dane and his g-parents

dane's a lucky guy: he got to meet all four of his grandparents before he was six weeks old. and i know that doesn't sound that extraordinary, but it is when you consider that they all live on the other side of the country! my mom came out for the week after he was born, tommy's mom and dad came for his baby blessing, and my dad came for a quick visit after a business trip in cleveland. we've really loved having all of them come, and we can't wait to spend more time with all of them over christmas break.

 dane and his grandma murphy: 3 days old

 dane and his grandma leininger: 1 month old

dane and his grandpa leininger: 5 weeks old

dane and his grandpa murphy: 5 1/2 weeks old (and smiling at him!)

happy halloween!

we've had a pretty low-key halloween around these parts--we don't even get trick-or-treaters. the first year we lived here we even bought some candy for potential trick-or-treaters and ended up having to eat it all ourselves. we learned our lesson. we didn't even buy a pumpkin to carve this year. but we DID make some pumpkin chocolate chip cookies, which are delicious, and we did dress up for a party last night and had two cute costumes for dane. so all in all we feel pretty good about our celebrations.

first off, dane was a pumpkin.

he flirted it up at the party we went to with an older woman: naomi is a full two weeks older than he is. look at his dane's chillaxin' pose. he did turn his face and give her this big smile after this photo.

unfortunately, our costumes didn't coordinate with his--ours are total cop-out costumes that we wore last year: 50s teenagers. but at least we dressed up!

and then tonight dane wore his cool cat costume that his grandma leininger brought out to durham when she visited. the awesome thing about this costume is that it was tommy's costume on his first halloween 27 years ago. but tommy was born in november, so he was approximately ten months older than dane is right now. look at the two of them!

and then he was really cute and smiley when we asked him to.

until he started getting tired... (but oh, look at those cheeks!)

yep, that's it. we're done with this photoshoot.

happy halloween!

12

when we'd talk about pregnancy, i used to joke with my roommates that my biggest fear was that my feet would grow. i'd heard about people whose feet grew a size bigger when they had a baby, and that did not sound great to me. my size-11 feet were already the bane of my existence. (for those of you small-footed friends, nobody sells shoes larger than size 10 except for payless and nordstrom. so basically i'm limited to payless.)

well, i found out yesterday while buying new running shoes that that nightmare came true. my feet are now size 12. almost bigger than that, even.

me: do you sell women's shoes in that size?
saleswoman: ummm, maybe we could special-order them for you? i've never seen any...

on the plus side, tommy and i can officially share shoes!

also, it's a good thing dane is so cute and worth these giant feet, or else i'd be really, really bummed about this.

visitors and dane's baby blessing

we had a lot of fun with the leiningers here this week, culminating with dane's baby blessing today. i'd write more, but dane wants us to hold him, so here are some photos and quick captions for your enjoyment!

dane tried to do some tummy time on tommy's belly, and just gave up in total exhaustion. he fell asleep there.

duke socks on dane's hands and a duke shirt on his mom! (whoops, he's covering his face in this one . . . oh, well.)

dane has now been to the duke gardens THREE times--we went twice with the leiningers and had a picnic there.

homeless dane, sleeping on a park bench. 

dane and his grandma leininger and auntie kenzie.

check him out! SMILING again, this time at his grandma. he held this smile for a good 15 seconds--it was adorable. he loves his grandma!

we went to the nc state fair, dane and all! we enjoyed eating deep-fried foods, a giant roasted turkey leg, and a large bag of kettle corn, and looking at all of the NC exhibits. dane slept most of the time and was a pretty good boy . . . until he wasn't and wanted to go home.

he's considering majoring in agriculture at NC State later in life.

after he started being fussy and we were walking to the car.

curled up on grandpa leininger--he was so comfortable there.

random picture! out of order! me and dane on my birthday last week.

in the duke gardens together.

dane and the great blanket his auntie camille made for him. it's AMAZING, and so, so cute. he's going to love it once he starts learning the ABC's.

dane's shirt says "auntie's little man"--and here he is with his two lovely aunties!

all of the leiningers, on a walk today before the went to the airport. 

 

and some post-baby blessing pictures. dane was a champ and didn't cry at all during the blessing, and then just fell asleep in my arms for the rest of sacrament meeting. angel baby!

this is the blessing outfit that tommy wore when he was blessed almost 28 years ago. check out the bonnet! IT'S ADORABLE! and tommy's grandma made the beautiful white afghan he's laying on.

and he's smiling again. the one picture my feet got into. dang it!

