Toa at two months old

Time flies!! It's kind of funny because there was a point in my life where I wished time would go faster. Now I am at a point where I just want time to stand still so that I can make sure I DO NOT miss a thing with my sweet baby Toa! He is growing so fast!!

This picture melts my heart!! So sweet, tender and INNOCENT!! I hope he stays that way FOREVER!! :)

This is a picture of Toa at 3 days old. He looks so tiny!

7 lbs 8oz

21 inches long

Here he is at 1 month

11 lbs 2 oz

22 inches long

And here he is at 2 months old

12 lbs 8 oz

24 inches long

For his head circumference he is in the 60th percentile, for length he is in the 80th percentile and in the 55th percentile for weight. He is growing so fast and is starting to do things that AMAZE his mother! He rolled over for the first time at two months old, he started sleeping 7-8 hours a night at 6 weeks old, he LOVES to take baths, he LOVES tummy time and can hold his head up very good! He has found his hands and sucks on his fingers, he STARES into my eyes and melts my heart every time I feed him. He holds on to my fingers, smiles, coos and brings so much joy into my life! We play a game where I give him a big kiss on his chubby cheeks and say, "a kiss for the baby" and then he gives me an open mouthed kiss on the cheek and I say, "and a kiss for the mama" It's my favorite game right now and we play it ALL of the time just going back and forth giving each other kisses. Alofa thought I was crazy at first but I had Toa give him a kiss on the cheek and now he is hooked on the game too! Toa gives the best kisses!! He loves to lay on his back and kick at the air. When he is hungry he almost does a sit up to get to the bottle if I don't put it up to his mouth fast enough. He wakes up in the morning soo happy and ready to cuddle! He LOVES to cuddle his mommy! He is such a sweet, cuddly, happy, talkative baby! He has been such a blessing in our lives and makes EVERYDAY wonderful!!

Thanksgiving 2010

This year for Thanksgiving we were planning on going down to Salt Lake to spend it with Alofa's family. Due to the TON of snow we got, that really wasn't an option. So our plans changed a little and we went and spent Thanksgiving with my dad instead. We had a great time! and the food was AMAZING!!

This is MY turkey leg and NO I will NOT share!! :)

Alofa's first time carving the turkey! He did a great job!!

Grandpa Howerton MUST have slipped some turkey in that bottle! He sure was sleepy after he ate it! ;)

What a sweet boy! I am sooo thankful that he LOVES to cuddle just as much as I do! It makes every minute of every day sooo much better :)

Grandma and Grandpa Howerton, Joe and Toa on Thanksgiving day

Doesn't Alofa make that turkey look DELICIOUS?!?!

(It WAS delicious by the way:))

Grandpa Howerton feeding Toa. Looks like they are BOTH in Heaven! I think that Grandpa may have snuck some turkey in that bottle for Toa so he could enjoy his first Thanksgiving too :)

Joe won't admit it but I think he REALLY likes Toa :)

Grandpa Howerton and Toa. Does your fist taste like turkey Toa? :) Sure looks like you are enjoying it!

My sister, her boyfriend, her friend, my brother and his wife were all there as well but I didn't get any pictures of them. I wish I had. I will do better next year! We had a GREAT time going through all of the ads for Black Friday, spending time together and prank calling some of our other family and friends. I laughed sooo hard that I was crying! It was a wonderful and very fun Thanksgiving!

This is how you can tell it was a GREAT first Thanksgiving for Toa:

A happy and very sweet baby boy to be ever so thankful for!

I am so thankful for all of the blessings that I enjoy. My life is better than I ever dreamed that it would be! I have a very kind and loving husband who gave me the sweetest boy! He fits so perfectly into our little family and while it is true that he is only about two months old, I CANNOT remember what my life was like without him! He greets me every morning with a sweet smile and ready to cuddle! I am thankful to my Heavenly Father for the opportunity that I have to be a wife and a mom, both roles that I cherish! I am thankful for my job and that Alofa has a job as well! I am also thankful for my friends and my family! I have so much to be thankful for! I hope that I take the time necessary to reflect on my blessings often and do what I can do to bless the lives of others as well!

Toa's Blessing

My sweet husband blessed our little man on November 7th 2010. It was such a tender and beautiful experience for me to see my husband exercise his priesthood in blessing our son. I shouldn't have worn make-up to church on this day, the tears ran freely. I am so thankful for all of the family and friends that came to support and help us during this special time. Alofa's auntie and uncle came up the night before to help start preparing the food for the dinner at our house after the blessing. There was sooooo much food and sooooo many people who came to our home to celebrate and welcome Toa in to your eternal family. This will be a memory and experience that I will cherish forever and reflect on often!

