obsessed part 2

yesterday we had the missionaries over for dinner. dane was getting tired and wanting to be held, so tommy was standing up, bouncing him and holding him facing out. after a few minutes i looked over and dane had just quietly fallen asleep with his head plopped sideways on tommy's arm. it was SO CUTE, let me tell you. and after the missionaries had left, tommy said, "i kept expecting the missionaries to say something about how cute dane was, especially when he fell asleep like that. . . . but then i realized that they didn't care."

and i laughed about that the rest of the night . . . because so did i! how could ANYONE not think that was the cutest thing they'd ever seen? but of course, they're just 19-year-old boys and totally not that interested in our baby. (unfathomable!)

it's kind of like what one of our friends told us--she said, "it's a good thing i'm married to chris because he's the only other person in the world who's as obsessed with our baby as i am. anyone else would get tired of me after a few hours."

obsessed

i remember feeling like this with baby cole. i really do. i was totally obsessed with all the babies in our family. i always wanted to hold him, i always wanted to be the one playing with him, when anyone else was holding him i wanted to be talking to him and having him smile at me. baby cole was on my mind all. the. time.

it's all back. i am obsessed. i spend all day with this boy and most of the time, i still want to be the one holding him at the end of the night. (but i do share him with tommy, don't you worry.) i love talking to him and seeing how happy my face makes him. he is the cutest and best and most wonderful baby and yes, i am that crazy mom. I AM CRAZY AND I DON'T EVEN CARE.

i used to wonder if i would get bored with just an infant at home--what do you DO with a baby all day long? i'll tell you--you feed them and rock them and talk to them while they're sitting on your legs for hours on end. you change their diaper and sing songs to them and try endlessly to get them to nap. sometimes you get to exercise, but sometimes they get bored and want you to play with them before you're done. and it's really, really fun.

he's getting so big--3 months this week!--and i don't even know how to handle it. he's sucking on his hands and cooing constantly and laughing uncontrollably (more and more every day) and smiling every time i make eye contact with him (except for when there's a camera around) and lifting his legs up so that he rolls over onto his side and gets stuck there. why didn't anyone tell me that time would go so fast? (oh yeah, they did.)

THIS is the face he makes whenever there's a camera around. he stares at it trying to figure out what it is. . . . he's concentrating too hard to be cheerful.

LOOK at those chunky chunky legs.

i swear i take pictures with the camera and not just my phone. . . . they're just way more work to upload so i never do. i will eventually. i just can't help loving on this boy.

life lately

i'm trying really hard to not COMPLETELY fall off of the blogging wagon. i haven't written in my journal for a month-ish (!) and i don't want to miss everything that's going on in our lives right now. not that we're doing anything that exciting, unless you count constantly trying to make dane smile and laugh exciting (which we do). but here are a few things that have gone on around these parts lately:

• a few days ago, i was driving down the highway near our house, talking to tommy on the phone and driving to the grocery store, and i glanced up and there was a GIANT SPIDER on the window--on the INSIDE of the window--about six inches away from my face. you can imagine the chaos that ensued--there was some screaming and hyperventilating. (we're lucky i didn't crash.) but i managed to pull over, grab a piece of paper, and kill that spider, saving my life and dane's. 
• one of our christmas presents tommy and i are giving to ourselves is a pair of sneakers for each of us. we ordered them off of zappos (on sale!) and i've now had to order FOUR DIFFERENT PAIRS because each time the shoes are STILL TOO SMALL. there are no words. if this most recent pair of shoes (mens 11.5) are still too small, i'm giving up and only wearing slippers for the rest of my life!
• we've been on a baking binge lately--three or four different recipes of cookies, the leininger traditional christmas almond poppyseed bread, cream puffs, and more. also, tommy made some awesome thai curry for dinner on wednesday. i think it's hilarious when people act all amazed when tommy's made something (which, since i'm nursing a lot of the time while dinner is being made, has happened really frequently lately) because um, he's just as good of a cook as i am. come on people.
• dane has decided to give up on napping unless it's in my arms or the swing, or sometimes in his carseat when we're on a walk or in the car. this is a fun game for both of us--but it may have been a contributing factor to the eleven hours he slept straight last night! although of course i didn't get to sleep until after midnight and then woke up at 5:30 wondering why i hadn't been woken up yet, and couldn't get back to sleep. he's also recently grown out of his 0-3 month clothes and is now snuggling up in the 3-6 month outfits . . . what a big guy!
• we leave for our three-week trip to utah and california in a week and a half! dane's first plane trip, which we are semi-nervous for. it's basically going to be a full day of flying (two stops in the middle) so we'll see how he handles it (and how we handle it). but oh, man, we are excited to see our families and for them to see dane.
• for the last three christmases we've been married, we've only had a few christmas decorations, namely two nativity sets we'd gotten as gifts and two cheap red stockings we'd gotten at the dollar store in provo. but this year i splurged and bought a four-foot tall pre-lit christmas tree where we could put our few ornaments we've collected and under which we could keep our few presents we've already gotten. i love the little christmas corner we have in our apartment now.

having a christmas tree (albeit a mini one) has prompted us to take lots of pictures like this:

if dane had his way (which he basically does) we'd just rock like this in our rocking chair all day long, him sucking on his hands and me smelling his hair (which really, we basically do).

he's got a good life. i've got a good life. we've all got a good life around these parts. 

ironic

like all self-respecting babies and comedians, dane has an impeccable sense of irony and timing.

for example:

he waits until after i shower and get dressed in the morning, and after he is snuggled up to me eating, and then has a giant diaper explosion that gets all over both of us.
he refuses to stay asleep when i am trying to put him down for a nap, and he refuses to wake up and finish eating when he falls asleep mid-feeding at 4 a.m.
he knows when we're doing laundry--WITHOUT FAIL, he poops all over his outfit about 15 minutes after i throw in a load.

and usually, he will only smile when i'm NOT pointing the camera at his face. but sometimes we are lucky and fool him so we get a quick picture like this:

okay, so really, he is the world's best baby. but he does like to play these silly tricks on me sometimes. we just laugh and laugh about how silly he is all day long.