La Brea Tar Pits

A week or two ago a friend (we were in the same ward at BYU) and her son accompanied Oskar and I to the La Brea Tar Pits.

Tons of fossils have been excavated from the tar pits that show the kinds of animals that were living in Los Angeles up to 11,000 years ago.  The picture below is of a mammoth!  I love mammoths and have decided that it is now my spirit guide instead of an orangutan.

We watched a movie that showed the death trap that is a tar pit.  One animal is sucked into the tar and gets trapped and then another animal thinking it will prey on the first one tries to attack it but in the process also gets sucked into the tar and is trapped and then another animal sees the two in the tar and thinks it will have a nice treat but also gets sucked into the tar and then they all die.  The picture below describes the process of getting stuck and dying in the tar.  What you can't see in the picture is the baby mammoth on land watching her mother get pulled down by the sticky tar.  It's pretty brutal.

Oskar was not scared in the slightest of these animatronics even though taxidermy is my number one fear.

 At this station you pull the thing out of the tar just to see how difficult and sticky it was.  And there was a sign that said to not climb on the glass.  Oops.

One of the workers was walking around with a saber-tooth tiger head.  Oskar gave it a kiss.

 A sabter-tooth tiger attacking a ground sloth.  Again, Oskar was not phased in the slightest.  What a guy.

This was the point in our adventure when I was trying to pick up Oskar to take him outside and he ran around and hid from me.

And this was the end.  We can only go out outings for so long before we all have had enough.

May

The biggest event that happened in May for us was our decision to move.  Our neighbors have driven us crazy for a year now and since our lease is up we can get out of here.  The catalyst was the night they played their music from 3:00 AM - 4:30 AM.  Joel asked them to turn down their music earlier that night and they basically said it was our decision to have a baby and live in a crappy apartment and they're not going to change their life because of us.  Real winners.  So we called the cops that night and they never came and we decided that we were done.

We started looking for a fairly nice two bedroom apartment under $1300 a month in our same area so we wouldn't have to move out of the ward.  This turnd out to be near impossible.  If you get an apartment under $1300 it's going to be crappy.  The one we're living in now is $1200 a month and it is a deal even with the bad parts about it.  So we looked at apartments outside of the ward boundaries and found a few that would work for us.  As I thought about moving out of the ward I became more and more opposed to it.  We've made a lot of good friends in this ward, it's a good central location for Joel who has to go all over for meetings, and I really love my calling and didn't want to leave it.

So we fasted and prayed to find an apartment that we could afford, that wasn't too crappy, and that would keep us in the ward boundaries.  We exhausted our online resources and so I decided to just drive around looking for For Rent signs.  I found quite a few and called all of them and I think one person picked up but the apartment was too expensive.  I ended up leaving messages for the rest and the next day one person called me back.  She had a two bedroom available for, wait for it ... $1088!! Unheard of for a two bedroom apartment in this area! We figured it had to be really gross or something but we made an appointment to check it out anyway.  The next day we looked at it and to our surprise liked it, and then two days later we signed the lease.  So our prayers were answered and we're moving in about two weeks.  The new place is quite a bit smaller but I think it will be fine, it's in a nice neighborhood, and still close to everything we need.  It's a miracle!  And I'm hoping that even after we move in we think it's a miracle apartment.

So the next two weeks we will be busy packing up and moving which with a very busy toddler running around should make for a super fun time.  Since moving out and going to college in 2005 (8 years ago) I have moved at least once every year, sometimes twice or three times.  I cannot wait for the day that I am settled in a place for even a few years.  I shouldn't be impatient for that though because I don't think it's going to happen anytime soon.

Also Oskar got sick in May and couldn't keep anything down for a few days, it made me crazy with worry AGAIN.  But on the plus side in May, Mom and Mari's birthdays were celebrated, and Carson too I think?  We got to go to the beach for Memorial Day with some of Joel's brothers and families, another one of Joel's brothers came to live with us for a few months.  We also had lots of fun swimming times with friends and Oskar and I got to go see Joel on set a few times. 

Oskar showing his muscles


Oskar showing his seldom seen top teeth as he's doing what he thinks is a pretty great smile for the camera

Oskar doing his funny walk which really just means he crouches down a little and walks around, kind of like Groucho Marx

At Zuma Beach for Memorial Day.  I may have gone a little overboard with the sunblock and reminded myself a whole lot of my mother.