A month of "firsts" for Toa

October has been such a fun and exciting month!! This was the month that our lives were changed forever for the better! Who would have known that caring for an brand new sweet spirit would be so fulfilling and so rewarding! I have loved every single minute of it and often times find myself staring at my little man when he is eating or sleeping wondering what I did to be so lucky to be the mother to this sweet baby! I love watching him grow and learn new things! At the same time I wish he could stay at the stage he is in forever!

He loves to cuddle and I LOVE cuddling him! I have hit the cuddling JACKPOT!! I never knew how much I was capable of loving till I held my sweet Toa for the first time! Not only has my love for my sweet boy been amazing to me and unmeasurable, my love for my sweet husband has multiplied 100 fold as well. I am so grateful for him and for the sweet baby that he gave me. I am grateful for his love and support as well as his willingness to do all that he can to help raise this sweet baby to be a righteous and faithful son of God. I love watching Alofa rock Toa and sing to him in his native Samoan language! Alofa is an outstanding and AMAZING daddy and husband!!

Toa's first bath. He LOVES his baths!! He splashes and kicks his legs! Bath time is such a fun time for us and I look forward to it!!

Even from the first time I gave him a bath he spotted the toy on the side and grabs onto it every time! Such a cute and smart little man :)

Here he is trying to eat his towel after his bath! This little man is ALWAYS hungry!!

And here is our handsome little man after his first bath at home!

We went up to Idaho Falls to go to our friend, Stephanie's, bridal shower. It was Toa's first road trip AND his first play date! Our friend Melissa's daughter, Amy, and Toa met for the first time on this trip! I think they like each other and will grow up to be great friends.


And of Course it was Toa's first Halloween! It was pretty uneventful as we just stayed home because he was still pretty young. But we did get him his "first Halloween" outfit and he looked so dang cute in it!
Toa trying to make a scary face for his first Halloween :)

Mama and Toa on his first Halloween! I sure do love my little man!!

Cam and Toa on Halloween! Cam thinks Toa is pretty cool. Toa looks like he doesn't know what to think! I love it when Cam says Toa's name! It is sooo cute!!

This first month has been such an exciting month where I have learned and grown sooo much!! We look forward to many more AMAZING months as we watch our little man grow and learn as well!!

Toa at One Month old

Here is our sweet little boy when he was a new born baby

7 lbs 8 oz

21 inches long

And here he is at one month

11 lbs 2 oz

22 inches long

He is in the 75th percentile for weight and head circumference

50th percentile for length

He's our healthy, growing Mr. Man

What a wonderful month it has been!! Alofa and I have LOVED having this sweet boy in our home and ENJOYED the spirit that he brings into our family! He is growing so fast, getting stronger, CUTER and funnier everyday! He is starting to find his voice and makes the cutest noises all of the time! He can hold his head up and look around. He is soo curious and is always wanting to see what is going on. He LOVES his food!! My word, this boy loves his food!! He gets MAD if he doesn't get it right when he wants it. He is such a happy boy and is starting to smile at his parents. Melts our hearts EVERY TIME! What a blessing it has been to watch him grow the past month, to care for him and love him more than words could ever express!

I love my sweet Toa tot!!

Super Scary!!

Toa, Alofa and I have had a rough few days! It got pretty scary for me, and not because it is almost Halloween either. Toa normally poops 2 to 3 times a day so on Tuesday I started to get a little worried since he hadn't pooped since early Tuesday morning. By Wednesday I started to look for ways to help him poop since I noticed that his belly was getting big and hard. I knew he was constipated. I tried rubbing his belly, that didn't work. By 8 p.m that night Toa was in alot of pain and was crying a ton! He actually didn't stop crying till Thursday around noon when my Aunt Karen brought over some Karo syrup to put in his bottle to help him poop. That didn't work either. I talked to the Dr. and they recommended that he try some watered down prune juice. Didn't work either. Then a pharmacist recommended that we put 1/2 of a suppository in and that would do the trick. I only put 1/4 of one in just to make sure that it was safe for him. He pooped about 2 mins later and he pooped ALOT!! I was soooo relieved! I have never been so happy for him to make a MESS as I was at that time!! A little while later, I was feeding him and noticed that his soft spot on the top of his head had sunken in. I FREAKED out!! I started bawling and almost passed out! I had never been so scared in my whole life! Alofa and I took him to the emergency room and I asked the nurse if we needed to check him in or if I was just over reacting. I knew that he was dehydrated and that was why his soft spot had sunk in but I wasn't sure if it was a SERIOUS problem and if he needed to be checked in the E.R. I wanted to be safe instead of sorry though. She recommended that we check him in and so we did. They rehydrated him and took x-rays of his tummy to make sure we got all of the hard stool out. The Dr. said that we did a good job. He is fine now and is the sweet, happy baby he always had been before he got his tummy ache. There is nothing worse than not knowing how to help a sweet helpless baby feel better! I am so grateful for his health and that he is doing fine now. I must admit though, I was scared!

