Merry Christmas and a happy new year!

It's been a really great month here in the Ahumada house.  Our Benjito is now smiling and so much fun to play with.  He even laughs, too!  Except...he's a bit of a stinker.  So far I have heard him laugh only a few times: once each with my friends Nellie and Natalie, once with Sebasthian, and a couple of times in his sleep.  But try as I might, I can NOT get him to laugh for me!  He will smile and coo, but I guess he's already trying to tell me that I'm just not funny.  I've taken up reading Laffy Taffy wrappers to try to get a more refined sense of humor.

Earlier this month the temperature plummeted low into the sub-zero category, and somehow this made the power go out.  I'm not sure how these are connected but I usually just believe what the professionals tell me. Anyhow, the three of us spent the morning in bed to stay warm but Benji kept getting hungry and I wasn't producing enough milk to keep up.  I was starting to weigh the likelihood of him starving or freezing to death, and I didn't like either option.  Here's the part where I'm super dumb.  I thought that because we had no power, we had no hot water.  Thus, having no hot water, we would have no way to warm up some water for formula (it was ice cold!)..and Benji would surely starve!  Luckily we had a brilliant idea - we have a gas grill. Yes, we got a pot and put in some water and barbecued it until it was hot enough to warm some milk.  Genius? We thought so! Until Sebasthian had to get ready for his afternoon classes and washed his face in the sink...discovering that we'd had hot water for the past eight hours.  We felt pretty awesome.  Right after, the power turned back on and we never even took advantage of our new-found resource. haha! c'est la vi! All in all, the day was a pretty good learning experience, not to mention that Benji is probably the first two-month old to eat a barbecue'd meal!

The rest of our Christmastime has been wonderful!!  We have lots of fun as our little family and have made some great Christmas traditions.  We made sugar cookies and decorated them to bring to friends! ...but then they ended up being rock hard so we threw them all away (seriously, I've made about eight batches of cookies this fall and I don't think we've been able to eat any!  I can't make cookies.).  And we tried to learn Feliz Navidad on our guitars, but gave up shortly afterwards because we didn't want to be too talented and overwhelm people (or, it wasn't going well.  You decide.)  However, even with our silly mistakes, this has been a great season and we've really focused on keeping Christ in our Christmas.

This year we spent a family night watching Mr. Krueger's Christmas (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AG2xdsKNXy8) and wrote letters to ourselves with how we felt about the year, our testimony, and one gift that we would give the Savior in the next year through improving ourselves in some way.  We put the letters in the tree so that when we take it out next year we can read them again.

On Christmas Eve we ate bread bowl soup (a family tradition) and read the story of Christ's birth.  We also got to Skype with both families to celebrate with them!  Christmas is a wonderful time for family and we are grateful to have such fun and supportive parents and siblings. Sadly Benji has been sick throughout the week and so he wasn't able to join in on much of the fun. :/

Christmas morning....or should I say afternoon?  By the time I dragged my two boys out of bed it was almost twelve!  Sebasthian will have to enjoy this while he can because I am SOO excited for when our kids come wake us up at six in the morning to open presents.  Anyways, it was really great and I was spoiled rotten! We all got some great gifts, and we tried to convince Benji that he would like his toys but he was still pretty out of it.

Sebasthian picked out this present for him, he wasn't impressed.

However these next two definitely drew his interest...

Overall it was a pretty fantastic day and we are excited to ring in the new year together soon!

Merry Christmas to our family and friends and may you have joy and happiness throughout 2014!

1212, 1220, and 8 ...That's how many weeks old we are!

I expected myself to get more involved in "blogging" now that I have a baby to brag about.  And I won't lie, he is pretty stinkin' cute, but he doesn't really DO much, as demonstrated below:

 Okay Okay, so he doesn't sleep ALL the time...but aren't those pictures kind-of precious?  I know, another mom who can't stop with the baby pictures.  No worries - there's a lot more where those came from!  But really, so far he HAS made some marked improvement...which should be expected since he's almost two months old!

He can now scream very, very loud:

...Can grab onto his play gym toys...

(it's always the elephant that he grabs!  Between this fact and that his Elephant PJ's 

are one of the few he hasn't peed on, we've decided these are his favorite animal)

...And he can support himself standing if someone holds him!

What a macho man!

He also LOVES spending time with his daddy

Real, quality time

Sebasthian's biggest complaint is that Benji can't hold his own bottle yet. 

So often I find him set up with contraptions such as this.  At least I can 

give Sebasthian some points for ingenuity!

We've been having a great time enjoying the holidays! We had Thanksgiving with some good friends here in town, and even went Black Friday shopping!  It was Benji's first time (obviously) but he did great!

