Linus – Week 17

For Thanksgiving, Linus had his first plane ride. We flew from Boston to Kansas City, and then drove up to visit my family. I’m very happy to say that he handled flying just fine, and we think he’s going to be ready for vacation in Sedona in January. Let’s hope, anyway.

Now, who’s this adorable redhead? This is Adalyn, my cousin Aaron’s daughter. She’s 14 months old and an absolute hoot.

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You can see the Yen was quite taken with her! You’re going to see a lot of photos of her in this post. This beautiful woman is her mom, Angie.

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Now, check this out! It’s Grandpa and Linus. He’s instructing Linus in the fine art of relaxing, and Linus is soaking up every word.

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We tried to give Linus as many breaks as possible on the quilt. You can imagine how many people wanted to hold him, and he loved every minute of it. But occasionally a baby just needs to stretch out.

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He actually leads a yoga class each morning. I enjoyed taking it, as I usually miss it by being at work.

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Adalyn can tell you what all of the animals say. Lion is my favorite. Rawr!

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Here the kiddos are nicely sharing toys.

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Here Kisha helped bundle him up for an outing.

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Linus got to meet Great Grandma Neva.

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Don’t believe this picture for a second. Like all kids, Linus adores Mary. He was just having an off night.

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Linus and Doyle. Linus looks like he’s humoring him, don’t you think?

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Hm. Some photos out of order. Please excuse the bathroom photo interruption! Yen seems a little more into them than Linus this week.

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Last week I talked about advances. Well, this is a big one: Linus has had enough of people holding his bottle and slowly dishing out milk. Now he only wants to hold it himself. And if you hold it, he’ll push your hands up higher so more milk comes out!

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I call this game “Sniff and Stretch.” It works for flexibility and for pushing food through the system. You can try it at home! Why is he pushing things through his system? Well, because he eats solid food now! He’s had sweet potato, banana, rice cereal, and prunes so far. He loved all of it.

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Oh, here we are! Back to Iowa. Here’s David hanging out with Cael and Drake. We all needed a walk after a giant Thanksgiving feast.

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And this… This is so strange. See the cat on the edge of the ice? After this photo, it actually jumped in and began to swim toward us! About halfway through it decided it was all a mistake an swam back, none the worse for the whole thing. It just shook off and carried on.

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Cows don’t impress Linus.

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Here Linus and Yen are scale.

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This is the Ady face. She makes it all the time, and it’s wonderful. This particular face is in response to the hat that Aunt Terri made for her.

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Naked baby alert!

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Mom allowed us to take a photo of her. She won’t regret it later when Linus is older!

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Jenny made Linus laugh so hard one afternoon during the trip. I wish I had video of it! Naturally as soon as I turned on the camera, the moment was over. But it was so great while it lasted.

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I’m not sure what Ruby thought of Linus.

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She’s going through an “I refuse to smile” phase. We’ve all done it!

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We drove over to Waubonsie the day after our feast so we could get a walk in. That felt so good. And Yen got a geography lesson about the Loess Hills.

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It was so unseasonably warm that we thought Linus’s little bear suit would be too much, so we made do with just a blanket wrap.

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Goofus and David.

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It took a few tries, but I managed to get a nice photo of Ruby with Grandma and Grandpa.

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Then we foolishly added another variable.

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We went on to Nebraska City for lunch at Lied Lodge, which bears more than a passing resemblance to the hotel in the Shining. But lunch was very good.

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It has trails behind it that lead to the Arbor Lodge area, which we had to explore.

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A man with a large camera offered to take our photo. Linus wasn’t interested.

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Hanging out in the lodge after.

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Yen was super excited about this tank. I can’t remember why.

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And then Linus fell immediately asleep on the ride home. I think everyone but Yen (the driver) did.

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Back at the ranch, Linus watched Adalyn play with a balloon.

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