Lila Lynn and Cool Hand Luke Svoboda's Blogorama of Fun: Dear Blog: an apology, updates, and a promise

Dear Blog,

It has been 42 days since our last entry. We are so sorry for not updating you lately. I can list a number of reasons for our absence- sicknesses, visitors, traveling, Christmas holiday- but the fact remains that we have neglected you, and that was wrong. We have taken advantage of your patience, knowing that, as in the immortal words of Richard Marx, you'd be 'right there waiting' for our return. We apologize. We promise to try to do better. Please forgive.

XOXO,
Jen & Louis

Thanksgiving
We made our first road trip with Luke to Houston for Thanksgiving weekend. Following a fabulous dinner prepared by Nana, we braced ourselves for Luke's first ever Texas A&M/Texas football game. Before Luke was even a twinkle in our eyes we have foreseen with anticipation laced with dread this yearly rivalry and its affect on any future Svoboda babies. In particular, what would he/she wear??? Many different plans were made for this occasion, one being for the baby to wear a different outfit per half of the game, one for the baby to don the outfit in support of whichever team was the home team that year, etc. For this year we struck an agreement that had Luke wearing an Aggie onesie and socks with a Longhorn sweatpant bottom. Not exactly fashion forward, or even complementary colors for that matter, but it worked for this 'house divided' family, for this year anyway. (Pictures do exist documenting this event, but elude us at the moment). Texas did end up winning the game, barely, and is now in contention for the National Championship at the Rosebowl on January 4! Go Horns!

Dana visits from Scotland
Our good friend, Dana, visited from Scotland for a few days and brought fun gifts for Luke. One cute present was a pair of Scottish booties that Luke has been wearing throughout this holiday season. We look forward to visiting her and Reno in St. Andrews, hopefully this summer, and introducing Luke to bagpipes and The Old Course.

Plaid is back!

Yogi, Basia and Gabby visit from Boston
More good friends of ours also visited and got to meet Luke in person for the first time. We had a lot of fun hanging out with the Cohen family-Gabby has gotten so big! On one group outing with many of our friends we managed to catch all of the babies in the same photo, not a small feat I must say.

From left to right: Luke, Gabby, Martin, Zach

The Drool Squad

With their dads

Louis, Yogi, Jesse and Arthur

And with the moms

Jen, Basia, Erin and Meredith

Aunt Ariane visits from Hong Kong

We also had the pleasure of a visit from Luke's Aunt Ariane who traveled many miles to meet her new baby nephew. We all enjoyed having her stay with us, and Luke made out like a bandit with some gifts and clothes that she brought with her. We very much look forward to visiting with her and Uncle Angus, and Luke's cousins Renee and Lavinia this summer in France.

Luke and Aunt Ariane

Goodnight Ariane

Luke loves his new bear chair!

Lounging in Style

4 months old
Luke celebrated his 4 month old birthday with another visit to the doctor and the mean nurse who stabbed him again with her 'booster vaccinations'. Unfortunately, I came down with a nasty stomach virus the night before this appointment and could not peel myself off of the bathroom floor to accompany Louis and Luke, but Dad did a great job representing us both. Luke weighed in at 13 lbs. 14 oz. and measured 25 1/2 inches long, healthy and chubby and right around average according to the charts, and we'll take that just fine.

All I got for Christmas was my Daddy's cold...
We traveled to Houston again for about a week for Christmas and looked forward to a great visit with Nana and Grandpa and our friends in Houston, eager to show off Luke's increasing cuteness, smiles, and playfulness. We instead rode out the bumpy storm that was Luke's first cold. He had successfully fought off contracting the many little colds that both Louis and I have gotten in the last month or two, including the stomach flu that I had. But this most recent cold that Louis so generously brought home finally bested our little sweetie's immune system. He was a snotty, crabby, tired little baby, and after several long days and longer nights we were snotty, crabby, tired parents thankful that Nana and Grandpa were around to help. So, our plans for taking cute pictures of the Christmas baby never panned out, but here is a picture from our Christmas card photo shoot.