Lisa Leonard

Matty dons his fireman outfit (which he refused to wear on halloween, but has been wearing all morning!)

David lays on his tummy and backs himself between two boxes, a bench and a backpack. He thought it was HILARIOUS!

Lauren (our babysitter) saved my skin this week by helping out with a sick David

I model some potential wedding jewelry for a friend. I make the photo sepia to give myself a tan

We are off to Fresno today. We had a death in the family and Steve is going to do the graveside service. I’ll still be checking my emails and I’ll try to post on the blog. What’s your plan for the weekend?

Uncle Matt snuggles David

David gets his first bath at home.

Auntie Ellen gives David a tube feeding.
So we fled from the hospital with our little David–having no idea what the future held or how to best care for this tiny guy. The day we brought him home, there was already a baby shower planned for us with some of our family and friends. We went and brought David with us. I attempted my first tube feeding outside the hospital during the shower. My hands were shaking and I was sweating. I was sure we would somehow pull out the tube or feed him too much. There seemed to be so many questions. But we were relieved to have our family together and begin our lives again. As we pulled away from the shower, David was in the back seat making a strange gurgling sound. We screetched over to the side of the road, sure that he was choking to death, but no he seemed completely content. Why do the make newborns sit in the backseat facing backward?!

We brought David home and placed him in a pack and play we had set up in our bedroom. I bundled him in a blanket and felt certain he wouldn’t make it through the night. I set my alarm clock to wake up in two hours and do another tube feeding. When my alarm went off, I raced over to his bed, amazed that he was still breathing. I was so groggy and just generally exhausted. I kept prepared breast milk mixed with formula in the fridge and would pour an ounce into his syringe. The connector between the syringe and David’s tube was a little loose and frequently his milk would go spilling everywhere. The first few nights went on like this. During the days, we had family and friends visit and help out. Steve went back to work, but would come home for lunch. We ate out sometimes and David would tag along. I got a pedicure. We had a home nurse who checked in everyday. I pumped six to eight times a day, but since my milk never really came in, after twenty minutes of pumping I would have 1-2 ounces. I had accepted a new job as a full inclusion specialist in the local school district. Live was getting back to a state of normal little by little, but I felt so overwhelmed thinking about going back to work–even for just two days a week!

When David was two weeks old we were having dinner with Chrissie and Matt and he had a fever I just couldn’t get down. We finally decided to take him to the ER in Mission Viejo. Of course they did all kinds of test, including a spinal tap. Then they admitted him. I guess when doctors look at a 4.5 lbs baby with two fingers and a fever, they usually decide to play it safe. I was so discouraged, but it ended up being a great stay. We had our own room with a twin bed for me to sleep in. The staff was kind and caring. Their were volunteers who walked around with drinks, cookies and magazines. I kinda felt like I was staying at the Holiday Inn or something! During David’s stay we got a phone call from Steve’s mom telling us that Dave (Steve’s dad) had been in a serious trucking accident. He was going to be OK but would have to be in the hospital for a while. So, when David was released after a couple days, we headed up to Sacramento. We stayed with some of Steve’s old friends and felt so blessed by our time with them. It was good to get out and live life, even in the midst of adjusting to David’s challenges. We were getting to know him and we were falling in love.

Thanks for taking a look at my handmade jewelry! See the end of this post for directions on placing an order and answers to frequently asked questions!

teenie tiny initials. sterling pea-size initials are strung on 18″ sterling chain with a freshwater pearl. so darn cute! two charms standard $44,   add’l charms $10

The Open Circle. A favorite! Has a delicate, organic feeling. Made of pure silver circle (.999, sterling is .925), the pendant measure about 1 1/4″ Choose names or a special phrase. Strung on 18″ sterling ball chain. $48

Mini Open Circle Necklace. So sweet and so simple. Two small open circles (3/4″) are handstamped with words of your choice and strung on an 18″ sterling ball chain with freshwater pearl detail. These circles are also pure silver (a higher quality than sterling). $48, additional open circles, $12

Single Tag Necklace. Each tag is hand wrought. Choose a word or name that carries meaning to you. Maximum 9 characters. Strung on 18″ sterling ball chain with a freshwater pearl. $40, add $18 for each additional tag.

