Lea Mary Jacquelyn Lyon

Lea Mary Jacquelyn Lyon graced us with her presence on June 28th, 2011. That day was the only day of the week that was NOT a good day for her birth. John had an Office Depot district training in the morning and a large movie premier training event in the evening for which he still had a lot of preparation to do. Her arrival was nothing short of exciting. That morning John was preparing to get out the door for the training. As he was busily loading the last few things, Paige informed him that she was having contractions. "How far apart are they," he asked. "Twelve minutes" she responds. "Call me when they are five minutes apart. And call your mom." With that, John left feeling uncertain how things would turn out that day with so much riding on him. Yet, he did not want to miss the birth of his child!

John was a little distracted during his training, and apologized to all in attendance that he would have his cell phone on and would be possibly leaving in the middle. They all understood and thought he was crazy to be there when Paige was having contractions. Paige sent John contraction updates via text message. After the hour-long training John left the meeting. Feeling he had a little time he quickly went next door to purchase some last minute prizes for that evening's training. About 5 minutes after leaving the Office Depot and entering Best Buy Paige called to inform John she and her mom were heading to the hospital. Some neighbors were kind enough to watch Eliza and Julia on short notice.

John quickly left Best Buy and raced home to grab the camera and headed up to McKay Dee Hospital. Paige was settled when John arrived. Jacqui then left to pick up the kids and take them home where she would watch them the rest of the evening. Dr. Gary Silver, a family friend of John's parents, was Paige's Anesthesiologist. He did a really nice job with getting her comfortable.

Lea was born at 3:12pm. She weighed 6lbs 11oz. and 19.5 inches long. She is a beautiful little brunette! John is so excited that we have a little brunette in the family.

After 2 hours in the hospital John had to leave to go back to work. The training event was at the Century Theater in Salt Lake City for the movie premiere of Transformers. He had to work quickly to get all his things together for the training and get down there by 7pm. The event started at 8 with the training portion at10pm and the movie at midnight. Once the movie started John was ready to come home and go bed. It would be a long few days with John alone with the kids trying to keep them together while scheduling visits to the hospital in between.

The girls love their little sister. Julia is head over heels for the baby. She is just so excited every time she sees her. Eliza loves her too, but was not too warm to her in the beginning. She was struggling enough sharing time and attention with Jules, now there is one more body to get Mom's attention.

Through the last 9 months Lea has filled our home with much joy. She has an adorable face and an infectious smile that fills the room with joy. Eliza has always been an intense child. Jules was our most mellow child. Lea is our happiest child. When she sits in her excer-saucer she squawks at us to get attention. Lucky for her she has two parents and two sisters who adore her. Julia has always loved Lea. She gets so excited to see her each day that most morning she wakes her up by getting in her crib and cuddling her. Eliza has warmed up to her. Over the last 3 months she really loves spending time with her and has become a good little helper for her parents. She now feeds Lea bottles and gets her binkis when we are in the car. Eliza is always trying to carry her little sister around the house – much to her parents’ disapproval.

Lea loves being doted on. She is fully capable of holding her own bottle, yet she refuses to hold it herself. She just enjoys being fed. Lately she has been sitting up while drinking from a bottle. Her favorite food is puffs, little cereal-like treats that are very light and quickly melt in her mouth. When we pour puffs on her food tray she quickly grabs s hand full before we can even finish pouring them on the tray. It reminds us of the game hungry-hungry hippos!

Night time has always been a challenge with little children. Lea has been the easiest baby. She sleeps the best of the three. It’s nice we have a pretty good sleeper. She allows us to get some rest at night!

At 7 months Lea was showing us signs of being ready to crawl. She would get up on her hands and knees and rock back and forth. It was quite comical to put her down to bed and check on her with the baby video monitor and see her rocking back and forth rather than sleeping. By 8 months she was ready and began her crawling. Within 3-4 days she was tooling around the house exploring her new world. Her desire to be held decreased once she began crawling. But she is still a very sweet and enjoys being held and grabbing and pulling hair.

We love this little sweet chunky child. We are so fortunate to have her part of our eternal family.