Profusion of Posts

At least, that's what I hope.

I want to be a better blogger, and I want to find the time to do it. And luckily, I have all sorts of posts to catch up with, so I have plenty of material! I'm months behind in posts, so things won't be in chronological order, but there are things I want to make sure get posted. Firstly,

Frost Family Reunion 2013!

Today I'll share the tale of my sad career as a family photographer in Hilton Head, SC, a story otherwise known as The Universe Doesn't Want Me to be a Photographer.

The first photo shoot was for the whole family, and it was the most important, since we all get together so infrequently. It had been raining, but it stopped for a short time, and we were able to snap some pretty good photos--no small feat with a group of 43. 

Silly shot!

 

Then, after probably only ten minutes, right when we started doing some individual family shots, the rain started up again:

Emmaline, Jennifer, Leslie, Gibber, Alena, Jared, Noelle, Mariah
(A prize to any non-family who can guess the ages of all their kids!)

I thought the Cobia rain photo was lovely, but it's not exactly wall art. 

Makenna, Addie, Monique, Allen, Carter, Emery
Amazingly, the foliage was thick enough that Allen & Monique's family got a decent photo.
A couple of mornings later, Tess asked me to take some picture of my lovely niece Arin in her baptism dress. The combination of our wonderfully air-conditioned condo and the hot, humid morning made my lenses completely fog up. I mean completely. And it's not like I could just wipe them off, because the interior lenses were cloudy, too.
By some sort of miracle, my telephoto lens was clear for about 3.5 minutes, which allowed me to get a couple of good shots.

Later, Meghan asked me to take some family photos of her family. I should have learned from the beach shots to leave my camera in the car to stay warm or something, but leaving your nice camera in a hot car just seems like a bad idea for several reason. Anyway, my lenses were hopelessly cloudy again, but luckily Meghan's camera had been in the car and has a lovely 50mm lens that allowed for some nice photos.



Molly, Ben, Meghan, Claire, Stephen, Lauren.

In the end, I was able to get one or two good photos at each shoot, despite my problems with the weather. I think I like being a pretend photographer (as opposed to a real photographer) because I can take some nice photos without the pressure of people really expecting them to be good.

Which reminds me of the first interaction I ever had with my sister-in-law, Laurie Jayne. She said something about how she was looking forward to eating some Japanese food I was planning on making; I responded how I was nervous that it might not be that good. She said, "Then I will spread word of your mediocrity, so then we'll all be pleasantly surprised."

Clever, no? And exactly the way I'd like my photography to be known.

Christmas Crazies: Utah Trip

At sort of the last minute, we decided to tag along with my parents and Kenji to attend my cousin's wedding in Bountiful:

It was a beautiful occasion, and I am happy that we went.

Considering it was really just a weekend trip+two days' driving each way, I'm pretty proud of how much we were able to cram in. 

How did we survive road trips before hand-held technologies?

First of all, a sad note: We brought Pugslee with us on the trip, snuggled up in his dog bed.

This ended up being the last picture taken of him. He had a long life, and I think the long drive and super cold weather in Utah was too much for him, and he died the night of the wedding. 

You may not want to know the rest of the story, so I'm not going to include that quite yet. Maybe if I get requests.

Joel's mom got the flu right before Christmas and had to cancel her plans of coming to Oklahoma/Texas for the holiday. Sad. So she drove down to Bountiful from Boise to see us, and we had another mini Christmas!

Pretty dress for Pretty Junie

Mom always gives the greatest tea parties for her grandkids. Traveling tea parties!

We also got to spend some time with my aunt and uncle, who just adored June:

Dane, too.

June was screaming in every photo, except the one where the rest of us decided to scream.

We also spent some quality time with Evan & Holly and Cindy & Eric. It was great (and always hilarious!) to catch up with them. 

But we were especially grateful to spend time with George & Melanee, who even let us stay with them! We always have such a great time hanging out with them. We ate delicious food thanks to Melanee, and we got to hang out with Megan, too, despite her busy schedule. 

We always stay up late into the night, which is probably why we never get pictures. They would just be pictures of us sitting on the couch in our pajamas, mouths awkwardly positioned in the middle of speaking. But one of these days we need to document it.

But, since I don't have any pictures of all of us, I'll post these random pictures I happened upon:

Joel and George chatting at our wedding open house, circa 2004:

I can't even remember when this was; it must have been after a football game or something. 

Blast from the past, George! And I found a couple photos of George and Melanee and Samantha at BYU graduation. Pretty fun.

Anyway, it was a whirlwind trip, and June slept terribly. Silly goose. Don't know what we're going to do with her. But I think the trip cured of her impossibly picky eating, because she eats much better now. Weird?

Dane and June promptly reacquainted themselves with their toys upon our return:

And I finally managed to finish the very belated grandchildren quilt I made for Joel's mom. It turned out pretty well, I think.

And finally, we had fun over the holidays morphing our photos together on MorphThing.com. This is one of all five Hood siblings. Kind of creepy, huh? Especially thanks to Kenji's facial hair. Dane keeps looking at it, saying, "That's Mika. Wait, no. It's you, Mommy. Or maybe it's Kenji. Who is that?" I'm probably enjoying messing with his mind a little too much.

Oklahoma Adventures

First of all, thank you to all who contributed advice for helping Dane sleep better. Although I am still working on making sure we have a good sleep routine and schedule, I suddenly became aware of what is perhaps a significant reason he’d been waking up so many times during the night.

Teeth!