Oval Monogram Necklace. This is not your grandma’s monogram…it’s a fun, fresh take on a classic look. Your last initial sits center stage with your first initial on the left and your middle initial on the right. My formal name is Elisabeth Nancy Leonard, so E L N. I hammered the oval a bit to give it a rustic look. Strung on an 18″ ball chain, $44

True Love Hearts. Now your husband will never forget your anniversay again! Two delicate sterling hearts (about 3/4″ each) are stamped with “True Love” and your wedding date. Or get creative with kids names and birthdates. 5-6 characters max. So, so sweet!! Strung on an 18″ chain $48

The Original Necklace! A 1 1/4 inch sterling circle (so classic!) with up to four names. 1-2 names curved around edge, 3-4 names, each name on a separate line. The perfect gift for you or a friend! Strung on an 18″ sterling ball chain with a freshwater pearl. $44

Petite Original Circle. This necklace has a smaller disc (3/4″) with your kiddo’s first and middle names. Add a petite circle for each kiddo. This is also the perefct gift for a little girl. Comes strung on an 18″ sterling ball chain with freshwater pearl detail. Please request 14″ chain for a little girl. One of my best sellers! $40, additional discs $14

Concentric Circles Necklace. Two circles layered together with words of your choice, combines the original and the petite original. Larger circle is 1 1/4″, smaller circle is 7/8″ Strung on 18″ sterling ball chain. $54

Deluxe Rectangle Necklace. A 1 1/2″ rectangle is strung from a 17″ large link chain and a side freshwater pearl. This piece can fit up to six names! Unique and beautiful!! $52

The Classic Rectangle. Same pendant as the above necklace, but strung from an 18″ sterling ball chain with a finial stamp at the bottom. This piece can fit up to six names! $44

Dog Tag Necklace. This piece takes the single tag to a different level. Each tag is hand wrought and stamped with the word of your choice. It is strung on 26″ link chain so it hits at the bust, and a sweet freshwater pearl for detail. $58 (includes two tags), additional tags $20

Sterling Cuff. This is a great, easy piece that slips on. The cuff can accomodate up to 30 characters, so it’s great for a longer phrase or a bunch of names. Each letter and space count as one character. A freshwater pearl dangles from the end of the cuff. $72

Freshwater Pearl Earrings. These sweet freshwater pearl earrings are a perfect match for the sterling stamped jewelry. Just your basic, classic pearls, that go with everything! Strung on sterling fishhook earwires, they dangle about 1/2″. $16

Polish Cloth. A nifty silver polish cloth to keep your necklace shiny. They last a long time, even when the cloth gets dingy! $5

The keychain. A great keepsake for wedding attendants or the man in your life! Rectangle measures 1 1/2″ $32

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If you would like to place an order…

*Email me at lisaleonard@integrity.com with the name(s) of the pieces you would like to purchase. Indicate what words or names you would like to have stamped on the piece.

*I will send you a paypal link for the amount of your jewelry + $7 for S/H. The paypal invoice will confirm the specific details of your order.

*Your order will ship about 10 business days after payment is received.

*Want to get creative? Email me with your ideas and we can put our head together!

Love this poem!

Billy Collins

The other day I was ricocheting slowly
off the blue walls of this room,
moving as if underwater from typewriter to piano,
from bookshelf to an envelope lying on the floor,
when I found myself in the L section of the dictionary
where my eyes fell upon the word lanyard.

No cookie nibbled by a French novelist
could send one into the past more suddenly—
a past where I sat at a workbench at a camp
by a deep Adirondack lake
learning how to braid long thin plastic strips
into a lanyard, a gift for my mother.

I had never seen anyone use a lanyard
or wear one, if that’s what you did with them,
but that did not keep me from crossing
strand over strand again and again
until I had made a boxy
red and white lanyard for my mother.

She gave me life and milk from her breasts,
and I gave her a lanyard.
She nursed me in many a sick room,
lifted spoons of medicine to my lips,
laid cold face-cloths on my forehead,
and then led me out into the airy light

and taught me to walk and swim,
and I, in turn, presented her with a lanyard.
Here are thousands of meals, she said,
and here is clothing and a good education.
And here is your lanyard, I replied,
which I made with a little help from a counselor.

