Well, we just got back from Mexico, the three of us. And I have to say that Clark is the best traveler I've ever met. Lets start from the beginning. Julieta and Clark left for Mexico on March 5th, 2011, leaving me here by myself for the next two weeks. How she was going to be able to handle all the luggage and the baby in the airport and all of the security checkpoints and everything else involved with international travel, we didn't know. But she wanted to go and so she did. We had to leave the house by 2:00 that a.m., and so Julieta and I ended up not going to bed at all. Clark did however. As it came time to leave, I went and woke him up. He acted like he knew what was going on because instead of crying and being cranky, he was very excited. So we drove the two hours to the airport and I dropped them off. I waited inside with them until they had to go to their gate. Clark had fallen asleep on the way up and was still asleep in his stroller when they had to go. She called me when she got to the gate and sent me a picture of Clark, and I drove away from the airport. I had to pick up some suits from a store there, but it didn't open till 10 that morning, so I pulled over at the nearest motel and crawled in the back of my Tahoe for some free wifi and shut eye (an old Drake-team road trip secret)

Clark has never been one for loud noises or commotion, so I was a little worried about how he would handle it there in Mexico City, but apparently he did amazingly well. After the first day, he got over his uneasiness and loved it there. The kids all did great with him and his aunts and uncles and Grandma just ate him up. I can't say who was more spoiled while there, him or us. I don't think we fed him or changed him or even carried him once.

This is Clark with his Uncle Miguel
Clark and the crazy lady
umm....
Julieta celebrated her birthday while there.
Clark with his cousins Miguel and Fernando

Clever??
This was us getting ready to do the zip line
Clark playing with his rattles
This is our family dropping us off at the airport
They loved that baby!

This is us on the plane home. Clark literally slept from the time we took off until about 3 hours after we landed. That's what I mean when I say he's the best traveler.
When he finally did wake up in the airport on the way to the shuttle (yes, we had to spend the night in Atlanta to catch our flight the next morning) he was hungry. Luckily, he's fairly independent. We couldn't have fed him because we had all of our hands full of luggage and what not. But he took care of it for us.
After some smooth talking, I convinced the airline to comp us a room there in Atlanta and so we headed to a motel for what was left of the night. Clark was a trooper. I was worried that after all that sleep he'd gotten that day, that he wouldn't be able to sleep that night. Was I ever wrong. We changed him and fed him and he went right down for the whole night. We go up the next morning and caught a shuttle back to the airport for the trip home. He also slept during that whole flight, and most of the way home.

We've experienced a data loss on one of our hard drives and so as soon as I can recover the pictures I'll post some more from the trip.

Hair cut

So after looking like a punk rocker with a mohawk or a Japanese cartoon character with his hair standing up in all directions, we finally gave Clark a haircut tonight. It's not that he hasn't needed one for a while, just that I couldn't bring myself to do it. But eventually it got to where even some of my aunts were making fun of him, so we cut it. Aunt Emily offered to, and being the good and protective father that I am I made her cut Tanners hair first. Turned out she does a great job so we went ahead and did

it. I'm not usually the sentimental type, but I did keep the first lock that we cut off. For those of you that knew him as a newborn, you'll remember how much hair he had. Unfortunately, now at four months, the affects of baby balding left him looking, well, like my description of him at the beginning of this post. He had lost most of his hair around the sides of his head, leaving just a strip across the top and the slightest hint of a mullet/pony tail at the bottom. Needless to say we got him all trimmed up and if I didn't before, I now have the cutest little boy I have ever seen. He's so stinkin cute!!

Anyway, I'm trying to think of what else has gone on since our last post.

Aunt Sarah got engaged over the Christmas break, on new years eve to be exact. ( see www.sarahdrake.blogspot.com ) It was Clarks job to keep her distracted all day so that she hopefully wouldn't catch on to things. He kept her distracted with his smiles and giggles, and occasionally throwing up on her. Good job Clark. Julieta and I ran to Springfield to pick up Johnny so that he could work some magic on her. When we got home Johnny hid in the basement while the rest of us went into the family room to open up the last of the presents (from when Emily, Chris and Tanner were in Oregon) and then dad sent Sarah to the basement to get a "present" he had there for "mom". From there the rest is history.

Well, I guess that's about it for this post. Stay tuned for Clark's international adventures!

Three Months

So tomorrow Clark turns 3 months old, and unlike those Junior High relationships where celebrating that kind of thing is really lame, we here at the Drake Home think it's the most incredible thing ever. Clark has been with us for 3 months now, and how he has changed our lives! I love it when he wakes up in the morning. Instead of crying, he blinks a couple of times, moves his tongue around to get rid of the that awful morning/formula breath, and lies there waiting patiently. This gives his mom and I time to go over and tell him good morning. He absolutely loves it, and because of his reactions, we do too! He starts giggling (the cutest thing ever) and starts flailing his arms and legs wildly. He'll turn his head from side to side and then begins to settle down just in time for us to start all over. His mom is better at it then I am, but that's ok. Needless to say, it makes our day. Julieta seems to be able to make him laugh a lot, and here's a video to prove it.

I unfortunately wasn't home when this was recorded, as I was at school, but she showed it to me on the way to get Uncle David from the airport and I absolutely loved it. Basically I love anything my little man does, but this was especially adorable.

