sickies and mopeys

There are a few things that people tell you before you have kids that you just cannot really fathom or understand before you actually go through it yourself.

People told me, "Church is so hard when you have kids." And I thought I got that when I taught Sunbeams, with the tired and whiny and fidgety (and cute) kids who didn't want to sit in their chairs or stay in Primary. Guess what? NOT THE SAME. Church is exponentially worse when you're the parent, even of just one very tired and cranky one-year-old. I don't really have to explain this because anyone who goes to church knows just what I'm talking about: three hours, ALWAYS during nap time, expectations of quiet and sitting still. (Obviously, I am thinking about this because it is a Sunday and we just had a wonderful long day at church.)

Despite how hard Dane is at church, he was very helpful when Tommy went to clean the church on Saturday and sat in this cute hiking backpack the whole time and just had this big grin on his face. HE LOVES SERVICE.

I remember hearing, "Winter is hard because the kids get sick over and over again." But NEVER was I prepared for how ridiculously frustrating it is to have your child have a non-stop runny nose for months and to get one cold after another and for their naps and eating to be disrupted again and again because they can't stop coughing or because they're too uncomfortable or sick to sleep. How hard it is to handle not just days, but WEEKS of fussiness and no napping, and then a few days of health before you delve into yet another cold. And then how hard it is to know your poor baby is sick and sad at the same time that you are trying to not allow yourself get more and more frustrated with him. WINTER NEEDS TO BE OVER and it's still January.

I was taking this picture on my phone to send to Tommy to show him Dane's cute outfit, but just look how sad and tired he looks. He was so lethargic and exhausted and sick this day.

And... okay, people said lots of things. And really, I just kind of wanted to complain after a long hard week with a sick and whiny baby who has insisted on waking up in the 5s the last three days in a row. Weeks like this are so, so hard for me to control my temper and stay focused on the good thoughts, like "I love this baby more than anything" and "I really am grateful I can take care of him when he's sick instead of someone else." Because those good thoughts really are my priorities right now, and are much more important than the temporary frustrations that come from dealing with a toddler day to day--and I guess that's my job, to learn how to remember those priorities and make those my everyday focus, even on the long days. (And yeah, I am not very good at it right now.)

So, I'll just say it: I love my baby more than anything and I really am grateful I can take care of him when he's sick instead of someone else. This is my mantra for this week and WE WILL SURVIVE.

Sitting and watching a few minutes of Rio after giving him a haircut. He is such a cutie.

New Year's in UT, part 2

The other post has lots of pictures from all the outings we did while we were in Utah, but we also took lots of pictures of us just hanging out at home in Ogden. It is so nice that Tommy's sister Melissa lives so close (just in Layton) because she was able to come over a lot and let Dane and Zach play together a ton. They spent maybe 3 days playing almost exclusively with this marble set that Tommy got for Christmas when he was a kid, which made me covet that toy to no end when I saw how much time it kept their attention. And while they played, we got to talk to all the siblings visiting the house and got some good bonding time in. 

(Again, not sure why all the vertical pictures aren't rotated, and again, still too lazy to fix them.)

Dane loved Jet. He was nervous around Murphy at my house but I think seeing Zach tackle Jet and snuggle with him made Dane sure that Jet wasn't dangerous. He loved sitting in the high chair and feeling Jet's fur touch his feet when Jet would walk under him.

The two boys and their grandpa!

The only thing cuter than two babies the same age is two babies MATCHING. We didn't even realize that we had matching pajamas for them, but Melissa started getting Zach dressed for bed and we ran downstairs to grab Dane's matching monkey pjs. 

Tommy's dad has this game he likes to play with the grandkids called "Hello, Good-bye" where they bounce on his back and then he eventually rolls over and they land on the floor (on pillows). Dane was nervous at first but then LOVED it and would try and dive off of Greg's back before the game was even over. I just loved this picture of Dane with his big smiling face getting ready for the fun.

These two little mischief makers know exactly where they can wreak the most havoc everywhere they go.

We took Dane outside for a little while one of the days we were there to play in the snow. He was kind of ambivalent--happy to be outside and completely uninterested in the snow itself. But it was still cute to see him in those hilarious snow clothes.

My aunt and uncle gave all the boys in our family BYU ties for Christmas, and they gave Dane and Tommy matching ones. How cute is this to see them matching on Sunday?

The only time we really left Tommy's family, we went down to Orem to see Grandma and Grandpa Murphy. We were sad that my Grandma and Grandpa Myres were still out of town in Ithaca, so we didn't get to see them this trip. (But we'll do it this summer, don't worry, Grandma!) We spent the night at G&G Murphy's house, and had dinner with them and Scott and Kate and Elliot.