Here is a breathing body and a beating heart,
strong legs, bones and teeth,
and two clear eyes to read the world, she whispered,
and here, I said, is the lanyard I made at camp.
And here, I wish to say to her now,
is a smaller gift—not the worn truth

that you can never repay your mother,
but the rueful admission that when she took
the two-tone lanyard from my hand,
I was as sure as a boy could be
that this useless, worthless thing I wove
out of boredom would be enough to make us even.

aren’t these sweet? I am finishing up the bulk of my mother’s day orders. i’ve had so many–over 150, i think. which is insane and such a blessing. thanks to all of you who support my business. i truly appreciate it! are you ready for mother’s day?!

today kicks off teacher appreciation week. we have a couple fun things planned for david & matty’s teachers. it’s easy to celebrate this week because i am so grateful for the influence these women have had in my children’s lives! i don’t believe david would be were he is today without all the teachers and therapists who have spent hundreds of hours working with him. his current preschool teachers are AMAZING, working with his 1:1 consistently from the moment he arrives until the moment i pick him up. matty has made great progress with his speech and social skills in the last couple months thanks to his preschool teacher and speech therapist. their sunday school teachers are at church each week consistently and sacrifice their time and energy to teach my kids so i can go to church. most of all, each of these teachers LOVE my kids and my kids love them right back! i can think of special teachers who have influenced my life all the way from first grade though college. so a special thanks to all you teachers out there!! make sure you do something special for your kid’s teacher this week!

here’s a few pics from yesterday. david casually walking into the garage while i was working on stamped jewelry. it is still so amazing to see him move this way. lately he is holding on to walls more. today he took 6 solid steps at school. incredible!! we may have a future rock star on our hands with matthias. steve put a beatles cd on and we were all dancing and being silly. he grabbed his guitar and started to move. look at that passion! also, notice the paint on his butt from preschool.

in other news, it is day 6 of the south beach diet. i have been a faithful follower (although steve would say i’ve cheated b/c i put one tablespoon on low sugar strawberry jam on my cottage cheese this morning at breakfast. a girl’s gotta live a little!). haven’t lost ONE pound!! hmmm…well see if i stick with this regimine if i don’t see any results. i want to be healthy and all but, c’mon!! i haven’t had a coke in a week!

steve got me a new digital camera today for an early mother’s day gift. so excited! it’s a little silver one to keep in my purse and he got it for a steal from target. it was on clearance! so i’m sure he’ll spend the extra money he saved on a gift certificate for a pedicure or a nice dinner out, right?!!

looking forward to fun with the girls this weekend at the women’s conference. i am doing a bracelet workshop tomorrow during one of the breaks. we are just using elastic to keep it simple, but i am bringing all kinds of fun, yummy beads! i’ll ty to take some pics with my new camera. what are your plans for this weekend??

After I held David for a few moments, he was wisked off to the Neo-natal Intensive Care Unit. Steve and I had already decided that Steve should go and stay with David during his first hours of life. Steve followed the doctors and staff to the NICU, but quickly returned to me, saying he just couldn’t deal with all the cords, exams, and medical staff. We were both completely overwhelmed.

I was transferred to postpartum and once I rested a bit, we headed over to see David. I think I was in a wheelchair, but I can’t remember for sure. There he was, this tiny little thing, laying in an isolette. I so badly wanted to dress him up in one of the cute outfits we had bought for him and take him home with me. Why was this happening? What was I supposed to do with this little baby who had so many needs. I felt completely inadequate. Where was the blond haired, blue-eyed boy we had hoped for? The nurse asked if I wanted to hold him, so while she tried to keep the cords from becoming tangled, she gently placed him in my lap. The NICU is an awful place. There are tons of beeps and alarms that go off randomly and nobody even acknowledges them. There are hurting parents and small babies and staff who would rather sit and cross-stitch than hold a little one. At least, that’s how I felt about our experience. There was a very sweet nurse on duty the first night who let one of our good friends sneak in and take some photos of David. Those photos we precious to me during our time apart the first few weeks and still capture the intensity of the first hours of David’s life.