Something he's not doing as often is making his cute little sounds when he sleeps. But every now and then he'll do them. He'll take a few sudden intakes of breath, and then quietly sigh them out. That's probably my favorite. Something he is starting to do more and more is "talking". The other night his mom was working on something for Nanny, and during that time we decided to watch a couple of movies together. He sat on my lap for 2 movies and told me all that he thought of them, the actors, the effects, etc. This is a video of him talking.

I mentioned that we had gone to get Uncle David from the airport. Little Rock is 3 hours from here, and on the way up Clark slept the entire time. He was even pretty good on the way back, but needless to say, including the stops we made while there, 8 hours in a car seat is probably too much for any child (unless you're Tanner and your mom has given you magic formula to help some). That was David and Clark's first time meeting, and Clark didn't know what to think of the strange guy that climbed in beside him in the truck. I feel these two pics tell the tale of their relationship better than words do.

Clark's hands are fuzzy in almost all of his pics because he can't seem to hold them still. He's discovered that he actually has hands and loves them.

His Uncle David also discovered something that his parents should have thought of from the beginning, but never had. Occasionally we have to suction his nose, and he HATES it. He screams and screams, and all I can do is hold his hands while mom tries to clean him out quickly. I hate it, that is, I used to, before this happened.

All you have to do is let him watch something, and that's all he focuses on. This is Uncle David showing him a video on his computer. His mom was able to take care of him without any problems. We've since used this a lot. It seems to calm him down no matter what the problem is.

As I was writing this post, David and Sarah came into our room. They wanted to show us something

Needless to say, their relationship is blossoming and they will get along just fine.

I thought I'd include just a few random pics as well. These are just some of my favorites:

This is Clark asleep in church. You know you've all wanted to do it.Then the choir started singing and woke him up.

This was me getting him dressed that morning for church. I loved him in his button up and cords. He's such a little man!Then of course this is him with his Nanny after a long day.This is doubtlessly the favorite part of both of their days. How is it babys can make any position look really comfortable?I feel like if nothing else, I owe Clark an explanation for this next one. We went to the Jingle on the Green at the ASUMH campus where I'm currently attending school. It was a cold one that night, and we didn't want our little man catching a cold. You think this is bad, you should have seen his stroller. His mom (who still hasn't quite adjusted to the cold here) took every precaution, including stuffing the inside with coats and blankets, and then laying blankets over the top of it as well. While we were on one side of the extreme, there was one mother who had her baby girl in nothing but a dress and a head band. I guess I'm glad we choose to error on the side of right. Sorry buddy...

This is Clark at the ward Christmas Brunch. There's not a lot that impresses this kid.

I do have one more video to post. It cracks me up because it just goes to show how much of a little "man" Clark really is.

So this has kind of turned out to be a tribute to Uncle David. Stay tuned for the next few days, we have Clark's first Christmas and New Year's coming up, along with the return of Emily, Chris and our favorite Tan-Man with all of his Tanner manners from Oregon.

Ok, so it's been a while. But now we have several new pics to blog about. We'll start with today, since there are lots to choose from.
This is Clark and I at the park. Look at that face, he is having a blast. Actually, so was I for that matter. I love my little man!
His mom was a little papa-razzi and he wasn't about to put up with that.


Momma wasn't feeling too much up to photos today, so she just took them instead. We stopped by Dairy Queen on the way to the park and enjoyed a banana split and a shake before the photo session.

Then later tonight Emily, Chris, and Tanner came over for dinner. Papa decided to re-institute an old tradition with the grandkids... BLANKET RIDES!!




This is Clark giving Papa the "OK" to get started. He wasn't quite sure what to make of it, but for the first time, he actually got to be on top of Tanner.


This was Papa and I carrying them to the couch after the blanket ride was over. This is the blanket ride in action.Being as this wasn't Tanner's first time, he was able to comfort Clark when the ride started. Look at this sweet boy holding his hand to comfort his cousin.





When Clark was born, Nanny and Papa presented him with a gift, one we thought wouldn't fit him for several months, but he's actually closer that we thought. They also got Tanner the same thing, so we couldn't resist getting some pictures of them together.

I think this picture says it all. At first Tanner didn't know what to think about what we were doing, but as soon as we sat Clark down next to him, his face lit up! You could tell that there were a million different ideas running through his head about what he could do to Clark, but luckily Emily has Tanner ESP and read each one of them and was able to react on time. You can tell Clark is just resigning himself to what's coming. Unfortunately, we were too slow a couple of times. Tanner was trying to get a finger into each hole in Clark's face, and just about succeeded.


He tried to play like he didn't know why Clark was crying, but his face gave him away.

A couple of weeks ago Aunt Laura and Aunt Sarah gave us a couple of surprises. Reminiscent of when Julieta and I drove out with David and Sarah to see Tanner when he was born, they flew out here to see Clark. The other surprise was that Sarah brought her boyfriend Johnny with her. Uncle David was going to come too, but unfortunately he wasn't able to. We were able to spend an enjoyable weekend with them.


It worked out, thanks to a little bit of orchestration from the only person who was in on the surprise, that Clark's blessing was that weekend as well. I did the blessing in Spanish, while it was translated into English for the rest of the family. It went really well, and I think we all walked away with a better understanding of how important Clark really is and will be to our little family.