There are a few things that remind me so strongly of my childhood around G&G's house, and these little kid chairs are one of them. So cute to see Dane playing in them. He is enthralled with child-size chairs right now--one reason he loves going to nursery with me!

The two second cousins.

Grandpa Murphy (or, should I say, GREAT-Grandpa Murphy) gave Dane a few of his useless old CDs, and turns out he was very prescient about what sorts of presents 15-month-olds want because Dane carried that CD around for days. It was really cute to see how excited he was.

A rocking horse Dane loved.

Thanks for letting us come, Grandma and Grandpa! We always love seeing you.

And thanks for the good times in Ogden! We will be back sometime in May!

New Year's in Utah, part 1

After we left California, we flew straight up to Utah for a week and a half. We love heading up to Ogden and staying at the Leiningers' house, especially over Christmas break when there were a bunch of the siblings around to hang out with. Tommy's sister Kristen was our holiday season party planner, and she made an awesome daily calendar with outings and activities that we had to do in order to save us from the usual plight of never getting around to doing anything and spending our whole trip just sitting around and hanging out. Thanks to her stellar work, we conquered the post-Christmas sugar crash with a lot of fun-tivities that helped us feel like we were spending Quality Time together as a family and getting out of the house. But OF COURSE we also spent a good amount of time vegging and playing the Wii together and watching Dane and Zach throw marbles down the marble track for HOURS on end. We are so happy that Dane has two cousins his exact same age on the Leininger side for him to play with and fight with (although hopefully the latter will die down eventually). 

(P.S. I'm not sure why half of the pictures that should be vertical are staying stubbornly horizontal... and I am way too lazy to fix them so there you go!)

We went to the Christmas Village in downtown Ogden, this annual tradition with lots of awesome Christmas lights and little Christmas houses put up by local businesses. We did this the second night after we got there, and it was FREEZING, but Dane loved the Christmas lights and seeing all the little mini houses and their decorations. He did start screaming by the end so we were rushing back to the car to get him home and to bed, but we survived.

Dane and his cousin Zach--totally the most fun part of the trip was seeing these two playing together! (And fighting over toys, and pushing each other, etc.)

Tommy and James and their two boys.

Another day, we all went down to Salt Lake to meet up with Shane and Kiley and Jaxon (Tommy's brother and family). We first went to the Clark Planetarium, just to play with all the fun exhibits there and let the babies have some fun, and then we had dinner at the new City Creek mall.

Dane liked standing in the tornado tunnel. This is not an appropriate use of the exhibit, but he sure was happy about it.

Not sure why we felt compelled to get a family picture on the fake Mars landscape in the planetarium, but we did. This will TOTALLY go on our wall.

This is Dane and his cousin Jaxon. We never managed to get a picture of all three of the boy cousins together, but that's okay.

 Uncle Troy knew just how to get Dane to laugh, all the time!

Dane wanted to wear Kristen's scarf like a head wrapping or something. They were trying to keep him warm at first, but then he kept begging for them to put it back on him.

We ALSO ended up heading down to Salt Lake another day to go to the Hogle Zoo. My cousin Scott invited us to go with him and Kate and Elliot, and we joined them--and brought almost all of Tommy's family along! So Elliot is Dane's second cousin--they're my Grandma and Grandpa Murphys' only two great-grandchildren--and they are only about two months apart. So it was really fun to see them--AND fun to take these young boys to the zoo and see them enjoy the animals. They were enthralled everywhere we went.

Zach didn't want to miss out on the zoo action either.

Elliot wearing his blue devil hat. His mom is a Duke alum, so they have Blue Devil pride!

Dane and Elliot in the bald eagle's nest, haha.

Everyone was enthralled with the seals and sea lions. Dane was trying to imitate the crazy sounds they were making.

Dane was sitting there staring at the leopard with this grin on his face, just so amazed at the cool animals he was seeing. And then he was trying to make a leopard's growl sound.

 All of there at the zoo together!

Us with Scott and Kate and Elliot.

And the last big outing that happened while we were in Ogden was a trip to the Ogden Dinosaur Park. Dane has been really into dinosaurs (we've been borrowing those "How Does a Dinosaur..." books and he loves them!) so we thought he and Zach would have a lot of fun. I got some 24-hour flu bug, so I stayed home and threw up while everyone else went to the dinosaur park, but it definitely sounded like fun.

Dane, dinosaur hunter.

I think we definitely accomplished our goals of not just sitting around and wasting our time doing nothing while we were in Utah. Nothing too fancy or crazy, but we really had a lot of fun doing all of these things!