The Cheering Section

This weekend Baby Charlie and I headed down to DC to cheer on Carlos with the house and my brother in the Marine Corps marathon. We all - brother, Carlos, and baby & I had varying levels of success. After a successful sighting at 17 miles, Soogy, Wallis, Charlie and I attempted to make it to somewhere in the 20+ mile range to cheer on Nathan. We knew he would need it given that he somehow forgot to train for the marathon...(shockingly similar to the last two years - one of which ended up with him in the medical tent). In our enthusiasm we ended up following what we thought was the race route....but there were suspiciously fewer and fewer people cheering. We were merging onto the bridge across to Virginia as were the runners, but there was one important thing separating us: a large divider. In fact we were merging onto highway traffic - not the path with all the runners. The bugaboo stroller is a decent ride, but wasn't going to stand a chance in the fast lane so we had to solicit help to lift the stroller - with baby Wallis inside and all the absurd mounts of baby gear one ends up leaving the house with latched on - over a divide and into the middle of the race. There we were - stuck on an seemingly endless bridge of unsightly concrete going to Northern Virginia (itself rather unsightly) surrounded by thousands of runners. No one else was dumb enough to cheer there so we were literally IN the race - there were participants walking next to us, we'd get passed by runners and then pass them as they stopped to stretch or vomit over the bridge (nice!). I felt like we should have had our own race numbers. At first baby Charlie loved it, but the bridge was way too boring for him and he fell asleep. It worked out well as we caught Nathan at mile 24 and was able to give him a coca-cola. He said he was in a bad way, but he looked fine and was still ahead of the women dressed in a tutu and the superman guy who actually ran 26 miles in a cape (did he think it would help?).

Back at the house front Carlos and my dad worked on the basement's kitchen cabinets in preparation for a big inspection this week. As you can see from Carlos' hair in the picture - he has been lacking a shower and using drywall dust as hair gel. Luckily now there is electricity and a functioning toilet. Though he did say to my dad as he was leaving at 10:30pm - "Are you sure you don't want to pee in the drain for old time's sake?" It was the baby's and my first night staying at the house which was scary, but ended up being fun. Baby Charlie was especially reluctant to leave and signified his displeasure with a really juicy number two in his diaper.

The really fun part of the weekend was carving pumpkins with the SAISers. I am pretty impressed by our work - though I did decapitate a star, one eye on Obama is missing and I think that Palin got a nose job. But overall I think they rock.

I definitely got scammed on the photo shoot of baby Charlie. yesterday we went to view the photos that the woman took a couple of weeks ago and I ended up paying loads for a mere 3 digital images - oh, and "One free Print." The really bizarre thing is that for some reason it takes 10 weeks to mail me the image on a CD!! I'm pretty sure she could have burned the images onto a CD right then and there. Maybe the 10 weeks makes it seem really handcrafted and hard. Which brings me to another point - I noticed that she touches up the photos. okay - maybe that is what they are supposed to do as professional portrait people, but I happen to think my baby is really cute as is. Clearly I'm too defensive to be a good portrait studio person. At least the lesson learned is a fun one as I get some cute Charlie shots. I'll make sure to post them...in 10 weeks when the arrive....



Charlie is smiling a lot but I guess I'm not funny enough to get some real laughter. Here's a video of me trying to make him laugh with my crappy duck noises. His reaction makes me laugh which seems to amuse him more than what sounds like a drunk donald duck.

He isn't laughing yet, but he is trying to sit up incessantly. He sticks his tongue out, strains and mostly just lifts his head forward. But he is very proud of himself and when I sit him up he is very entertained...until his head gets too heavy for him and it slowly starts falling forward against his greatest efforts. It is, afterall, still a very big head.

As for the house, well, let's just say that I'm still in philadelphia...

Fist Lint - yummy

Charlie finally unfurled his fist to reach for the bears in front of his bouncey chair. Usually he keeps his fists tightly clenched and when I pry them open he has a nice supply of lint that somehow he has collected. nice. He has been checking out his fists a lot lately - holding them in front of himself and staring at them. I'm hoping this means that he is beginning to realize that they belong to him. He still punches himself in his sleep and often wakes himself up with his upper cuts. And because I am scared of the nail clipper he wakes up with scratches on his face too. It's really sad. I try biting them as that seems slightly less lethal than a clipper. In fact I've taken to biting his nails instead of my own - my nails are so long! (like you can actually see the white part :))

Last friday we made a mad rush for the Restoration Hardware wharehouse sale in Baltimore. Neither I nor my mom knew what Carlos was getting us into. We arrived 30 minutes after it opened and it was packed and elbows were flying. I reached for a light that I had seen online and someone screamed "MA'AM, MA'AM DON'T TOUCH THAT - it's mine." Clearly the accompanying baby didn't soften their aggression. It turns out that my mom can dish it out too as she collected drapery and fended off the circling housewives. Carlos arrived early and put so many things on hold that he managed to have the staff hate him by 10:30am. It only got worse once we finally got to the register as Carlos infuriated the incompetent cash rep and they talked eachother in circles about the various discounts until we seemed to come away with various free items. I don't know if any of it will fit in the house but it was a bargain and highly entertaining....especially as I got to hang out with the baby as my mom and carlos struggled to pack up the cars. Here are some shots of the cars...

