Guy Smiley

Our little friend has been smiling a lot lately. Nicole got these great pictures of him today. It's nice to know that beyond all the crying and fussing and not sleeping through the night, he is still a happy baby. And now we have the proof to show it.

Oliver is now 10 weeks old. At some point we are supposed to start saying 2 1/2 months instead of weeks, but I don't know when. Someone told me recently that you start saying months based on their clothes size. But if I said Oliver was 3 to 6 months old, you would be left guessing what the crap that means. And don't even get me started on the 2T, 3T, 4T sizes. I don't even know what they mean.

Another person told me to use weeks up to one year and months from that point until they are two. But I don't think it is right to force people to do that much math. If someone asks how old your baby is and you say 44 weeks, they should no longer be under the obligation to care how old your baby is.

Oliver is really into boots right now.

The Day I Blew Up

A lot of people have seen my charred body on our "pictures" link and have been asking a lot of questions about what happened. For some reason it is very difficult to explain in e-mails, so I drew a picture and will try to explain using it as a reference.

In the early morning on September 25th, Corwin and I were at work with our Dad in Fontana, California. We were all in the rear electrical room at Wal*Mart where I was working on a 480 volt panel. Suddenly everything around me turned white and became very loud (eerily similar to when the nuclear bomb went off on last weeks "24" episode).

In the back of this panel were three buss bars, each of which carries 277 volts of electricity. Something, probably made of metal, crossed over the bottom of the two left most buss bars and caused an arch. The same concept is used to super heat metal when arch-welding, but obviously that is more controlled. I was on my knees when it happened putting me level with the explosion.

Normally this arch would cause a breaker to shut off the power running to these three buss bars, but something malfunctioned and the searing heat kept shooting at me for about 5 to 8 seconds. My dad, seeing the flames had just about stopped, jumped in front of the panel and pulled me out of the way. Corwin avoided the blast. I thought I was toast (get it, toast?).

I did not get electrocuted like Frank Grimes did. That would have killed me like it killed him. Poor Grimey, as he liked to be called.

When My eyesight came too, I saw that the burns weren't as bad as I imagined. In fact I got up and walked around for a few minutes while my Dad took care of the panel. When the ambulance got there, they introduced me to this stuff called morphine and the next 10 days were a blur.

For those who haven't had the stomach to look at the pictures, I had 1st, 2nd and 3rd degree burns on my left arm from my wrist to my elbow and on my left leg from my ankle to my knee. I had 2nd degree burns on my right arm, 1st degree burns from the left side of my face (from the corner of my eye to my ear) and a 2nd degree burn on my ear. I also had 1st and 2nd degree burns on the outside of my right hand and on the lower portion of my right palm. I was holding a drill when it happened, so if you make like you're holding a drill and look at your hand you can see how that happened. This is the least graphic picture.



At some point during my 10 day high, I had skin grafting done in surgery. They took skin from my left thigh and covered the deep burns on my right leg and right arm. Everyone who has seen the grafting, Doctors and regular humans alike, have been very impressed with how good it looks. Most burn victims have to wear what they call compression garments for 12 to 18 months. I wore them for three months.

Most people cringe when they think about the pain associated with 3rd degree burn. But The whole ordeal was not unbearable. That is mostly because they kept me so well medicated at the hospital. I want everyone to know that the pain I experienced was very minimal compared to the other people I met in the burn ward at the hospital.

We appreciate every one's help and concern during this time. Nicole is such a trooper, she was 7 1/2 months pregnant while all of this was going on. She went through quite the ordeal simply trying to get down to California to be with me. We moved into our new house a few days after I got home. My family put a lot of work into painting the house before they helped us move in. It is really nice to have people that close to rely on in these types of situations.

And that's that. I am doing great now. Feel free to see the "pictures" if you don't mind the gore.

The White Ninja

We blessed Oliver a few weeks ago. Nicole's mom was very nice and offered to make his blessing outfit. However, one day when Nicole described it to me, she used the word "feminine" and I freaked out, as I am prone to over react to things. Since then, Nicole's mom has been really nervous about making this outfit. She was working on a second outfit that I thought was going to be perfect for him, but she decided that it didn't look good. Then she found this one at Target in Southern California.

I think Nicole's mom thought it was a negative comment when I said, "He looks like a white Ninja!" All it lacked was the headband and a black belt. To say the least, I absolutely loved it. The blessing went well. Grandpas, Uncles, Great Uncles and Bishops all participated. It was a perfect day. Of course, now the ward knows us as the bearded family since a big percentage of those who participated wore full beards.

Our good friend Kelly McCaleb brought her camera to the after party and got these great pictures. You can see more at our Picassa site (the link is on the right).

This is Olivers cousin Daphne. She is five years old and can't wait to be able to baby sit for us. She will follow Nicole around everywhere waiting for another chance to hold the baby. She is really cute.

This is Nicole's sister Emily. Not much of a resemblance to her sister.

This is mine and Olivers favorite trick, but Mom and Grandma and Grandma and Great Grandma have a borderline heart attack when I do it. So I don't do it that often anymore. Yeah right!

Christmas 2006

It was a great Christmas. Nice and white. Perfect for Oliver's first and for Nicole's family who came up from California. Grandma Dorothy was there too, which is great cause it was her birthday on Christmas day. She got to see her first great grandchild for the first time.

We decided not to get Oliver any presents because he already had so much stuff just from being born. But he still raked it in with the majority of the presents under our tree. It was so nice to have our own house to host our own Christmas morning.

We went to salt lake to see the lights at Temple Square one night. It was as beautiful as ever...and freezing cold.

I am not the only one that is impressed with how good Nicole looks a month after she gave birth.

It's A Baby!

The most recent event for Los LeSueur in the crazy year of 2006, and biggest to date, was the birth of our son Oliver Arden. He was born November 21st, on his Great Grandma Hutchings birthday, at 10:24 pm. He weighed in at 8 lbs. 8 oz. and was 20 3/4 inches long. The labor was...well, easy. At least easier than it looks in the movies. The doctor joked that it went so quick and painless that there was no way it could have been Nicole's first pregnancy....?

Oliver is now 6 weeks old and doing great. He has had some rough periods in his short little life. He has so much hair that every day is a bad hair day. He was fed some hippy, soy based formula for a few days because the doctor thought he could be lactose intolerant. And he is now too big for most of his clothes.

Oliver enjoys staring into light fixtures, playing Zelda with his dad, eating every 3 hours and flailing his limbs around. He has had quite a lot of neck strenght since day one...a lot more than we expected. He can put all of his weight on his legs, but he doesn't enjoy doing it. At his two week check-up he was 75th percentile for weight and 95th percentile for height. The doctor said he was as tall as the average two month old baby.

We tried to pick a middle name that starts with "W" so that his initials would spell "O.W.L." But we couldn't think of a good one. He was given "Arden" after his great great uncle who also happens to be his Grandpa LeSusuer's mission president. But Oliver likes owls. A lot of his clothes have owls on them. We decorated his room in a cowyboy and indian theme, but Nicole refused to let me put up the hugh "dream catcher" with the indian throwing a spear on the front of it. I will go ahead and steal this last comment from my friend Sarah. She stated it so perfectly. "Everyday it's like I'm hanging out with the funniest person that I know. I never knew a little baby could make me laugh so much. We're glad he's in our life."

I'm a Blogster!!!

After looking through a couple of friends' blogs, I decided that it is worth the hassle. That, plus the fact that 2006 was the most eventful year of our lives, we will now joing the world wide blogging family and be posting things from time to time. We are Los LeSueur: Nicole, Dusten and Oliver.