Van + Daddy

Months before Van was born, I had a dream that we were introducing the baby to a big group of people, and he would scream whenever I was holding him, but he'd totally calm down if Jon was holding him. Needless to say, in my dream I was really embarrassed as his mother to be of no comfort to my child, especially with tons of people watching us.

While I'm happy to report that the dream didn't 100% come true, (because sometimes I can comfort my baby, thankfully), I'm also happy to report that it was probably 50% true...because Jon really does have a way of calming Van down just by holding him. I love that.

I just have to say that Jon is the greatest dad, and I have loved watching him jump into fatherhood and run with it. One of the first things I noticed about him when visiting his family while we were dating over 2 years ago was the way he loved being with his nieces and nephews. He played with them, read to them, took opportunities to teach them, and they adored him. He always told me that having nieces and nephews is what made him excited to be a dad, and I'm so glad it did, because he is such a good one. He's so happy, patient, and loving with Van. When his sisters were out here visiting a month ago, one of them said that she thinks Jon had to wait until he was 30 to be a parent so he could calm down a little bit, because she used to be afraid for her children's lives when they were in his hands (so he likes to rough-house a little bit...). Maybe she was right, :), but either way, all I know is he does a great job now!! (Just wait until the kid's 1 or 2 and Jon starts throwing him around, and then I might start to worry. :)

Here are a few of my favorite Van & Dad moments I've loved seeing in the last three weeks:

• One night when I was doing the dishes and Jon was holding Van, he was taking him around the house and explaining different chores to him while he was doing them, like switching the laundry, helping to load the dishwasher, taking the trash out, (you have to imagine him talking to Van at the same time...."See buddy, you tie the bag together at the top real tight so it won't smell bad, and then you take it outside, but you have to make sure to put a new bag in the garbage can. That's how you take care of the the trash.") I was loving it! He was so funny.
• Jon LOVES to burp Van, and change his diaper. It's like daddy time or something. Since I am the one doing all that during the night and all day while Jon's at work, I'm more than happy to let Jon take over when he's home. :) If I ever ask Jon to burp him or change his diaper, not only does he do it, he's really excited to do it. "Hand him over!! It's my turn!" And he talks to Van the whole time he's doing it, it's the cutest thing. I frequently hear Jon talking to him at the changing table, or laughing out loud as our son once again pees everywhere as he's getting changed.
  
• One night Jon announced he was taking Van out with him to go check the mail (our mail is upstairs and around the front of the house) and he had bundled the baby from head to toe, blanket, beanie, and socks included, because he wanted Van to go too. Of course just moments after he left I heard excited voices upstairs saying, "It's the baby!!" coming from the other renters in the house that live upstairs from us. He was gone at least 15 minutes...Jon LOVES showing Van off.
• Speaking of showing the baby off, Jon wanted to go into work (during his paternal leave) a couple days after Van was born just to tell everyone about the baby and show them a couple pictures. He had planned on being there just 30 mins or so, but that of course turned into a couple hours of visiting with everyone at work about the baby. For his first day back to work after his 2.5 weeks off, he made sure to bring in tons of photos we had printed off the day before so that he could show van off to everyone again. He was so excited, he's such a proud dad!
• Sometimes Jon gets sick of Van sleeping and he wants to play with him, so he'll try to wake him up and just pick him up and hold him and play with him until he wakes up. It's the funniest thing, he just loves holding him. He'll also do this sometimes if someone's visiting or we're introducing him to someone and he wants them to see Van awake. Like at church. I love seeing how much he wants to be with the baby, even if it does mean waking him up sometimes when he should be sleeping. :) But at the same time, if Van needs to sleep, no one walks around the house with the baby better than Jon, singing to him and rocking him the whole time until he calms down.
  
• Jon wants Van to love all the same things he does, or at least sway his opinion in that direction if he can. One time when he was holding Van, Jon handed the baby his little football that Jon's coworkers gave us at a baby shower, and he started explaining to Van how he needs to hold it real tight or he'll lose the ball, followed of course by telling him that he wasn't doing a very good job, but that's okay, he had lots of time to get better. I loved it when he said to the baby, "Can you say 'touchdown'?" Such a dad. And don't worry, Van is already well-schooled in how to properly use the microwave to prepare a bag of popcorn. This is a necessity in our home. ("See Van, you make sure you take it out of the plastic, then open it up like this, and put it with that side up in the microwave, and then you push the button that says "popcorn" and "start". Just like that. You're gonna want to remember that, buddy.")
  
