part that Tommy was going to. When we found out that Tommy had to go, we decided it would be worth it to have Dane and I drive down with Tommy for a fun weekend trip and so that Dane and I weren't stuck at home by ourselves like we've been so much while Tommy's been gone lately. We drove down on Friday afternoon and came back Monday afternoon--and had a great time. It was really fun walking around and doing a little sightseeing. Tommy was going to the conference most of the time, so Dane and I would drop him off and then go do our own thing, usually stuff that two-year-olds are into.

Austin is a funny city--it was so different than Dallas, which seems so much more fancy and put-together. You could just tell the different crowd that goes around downtown Austin--and I loved it. Especially this week, with SxSW going on, there were tons and tons and TONS of live music events going on and a whole sort of artsy crowd wandering around. Austin's motto is "Keep Austin Weird"--so we definitely bought a few t-shirts saying that to send to Uncle Austin and one for Dane to wear to represent. 

Probably my favorite thing we did was the first night--we met up with Tommy's uncle Doug who lives in Austin and had dinner together. Doug brought us to Central Market, a Whole Foods-y type place that has a cafe attached to it--and outside, a patio with live music and a big park for kids to play at while you eat. It was the most beautiful weather and so fun to just sit and listen to the music and watch Dane running around on the playground. It was so simple and relaxed and fun. At least, until we tried to leave and Dane screamed "ONE MORE MINUTE! ONE MORE MINUTE!" the whole way out to the car. 

And of course, this was the only picture we got with Tommy in it from the whole weekend, since he was at meetings the whole rest of the time. 80% of the pictures are just of Dane at different places since it was just him and me wandering around. 

While Tommy was at the conference, Dane and I wandered around Austin. We visited the Texas State Capitol building, which several people mentioned to me is bigger than the US State Capitol (thank you Texas). They give free tours, but I didn't think that was a good idea with my little buddy. So we just walked around a little bit inside it and then played a little on the grass.

Oh yeah--I was 36 weeks pregnant this day too. So I probably shouldn't have walked 2+ miles that day--whoops! I was worn out by the end. Good thing Dane is still napping so we both got to lay down for a while in the middle of the day. 

We went to Zilker Park, the main central city park in Austin, and rode on the Zilker Zephyr, a little kids' train there. Dane was thrilled! (Notice him wearing his Thomas the Train shirt on the train.)

We went to the children's museum the next day, since I wanted to be mostly stationary all day and not walking around constantly like I had been the day before. 

We paid all this money to get in and spent half of our time at the train table. 

Just kidding--we spent most of our time at the water table. Dane could not get enough of it. So cute!

I loved him wearing the too-big crocs and apron they had to keep the kids from getting too wet. 

We also went to the Texas State History Museum with this giant LONE STAR in front of it. Oh, Texas. 

It was really just a quick weekend trip, but I was glad that we went. It was kind of our babymoon as a family--one last trip with just one kid in our hotel room and only one person's nap schedule to worry about. I honestly think it is so helpful to get out of town and out of your everyday normal life at least once every few months. I always come back rejuvenated and glad to be home, even if the trip itself is tiring and lots of work with little friend(s). And it was totally great because we ended up making money on this trip, the way that Tommy's expenses got paid for this "business" trip! Glad we all went--and also glad that we made it back without accidentally having the baby in Austin while we were there!

photo wall

So THIS is the most boring post in the world, but I have worked so hard and so long on this lately that I wanted to get some validation by sharing this with the world. We have a super long wall kind of near our kitchen that was the perfect place for a photo collage wall. I changed my mind a lot about what I wanted it to look like, but I ended up deciding on this design with two rows of pictures. I had to buy extra frames and did a LOT of prepping to decide how to put them up.

I spent FIVE HOURS hanging up these pictures on Saturday. Seriously, I have no idea how it took that long (I guess I did take a lunch break in the middle?). But it was HARD and took a lot of measuring to get them all exactly even--and of course, they're NOT exactly even because that's pretty much impossible when you're using a variety of different frames, etc. But I feel like they look pretty good and I'm happy with the result. I'm also very happy I didn't make Tommy hang up all the pictures, because he hates having to do this and it would have been a VERY long day for him. Usually I wait for him to do stuff like this, but I've gotten more confident in my ability to do this by myself, so this was good for me! It worked out great for both of us.

The finished product, from three different angles so you can see the pictures that are up there. I decided to just go with a variety of posed and not-posed pictures, and ones with all three of us and then different ones with Dane and us separately. I think it looks really good. 

Okay, and here are a couple of cute pictures for the end of the post. We had THREE snow days here last week--crazy! I thought we lived in Texas!--and Dane had fun playing out in the snow for very short periods of time. We brought his dump truck and digger out in the backyard and dug up snow together. And Dane and Tommy went in the back over the weekend and threw snowballs at each other, which was basically heaven for a little boy!

And finally, look! A pregnancy picture of me! I'm 34 weeks exactly in this picture, headed to an 80s-themed girls night (this was the best I could do with the few clothes I have that fit right now). I told Dane I was showing off my tummy and he did the same. 

our "baby"

Dane is really into pretending to be a baby right now. It's kind of annoying actually, because when he's a "baby" he just walks around saying "mama! mama!" in this fake high-pitched voice, and he won't stop or say anything else no matter how many times I ask him what he wants. He wants us to wrap him up in blankies and carry him around like this all the time. I don't have the heart to tell him that the very fact that he can pretend to be a baby proves that he is no longer a baby. He is a full-fledged child, with very little baby there any more. (Except when he has nightmares and needs to be cuddled and rocked back to sleep, which is so sad but oh so cute and sweet and I love getting to hold him as he falls back to sleep.)

My due date is five and a half weeks away now, and Dane was born a week early, so... we could have our baby here in a month. I am not ready for that, mentally, but I'd be happy to not be pregnant any more. The closer we get the faster time seems to be speeding up, which I know is different than most people's experiences and I'd rather things go fast instead of slow. But the closer the day comes, the more I want to snuggle Dane and the more I keep trying to help him understand what's going to happen. ("Dane, one day soon Mommy's going to go to the hospital and the baby is going to come out and then you will get to hold him!") He really seems to be warming up to the idea--he went from flat-out denial a few months ago ("No! I'm the baby!") to now talking about holding the baby and saying he's "fankful" for the baby in his prayers (which he's only really started saying this week and they KILL ME because of the cuteness!). I know it's all going to rock his world no matter what we do, but he will hopefully be okay. I hate hearing about big siblings who wouldn't touch their baby sibling for months and months because they hated them so much, and I hope Dane is a little happier about the baby than that... but I know there's not much you can do other than being really patient!

We sure do love this little guy. I'm pretty sure we're going to love his little brother (he who shall not be named, apparently, based on our inability to even have a conversation about picking his name yet) just as much too. I can't wait for that moment where I get to hold him--that's what I keep daydreaming about these days. We're in it for the long haul!