Yes, at 4½ months, he is the proud cultivator of two budding teeth. As a result, he is chomping a lot, and he doesn’t hate the pacifier right now. In fact, he will hold it and take it in and out of his mouth, getting a few satisfying chews in. I’m hoping he figures out that if he sucks consistently, he can keep it there. I’d be so relieved if that happened. Not just for the pacifier but because then he’d take a bottle, and I would have so much more freedom! Here’s hoping.

Anyway, we had many adventures getting to, being in, and returning from Oklahoma. As you know, I had been nervous about flying by myself with Dane. If you ask me how it went, I will think about it and say that it really wasn’t too bad; in fact, it went pretty well. But if I think a little harder, I will realize that almost everything that could possibly go wrong did indeed go wrong.

We got to the airport in plenty of time, and we said our goodbyes to Joel. He was in for a lonely week (extra thanks to Heather & Ryan and Stephen & Meghan for feeding him and giving him company.) I find out that my flight is delayed 30 minutes. No problem. An hour later, the plane actually arrives, and we wait to be told we can board. Dane is pretty upset by now because I haven’t fed him because I wanted him to be hungry enough to nurse as we took off as I’d been advised to do. This obviously took longer than expected. Anyway, we get on the plane, they shut the door, and start to feed Dane. The captain says we won’t be leaving for a few minutes because of a minor repair that needs to be done. Shortly thereafter, he tells us that now there’s something wrong with the engine and we all have to get off the plane. The woman next to me, a kind woman from New Zealand, helps me cut in line to be one of the first to get rerouted because we were all missing our connections by then. Incidentally, the flight leaving from the gate next to us was also cancelled because the inflatable slide suddenly inflated there on the tarmac. I would have thought that was funnier if it wasn’t already such a stressful situation. Anyway, we finally board our other plane, and I’m relieved to find myself sitting next to a 10-year-old girl. She won’t take up as much space and won’t be able to try to sneak a peek at my breastfeeding Dane. Oh wait, she wants to trade seats with her Dad, a very broad-shouldered man. But he was actually very nice, and Dane did alright. He got a little fussy sometimes but was mostly pretty good. After this first flight, I didn't even try to feed him during takeoff and landing because Dane didn't seem fazed by the cabin pressurization. Swish.

Once I get to Denver, I have about 15 minutes until I board the next flight, and we find our gate easily. This time, I sat next to a nice man who joked about how he and Dane are both bald, but the flight ended up being pretty empty, so we all got our own row. This made things way easier. The man seemed disappointed that we changed rows. I wasn’t sure if I should be heartened or creeped out by that. Anyway, this time Dane was very chill and slept most of the way. Whew!

My entire family came to the airport to meet us, which was very fun. My mom and dad (Jiichan and Baachan to Dane) were so excited to see him. My dad wasn’t supposed to lift anything over ten pounds for a few more days after his heart procedure, so I tried my best to keep him from lifting Dane off his lap, but there is no stopping a grandfather holding his first grandchild. We celebrated Rika’s birthday when we got home that night. I will fill you in on more details about the trip in a later post.

Come Saturday, Dane had a fever and was fussier than normal. I’m pretty sure he caught something on the plane. Dang. He’d never been sick before, so it was a new adventure. His fever lasted through Monday, and he had coughing, sneezing, and a majorly runny nose. We awakened one morning, and I found Dane like this (brace yourself):

What a poor baby! It makes me want to cry just looking at this picture. He was such a trooper, though. He was understandably clingy and a little fussier than normal, but otherwise, he was such a good boy. Oh man. I may have to remove that picture.

Fast forward to the trip back to Utah. Again, we get to the airport in plenty of time. Jiichan and Baachan are very sad to see Dane go, and we are sad to leave them.

Again, my plane is delayed, this time by about an hour-and-a-half. I sat next to a very nice third- or fourth-generation Japanese-American man from Orange County. Although the plane was full, we were the lucky ones to have an empty seat between us. Dane pooped. See, because Dane only poops every five days, I was really not worried about him pooping on the plane. But he did. It seemed to be a really small one, and it didn’t really stink, so I figured I’d wait to change him until we landed; the flight was only an hour. The nice man and I chatted a lot, and Dane slept most of the time. Then, right as the captain announced that we were starting our descent, Dane pooped again. Again! This is unprecedented in the life of Dane. This time I knew I didn’t have the luxury of waiting, so I went to the back, and the flight attendant spread a blanket on the ground for me. Of course, the poop leaked onto his clothes. I had a spare outfit, but I hadn’t brought it to the back with me, and we were to the point where everyone was supposed to be back in their seats, so I took the bib off his neck and held it where the poop leaked onto his clothes and hoped that would work until we got to Denver. Once there, I changed his clothes and found out my connecting flight was delayed an hour. ‘sigh.’ But we get on our way, and I sit next to a nice woman who was happy to sit next to the baby. Dane sleep almost the entire time. We land in Salt Lake, I congratulate myself for surviving the trip, and Dane wakes up and throws up all over himself and me. That exhausted my supply of backup outfits. But if he was going to throw up, I guess that was a good time to do it. Then, we met up with a very excited Joel, our family once again reunited on a happy Valentine’s Day.

All in all, I discovered that people are really exceptionally nice when you’re traveling with a baby. People kept offering to hold my backpack or fold and unfold the stroller. Even the captain helped me a couple of times. The experience scored many points for humanity.

This is really long, so I’ll end there for now. Tune in next time for the actual stay in Oklahoma!