• This is my favorite...we've been pretty good about just putting the baby down to sleep at night without rocking him to sleep or anything in hopes that he will quickly learn to put himself to sleep on his own. Van seems to adapt to it pretty well, even when we lay him down and his cute little eyes are wide open staring into the dark. But being parents, we still like to check on him and make sure he's breathing and everything, especially since our room is across the house from his. So one night after brushing my teeth I went in Van's room and got real close to his crib to listen to him breathing, and he was making the cutest little baby breathing sounds, really quick and short and quiet. It's the cutest thing to see him sleeping with his body all swaddled up tight with his arms to his side like a straight jacket, his head turned to the side, and his little chest rising up and down. So of course when I went back into our room I told Jon how cute Van was sleeping, and Jon couldn't resist, he just got a big smile on his face and ran (literally, ran) to Van's room so he could listen to him. I love that he gets just as excited as I do and that he eats up everything Van does. He's always saying how cute Van is and just smiling like crazy when he sees him or holds him. It's SO FUN.

I'm sure there are more fun Dad & Van things that I can't think of right now, but I just wanted to share a couple because it's the funnest thing to see Jon so excited for this little life that has joined us in our home. Almost just as fun as seeing the baby for me is seeing Jon with the baby. He sure loves our little man. And I'm crazy about them both!!

Here are some photos of two of my greatest blessings...my two boys, my two loves.

Van in Black and White

I wanted to practice taking photos on both white and black backgrounds and this is a small number of our results. The black background was a shiny, striped table cloth that we have which was kind of hard to get rid of, if anyone has suggestions on a better background I'd love to hear your suggestions (hint, hint, Kalli), these were taken after dark. The white shots were taken in the baby's room with light from the overcast day, from the small window that the room has. We just set him on a white, fuzzy blanket. I welcome any photographers' suggestions on how to make shots of this style better. I was mostly experimenting with the camera's contrast, sharpness and monochrome settings as well as adjusting the light meter.

See Van Dance

I wanted to test out our new little video camera with the iMovie software that I hadn't touched yet, so this was my trial run. Van seemed like a good guinea pig since he has no opinion yet. Van wasn't actually dancing, editing genius would make you believe otherwise. I learned this by watching the skills of my bros compiling sick ski vids, thanks for the inspiration. Really it took me about 30 minutes to come up with this dumb idea, produce, and edit it. This is what happens when you have more than 2 weeks of paternal leave. Everyone should become a dad.

Van, 10-Days-Old [photo update]

As anyone must know after spending any considerable amount of time with us (say, an hour or two), we're pretty much addicted to taking pictures. And having a brand new camera doesn't make it easy to resist our addiction. Nor does having a brand new little one that we just can't get enough of. He's so entertaining to us, and we look forward to getting to know him more and more every day. He's already 10 days old, it's so weird to think that just over a week ago this baby full of personality and expressions was still in my body. We think he's starting to like bathtime, we've caught a few accidental smiles from him when he's not awake, and it looks like he loves sleep as much as his parents. Thus all the sleeping pictures.

Here's the latest on the little man!

(as a side note, we'd LOVE to have visitors over to come meet little Van! We're at home and totally open for any time you want to come over. Jon's off work for another week still, so we're just living up the stay-at-home parents life. :) Please call and come by if you can, we'd love to see you all!)






Van meets Lincoln


Cuddling with Grandma and sucking on mom's fingers (he ALWAYS has to be sucking on something, usually it's his own knuckles)


The Van we know best

Thank you, Mom!!!

As you may or may not have heard from me, pre-labor, my biggest fear of our baby's timing for his entry into this world was that my mom, who scheduled her flight months ago, would be gone and back in Utah before the kid was ever born. If it weren't for that, (his daily growing birth weight aside), I would have been totally okay with him being 2 weeks overdue. I was never terribly miserable or uncomfortable during my pregnancy, not even in the end, and I had PLENTY of things still on my list to accomplish before he came. But with my mom living 2,100 miles away and me being a very hands-on learning person, I was not looking forward to the possibility of pulling off week 1 on my own with no training whatsoever. Let's be honest, I would have cried my eyes out.

My mom was scheduled to land in DC the afternoon of Monday, November 3rd and stay for exactly one week. Come Sunday, November 2nd, I was still feeling 100%. !?!? I was trying to come to terms with him not coming until at least half way through my mom's time here, but I wasn't pleased with the idea. Everyone at church told me just to plan on him being 2 weeks late and I wouldn't be so disappointed. Feeling so normal, you can imagine my surprise later that evening when I realized that my usual braxton hicks contractions were suddenly coming like clockwork, lasting longer, and adding a good dose of pain. Jon and I were so excited!! We finally started clocking them, and we were surprised to realize they were about 4-5 minutes apart, and lasting just under a minute. Suffice it to say, we clocked them for the next 8 hours or so to make sure it was the real deal, and when I could no longer do anything else but focus on breathing during my contractions, we figured it was time to go. 2.5 hours after our arrival at the hospital, Van made his grand entry at 8:25 am, just 8 hours before my mom's flight was scheduled to land.

Impeccable timing, Van.

