We also made our first long car trip - 3 hours to KC and back in the fog. Dan's sister, Abby, was going wedding dress shopping on the weekend of 1/16 and it was going to be quite an opportunity for family to get together. Of course, her mom came down but also her grandmother, aunt and her sisters-in-law. This meant that Jason could meet his Great-Grandma Coffman, his Great-Aunt Gail, his Aunt Sarah (and Uncle Matt), and get to see his Aunt Abby again. It was quite a house-full! It was a nice visit, Abby picked out a beautiful dress and Jason was well behaved (of course) and hopefully didn't steal too much attention from his aunt ;-)
On 1/18 I returned to work :-( I have been freezing my breastmilk for the past month and a half so I had a pretty good stash that Dan could defrost to feed to Jason while I was gone and I had the lovely task of pumping at work. Fortunately, my first day was busy enough so time went fast but slow enough that I could pump a couple times without trouble. Dan did pretty good with Jason despite some fussy times. Once he gets a hang of feeding him things will go smoother - although I think Jason will suffer from boob-withdrawl regardless. It's kind of nice to be back at work part time. I get to spend lots of time with my baby but I can get away a couple times a week and every other weekend and be Kathy again instead of "Jason's mom". I was also happy to discover that I hadn't lost too much of my speed and skill over the 11 weeks I was away. It makes me appreciate the time I spend with Dan and Jason more too.
We also got ourselves a new camera for our big Christmas present. Hopefully this will lead to better pictures taken by me (it has the stabilization feature for my shakey hands) and more videos. I'll have to figure out how to convert them to smaller file sizes (I've seen Dan do it but I don't know how he did it) so I can put them in the blog. Jason is smiling a lot now and we've even been able to catch some on camera....he's so flipping cute! 
We had Monday the 28th to reset the house and Dan's parents came down on the 29th. His sister Abby came with them for the day and had to go back home to work on the move. We had a second Christmas so Jason was able to get more use out of his Christmas outfit. Between both grandparents and all the Aunts and Uncles, Jason made out like a bandit. 
For New Years we did the "(Great) Grandma Bender New Years Celebration". We played games all night then rang in the new year wearing stilly hats, throwing around an unopened bag of confetti (it's cleaner that way) and had plenty of noise makers and streamers. It was a good time!
We went to our first Christmas party on Saturday. More and more of our friends have kids now so even though Jason was the youngest he was certainatly not the only baby. He was very good and of course everyone loved him.
We also got to go see Santa on Sunday. We got there just in time too because they were closing the line so Santa could go on break. We only had to wait about 20 minutes or so. My favorite part was the automatic hand sanitizer dispensers they had right before going to Santa. Kids can't resist playing with those things so hopefully they were good and germ-free by the time they got to Santa. Jason looks so cute on Santa's lap!
On that Sunday, Jason got the honor of playing Baby Jesus in our church's live nativity. I forgot my camera that night but we did get pics at the rehearsal. On the night he was wide awake and I was glad I brought his pacifier so "Joseph" could keep Jason quiet (I'm all about historical accuracy). He did good though and stole the "show" with his cuteness.
Jason turned one month old on Wednesday. It's hard to believe it's been that long. Jason has his one month well-baby visit with the doc. I can't wait to see how much he's grown. We started giving Jason a bottle of expressed breastmilk every night to give Dan that bonding experience and get Jason used to it before I return to work. He took it really well so that was a relief. I've been pumping about 3 times a day now to build up a freezer stash. I really hope to not have to supplement with formula when I go back to work. ok, here are a bunch of pics and videos.
Dan giving a bottle:
Jason trying to nurse on Dan's nose:
I took a bunch of videos last night with our camera but forgot that I can't hold the camera sideways or else the video is sideways. If you can stand the neck strain the videos are pretty cute.
Since we're not spending Thanksgiving with them, we had a small thanksgiving meal and I figured we'd get as much use as possible out of Jason's bib....but I didn't want wake him up to put it on properly ;-) 
We also took some family photos...note my new haircut (too bad Jason had a weird look on his face....we may have to try this again sometime soon)
Here are the "Bender Boys" in their pumpkin shirts - see, I knew I'd get use out of that Halloween onsie even though Jason was born in November! We caught Jason mid-yawn and it just cracks me up.
