"That's Eric. He lives in his carseat."

So. I've been prodded by my cousin in South Carolina. (Thanks, Angela!) I have this tendency to want to do things so completely perfectly (in this case, add pictures to go with all the stories) that I don't do anything. But, then nothing gets done.

So, the last couple of months have been a blur (not surprisingly). On January 13, we took the trek to Utah (4 hours on a plane, by myself, with two babies) for Laura's wedding. I guess it could have been much worse ... in a car or a covered wagon, or with 5 kids, or something like that. I thought it would be fine, because I had our portable DVD player, and I kept promising Sam that as soon as we took off, he could watch Dora. This particular flight is hard for him because the drive to the airport puts him to sleep, but then he only gets a 15 minute nap and can't get back to sleep, and therefore is sleep deprived. We made it onto the flight, and took off, and I pulled out the DVD player, and ... no DVDs. Aaaagh. I had forgotten them. So after crushing crackers all over the place, dumping out water, flinging wet napkins onto the windows, and exhausting all of his other entertainment options, (I was feeding Eric, and there's only so much you can do at that point), Sam announced that he was ready to get off the plane. And that was only 30 minutes into the flight. Thanks to some patient passengers, we made it.

Eric was a month old, and luckily, he just sleeps a lot. This allowed me to focus on helping Sam feel like things were as normal as possible. When we got to my mom's house, the only place for him (Eric) to sleep was his carseat. And because we were so busy, and he's such a good sleeper, he spent quite a bit of time in his carseat. At one point, I was feeding him, and Madi, my two-year-old niece (known for her insightful comments), came in the room. She looked at us and said, "That's Eric." I nodded. Then she said, "He lives in his carseat." I felt guilty. For about ten seconds. Then I realized that babies need their sleep and if he's so comfy there that he sleeps all the time, then I'm not going to feel guilty about it. More on sleep later ...

We had a great time at Laura's wedding. But every time we go to Utah in the winter we get sick. I thought Ivan was being irrational, but sure enough, we got sick. Sam got a cold and I got the stomach flu. Then we switched. So I had the pleasure of changing the diaper of a two-year old full of lime-green something in an airplane lavatory, while having a month-old baby strapped to my chest in a Baby Bjorn. (At least my stuffed-up nose prevented me from smelling anything!) It's a good thing that Sam was very cooperative, or it could have been really ugly. We brought our respective diseases home to Ivan (who had come out to the wedding just for the weekend), and we were all sick for another couple of weeks. But now, life is back to normal. I'm back at work, and Ivan's traveling again (Minneapolis last week, Mexico next week), and we're all looking forward to the spring!