Utah Trip Highlights: part 2—the cabin.

The day after we arrived in Utah (in January) we headed up to a cabin in the mountains to spend a couple days there with all the Smiths. When we got there we were greeted by tall snowbanks and a little pathway carved out of the 1-2 feet of snow in advance (thanks Joel!!). We were also greeted by freezing temperatures, but after a couple hours with the fire burning until we couldn't see our breath anymore, we were warm and cozy for the rest of the trip. The cabin was a perfect winter getaway—1 bedroom, 1.5 bathrooms, 21 people—we had so much fun!

All of Jon's brothers and sisters were there, and all of their children (it's so weird that now all the nieces and nephews are becoming "the cousins" instead of me & my cousins...now we're "the grown-ups"! I still don't feel it, that's for sure!), so it was a complete Smith party for the first time since Sep.'06, before Jeremy left on his mission. We had breakfast in our pj's, a big game night playing a memory game with little-known facts of all the Smiths there, and we had a movie night with all of us sprawled all over the floor in front of the fire. The boys all headed out one day for a ski/snowboard day and of course had a blast (check out some pics/videos here, they're AMAZING), and the kids had a sledding day back at the cabin. We loved the cabin and it was so good to finally see everyone again after such a long time. Thanks again Kalli and Joel for hooking us up with the cabin, we owe you guys! The only undesireable moments were when Van screamed in the car all the way there and all the way back. It probably deterred Kalli & Joel from wanting children in any near future, but we promise he's not always like that, guys! :)

{you'll have to forgive me for the large smattering of photos, but I had to show off the sweet shots my honey took. these are almost all compliments of jon and his photog skills}


beautiful winter {I know, I just bashed on winter in my last post, but when the world is covered in white, beautiful seems to be the only way to describe it}


































all the cute kids {ours is the sleeper}

















everyone excited to see the results of our family photos taken by the amazing and talented Kalli {check out her photog blog here} which I'll be posting soon

















game time

















one of the highlights for the kids was some sweet old school nintendo, which of course they caught onto and mastered in seconds.


































the boys with their game faces on, ready for a ski day

















heading out to go sledding...



















































This kid is amazing. He's 3 years old, this was his first time on a snowboard, and he was pro. Like father like son I guess! We were so impressed with his mad skills.



















you have to admit, this is hilarious. And yes, they went all the way down the hill too. Don't worry, there were no sledding saucer wrecks!


















the two we owe the trip to...thanks Joel & Kalli!!

protesting winter

Looks like I'm not the only one hoping for an early out from winter this year, despite our recent typical daytime temperatures in the 30's. I walked outside on my way somewhere with Van a couple days ago, and I was pleasantly surprised to be greeted by this ambitious purple flower as ready for warm weather as I am:



















I thought it was the only one, until I saw this:

















and these: (with new grass!)

















and these beauties:
















Red rover, red rover, send springtime on over!!! I'd be more than happy to wake up to warmness, don flip flops and short sleeves, and let my child stay outside for a few moments more than the regular rushed house-to-car transfer.

Who are we kidding, let's skip spring and head straight for summer. I vote mid-80's. Sunny.

Any takers?

{ love }

He got me the biggest balloon I'd ever seen, and Van was enthralled by the big shiny floating thing twice his size. He found my favoritest chocolates and insisted I don't share (gone in 2 days). He gave me bright flowers in happy shades of lime green, white, and bubblegum pink. He made me the sweetest card and told me why he loved me. He took me to dinner at a quaint little local mexican place (I LOVE mexican) and let me eat more than I should have. He took me dancing, and little did you know, the man can dance. He knows how to move, knows how to step, and you should see the way he moves his hips. He stole all the old ladies' hearts, all the young girls' hearts, and while he may have forgot to tell me that everyone else ballroom dancing that night would be dressed in red so I was awkwardly the only one in aqua blue, he still stole my heart all over again.

just like every other day.

I love him.

and Van loves balloons. big ones.













p.s. HUGE thanks to our sweet friends Ashlee & Nate who were the brave souls to take on Van's very first night of babysitting. You were pros, and you let us have our own first post-baby date, just in time for Valentine's.

They told us not to do it...

...but you know how that goes. What are we supposed to do if Van loves being held up high over our heads right after he eats? Especially when it produces the biggest open-mouth smile you ever saw? Julie (Jon's sister) was the first to warn us, and even told us how she'd told her son not to do that to his little brother or he'd spit up all over him. But when the baby likes it, we're pretty bad at resisting.