Toa Thomas Laulu 10-1-10

The 3 weeks before our little man came were SOOO stressful on me! Alofa had gone back to Samoa three weeks before the due date of 10-8-10 so I was home all alone for the last couple of weeks of this pregnancy. That was hard. I thought that I would be fine since I was 28 years old and had spent 27 of those years single. I was wrong! Very wrong! I guess in the past year of being married I actually started to become dependent on my husband :) I felt like I could not live without him while he was gone and wondered how I ever did it before he came. Right before he left he gave me a blessing and I just sobbed! He has so much faith and knew that everything would be just fine. My faith wavered at times. I wasn't so sure and I was super scared. Faith and fear can not abide in the same heart at the same time. Alofa's heart was full of faith, my heart was full of fear. Good thing I married such a faithful man! I needed his faith more than ever then! After the blessing I had to go to work and it took everything i had not to cry the whole day! To make things worse, I had an ultrasound the day before Alofa left because the Dr. was afraid that the baby was going to be really big. She called me while at work, after Alofa had left and said that according to the ultrasound, the baby was measuring REALLY big and she wasn't going to let me go clear to my due date. When she said that I started bawling because Alofa was clear across the world and wouldn't be back until

9-28-10. I knew there was NO WAY that I could have this baby alone! I needed him!! I talked to Alofa every night while he was in Samoa and tried not to cry too much because I didn't want him to feel bad. It worked some nights and other nights I cried like a baby to him. I told him about what he Dr. had said and he remained faithful, saying that everything would work out just fine! I went to the Dr. on 9-27-10, the day before Alofa was to come home, and I was dilated to a 2 so she stripped my membranes! I panicked! I was worried Alofa would miss the birth of his son. But he didn't! He got home late Tuesday night and everything was just fine! Thank Heavens for my husband's faith and for tender mercies from above. I think Heavenly Father knew that I couldn't have this baby alone!The night before we were scheduled to go to the hospital we decided to go on one last date as non-parents :) We had a great time and LOVED being in each other's company as we PATIENTLY waited for the next day when we would welcome our son into the world!

Friday, 10-1-10

Alofa driving us to the hospital and super excited about what was going to happen this day!

5:30 a.m. on 10-1-10 on our way to the hospital to have our little man!
When we got to the hospital I was dilated to a 4 and having mild contractions every minute. I didn't even know that I was having contractions because they were so mild. Our little man was well on his way. They started the IVs and hooked me up to all of the monitors.
Alofa giving me a kiss right before it was time to deliver! We were both so excited to meet our son!

Alofa waiting. He was soo funny! I think this was the hardest part for him. He kept saying that if our son was not here soon then he was going to take matters into his own hands... I don't know what he meant by that :)

I got a epidural when I was dilated to a 7. Thank goodness for epidurals!! Heaven sent!

Then it came time to push! I pushed for an hour and 40 mins with NO PROGRESS! I was soo discouraged and wasn't sure I was going to be able to deliver this baby. The Dr. thought it was because he was sooo big, like the ultrasound said he was, and couldn't fit. They were getting me ready to go in for a C-Section when a specialist came in, did an ultrasound and saw that his face wasn't facing the right way. They turned him and not even 10 mins later our little man was here! He had the cord wrapped around his neck two times pretty tightly but everything else was perfect and he was healthy, safe and just fine! What a relief! I did NOT want a C-Section.

When he came out and we saw that he was just a little man we were all shocked!! According the ultrasound he was supposed to be a 10lb baby. But he wasn't :) he was a healthy 7 lbs. 8 oz. 21 inches long baby boy born at 7:40 p.m. on 10-1-10

Alofa got to cut the cord and he started crying, the most glorious sound I have ever heard!! They laid him on my tummy, he looked at me and I looked at him. He yawned and then stopped crying and I started!!! I can not even put into words the feelings and thoughts of this experience!

AMAZING!

So proud of my little Toa

Toa with Dr. Christensen, our Dr. She is wonderful!

Here he is!

Getting all inked up for his footprints

I can not even tell you how happy I was to hold our little man! He is PERFECT and so handsome!! This was the most spiritual experience I have ever had in my life thus far! I could not stop crying after I saw him and held him for the first time!

The very first picture of our little family

Alofa is such a GREAT daddy!! He wanted to hold his son all night! Sooo sweet!

