Road Trip Out To Michigan

Video of our road trip out to Michigan. This was the most daunting video project from last summer. I started with over 200 video clips and boiled them down to these 60 or so. This was a fun project though. The others should be easier from here on out.

Jane over time

Jane at birth.


At one month.


2 months.


3 months.


4 months.


5 months.


6 months.


7 months.


8 months.


9 months.


10 months.


Don't you just love her?

Jane @ 8 months

I know you'll never believe this, but Jane just keeps on getting more fun. She's getting more and more interactive. She just gets games more. She gets when you're being playful, and if you're kind of coming after her, she'll turn and bury herself into the arms of whoever is holding her. She's so darling.

Her second tooth started coming in and that has just started some sleeping issues recently, but otherwise she is just awesome. The traveling kind of messed her up too, but she's normalizing since we haven't stuck her in her car seat for hours at a time and not changing rooms and locations every night.

Tonight we gave her some Tylenol and she started kind of crying and moaning as soon as I put her down for bed, but calmed down when she realized that I was staying to hang out with her. It was the cutest thing. She'd just kind of roll over and change positions, reach her hand up to touch my face, and I just rubbed her back until she fell asleep a few minutes later.

Probably the sweetest thing ever, though, was on our road trip over to Michigan. There would be times when we didn't have too much left in our car ride, but she had woken up or was just plain getting tired of being in her car seat, and if one of us could reach back and hold her hand, she would calm down immediately, set her head off to one side, and just fall asleep, reaching up her one little hand to hold one of ours.

She constantly melts my heart. I was not a person who just filled with love the second she came into my life, but my heart is brimful and overflowing whenever I think about her now. She's just such a happy little baby. I love my sweet little Jane.

Jane at 6 months

I just think she has the sweetest little face in the whole world. I don't think there are many differences between this month and last. I'm pretty sure she's growing, but I know she's still a runt. The biggest thing, probably, is that she can roll from front to back and back to front. She doesn't do it very much, but she does it with ease, and always seems to wait until we're not there watching her.

My favorite thing about Jane lately is when she is in the baby bjorn riding forward. She just loves it. It's funny to hear her giggle and just wiggles so much when she's in it. This last weekend when we were coming back from Phoenix we stopped at the Hoover Dam for a quick break and so I strapped her in the bjorn. One person commented to us about how happy she was in that thing.

She's such a good traveler. It was funny over the weekend because someone asked us if this was her first road trip. No, actually, she's been on three big ones already (California twice and now Arizona, with St. George and Vegas next weekend) and two plane trips (Vancouver and Mississippi). What can I say? The girl gets around. Sometimes when we're out and about she's kind of out of sorts with her sleep schedule, but always seems to adjust pretty easily wherever she is.

She's not great at naps, but great at sleeping. Although when she did figure out how to roll over from front to back, she would wake herself up in the night and not know how to go back to sleep. That was kind of rough for about a week, but she's good now. And in spite of our preference for her to go to sleep later so we can stay out and party more, she's been getting down to bed around 8ish, but she still sleeps in until about 8, so we can't complain at all.

Her awareness of people is also a little more obvious, especially strangers. We ended up going out to see a movie last week and we left her with a friend, but she cried the whole time we were away. I felt bad for that friend, but what can you do? Mom and dad have to get out on their own at some point, right?

We just love Jane. I just love Jane. I wasn't a person who just felt flush with newfound love when she was born, but it has been something that has built up since then. Just thinking about her lights me up. I can't believe it. It's such a unique kind of love to be a parent, different than anything I've ever known. And silly sometimes too. You wouldn't believe how proud I felt when she finally started rolling over and made it look so easy, like, "come on, dad, you really didn't think I was up to it?"

I love her more than I can say. We just feel so lucky to have her.