It was all fun and games and even a great source of my joking with Jon when it happened to him a couple weeks ago right before we put Van down for the night. I could see it coming from across the room, there was no way Jon would clear it. And he didn't. New spit up made a lovely streak from his hair down to the middle of his shirt. Luckily he'd turned his head at the last second, so his hair and face were only bombed on the side. We both laughed and got a great kick out of it, and I was just grateful it wasn't me.

But what comes around goes around, and last night while Jon was out doing man things (b-ball) and after I had just finished Van's last feeding, I was playing with him and he was being super giggly and smiley and I was loving it. Until I lifted him up above my head. One second we were all smiles, and then all the sudden I was wet. But that really gross kind of wet that you don't even know where to start cleaning and you don't even want to think about what's on your lips. My only thought was to spit. Spit a lot, spit hard, and spit fast. Anything to keep it out of my mouth. Of course Van got off totally spit-up free. I looked at him after recovering from the initial shock of the smell, and he was sitting there smiling at me, clearly feeling much better. And maybe I laughed. You can't be mad at a face like that, even when he opens his mouth up and drops his dinner on my face. And yes I still think risking the spit-up recurrence is worth the face we get from him when we do the full baby body lift over our heads. So maybe we won't ever learn our lesson.

Just to prove even babies that spit up on their parents are still cute, here's our little man hanging out on our bed with nothing but innocence written all over his face.



















Here's the "leave me alone, mom, I'm resting" look.

Utah Trip Highlights: part 1—the airport.

A month ago we went for a trip to Utah to finally see our family after 15 months of not going "home". That's just 3 months shy of the length of my entire mission to Argentina. That adds up to 2 Thanksgivings, 2 Christmases, and just about 2 of everything else without a trip back west. We LOVE the west. We also love the east, which is probably part of what has kept us from a westward trip for so long, because we've been using so many days off to take road trips all over this coast (I miss road trips...).

After spending a perfect Christmas holiday here at "home," we were excited to still have something to look forward to come January while everyone else had to be settling back into normal post-holiday life. It's definitely the way to go if you get the January blues. :) Van caught RSV over New Years, which was probably the saddest thing I'd ever seen in my life, a little 2 month old that couldn't breathe or blow his nose or cough up nastiness on his own to get better. I was so scared he wouldn't be better before our trip--and who knows how that would go over on a plane--but thankfully, he was fully recovered just days before we left.

So, the airport. Exactly what I had been dreading for months. My biggest fear of taking Van in public anywhere, being a new mom and all, was that he would go absolutely ballistic and I would have no idea how to calm him down, while everyone watches from the sidelines shaking their heads..."That poor new mom has no clue what she's doing..." And they would be right. This fear magnifies when thinking of being stuck on a plane with no escape route. Blowout diapers, endless screaming, violent flailing, purple-faced, angry raisin...every imaginable reason for any nearby passenger to hate me and tell any person they come in contact with about the worst plane flight they ever had to tolerate. Please don't be me. Please sleep, Van, please do nothing but hibernate peacefully for 4 straight hours. That's possible, right?

Van was okay. On his first flight anyway. On flight 1, DCA to DEN, he screamed for takeoff, slept for 2.5 hours, then screamed for most of the landing. Luckily the flight wasn't packed so the person next to us had moved. Jon and I were a little embarrassed, but at least it was over. We had a 3 hour layover, which didn't go over so well with the dude, leading to his grand finale on our DEN to SLC flight, where Van pretty much hated every minute. And so did we. I could not wait to get off of the plane, and Van couldn't wait to be anywhere but sitting in the same place for another second. He gets bored quickly, so you can imagine our futile attempts to entertain him constantly in a 2-square-feet radius. There was fussing, there were tears (Van's, not mine), and in the end, nothing but relief to get off.

I'm happy to report that heading back to DC was much better, despite our second flight being delayed. Jon entertained Van on the moving walkways for at least 30 mins during our layover, and we were just happy he wasn't all tears. On the plane Van slept, ate, played, laid awake staring at the overhead lights for an hour, and slept again, just like a little angel baby. Granted, he did have a blowout diaper on the last flight that I had to go change in the tiny bathroom. (By the way, I NEVER use airplane bathrooms. Ask Jon. I'll hold it for hours before I go in there because they totally freak me out. It all goes back to some X-Files I saw when I was 12 or something about some creature coming out of the airplane lavatory...no creatures for me! No thanks!) Imagine me trying to roll up his messy onesie and wipe Van's entire body without letting him go rolling off the changing table, and while I'm doing this the seat belt light comes on and the pilot announces to prepare for landing, followed immediately by the plane getting jumpy and jolty, and I'm just trying not to get poopy. So fun. Anyway, we survived. We even had some passengers tell us what a good baby he was. BIG sigh of relief. I mean, we knew that, but to hear someone say it made me feel a little more like maybe I can do this parent thing in public after all.

