You Just Needed Some Time To Clear Your Head

And you seem to have done that.

La la la la la...

Yeah.  So I've been absent for a very very long time.  But I'm coming back.  I just need to finish sorting and editing photos.

In the mean time, if you're a Facebooker, you can check out the kids in this cute video on my wall.  I've given up posting videos on Blogger for the time being.  It just doesn't happen.

You can also see a bit what we've been up to on my Abiding Joy Blog.

Until next time!

Mr. FluffyFace

Really, it's his hair and not his face.  But FluffyFace has a much nicer ring to it than FluffyHair.

And he's 11 months old tomorrow.  And these pictures are all a couple weeks old.  But I'm waaaaay behind on my posting, so I'm combining the two.

He's 18 1/2 pounds, so I think it's safe to say that he will be the first of our household to hit 12 months before 20 pounds.

The tragic day that I knew was coming has finally arrived.  His hair doesn't really stick up any more.  But one Sunday a couple weeks ago, it gave us one final hurrah with this look.

It made us both SO happy.  I'm trying to keep it together now that it has collapsed, but, really, wasn't it just fantastic?!

This is how he looks wet.  Almost like a different baby.  (Pardon the sketchy bath photo.)

I love my boys.  And I love that my older boy chose that pink pouf from all the color options available.  He is 100% confident in his manhood.

This is what Trey's hair looks like when it swirls around in the bathwater.  It kind of looks like it's not really attached to his head.  And it kind of reminds me of the house centipedes we used to get back in Connecticut.

He doesn't like when it swirls around his head.  Because that means he's laying down and not sitting up playing with his toys like a big boy.

At least I can still make it stick up in the tub.  See how happy he is when he gets to sit up and play with the baby shampoo?

I think these two look a lot alike.  Except, of course, that she was much much chubbier.

Teaching him to drink from a cup, just like my friend suggested a couple weeks ago.

Just kidding!  He lacks the know how to tilt his head back and actually get any of that nutritious bathwater in his mouth.  No worries.

Having never had a skinny baby before, I think it's just absolutely adorable how tiny his little body is.  He's just so little!

And here's the finished product.  FluffyHair straight out of the tub.  With Lizard-Mouth Mommy showing her enthusiasm.

See how it's kind of flopping there at the front?  See how I'm trying to hide my pain behind my smile?  See how I really really needed a hair cut?

At least one of those wrongs has been righted since this photo was taken.  I got my haircut.  And Blake can hardly keep his hands off me ever since, so I guess I'm still winning.

Unrelated

I've been slacking in the photo area lately.  I either forget to take it out completely, or I only get one or two pictures.

Thus, today's post involves two separate, unconnectable photos.

The first is from another great date Blake and I went on with a couple other couples a couple weeks ago.  First, we went to the temple which was so great.  Then we went to The Cheesecake Factory.  Yum.

Blake ordered the lettuce wraps.  We're used to them P.F. Chang style.  Not lettuce farm style.  It was such an impressive array, I had to take a photo.  Apparently, Blake's next door neighbor thought I was taking a photo of the two of them.  Sorry, Jon.  I'm a foodie.

And photo number two is from the Sunday after our romantic date.

Blake and the kids made me breakfast in bed!  How sweet is that!  Blake's specialty is sliced strawberries and bananas with brown sugar and a dollop of cream.  Now, Bryce keeps telling me "the secret ingredient is brown sugar" any time I cook.  I was also treated to yummy toast and my very favorite Simply Orange juice.

Honestly though, even if it hadn't all been so delicious,  I would have been thrilled all the same.  It was so sweet and unexpected and just great.

And I just realized there is a commonality between the two pictures.  New Title:  The Food We Eat.

When You Party Like A Rock Star

Admittedly, I don't really know what that means.  I've never partied with a rock star to know exactly how one parties.

But this is how I imagine one might sleep after such partying:

If you can't tell, he's crammed up against the slats of his crib.  Seriously, his face was pressed up against it.

We wanted to create a smokey haze, just like a rock star party.

Ew.  That's so gross, it's not even funny.

That's actually humidifier mist.  We've been running it in his room almost every night since November.  Twice, we've decided to take a break from it.  Both times he's woken up sick and feverish the following morning.

Of course, he hasn't had more than two consecutive days of good health since November, so it's hard to say if the lack of humidified air is really the culprit, or if he was on the verge of being sick anyway.  He has to keep going in for check ups on his ears because they're interested to see if there is fluid in them when he is healthy.  So far, this just results in the diagnosis of another ear infection(s) each time.

It's a good thing for this little Rock Star that Spring is right around the corner.

Oksana Revisited

The weekend before Valentine's Day we were supposed to go ice skating with a bunch of other couples.  But then I learned that there was a youth activity that same night which most of our babysitters would be attending.  So, I rescheduled it for the following weekend.  And then we had this crazy warm week and the ice melted.  And I was most upset because I could enjoy the warm weather 100%.  I worked through my anger and decided to just forego the ice skating plan and have everyone over for games and good eats.

I forgot to break out the camera during the party and I learned long ago that if the camera doesn't come out, it's like it never happened.  I completely forget to blog about it.  So, I'm trying to be better.  There was a party.  There were a lot of people in our home.  There was great food (everyone brought a little something).  There were some heated moments of competition.  But mostly there was a lot of fun and laughter.  We are so blessed to have awesome friends here!