On the second day of David’s life, we looked for neo-natalogist to talk with. We wanted to know if they had any information or answers for us. We literally felt like we were being avoided. Finally, we cornered a doctor and asked him if he could give us an update. He (in a thick accent) told us our son had Cornelia de Lange Syndrome and would be severely retarded. We pressed for more information. I don’t remember his exact words, but he gave us the impression that David would be a vegetable and would never walk, talk, see or hear. We went back to my hospital room and sobbed. I remember thinking, both of us can’t lose it. One of us has got to pull it together. But at moments like these, you can’t pull yourself together, you just have to be in the middle of the muck and mess. I called my sister and asked her to look up the syndrome online and print out any information she could find.

Overall the NICU was a very frustrating experience. We were new parents and felt completely ignored and condescended. I overheard one nurse telling another that David had a heart defect. No one had informed us of this, and I was irrate! We frequently had staff telling us to put David back in his isolette and let him rest. They felt we were overstimulating him by cuddling and talking to him. We didn’t know how much time we should be spending at the NICU each day. We wanted to be with David as much as possible but we were exhausted emotionally, plus, I had just given birth. Our friends, Tim and Susie had just had a NICU experience with their son (and Susie is a psychologist) and they gave us some great advice. They recommended holding, touching and talking to David as much as we could to help him bond. They encouraged not to take a backseat to the hospital staff. They reminded us that we were the PARENTS. We stopped being pushed around and came up with a plan. When we got to the NICU in the morning, we told the staff how long we planned on staying and what we intended to do with David (holding, changing, reading and feeding) during that time. We told them we wanted regular updates on any tests that were run and any new medical information that they had in his file.

During this crazy time, there were some real blessings. We had lots of friends and family come to visit David. His isolette was near the front window so we could show him off easily. We decided very early on not to try to hide his hand, but to make a point of showing people, talking about it and touching it. Our church family brought us delicious dinners every night and the highlight of everyday was checking the mail. Some days we would get as many as 20 cards from people who were thinking of us and praying for us. Many people we didn’t even know reached out to let us know the cared.

After two weeks (which felt like two years) we were ready to take him home and get on with life, no matter what that might hold for us. They kept putting us off and telling us there was no hurry. They wanted to place a g-tube (for feeding) before he left the hospital and the surgeon wasn’t available until the following Tuesday. That was over a week away! I asked for the surgeon’s number and called him up myself. He agreed to preform the procedure a couple days later. Three days after that we packed David up in his carseat and ran for the door. I kept thinking they were going to change their minds and want to keep him for a few more days. I felt like I was kidnapping my own child.
Flash forward four years. This is David with the same Curious George. What a delight he is to us!

Both the boys are doing great. These photos are from a recent trip to Art’s Cyclery. While Steve shopped around and dreamt about having all the things he wants, I tried to entertain the boys!!

Matthias is doing well in speech therapy. We have already seen a marked improvement. His therapist is great and he loves going to see her and play games. She thinks in a few months he will catch up completely. We have been really working on listening. Sometimes he completely ignores our directions and it drives us crazy. Consistency is key, and so hard!

David is a little sweetie. Thriving in school and eating lots of vanilla pudding. Where does he put all those calories? He is starting to let go of the furniture a little or take a few steps toward me when I coax him. So exciting!!

Tomorrow I’ll post my third chapter of David’s story. This might end up being a twenty chapter story…there is so much to tell! Thanks for all your encouraging words. I really appreciate those of you who take the time to read the blog!

mine is going well! very productive, so far. and i’m feeling a lot less hungry here on day number three of the south beach diet. we dropped matty off at school and then david and i busted through a bunch of errands (and a little coffee stop with a friend). i made this ‘live simply’ necklace yesterday with the new open circle component. i hammered the back side to give it a more distressed appearance. i’m considering practical ways to live more simply–and to give to others. I’m thinking about clearing out my wardrobe and donating to a shelter or thrift store. i’m looking for a place to donate jewelry. perhaps a program that helps women dress and prepare for job interviews. what are some practical ways to live simply? check out brianna’s blog (heldt family) for her thoughts, too! off to straighten up the house a bit before i have to get the boys from school.