::31 on the 31st::

(My birthday presents--my new computer for work and some fun stuff my mom brought for me!)

Today is my birthday! It's been a great day, besides the 20-30 minutes I spent on the phone with the bank, since they pulled our rent out of our account twice for Feb. Ouch.
But enough about that. The fun part of today is that my parents are here visiting. This is the first time I've been able to be with my parents for my birthday in years. Probably since we moved away from UT which was close to seven years ago! So how fun that they got to come out for the baby blessing and stay for my birthday.

I got to go shopping with my mom and sandy this morning while the boys went on a Land Rover adventure in the mountains (Max had the day off school for some teacher training or something.) We had a good time. Then we all met up at Harry's Roadhouse for lunch, which was delicious. Then we went home and relaxed for a while and then at the end of the day enjoyed pie and some sweet gifts.

Max served me a fancy breakfast this morning and it was delicious. He was very very serious about it too. Or at least he tried to be.

I couldn't be luckier.
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::today::

Today we had Sandy's blessing at church. It was so nice and a really beautiful day. I'll post more about it later hopefully. I'm all worn out now.
Sand couldn't have behaved more perfectly today.

(thanks to Grandma Kathy & Lechelle for finding the adorable outfit, it fits perfectly!!)

::word::

So some people have been coming up with a word for the upcoming year. A word to define, or sometimes direct the year by. This is tough for me. I have a hard time distilling everything down to that one particular important word. But I try anyway, because it makes me think.

And the fact that it's taken me like four weeks to finally think this out and write it down is just evidence that I need this word to apply pretty terrible.

The word for me this year will be SIMPLE. Yes, as in like "keep it simple, stupid." Except for the stupid part since I really hate when people call themselves stupid.

The reason why? Well, I'm way in over my head right now. I have way way more to do than I can ever possibly get done to my satisfaction. And most if not 99% of what I'm doing is good and important and a large amount of it I enjoy. So where can I cut some of it out? I can't. So what I have to do is just keep everything as simple as I can, and not require too much of myself at any given time.
Like......making dinner. It's so hard for me. It's a tough time of day, I'm not a very good cook and I can never think of what to make that actually sounds good and is healthy. So I've got to keep it simple. I've got to find some easy things that sound decent and figure out how to do them well and quickly. OK, so that's not a simple task, but once I get it figured out it should simplify things.

Here's a good example of something I already did. I really wanted to make delicious sugar cookies at Christmastime. I usually do it and they're delicious and fun and so festive. I made the dough, twenty times in my mind. I never got it done. And instead of beating myself up because I didn't get something fun done I just decided I'd make "winter" cookies instead and put it off until after Christmas. And we did it. Later when the pressure wasn't quite as intense. They tasted just as good.

So it won't be particularly simple to simplify things, but after the initial work I think it will benefit us all. And then I can keep doing all the good stuff I'm doing. And hopefully I won't go crazy.

So there you go.

::the tenth week!!::

Week number ten was a little crazy. I felt like I was drowning in things to do. We got back from our Phoenix trip and of course there were mounds of dirty laundry to take care of and all sorts of other projects waiting for me.

We also had a little health scare. One of Sandy's newborn screening tests came back with a (slightly) elevated reading and I had to drive him down to UNM hospital (all by myself) to have another set of testing done. It was really unpleasant and made me really nervous and stressed of course. Everything turned out normal and ok so we were extremely relieved, but it did give me a good chance to think and realize that it didn't matter if our Sandy wasn't perfect, he's our darling boy and we'd just make sure everything was as good for him as it could be. But we're really grateful that he's ok.

So anyway, I spent a lot of time driving and a good amount of time trying to catch up on work. Poor Sand and Max spent more time than they wanted to in the car.

So turns out the only pictures I have of the baby from week 10 are car seat pictures. And they're sad pictures too.
I wanted to showcase some of his cute clothes, because I went to Carter's in Phoenix and got some adorable stuff and I got a few things on sale from the Gap too that are just to die for. But of course, car seat pictures don't do much for seeing baby clothes, and the baby always seems to soil the clothes that are the cutest, so oh well.

Oh, and another thing this week, Sandy got his first set of shots from the doctor, poor guy. See? I told you it was a crazy week. He didn't have a good time with it and he was sad all day after. So this picture is from shots day.
It was supposed to show you his adorable little jeans and flannel shirt, but oh well.

Ah, now that's a bit happier face--a bit.