 

Me and my precious sweetness taking a little nap

 

Nature or Nurture

Oskar is officially hilarious.  He makes faces all the time, he makes weird noises, and when he realizes we think something is funny he does it again and again.  When we ask him to smile he throws his head back, squinches his eyes, and shows his not often seen upper teeth.  Sometimes he'll be doing something and minding his own business and then will suddenly start with this high pitched scream and liking the sound will scream over and over.  He also takes any kleenex, toilet paper, regular paper, socks, burp cloths, or cloth of any kind and blows his nose on it.  When we ask him to dance he takes a bunch of quick little steps. He waves his arms to lead music whenever he hears some.  When we ask him to say Daddy or dada he says Joel, he refuses to call his father anything but his first name.
 

 

He has four top teeth but we hardly ever get to see them.  

 

 

You can't really tell because his hand is in the way but in this picture he is trying to eat the side of Joel's glasses.

 

This is his number one favorite spot in our apartment.  Every day he'll perch himself on top of the couch and look out the window waving at neighbors and yelling dog every time he sees one.  He also waits for Joel and I here when we leave for work.  He gets very excited when we come home.

His eating is better, but still far from great.  I've found a few things that he'll eat like yogurt, soup, puffs, etc. but he is really resistant to try anything new and even with the stuff he does like sometimes we have to read a book for him or play The Circle of Life just to get him to open his mouth.  That brings up another funny thing.  He LOVES The Circle of Life. If it is playing on the computer or if we even start singing it he'll stop and listen and watch very attentively. 

Pictures!

Oskar broke our last camera and we finally got a new one!  In the last two days we've taken 60 pictures already.  Here are my favorites.
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Oskar's Results

Yesterday Oskar had his follow up appointment where we learned more about the results of the endoscopy and the allergy testing.  It turns out that Oskar has ZERO ALLERGIES.  He's not allergic to milk, soy, wheat, whey, casein, egg, peanuts, etc, nothing.  He has no food allergies.  This is great news.  It will make our future in food exploration a lot simpler in fact we've already started introducing cow's milk in hopes that we can get off formula ASAP.  However this also is a tad bit frustrating just because we have spent thousands of dollars on his special formula that he HAD to have because of his food allergies.  He was never tested early on for food allergies it was just assumed that he had them because he had blood in his stool.  So he either grew out of his food allergies or he never had them.  Either way it's a little frustrating to think about how much money we spent.  But mostly it's a relief that we don't have to worry about this anymore.

The other results were concerning the endoscopy.  The doctor told us right after the procedure that he had reflux and ulcers (caused by the reflux) and that the door between his esophagus and stomach is completely open and it's supposed to be closed.  This door from his stomach to intestines is closed much more than it should be so he's a little turned around with his inside doors.  So he's been on Zantac to help the acid reflux and while he threw it up the first few times we gave it to him, he has been able to keep it down for the most part since ... except for this morning.

Yesterday we found out about the results of the biopsy taken during the procedure.  It is my understanding that because of the reflux the cells in his esophagus have changed and have the potential to turn into pre-cancerous cells.  Scary.  The doctor will put him on a third medicine in two months for that.  I don't know what it will do or how it will help but that is what we have to look forward to.

I'm happy that we know what is going on now but I can't help but blame myself for not forcing him to take the acid reflux medicine months and months ago when the doctor first told us to.  He's been dealing with all these things and all this pain for a solid 14-15 months and he didn't have to.  I guess I thought he couldn't do it because he threw up every time we gave it to him and I didn't think it was necessary.  I was hoping he would just grow out of the vomiting.  I think I didn't understand the situation entirely and the effects it could have on Oskar.  If I would have known this would have happened I would have tried a lot harder to make him take the medicine.  I hope my mistakes don't cause him long term problems.

Oskar Update

Oskar took another bad turn this last week and reverted back to throwing up multiple times a day and, understandably, not wanting to eat.  We're not quite sure why this happened.  We think either he was sick even though he had no symptoms, or as we were trying to switch him slowly to soy formula his body completely rejected it.  Either way we stopped the soy and any solids we attempted to give him.  On Monday we had some blood work done to see if it could be due to food allergies and we'll get the results back from that on Friday.  Then next week we'll do another blood draw to check for some other things.  Then on March 21st he's going to have an upper GI endoscopy.  Basically the doctor will stick a camera down to his stomach to see what is going on and why he can't eat.  It's kind of scary to think about especially since he has to be under anesthesia for the procedure but at this point I think we need to do something this drastic because things aren't getting any better.  So that is March 21st at 7:30 AM, just keep him and the doctor in your prayers please.

Just a Sweet Picture

Just a sweet picture of my sweet baby.