christmas break recap: california

and guess what? after this post, i'm just going to try and blog business as usual from now on. aren't you excited?

as usual, after utah, we went to california to visit my family. we went from one awesome party to another! we flew into LAX at 10:00 at night (and had a minor panic attack when it appeared they'd lost dane's carseat. . . . never fear, it showed up fifteen minutes after all the rest of the luggage on the carousel) and left early the next morning to drive down to alpine for my cousin elder grant myres's homecoming from his mission in chile. we had a great time seeing all the cousins (with two married in each family, plus dane, minus austin on his mission). it was awesome. 

dane was very festive in his new year's tuxedo . . . he was the best dressed of all of us, hands down.

after he went to bed, though, we all hit the TOWN and went to the irvine great park to watch the orange balloon drop--at 9:00 p.m. probably our most crazy and festive new year's yet. OH YEAH! but really, it was fun to get out of the house for a little bit at least.

showing off our festive flashing new year's rings that we got for free for showing up to the great park party. really, we just went there for the free stuff.

and then our favorite new year's tradition: fondue dessert!

our other big outing was a walk around balboa island a few days after new year's. they've always got the best christmas decorations and it was fun to see them still up, even though they weren't lit up during the middle of the day.

c and b and baby d

however, most of our vacation in california consisted of a lot, a lot, a lot of this:

just like in utah, everyone was so, so, so excited to see dane that he barely got put down for the whole time we were there. especially while camille and brandon were there, it was just like there were hordes of followers wherever dane went. and he LOVED it--he was so talkative and excited with all these new faces looking and smiling at him. we were worried he would be so bored when we got back, but he seems to have adjusted to normality just fine. we don't have even half as many pictures as we took because we were using my parents' two cameras and their iphones to take a lot of pictures, but we'll hopefully be getting them soon.

we had just such a great time visiting both our families, but it's good for us to be back.

christmas break recap: utah

okay, i have been horrible about blogging lately. and there is a reason! our photo collection on our computer has been in total disarray because around the time dane was born, my computer died and tommy's needed an OS update and we lost iphoto. so we need to develop some sort of organizing system to sort through our giant pile of pictures on tommy's computer, and it's been too intimidating to do. . . . but it's one of my goals to do it in the next month or so.

it's so funny how much dane changed over this trip! three weeks is definitely a long time in the life of a baby. by the time we left california at the end of the trip, he was doing a whole bunch of new tricks, like gurgling, holding and sucking on toys, standing on his legs, loving books, grabbing his dad's glasses off his face, smacking his lips when he sees food, sticking his tongue out of the side of his mouth (only the right side, haha). he is SO fun right now. everyone has told us that four months is a really great time, and we TOTALLY agree.

dane's first ugly sweater party in north carolina (although, let's be honest, his sweater isn't ugly. it's adorable--like everything he wears)

and then we hopped on dane's first plane flight! he went on six different flights this christmas--he's averaging almost 2 per month of life now. he was really great on the way out to utah--not so much on the way back.

and dane got to meet all these new friends! including auntie melissa and cousin zach--who is two months older and made him look like a tiny little skinny guy.

also, uncle troy! who he LOVED. (and he met shane and kiley and kristen, although no pictures!)

he also had to do physical labor in the kitchen. no getting out of working in this family!

we went one night to temple square and the city creek mall to look at the lights. dane was a champ and it was totally worth it. this was our big outing for the trip in utah (other than going to see les mis with all of tommy's siblings and without dane).  

loving uncle troy, his own reflection, and his christmas pajamas. he was actually pretty sick on christmas eve and christmas day (a really bad cold!) so we didn't take many pictures... and he was sleeping while we opened presents. a pretty sad first christmas for him, but luckily he didn't even notice. 

the leininger traditional christmas morning picture:

we also got to bring dane to meet both of his sets of great-grandparents (on my side, anyway). i was so happy we got to go see them! we had a really nice afternoon at the myres', and a good evening with the murphys. the great-grandparents myres:

and the great-grandparents murphy:

what a difference two months makes! zach was grabbing at dane and dane was pretty much just oblivious to zach's existence. it won't be that way next time they see each other!

we came in from watching les mis (and leaving tommy's mom with both babies!) and the four of them were just hanging out like this. they looked like they had a good time--hopefully we weren't just imagining things.

other than dane's post-trip fussiness and cold, we had a really lovely (white!) christmas in utah. everything was so much more fun with dane, and he didn't even know what was going on yet. it was so awesome.

2012

2012 for us could be divided into three distinct parts.

january - may: school. tommy passes his prelim. i write my capstone. i graduate in may. 

may - august: drive across the country to live in santa monica for the summer. act as tourists in la. tommy works at RAND. i hang out. move back to durham and get ready for baby dane.

 september - december: have dane. take care of dane. watch dane grow.

sept 15:

dec 22:

pretty crazy . . . we started 2012 with no idea that it was going to turn out this way! and man, it's been SUCH a great year. dane has made our lives so much more exciting. so we're excited for 2013!

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.