First Christmas

It's almost been a whole month since we've updated the world on the Z family happenings! Somehow the holidays always seem to be more busy than relaxing...

I flew down to Hilton Head Island on December 15th with Brandon to help my mom after her surgery. Yes, that means I flew by myself with an infant. Despite my anxieties, everything went relatively smoothly, mostly because the flights were not full, and I had a whole row to myself on both legs of the flight. There was one small issue called a diaper blowout while the plane was in line to take off, so I couldn't get up to do anything about it. A few loads of laundry later (mine and his), we are no worse for the wear.

KZ flew down on the 20th to join us. Because we were not at our Kansas home for so much of the holiday season, we decided not to get a tree. We both love having a live tree and enjoy decorating it, so it was a little sad around our house. In order to have some sparkling lights, we decided to decorate a Christmas lamp.

Festive, huh?

We were in South Carolina until January 2nd, but we surprisingly took very few pictures. We didn't realize until we got back that we didn't get many pictures of our family members holding Brandon. I guess we were too caught up with enjoying him and seeing our family enjoying playing with him. Brandon loved meeting his aunt Kiki, uncle Andy, cousin Drew, great-uncle Tim, mom's cousin Devin, and many other family and friends. And he, of course, loved spending lots of time with his Mimi, Papa, Babcia, and Dziadzia.

Here is Brandon on Christmas Eve in the cute shirt mom's friend Shelley gave him!

Our mischievous little elf!

The "wrapping" elf. :-)

Brandon and his Daddy on KZ's birthday, December 22nd. Those little figurines on the cake have been on his birthday cake ever since he was little. I wonder what traditions we'll start for Brandon on his birthdays. (side note: do you think my husband likes superheros? Check out the guy behind the tree on the cake and KZ's shirt)

Here we are on a walk on Pinkney Island with KZ's dad. Brandon is sleeping in the Ergo baby carrier.

Here's Brandon with his Papa. Papa makes cool hats, huh?

This is on the bluff behind Valerie's parent's house. Brandon is (again) sleeping in the Ergo. We can't keep him awake on walks when he's in that thing!

The flights back home were a little more eventful and difficult than on the way there, even though there were 2 of us to handle the baby! We were held on the runway for a long time at the beginning and end of the first flight, and Brandon didn't sleep at all, so he became overtired. He fell asleep the minute we put him in the stroller in the airport, mostly because we were walking very very fast, so he was getting a nice bumpy ride. We had less than 30 minutes to change concourses and get to our gate in Atlanta. Why is it that you only ever have to change concourses when you are running late!? We made the flight (and our luggage did too amazingly), but Brandon had a hard time getting back to sleep on the plane, so he fussed most of the time.

We finally made it to Kansas City only to find that it was 8 degrees and snowing. Wait...it gets worse. KZ had parked in the uncovered economy lot. Kansas City had already gotten about a foot of snow under what was currently falling. And I hadn't yet put an ice scraper in my car for this year. After about 45 minutes and a few broken CD cases, KZ picked Brandon and I up at the baggage claim area and we made it home by 1:30 am (which seemed to be 2:30 am for us coming from the Eastern time zone). I didn't realize how easy I had it on my flights down to SC. Maybe I won't be flying with the baby any time again soon.

So now we are back home and trying to re-condition our son to realize that someone does not have to be paying attention to him 100% of the day! And we are on to another baby adventure called "solid food" as you'll see on another posting!