7-30-10

lily likes to feed charlie in his highchair. usually he feeds himself, but stuff like yogurt, applesauce, oatmeal, etc needs a spoon and so he's just not great at getting any of it actually in his mouth, and lily likes to help. unfortunately, she gets distracted and lets him grab "handfuls" of mushy drippy sticky goop and put it everywhere.

some version of this happened today while i was doing dishes and somehow lily got nearly as messy as charlie. it was one of those "not enough wipes in the world" situations, so i ushered everyone up to the tub.

well charlie, maybe if you had EATEN some of the yogurt, instead of rubbing it in your hair/ears/eyelashes/neck/nose you wouldn't need to eat bath toys.

bath toys are apparently yum, and i'm guessing they feel good on his TWO teeth.

7-29-10

okay, so i woke him from this particular snooze by kissing his sleepy face too much.

who could resist those little cheeks?!

7-28-10

Our auntie tami is leaving on saturday, so sad!

get ready for mushy sad picture montage sometime soon. I have loved living with/near my sister this past year. boooooooo. hoooooooo.

7-26-10

New bike rack at Lilianas!

Hand made on site by the same artist (Alex Herndon) that did all of the rest of our wrought iron work (and the fountain!)

Lily wanted to help paint! Look at the hand she's not using for the paint brush. Looks like she should be holding a tiny teacup or something. too fancy. :)

7-25-10

Just discovered these on daves phone. They are from our recent trip to the dells. Lily was "getting fancy" before a magic show.

Putting on her accessories:

more accessorizing.

Ok. Fancy.

7-24-10

feeling nostalgic for my little lily. such a grown up girl now.

this was the first "secret tea party" we ever found lily having with her closest friends. so dear!

7-23-10

This picture was taken about a year ago. For some reason the tiny mardi gras mask made Lily REALLY sad, and dave was trying to cheer her up by being overly happy and excited for a picture, anyway, dave LOVES this silly picture...

so we tried to recreate it. but lily has grown up a lot and now she thinks its super funny, so she was laughing too hard to make sad face!

Charlie tried it on, too. But the mask seems to have lost it's sadface powers.

7-22-10

Pasquals with tami and patrick and the babies.

Lily took this!

Lily's self portrait

Not sure if she was trying to get me in the picture or not, either way, its not super blurry or a picture of her food, so good job!

7-21-10

remember these tiny baby plants?

they grew.

and someday soon, we may even get to eat some vegetables from them!

7-20-10

Hope.


How do I explain what it's like to be Charlie's parent at night. Well, parenting Charlie, that's part of it. With lily we plopped her in a crib at night and saw her in the morning. And she was happy with that, and we were happy with that.

Charlie requires parenting, all night. So much so that my alarm goes off every morning and i'm already (still?) awake, and more sore, sleepy and frustrated than when I went to bed the night before. This has gone on for nine months.

But the last few nights, something changed. I'm not getting more sleep, not yet, but there's hope, and that's important.

For a while now, he is spending a few hours each night sleeping great in his crib.
Good.
Although I sleep terribly, he spends the rest of the night sleeping fabulously while nursing in my bed, so there's no real sleep cycle issues.
Good.
And here's the new thing: he will nurse, roll away and fall asleep independently and I can move him to his own space for a few hours.
SO GOOD.

Hoooopppe.

I need sleep.

7-19-10

Charlie is nine months old today.

Nine months in, Nine months out.

Not sure why it feels so substantial to me. Maybe because Charlie is so profoundly needy, I've been hoping that this concept of exterogestation is really something. (Ashley Montague, who was an anthropologist, scientist, and humanist, talked about the eighteen-month gestational period: nine months within the womb and nine months out. The newborn needs the extra nine to ten months outside of the womb to mature. This is a period of time Dr. Montague designates as being the exterogestation. It is around the end of this period that the infant begins to crawl around and is capable of mobility independent of the mother. This period of exterogestation requires the constant care of a loving and nurturing human being who can learn to respond appropriately and quickly to the newborn's needs of touch, nourishment, and warmth.)

....Maybe I'm hoping that having Charlie's needs be the center of the universe for the past nine months was natural and nurturing and useful to his development.

...That I haven't just been killing myself with lack of sleep for no reason.

...That he felt safe and secure and loved while I held and rocked and whispered during those 4-6 hour screaming sessions of his early months that pushed me to my limits with panic attacks and migraines.

Maybe it feels substantial, because it is! Nine months ago I labored and was brave and strong and I met my beautiful baby boy.

Let not forget the part where I delivered a 10lb baby naturally in 6 hours, ok?