Here he is with his "Black Friday trophy"! He was mad that Dad wanted to play first

Now that it's Christmastime he also loves looking at the tree!!  We are grateful for this wonderful Holiday season and all the Joy that we can find together in it.  :)

A Birth Story; 'cuz everyone's doing it

I feel like I'm doing pretty well at following the "Mormon" stereotype.  I got married in college to a "Returned Missionary", and after a few months we decided it was time to follow the oldest trend ever of multiplying and replenishing the Earth.  So one thing leads to another...Boom! Zygote-Embryo-Fetus! Just like that.  The afterthought here, is that this little creature had to come OUT somehow.  And this is where our story begins...

I probably had the best pregnancy ever.  I was fit and able to stay active (I still get made fun of by my coworkers for being the bike-riding pregnant lady), and I felt good all around.  Except...dun dun duuuuun...lurking in the deep pockets of my soul was a rigid fear of that whole "giving birth" scene. I was freaked out!!  I prayed a lot for help but didn't seem to be calming down much...yet the "due date" was looming nearer.

On September 23rd I was about to shower when I suddenly felt something funny and then liquid started trickling down my leg.  Commence: super ultimate freak-out panic mode.  I started shaking and hyperventilating, worrying that my baby was on his way!  Quickly and clumsily I showered and then picked up Sebasthian from work.  I told him that I wasn't sure, but maybe my water had broke?  I hadn't felt any contractions, so I didn't want to go to the hospital, but he insisted that we should go "just in case".  And the next morning, our son was born! yay! The end.

Okay, just kidding.  Actually, it turns out that I must've just peed myself or something (lol!), because baby was still happy and swimming around in there.  But it WAS a good experience that helped me get over my fear.  The nurses were nice and the thrill of it was kind-of fun :)

The next couple of weeks passed uneventfully, but I began to grow pretty excited about meeting my little man.  Every day Sebasthian would say: "We could be parents today!!" and I agreed with him.  One Monday morning he said it and I said "No, I think he's sticking this one out.  I don't feel him doing much." haha "Eat your words, Elysha!" Within the hour I was cleaning the whole house spotlessly with an energy no java-holic has ever seen.  Every five minutes I would get cramps and then they would go away after about 30-45 seconds.  I wasn't sure what was going on so I called up my good friend Melissa and we went for a walk for an hour or so.  Well, the cramps didn't subside so that was good and stuff.

I made lunch for Sebasthian and when he came home I calmly told him that I thought I was in labor.  He freaked out a little.  Not because of having a baby, but because I was so ridiculously cool about it.  I'm always cool so he should have just caught on.

We decided he should go to work, since labor usually takes awhile anyways.  After he left I was curious how long I should wait.  So I called the Doctor.  They told me I had to go in. Nooo, I wanted to labor at home.  I resisted, but eventually called my awesome neighbor, Jacquie, to see if I could get a ride to the Doctor.  Once there, I waited. and waited. and waited.  Not unusual for a Doctor's office, but REALLY?  I could've popped out a baby any minute! ...or in a few hours, at least.  Apparently the Doctor had needed to go to the hospital to deliver or something (again, really?  aren't I top priority? ;) ) So they commanded that I go there to get checked. I did not just misuse the word "commanded", as I kept trying to tell them I didn't need to go.  I was a little miffed.  I absolutely did not want to go to the hospital just to get sent home.

Jacquie was super wonderful and took me to the hospital, and I called Sebasthian and told him to leave work...hopefully this wasn't a false alarm.  I kept telling everyone that I didn't know why I had to be there, I didn't feel like I was in labor. Well, the nurse checked me when I arrived at about 5:30 and I was dilated to a 3-4.  So they had Sebasthian walk around with me and we went to the cafeteria and ate.  (Note to self: this is a bad idea when you're in labor. Never again.) After half an hour I was at a 5, so they decided to keep me.  I was so mad that I didn't get my "Pinterest" photo of us leaving with our bags for the hospital. haha. But at least we got some when I was admitted:

The anesthesiologist was busy in surgery so I really got to spend some quality time with my contractions.  

I wouldn't let Sebasthian take pictures of me in pain (don't need to remember that!) so these don't really fit the story well. haha

Luckily we got to watch "Family Feud" while we waited it out :)

Finally the epidural came (yay!) when I was dilated to a 7, and then about 20 minutes later I had to PUSH.  yuck.  I hated pushing.  About halfway through I asked them for a c-section.  They kind-of laughed at me and said I just had to do it.  Fine.  I started pushing at midnight and an hour and 43 minutes later....

Wahoo!! I'm a mom! 

And he's a dad!

and he's a boy without a name...

So we'd been struggling over the past nine months to find a name.  Sure enough, we still couldn't decide at the hospital.  We were about to leave without one and mail it in when we decided, when the insurance lady came and told us we had to have it before we left.  We were leaving in an hour.

Sebasthian brought up the name "Benjamin" and although we'd never considered it we thought it was a fitting, strong name.  I only agreed to it if we could call him "Benji".  So there we have it: Benjamin Thomas, born October 8th at 7 lb 9 oz.

And isn't he the cutest?