Side note. While at the airport, we realized how living in a basement apartment in the winter might take a serious toll on our son's exposure to sunlight. He has none. We noticed this when he seemed so in awe by it at our first layover. Thus the many cute photos. We were in awe by it too. Maybe someday we could live somewhere where we can bask in our own natural light, if we're really lucky.

What? No more bonding parties at 3 am?

Well, at least we can hope that's what it means. I have no doubt that there will be relapses, and this could even just be a very temporary lucky streak, but after looking at my eyes yesterday morning and realizing for the first time in a long time the whites were actually white instead of red, no lubricant drops needed, I was pleased to remember for a moment what it's like to get a full night's sleep.

That's right, after more than 3 months of Van wondering who the zombie was that came in to feed him during all inhumane hours of the night, it seems he'd rather go without waking the mom-zombie from her sleep. Tuesday night he slept 9 hours straight, then Wednesday night was 11 hours, and last night was 10.5, so I'm hoping this is a new habit. Believe me, this wasn't easy to get him to do and it's taken serious dedication to a schedule (while still maintaining some flexibility for sanity's sake), patience, and not giving up, but I know many moms who have it much harder when it comes to getting their little ones to sleep through the night, and my props go to them. It's tough, that's as given. So so so worth it, but definitely pushing yourself to the limits (that's a good thing, right?) Every kid is so different, I'm definitely learning that.

So mostly I'd like to give a shout out to Van today for letting me get the whites of my eyes back. What's not to smile about? Even if it only lasts a couple days. Thanks Van man! But if you decide to take this crazy whole-night-sleeping thing and run with it for the long haul, then that's perfectly okay with me, little man. Go right ahead.

The boy's got skills

Since it's taking me forever to get our photos up from our recent Utah trip (which was also the reason we were MIA in the blog world the last few weeks), I wanted to at least jump in and give an update on Van. He just turned 3 months this week, and it's so fun to see all the new things he's learning. Among the obvious (eating, sleeping, growing like a weed), he's been up to a lot of fun new things that show us small glimpses of his personality.

I can tell you one thing...when this kid figures out how to plant his feet on the floor and hold his body up without looking like his trying to win a hula contest, we are in some serious trouble. I'm pretty sure he's going to take off running and promptly take over every touchable thing in the house, thus throwing our sanity out the back door. He's active, he needs entertained 24/7 and is easily bored, he moves nonstop, loves to stand, hates to be cradled, wants serious attention, and he's already holding his head straight up and rolling over all the time. Thankfully, it also seems like he likes to make us smile, and he has the cutest smile in response, so in the future, I'm sure his little boy smiles will make the inevitable insanity worth it.

Here's what the Van man's been up to...

A Natural at the Bottle

I waited a while to start Van on any bottles, mostly because it was unnecessary, but then Jon and I thought it might be a good idea to get him used to them in case of an emergency (or if we ever actually wanted to do something alone, someday...) so we gave it a try 3 days after Christmas, just before Van hit 8 weeks old. I'd heard or read somewhere that if you don't start your baby on a bottle within the first 4 weeks or so after birth, that chances are the baby might not every take a bottle. Because of that, I was a little nervous that he might not even give it a chance.

We had to try 2 different kinds of bottles, but he was sold on the second one, and for the first time ever, Van got to be fed by his dad. We were so excited, he was pro. I loved watching his little hands try to hold his bottle, it was the cutest thing. And we think he liked it because the view was a lot better than normal--he couldn't stop looking around at everything around the room while he was eating (including right at me). We sure have one curious little kid!

Lessons in Life Sciences: Reproduction Chapter

So, remember that real Christmas tree of ours I was so crazy about? So crazy about it that I said we might leave it up all the month of January? Well, it turned out we had a little Charlotte's web issue, and some mother spider decided to plant all her posterity there. After discovering 43 tiny baby spiders on our living room walls, ceiling, and floor in 10 minutes, Jon and I accused the tree as the culprit, and on the very first weekend after Christmas, our tree was ejected from the house as fast as we could strip it of its homemade garlands, unscrew it out of its tipsy treestand ($4, goodwill), and send it out the back door in all its glory to bond with mother nature. We dumped the popcorn and cranberry garlands, vacuumed twice, and sprayed a solid round of Raid to allow any remaining arachnids to soak up the rays.

I realize this is a very late post, but it had to be posted. I'm happy to report that the tree definitely must have been the baby spider home, and with the tree gone, we've been baby spider free. I've never seen a Christmas tree go down so fast all my life, and I'm so glad. Grossest thing ever.