Fast forward to another Saturday later on.  I can't remember exactly when.  But between Valentine's and now.  We were all set to drive up to the Big City to buy bedroom furniture and then it snowed for a few days.  A lot.  And froze.  And the roads seemed a little sketchy.  So, we rescheduled our exciting plans and I sat at the breakfast table feeling a bit bummed for 3.4 seconds before my rapidly moving train of thought took me down this track:  Blasted weather, now we have to reschedule our plans yet again, except this time it's in reverse, we can't do what we want because it's too cold, last time we couldn't do what we wanted because it was too warm..., hey!  wait a minute!  I'm feeling a connection here, if it's too cold to go furniture shopping, it must be perfect weather for ice skating!  Yay!

I let Blake skip all of the middle part and just shared my awesome final thought with him.  He was totally on board, so we called the babysitter to make sure she would babysit for us first and then I called all of our friends while we went about the morning routine of working out at the gym, taking Kayli to violin group class, and running errands.  At first we had a pretty big group of people interested in joining our last minute skating plans, but then people started backing out and we wound up with two other couples.  Which was nice because we all drove up together in our van.  And it turns out the ice skating rink is almost as far away as the furniture store.  But the roads weren't bad by then.

We haven't been ice skating in about eight years.  I have never been good, but Blake at least looks like he knows his way around a rink.

For some reason, almost every picture of my friend Anna has two things in common:  1.  She's flashing a cheesy grin and 2.  She's blurry.

But her ear warmer is adorable.

Blake kept skating off without me, so she was kind enough to let me hold her hand.  She knows I'm kind of co-dependent like that.

These are our other friends that joined us.  Jacob heard about me being touchy-feely and made sure to keep his hand angled away from mine so I couldn't slip mine into his.

Blake pulled me in to kiss me and I started to cry.  Actually, he puckered his lips about six inches out from his face and looked so ridiculous that I burst out laughing.  Which apparently, looks a lot like crying.

And the kid in white is taking notes on how to bust a move while skating with your woman.

Blake expressing how much it hurts his heart when I laugh at him when he tries to kiss me.

These two are seriously SO cute.

As are these two.  They're Olympic hopefuls for the pairs skating.  It took about four tries for me to get this shot.  Oddly enough, it was my camera that struggled more than their skating skills.

Here we are in action.  You can tell how secure and at ease I feel on the ice.

We had a ton of fun and are so grateful to our friends that were able to make it with us!  Afterward we all headed over to the home of some friends who liked the idea of hanging out, but not so much on the ice.  They served us delicious hot cocoa and cookies!  And then the husband showed Blake his gun collection and got him all excited about hunting season.  Thank you for that!

For some bizarre reason, after all of this and the long day we'd had before it, Blake and I decided to rent and watch a movie after taking the babysitter home.

When I woke up the next morning, I felt old.  I just can't pull off a day like that any more.  I'm too tired.  Which is crazy because I'm really not old enough to be old.  Wasn't I just barely 17?!

The Best Kind Of String

Remember that Valentine's package from Blake's parents the kids received a few weeks ago?  Well, it contained a container of silly string.

Fortunately, that was a nice, warm week, so the kids were able to spray it around outside.  They were SO excited!

And by "kids" I mean. of course, these three.

We left Zima inside, so she wouldn't eat the stuff.  The glee on their faces is that of shooting it at the door which she was sadly sitting behind.  She hates being left out of the fun.  But really, I think she was happier on that side of the door than she would have been on this side.  Meanwhile, the giggles just kept pouring out of the kids during all the fun.

And then they turned it on me.  I didn't even flinch because I just *knew* they would never shoot it at me, me being the mama and all.  Plus, I was toting the camera.

Turns out, I was wrong.

Don't you go spraying that silly silly string on my mama!


He's always good about defending my honor like that.

Then Kayli wanted a turn with the bottle.  Naturally, they targeted Bryce.

Who was not exactly thrilled with the idea now that it was his turn to be the target.

So, he took a turn and sprayed his sister.  You can guess how that went.

Finally, we got that bottle and decided to get Daddy who had cleverly made sure he was always the one really in charge.  And wouldn't you know?  When we tried to spray him with the string, it didn't work.  It was all gone.

Just you wait, Darling.  The next bottle of silly string has your name all over it.

Defying Gravity

I need to see "Wicked" again.  But this post isn't really about "Wicked".  It's about my darling baby.  Although, he is wickedly cute.

He really has been a perfect baby for 10 months.  And I know every "baby stats" post says this, but I really can't believe he's 10 months already!

He's still got the most awesomest hair in the universe.  Although, I've discovered that if we wash it with Bryce's shampoo-and-conditioner-in-one, it starts to fall a bit.

But give it just baby shampoo, and Idina Menzel has got nothing on that hair!

See those cute little teeth?  If you look really closely, you can see the second top one coming in, too.

I know it's an odd photo, but he wouldn't let me set him down for his 10 month photo shoot.  He's still been sick since November.  Now we're looking at perpetual ear infections.  Fun fun fun.  For the most part, he's been quite the trooper.  But he does prefer to be held.  And when he cries, it breaks my heart.

But sometimes I have to take a picture first, before rushing to his aid.  Usually, when we prop him up and let him stand, he's happy as a clam.  But he still hasn't figured out how to get down from his propped up position and was, at this point, tired of standing.

But he just looked so cute and tiny (and I needed proof that he doesn't always wear his pajamas.  He does even wear pants sometimes, but he'd spilled on them during dinner.)  Look at those scrawny little legs!

There's something about his face here that just gets me every time.  So sad.  But so sweet.

And that's our little guy for now.  He's all of 19 pounds when he's fully clothed.  19 pounds of pure preciousness, that is.