He wasn't too happy for the next day or two either, and he didn't sleep well at night. I'm not used to that anymore, since he's been doing such a great job sleeping, so I was pretty worn out.

I think he might be wondering why I'm taking pictures of him instead of getting him out of the dreaded seat here.

But how cute is his little star jacket? I like my baby in a hood.

So we survived another week. And a tough one it was. I wasn't sad to see this one roll on by. This next week is already much better.

********I forgot I had this adorable photo on my phone.

I love these two boys so much. I'm so glad we had a happy picture for this week, even though it was hard to find!

::week nine::

The latest week report ever! I've been busy. You'll be glad to know I finally got all of the Christmas decorations down and put away. It took until this saturday. Everytime I would see a Christmas decoration it would just make me tired, so I'm so glad they're finally all packed away.
Then we had our Phoenix trip during week nine. Very fun and busy.

So anyway, here are a few fun photos from the week.

I think this one of the boys in the hotel is so sweet.

We feel so lucky and blessed that Max loves his little brother so much. And I know their relationship will go through lots of changes in the next few (and many) years, but it's off to a great start. Adorable.

Here's Sandy hanging out in the car after a feeding and a change. He did great on the trip eating in the car. We didn't have any problems changing him in the car either, luckily, since he's been known to poop on people relatively often.
He was patient and I think he had a good time with all of us, when he wasn't too sick of the carseat.


And here are my favorite Sandy photos of week nine.
I was shopping at the Gap for baby socks and ran across this cute, rather gorgeous colored, full body sweater in the sale section. Well I HAD to get it. And he looks so cute in it. I don't know how many more times he'll end up wearing it because it's darn warm and the winter just hasn't been that cold so far, but we'll see.
It suits him, no matter how many more times he's going to sport it.


Um, cutest thing EVER? I think so.
We love our Sand.

::phoenix in january pt 3::

It's about time I finish telling you about this trip! It's been a bit of a crazy week this week, and the baby hasn't let me sit down to edit photos for days.
Anyway, the trip was great. We were able to do a little shopping at stores we don't have in Santa Fe. We ate some Jimmy John's and some In'N'Out Burger. Kris and Max swam. Max and I watched a movie in the hotel room together on the computer Kris brought to do his course work on. We got to visit our friends the Baboias from residency. Sandy got a little travel swing and really loved it. We goofed around in the hotel room plenty.

The best part though, was wearing short sleeves and sandals. It wasn't too warm, but it was nice and we took advantage of it. Sandy got to feel the breeze on his arms for the first time ever!
Max goes around that hotel like he owns the place. He's stayed there three times now because of the course and he loves it. It is a pretty fun place, weird but fun and the breakfast is quite good. We can handle going back one more time.

We left on saturday night to head towards home. The office was open monday because of Martin Luther King Day (trying to take advantage of the school holidays to get kids in!) so we needed to get home.
Saturday night we stayed in the Wigwam Motel. Ever heard of it? Well, it's pretty darn awesome. It's in Holbrook AZ on old Route 66. It's a big group of concrete teepees, and you sleep in them. In fact, ours had two "queen" beds, a tiny TV and a tiny little bathroom with a very short shower.

The temperature in the wigwams was surprisingly ok, considering it was freezing cold outside. BUT if you went into the bathroom with bare feet it was awful. Just frigid.

Max was so excited when we got there he was bouncing off the walls. He was rolling around on the bed driving me nuts and I told him to stop. He said "My body just won't let me relax!!!" He finally fell asleep at about 10.
There are a bunch of old classic cars parked outside of the wigwams. They were really fun to look at.

So I thought you might want to see some of them too.




We're pretty sure that this is the place that inspired the Cozy Cone motel in the Pixar movie Cars. And almost every one of the cars in the parking lot can be identified as a character in the movie. Like...Mater of course!

It's a fun place. We'd definitely recommend it if you don't want to spend too much money, have a small boy or girl that will get psyched out of their mind, don't want to shower in the morning and want your feet to hang off the end of the bed.

It was a fun trip. Luckily we get to do it one more time in February!

::phoenix in january pt 2::

We made some very exciting and awesome videos with our new little waterproof video camera when we were in Phoenix. We're putting it all together into a big long one which will probably be way too long for youtube, but here's a teaser for you. The underwater footage is so fun!

A little more Phoenix to come, hopefully tomorrow!