Nine months ago....We got Charlie!

Happy Nine Month Day, beautiful boy.

7-17-10

love my beautiful bright baby ballerina!

7-16-10

So excited about breakfast buffet that he kinda looks cross-eyed!

Yummmm! breakfast!

also, total old man hair.

Lily was on the vacation as well, I'm not sure why Charlie is the only one in any of the very few pics I took on this trip!

We saw a magic show in our hotel with white tigers and Lily fell madly in love with the least attractive of all the souvenir tigers. Daddy is a total pushover for Lily's cuteface.

What a fun trip! Now we just have to get back in to a normal routine back at home. No small feat for us!

7-15-10

Charlie loved this big open room at the hotel. He was giggling while crawling far away from us, then I'd go bring him back, repeat. Best game ever for him.

also, Charlie has started REALLY loving toys, it's fun seeing him explore new shapes and colors and noises and textures. Growing up so fast!

I'm so glad Auntie Anne and Uncle Mike were able to join us for this trip! We love spending time with them, of course, but really we invited them just so Mike could keep Charlie happy with his mysteriously alluring owl shirt. Thanks for bringing the magic shirt, Mike!

7-14-10

EW! We were staying overnight in the dells and Charlie's first priority as we got settled into our room was to check out the (thankfully very clean!) toilets. YUCK!

yes, this picture means i saw what he was doing and allowed it to continue so i could go get my camera. Im probably not a great mom.

7-13-10

Charlie, Wisconsin Dells, 7-13-10

Charlie, Wisconsin Dells 5-7-10

7-12-10

okay, so I'm totally 5 days behind, but it LOOKS like I got a whole six days behind because my post for the 12th never posted. No fair!

It was this cute pic of Charlie enjoying the "gourmet baby" meal at lilianas.

now to catch up 5 days worth of blogging because of a few days of vacation and the days of pre and post vacation chaos.

7-11-10

Happy Baby!

Charlie loves water! Bath, pool, puddle... water is fun! Pretty simple request to fill, especially in summer since we hop in the pool almost every day!

7-10-10

Charlie has a little walker chair down in the basement that he uses to roll around while I'm grooming dogs. It has a tray which is a nice place to leave some toys and such for him to play with, and it allows him to roll over and check what i'm doing and roll back over to check out what lily is playing with (and repeat, endlessly). The last two days Dave took Lily to work with him, and here's what happened:

totally crashed out asleep on the tray. way too cute!

7-9-10

We went to the zoo to see a fun art display they have up and Lily really enjoyed seeing all the animals all dressed up. She randomly INSISTED she have her picture taken with this lion.

cute!

7-8-10

Oh, strollers.

It's been hot, and the idea of attaching a 20something pound baby to my body is a bit daunting some days. So I've tried the stroller a few times lately. I hate it! I miss my baby as he just sits, totally silent, like he's not expected to interact at all, where in the carrier he's all babbling and smiling and kissing and interested in whats going on (maybe he's just a bit too young?). It's also just inconvenient. I've not once had an outing where I could leave baby in the stroller the entire time, and getting him + all of our stuff out and back in is just frustrating and annoying. Lily gets sad because she cant hold my hand as easily (since I need to steer) and when I want to show lily and charlie something up close i have to get him out or awkwardly wheel the stroller as close as i can and kind of hunch around the wheels to talk to both of them? I don't like it. I know, it's just sort of a necessary evil. I just needed to complain.

also, it's pink.

7-7-10

i love enjoying the most simple things again through the eyes of my kids, but i'm pretty sure the sheer joy of eating a melting dripping popsicle on an intensely hot day is reserved for kids, who don't care how messy or sticky they are getting.

7-6-10

Charlie has beautiful blue eyes!

7-5-10

Thank you, retractable vaccuum handle, for ending the ongoing weekly debate over whether lily needs a toy vaccuum.
I argue we are not having anyone pretend to clean in my house, because I would rather people ACTUALLY clean.
Lily argued that the toy vaccuum was
a) cute and
b) "I love helllpppiinngggg".
So i was glad when I finally had a stroke of genius and realized that with the handle in the "storage" position my vaccuum can be operated by a three year old.
Voilà, compromise.

She also swiffers.

7-4-10

We had a lovely 4th of July dinner with Parry, Veronica, Anne (who just moved back to Wisconsin from Colorado, HOORAY!), and Dave. Yum!

We practiced with sparklers while the sun was still up.

Then when it was dark we lit LOTS of sparklers.

Lily was a little concerned

But then daddy showed her that sparklers are fun!

Yay, sparklers!