Me and my little man!! I can not even express how much I love him!

The proud daddy and his son

Happy Year Anniversay!!!

One year ago today, August 22nd 2009, I made the very best decision I have ever made in my life and married my best friend for time and all eternity. I could not have picked a better companion, I don't think one exists, to help me through some of the difficult times and enjoy the best of times with. He truly is the perfect man for me and makes me laugh out loud every single day! I am the luckiest lady alive to be married to Alofaaga Laulu!!

Some of the things that we have been able to accomplish together this past year and why I love Alofa soooo much:
I started my second & last year of grad school just 2 days after we were married. What a challenge. With that last year of grad school came working full time, internship, preparation for comps, oral exams and graduation. I was a WRECK!! If Alofa could handle and put up with me through that, then he can handle ANYTHING!!! He never once complained about my frequent absence. He never once complained about not having a hot meal on the table for dinner or our house not being 100% tidy and clean. He supported me through it all and picked up my slack. I can't remember how many times I came home from school/work/internship and found a hot meal on the table with the clothes washed, folded and put away. I honestly don't think I could have made it through the last year of grad school without my husband to encourage me and support me. When I would come home in tears, saying I wanted to quit or give up on getting my degree because I was not sure I would be able to do it, he would just hold me, tell me that he knew I could do it and that I was good at what I do and very smart. That is all I needed. I know I couldn't have done it without my Alofa!

Alofa has a very laid back personality and almost nothing stresses him out. I, on the other hand, am very up tight and stress out about everything. For this reason we make the PERFECT couple. When I start to go into my "stress out" mode, he stops me and asks what good stressing out is gonna do. He is soo right! He has been the one to keep the sanity in our home and has helped me not to get too worked up over things that I have no control over.

He is VERY funny and keeps the mood in our house very positive and light. I am soo thankful for that! I have very RARELY seen him get mad, almost NEVER happens! He is always singing, sometimes in English and sometimes in Samoan. I laugh EVERY TIME he sings in English because he makes up his own words to the songs, and most of the time it makes NO SENSE! It's sooo funny!! I love coming home to Alofa every night. I honestly do not know how I lived without him!

Alofa is one of the hardest workers I know. He busts his bottom all day at work then he comes home and does what he needs to do around the house. This is one of my most favorite qualities about him. I know that he will always take care of our family.

He has done the dishes EVERYDAY since we got married. I thought this might be something that would fade after a couple of days or weeks of marriage but he is still going strong. I have not touched a dish since a year ago today! I am so thankful for his willingness to help around the house!

I don't know what it is about Alofa but EVERY single little kid I have ever met adores Alofa. He just has this spirit about him that kids are drawn to. Just the other night, while we were at Luau practice, all of the little boys were playing soccer. Alofa got up and started playing soccer with them. He loves to be around little kids and is sooo good with them. This is just one of the reasons why I KNOW that Alofa is going to be such a GREAT daddy!! There was this little girl, about 4 years old, selling lemonade out on the corner in front of our house yesterday. Alofa went over and asked how much it was. She said, "free, it you want some." Alofa bought a cup from her and gave her a dollar bill for the lemonade. He has such a good, big heart!! He is such a great example of being good and kind to everyone!

This is Alofa reading a story to Stanzie, our friend's little girl. It was one of the cutest things I have ever seen. Perfect example of why Alofa is gonna be a GREAT daddy!

Alofa LOVES food!! He is not hard to please either. All I have to do to keep him happy is keep his tummy full. And if he gets fish, taro, lamb or stake and rice it's even better. He could eat those same things every night and be just as happy as can be.

I could go on and on as to why I am so lucky that Alofa is my eternal companion, but I won't :) The last thing I want to end with is that Alofa is ALWAYS so sensitive and attends to my needs and wants. I have never felt so important or so loved in all of my life. He makes sure that I am comfortable and happy all of the time. If I want or need something he jumps to it and makes sure it gets taken care of. He treats me like a queen. He takes into consideration my thoughts and my feelings before he does anything. He is the perfect man and husband for me. I used to dream about what my future husband and family would be like. I thought the husband and family in my dreams were the perfect husband and family, but, as always, my husband and family in reality is WAY better than I could have ever dreamt. I thank my Father in Heaven everyday for Alofaaga Laulu. I am so thankful that Heavenly Father is allowing us to grow our eternal family here on earth. This, having a baby, is the greatest accomplishment that Alofa and I have achieved thus far. I can't wait for our little man to get here and I hope and pray he is JUST LIKE HIS SWEET DADDY!!

I am so grateful that families can be together forever. I look forward to the rest of my life and eternity with my sweet husband AND our future children.