I'm listening, but trying not to listen to the presidential debate. Forget what I said about long nails - - they are all gone!

Photo Shoot

Yesterday was Charlie’s first photo shoot. We shunned off the official hospital photographer when he was born as the samples seemed a little over the top (like blue ribbon in his hair cheesy) and I knew it was a scam when the photographer wouldn’t tell me the prices up front. My mom said that when my brother was born the photographer got her by saying that he would burn all the photos that she didn’t order of her son…so she bought them all! Anyways, it was a lot of fun as the photographer put him in a bunch of poses and even got him to smile for the camera. Usually when I put a camera in front of him he just stares at it and won’t smile. We get the proofs next weekend so we’ll see what a sucker I am then…I employed my own photographer skills on yearbookyourself.com to find out what little Charlie would look like back in the day in 1958. Big Charlie gave us the idea so I'm including his too - can you tell which is which? Hint - I kept baby Charlie's double chin...:)

We made another trip to DC to see Carlos and my brother and niece who were visiting for the weekend. We crashed his hotel and put on the robes…I was tempted to take them for a Halloween costume – I mean, really, who wears robes like these?! While down there we made a trip out to Virginia for the Waterford Fair as my dad and Carlos worked on kitchen cabinets. When we got back we found Carlos holding a flashlight as my dad drilled another cabinet in. Yep – still no electricity.

Here's him hanging out with his teddy bear friends - which he seems to like more than his mother...

Our overnight excursion

Baby Charlie and I took the train down from Philadelphia to DC on Tuesday for his two month doctor's visit and an overnight stay to see Carlos. Baby Charlie loves the train - though not the train conductor who would wake him up at every stop. And it turns out that there is no better way to keep someone from sitting next to you on the train than to flash a baby! Whether they were scared of crying or poopy diapers the masses stayed away.

We got a glimpse of what we were in for (regarding his size) when we stopped in at the breastfeeding center which is in the same building as the doctor and which on Tuesdays opens its doors to breastfeeding mothers to come talk about breastfeeding concerns. I guess this is what mothers in western countries do - support groups for breastfeeding. There must have been 25 moms and 24 babies (one woman was only pregnant - weird!) crammed into a tiny room, each sharing their breastfeeding concern and sympathizing with each other. I didn't really have anything to say so I tried to make up some worry so as to fit in! Anyways, I talked with moms around me and we shared baby facts - like how old, blah, blah blah. Well - the baby on my right was twice Charlie's age and half his size! And on the left the baby was his same age and maybe a third of his size. I wanted to ask if the baby was a preemie, but figured that wasn't polite. And she looked at me like I had the pillsbury dough baby. Indeed the doctor confirmed that Charlie is in the 99th percentile for weight!! At least my child is in the 99th percentile of something...! He weighed in at 15 lbs. According to the graph she showed us Charlie is almost OFF the chart!! He is in the 90th percentile for height and head size too. Even the doctor was surprised when she saw the size of Carlos and me -- I think she expected Carlos to be a linebacker for the redskins or something.

All that chub didn't seem to help when it came to dealing with the shots. Two on each leg and one orally. He was so pissed that he wouldn't even nurse - and that's really pissed for him. I tried to blame the nurse but he didn't seem to care. Although we had planned to all camp out at the house with no electricity or water, Carlos had the foresight to get us a hotel instead. So knocked-out-baby (he cried until he slept) and I went around town and then to the hotel while Carlos AND the diaper bag went back to work. The part about the diaper bag is key because it had - surprise - diapers (!) and tylenol. Carlos thought he'd be done by 5 so at 4:30 I freed him of his stinky diaper and covered him with a towel. Well it wasn't until 7 that Carlos arrived and in the meantime we went through every towel in the bathroom!! Finally I had the idea to take a bath with him so he could pee all he wanted. That lasted about 10 minutes before his fever started raging and he went ballistic - I thought the hotel was going to kick us out. Finally Carlos arrived with diapers and tylenol and situation improved quickly. Oh - and of course after using all the towels we decided to change rooms! I think they had taken one look at me and put us up in the attic room which Carlos didn't approve of so we ended up in a much nicer room (with more towels!).

I really appreciated that the gave us a crib and a robe just for him. Here's some pictures of me and him lounging in our robes...

I also appreciated this shot of how Carlos' closet these days....