good things

 -fall is coming! the weather here is showing off its best self and the leaves are just starting to change. . . . i love, love, love north carolina fall.
-every day i feel like i'm more getting into the swing of things. our apartment is not in shambles any more, i'm getting used to running errands with the carseat and diaper bag, and dane is getting on a pretty regular eating schedule. (it helps that he's still sleeping 90% of the day.) even though i don't leave the apartment some days, we're learning how to be normal, functioning members of society again.
-after years of searching and trying many, many different recipes, i think we've found the WORLD'S BEST chocolate chip cookie recipe. hallelujah! and we have an entire batch of cookies here for our enjoyment.
-i bought a giant amount of fresh fruits and veggies at the grocery store and we're actually eating them! we are eating so healthy lately (except for the hundreds of chocolate chip cookies), and i feel great about it. one of my recent goals is to only snack on fruits and veggies (although it's mostly fruits, let's be honest). i went to the library and checked out a ton of cookbooks too, just to get ideas and break out of our boring food slump. i was really inspired by this one for great ideas for new and exciting lunches.
-tommy's parents and two younger sisters are coming to visit this week. we love having visitors, especially family, especially the leiningers. and we can't wait for them to meet dane! although we don't have any fun plans for while they're here. . . . we need to get on that. and then we're having dane's baby blessing in church next sunday, which should be awesome.
-tomorrow is the big day: 10/12! okay, for those of you who don't remember this, it's my 24th birthday. and tommy's going to stay home, and we're going to have a picnic, and organize several problem areas in the apartment, and buy ourselves new running shoes (my main birthday wish), and make gyros for my birthday dinner, and get cheesecake (to go) from the cheesecake factory . . . or any combination of those things that dane allows us to do. i am excited.
-i went to the grocery store by myself several nights ago, and tommy sent me this picture text:

 i love you mommy!

now, you can tell me that babies this young don't REALLY smile, and that this is just a fluke (or whatever), but i will not believe you. no way. this picture just warms my heart right up--it's now the background on my phone and i've been pulling it out to smile at it many times a day.

happy, happy day!

"humbled"

we left the hospital on monday afternoon at around 2:30, but we were back in the ER that evening. dane hadn't had any wet diapers for over twelve hours, and the nurses had instructed us that if something like that happened, we needed to call the on-call pediatrician at the hospital and make sure everything was okay. maybe dane was already trying to show us his sense of humor, because he decided to wait until we'd unstrapped his diaper and laid him on the scale in the triage room to show off his peeing skills. we were very, very relieved--doubly so because his slightly elevated temperature went back down after half an hour of being there and we could leave without the doctors trying to keep us to run tests and find out if he was actually sick.

two days later, though, he was pulling the same trick: no wet or dirty diapers for hours and hours, and he started acting extremely tired--"lethargic," as the nurse called it. he slept for six hours straight, despite my best efforts to wake him up and feed him--he would fall asleep after sucking just a few times. we'd figured out that this was BAD, from our instructions in the hospital: "feed him every two to three hours, round the clock. keep him awake to eat; don't let him fall asleep while feeding. he needs to eat every two to three hours." this time, we called our pediatrician and they told me to pump some milk and give it to him in a bottle, and luckily, after he swallowed that ounce of milk down, he perked right up and got right back with the schedule. and since then the wet and dirty diapers have come with a vengeance.

i can't emphasize how small of an incident this really was. even as i was crying my eyes out about it, i bawled to tommy "i know it's not that big of a deal! i know it'll be over in a couple of hours once we figure it out!" but even though i knew in my head how everything would be fine, oh, it sure was scary at the same time. i felt guilty and sorry and worried, watching my boy fall asleep while trying to eat again, knowing that he needed the food he was too tired to eat, not knowing what to do about it. i felt small and unprepared and totally unable to take care of this tiny baby--i realized how much help i truly needed if i am going to be a mom. i was so grateful that tommy was there, so grateful that my mom was there, so grateful that the pediatrician's office answers phone calls, so grateful that heavenly father answered my prayers for support and strength.

for the first time in my life, i really understood the meaning of the word "humbled."

the many faces of dane

this blog is suffering since i barely have any computer time nowadays, so i'll just use it for right now to share what you all want to see: ENDLESS PICTURES OF MY BABY BEING ADORABLE. i took all of these pictures in a row, and the best ones are where he's clearly saying "i am not amused" and showing off his jowls. there are several of those--might as well share them all, right?

 

for the record, dane is such a great baby. i will write a real blog post about this sometime soon, but i have loved taking care of him more than i ever thought i would. i don't even begrudge him the sleep i'm losing or the amount of poop i've touched over the last (almost) three weeks. at least half of the things tommy and i say to each other now are, "isn't he SO CUTE?" "HE IS SO CUTE!" and "we have the CUTEST BABY!" we rarely ever call him dane--he goes by "cutie cute" and "angel baby" and "buddy boo" and all of the most obnoxious baby nicknames you can imagine. (okay, mostly, those nicknames are just from me. tommy does call him "buddy" though.) and he doesn't even smile yet . . . can you imagine how crazy we're going to be once he starts interacting with us?