So, a great miracle occurred, we were blessed with a tender mercy from on high, he came out of nowhere, and I had a whole week to take advantage of my mom's wisdom. Mom was here a week, and she made the transition such a breeze for us. Amazing meals just showed up on our table. Clean clothes just appeared and I never even saw Van's laundry before it was done. The floors were swept, the house was clean, and I never had to get up for the baby since Mom just brought him to me. She changed endless diapers and cleaned wet sheets and outfits. Twice in one night. She taught us how to hold a baby when he's soaking wet and slippery during bathtime. She made me take a nap every day (because she knew I wouldn't if she didn't tell me to). She told Jon and I what good parents we would be and loved all of Van's facial expressions just as much as we do. I also loved having the time to just sit and visit and all go on walks together––small things that are so rare with living so far away. She was exactly what we needed and our only regret is that her time here went so quickly! We couldn't have done it without you Mom!! Thanks for being everything your daughter (and son-in-law, and grandson) needed! We wish we could be closer, we miss you already!

We're counting down the days until our visit to see mom and everyone else in our family in January...

Here's a little photo tribute to Grandma Sorensen (that sounds weird, Mom, since I have a Grandma Sorensen that's not you) and all she did for our little Van.

Van's DC Debut

After our stroll at Hains Point, we parked near the Jefferson monument and walked around the Tidal Basin to the FDR memorial and got to see some pretty amazing colors around the monuments. We also got some of our first dusk/evening shots of the monuments––something we hope to get a lot more of in the future. This was Van's first trip to the District, and he of course slept through the whole thing. We're pretty sure he's going to end up a great traveler like his parents. And it looks like he also inherited our ability to sleep anytime, anywhere (if this holds up past his I'm-still-a-newborn-and-I-love-the-womb stage, we'll be thrilled; although we may be known to poke and prod him in his sleep because we love playing with him when he's awake).

Hains Point

We've been dying to check out the leaves in downtown DC with my mom, and it gave us a good excuse to get out and move around a little bit with the new little guy. We started off at Hains Point (we double checked the spelling on that) and it ended up being a perfect scene for ducks, sunsets, and some fun photos. This is just a small sampling of the results from our trigger-happy photo habits.

Retro Post: Halloween 2008

What better than a big rotund fish bowl to highlight the roundness of a pregnant belly with a cute little human fish swimming inside? And what better than a dad in training to represent a dad who needs a lot of training? (Jon said that, not Melissa.) Jon was a hit at his work party, his coworkers thought he was hilarious. And as for me, I got to show off the fish bowl to our neighbors and three groups of trick-or-treaters. But it was totally worth it!
















































And here are a few follow-up photos of our pumpkins from our pumpkin carving evening (10/30/08 post), including the comparison of Melissa's pumpkin to her belly—which were identical in shape and size.

Retro Post: Skyline Drive (Oct. 26, 2008)

In our annual attempt to get out and see the sights of autumn on the east coast, we waited for what we deemed to be the perfect time to head for Skyline Drive, a famous road placed at the top of the Shenandoahs that many locals head to for the fall colors. When we finally saw the reds and golds turning up around town, we took our planned trip to the national park––only to find that we had guessed one week late. So while the colors were more brown and bare than scarlet and orange, we still loved the drive, loved the time together, and took advantage of the trip to practice with the new camera.

Here are some of our favorites.

Van Jonathan Smith [November 3, 2008]

HE ARRIVED!

As you can see, our son already has his own clothing line...
Van was born on November 3rd, just in time to see the first black president of the USA. Melissa began to progress quickly on Sunday and by 5:30am on Monday we were on our way to the hospital, by foot. We checked into the hospital at 6:06am and Van came at 8:25am. He weighed in at 7 pounds 6 ounces, and measured 20.5 inches long. Just hours later Melissa's mom arrived in DC from Utah, and we're grateful to have her teach us the ways of the wise mother. Did I mention yet that Melissa gave birth 100 percent natural! She is one tough woman I'll just say that much. It was AMAZING to watch Van's birth, and it's amazing to stare at him all day too. I'm excited to be the father of this beautiful little kid. The hospital has everyone stay for 2 days so we came home from the hospital today, which is his due date. It's great to have him home, he's SOOOOOOO cute!

A few of my favorite things about the dude...
1. He snorts like a pig, and I love pigs.
2. His face changes shape constantly, and he makes a great pouty face.
3. He's very aware of everyone in the room, I lost in a staring competition with him already.
4. He got me out of 2 weeks of work :)
5. His tight little buns can't be rivaled.
6. He smells like roses...most the time.
7. He's real cute, just like Melissa.
8. His bottom lip quivers when he cries.
9. He wants to play football when he's older.
10. He likes when MELISSA changes him :)

...What a kid. We both look forward to many stinky diapers ahead.