::phoenix in january pt 1::

Kris has his orthodontics course about once a month. We drove out with him in September for a fun little getaway. He went on his own in October, and then took Max with him in December (and almost earned the title of a saint for it).
He was excited that this time we were all up for the trip.
We planned it well--lots of stops, and no more than four hours of driving a day.
We left on wednesday evening after work and drove to Gallup, NM. We stayed in a crazy old supposedly famous place called El Rancho. When we drove up in the dark Max said he thought it looked like Las Vegas.

Supposedly this is the place where all the movie stars stayed when they came out to make movies and such. There were signed photos all over the lobby--if you can call it a lobby.

I'd say their claim here is a little overstated. It's charming--at least in the lobby, but the convenience of tomorrow was sadly not that present.
Check out the crazy lobby.

It's hard to even tell what's going on in here with the balconies and the stairs and all the crazy furniture. The overriding theme in there (besides the movie stars) was bull horn furniture. If I hadn't had my arms full of baby when leaving the next morning I'd have gotten some shots. They did have some fun vintage vending machines and some other stuff in there. Overall it was charming, but also 100% overwhelming!
Then, when we went up the stairs and headed through a door towards our room, this is what we saw.

Cinderblock halls! The charm was gone! Besides the paintings of indians along the way.

The rooms were ok, they attempted to keep the theme with wagon wheel furniture. The best thing though was the bottle opener/corkscrew attached to the doorjamb in the bathroom. Just in case.
We froze all night, not knowing how to turn up the heat. Sandy slept well despite that though, so that was nice. Max tried to get him to do some stomach exercising, but it didn't work out so well. He didn't enjoy it much. The pictures are cute though.


I love how his little feet are pointing up. Max sure loves his brother!
We got up to head our four hours towards Phoenix. I enjoy this part of the drive because we get to drive through AZ's northern mountains and then down towards Phoenix there are tons and tons of the big cactuses. They are so fun to look at. I wish I had a picture, but it's tough to take a good one from a speedy car. We did get some video though, but I don't have that to post right now.
The drive went well. Sandy does so great in the morning, he mostly just sleeps and smiles. Max was attentive to him in the back and popped his "peaceifier" as he calls it, back in for him and blocking the sun.

I love those baby mirrors.
It was definitely cold in NM and northern AZ. At one point we drove into a big foggy cloud and I thought it might be stormy, but luckily it was just frosty instead. I thought it was cool looking.

We were all really happy to arrive in Phoenix in the early afternoon. It was sunny and in the high sixties. The baby was able to wear short sleeves outside for the first time in his life!
And that's as much as I'm going to say about it all tonight. Oh, except that I'll say we had a great time and I was a little sad to have to get home....

(If only he was always this jolly!!)

::comparison::

9 days old:

55 days old or almost 8 weeks:

WOW!

::fun from week 8::

Week eight with our sweet Sandy.
He's darling and he's been sleeping great at night. Week eight found him stretching his nighttime sleep to four or five AM. Such an amazing thing for a sleep deprived mom.
He doesnt do so well with his daytime naps, but its hard to complain about that when nights are going so great. We're working on the daytime--slowly but surely (hopefully).

Some smiles from the week:


Oh how I love those full body smiles!!!!


I'm so sad that this little star suit doesn't fit anymore. He's growing so fast!


He now can sometimes get his hands into his mouth. It's a very happy and triumphant moment for him when he does! Like this:

BUT in the process of attempting to eat his hands he ends up scratching the crud out of his sweet little face. So sometimes for naps and nighttime he gets to wear socks on his hands.

I had gotten one hand's worth of fingernails clipped, but he didn't let me do the other one, the stinker. So he got to wear the
Michael Jackson sock look.

Another great week down, so many many more to go........

::just a teeny video::

Mostly for the fun of the grandparents!!
We think little Sandy is so adorable. He's almost figured out how to make his hands do what he wants--once in a while--sort of.

::::

Everybody loves the baby. Sultan loves him so much we have to protect him vigilantly from over-licking anytime his face is within reach.

::brothers having fun::

Max got a little toy phone at the office one day last week. When we got home he dug out one of his (many) other toy phones and proceeded to play phones with Sandy. It was seriously adorable because Sandy was in a wonderful mood and was very smiley.
Too bad it was super dark in the room--I wish the pictures were a little brighter, but oh well, they're still cute!






So adorable! I'm glad they're having fun together now, I think it bodes well for the future. But whatever it is, it's just so sweet.



"I just love that little guy!" says Max. I say I love BOTH my little guys. I feel very lucky and blessed.