dally woo

here is what we know about baby dallin so far:

he never sleeps. i mean, obviously, not never, but mostly, like, *never.* i think he has slept for three hours in a row all of twice since coming home. typically, he's up every hour or two hours or so. and one horrible, horrible night, he was up every twenty minutes. every twenty minutes, people!

he is my fastest nurser. which is saying a lot because all of my kids have been fast nursers, but dallin brings home the gold clocking in at three minutes. three minutes, people!

he scored a ten on his Apgar, which is a bit uncommon (being that it's not very different from a nine on the Apgar). we're not really sure what it means, but we tell everyone we know, and if he doesn't score at least a 2400 on his SAT in seventeen years, we're asking for our money back.

his eyes are always open. his head is perfectly shaped. he is completely unimpressed with my singing and cooing and efforts to make him play with me. and he remains absolutely adored (sleepless nights and all) by all the people living here.

summer writes some more

"My family had a new born baby. It was born on Thursday. My family can be together forever."

followed by an illustration of a family gathering we had not long after dallin was born:

i absolutely cannot get enough of summer's writing and her continually awesome family portraits.

just look at how fabulously tiny baby dallin is! bryan is finally taller than me! and what wonderful skin tone she gave anna and danton!

aside from a clean-shaven owen, everything is pretty much spot on.

color my world

as i neared the end of my pregnancy, i decided that my very limited resources and energy would best be spent making over three hundred heart-shaped crayons.

a wise choice, don't you think?

after all, dinner time may come and go, but valentines are forever.

don't mess around with the guy in shades

oh no.

do you wanna build a snowman?

seattle heard the rest of the country was busy being pummeled by snowstorms and wanted in on some of the action:

nine days old

his parents call him "handsomes."

his sisters call him "charming."

his brother needs to know where he is all the time.

baby dallin has received a warm (and loud! and crazy! and smothering!) wheeler family welcome into the world.

our cup runneth over.


ps - regarding his name, we have noticed that a lot of folks have never heard it before. we actually didn't see that coming. culturally (mormonally?), it's a fairly well-known moniker because of this guy. 

dallin's first bath

yes, there were seven of us who squeezed into the kids' bathroom for this momentous occasion:

in other news, the seahawks won the superbowl today :)

good morning, son

dallin bryan wheeler

born january 30, 2014 at 6:56am

9 pounds, 13 ounces

hipster

shared space

getting a little crowded in there, eh baby?

dimsum

so bryan is always trying to up the adventure ante around here by encouraging his little wheelers (mama included) to eat more exotic foods. as an after christmas breakfast treat, he thought we might all enjoy a little dimsum in seattle's international district. or at least he thought *he* might enjoy it, and the children and i were held mercilessly against our culinary will (just kidding, we went along...willingly).

the scorecard came back as follows:

kudos all around for bryan, schmatto, anna, and danton.

summer was a good sport and tried everything at least once. she actually liked a lot of the delicacies (even the seafood). yea for daddy! a girl after your own heart. i mean, stomach. 

afton has a palate like her mother's and, not surprisingly, was thoroughly unimpressed with what dimsum had to offer. however, she did insist on ordering a plate of beef and noodles off the menu, which she sampled. 

caleb was the wild card. he's generally the best eater out of the three of them, but he played against type here and disliked everything about the food except the chopsticks. 

ice ice baby

every couple of years the kids beg to go ice skating.

and we take them.

to remind ourselves that by "ice skating" they mean sloughing around the rink for fifteen minutes until their feet get cold and then complaining about how they don't have any candy.

wheelers 2013

summer, emily (plus one), bryan, caleb, and afton

looking forward to our growing family and all its wild and craziness in 2014!

chess in chinatown

this.

this is our 1,001st blog post.

thanks for sharing the ride.

on christmas day in the morning

season of light

"Then spake Jesus again unto them, saying, I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life."

John 8:12

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aup9M5HZawI

merry christmas!

#stranded

but wait! there's more!

as a general rule, bryan and i avoid winter travel like the plague. like the plague, i tell you!

but given the short window of availability into which we were able to fit our little romantic rendezvous, we took the risk anyway.

never. again.

so we were supposed to fly back to washington from utah on thursday morning. a storm was coming in wednesday night. we left the hotel in park city a night early, came down the canyon, and stayed with my grandma to avoid delays (and potential accidents) on I-80.

my uncle john drove us through the snow and sleet and rain and ice, and we arrived at the airport in plenty of time.

and by "plenty of time" i do mean plenty of time. like three days worth.

don't let that sign fool you or give you false hope: every. single. flight. was cancelled. 

and what happens when an airline tries to fit hundreds and hundreds of displaced people on flights that are already full of hundreds and hundreds of people during the busiest travel weekend of the year?

well, for the wheelers, it meant not getting booked out of utah until sunday afternoon.

now, you guys haven't forgotten about those three little people bryan and i left at home, right? 

well, my mom had already left washington early thursday morning. the plan was to cross paths in the seattle airport but a few hours from one another. and matto had been left in charge of the chillens.

now really, at this point, matto could probably take care of the children blindfolded, but he had no car and no food and no emotional preparation for an extra seventy-two hours of full-time *times three* (three-and-a-half if you fairly account for caleb) childcare.

i broke into hysterics. (yes, if you were there at the airport thursday afternoon, that was me). i had "rationally" decided that we needed to rent a car and drive (through two snow storms and several mountain passes) home. 

but as we were leaving the airport to go forward with this hare-brained scheme, bryan noticed that while no southwest flights were getting out, some other airlines had flights that were leaving. as a last-ditch effort, he called around to see the soonest something else might be available.

delta. friday night. first class. one seat left.

i took it.

and bryan came home on sunday.

#selfie

last week, bryan and i took a much-needed and last minute vacation alone. we headed to park city, utah for some skiing (him) and some spa-ing (her) and lots of eating, relaxing, movie watching, and good old fashioned hanging out for the both of them.

our many thanks and much gratitude to mere and matt for taking such good care of the littles whilst we were away.

...sleeping in, stuffing ourselves, and snapping selfies:

psst: remember our last solo vaycay, here?

tik tok

holly jolly

yep, that pretty much sums it up.

merry christmas!

a wheeler family pic

back in august, the extended wheelers were all able to get together in utah to celebrate grandma janna's birthday. towards the end of our stay, the lovely heidi henderson came up to take family pics:

(can you believe that there are seven children five and under in the above photo and they are *all* looking in the general direction of the camera?!)

august 31, 2013 in eden, UT

photos by heidi henderson