Bigger Than a Bread Box...

It turns out that Baby Charlie is bigger than a bread box. In fact he is bigger than a baguette and a fire log, but smaller than a guitar. He also has the cutest cankles ever! yes, cankles can be cute though I had to get toddler socks to fit his cute cankles. I'm not sure the photo below does them justice. Nor does the one of his wrist which to me looks like two little marshmallows stuck together.

Carlos was exceedingly pleased with himself this past week because he made our mean neighbor go through the bureaucratic nightmare of small claims court only to find that we had been granted a continuance. She was so pissed upon arriving home 3 hours later that she even dared speak to him! She said something sinister as she took pictures of him. I also realized that our tenant for the other house has probably confirmed that we are insane by the fact that she most likely has "unfrozen" our neighbor. Yes, I took some one's advice (yes, actual advice) and froze the name of our neighbor in water. It's probably defrosted now which is probably why she unfroze her lips long enough to murmur a few words to Carlos.

Studio Shots

Baby Charlie had a very cultured weekend; we took him to the Philadelphia Museum of art and Winterthur museum (http://www.winterthur.org/ it's so great!). He enjoyed the visits - especially because he doesn't get museum legs! And while the artwork was nice, he mainly appreciated the opportunity to suck on the front of his baby bjorn. The uptight tour guide was very pleased that he didn't interrupt her given that he was too busy soaking his ride through and through.

Some one else inquired if his name was Bjorn - and it took me a few moments to realize they were reading the flap of his Baby Bjorn carrier. It reminded me of the Calvin Klien scene from Back to the Future. And speaking of movie reminiscing the baby has twice reminded me of The Princess Bride. Once because Carlos' mom immediately looked to see if he had six fingers on one hand!! I wouldn't know what to do if I had the six-fingered villain from my favorite childhood movie!! The other time was last week when he was concentrating on something in front of him so hard and it was clear that he wanted to grab it, but his hand-eye coordination needs a little work....Then with what seemed to be all his strength throughout his entire body he managed to flop his left arm on top of the object. "To the pain" I thought!! Or perhaps he just isn't left handed...:)

I finally got the CD with the (not many) pictures of the boo-boo!!

Election Night...& Record Poo

Tuesday was such a momentous day. Baby Charlie and I went to vote around 9am after the line died down. I tried to tell him that he was part of an important historical moment, but he mainly just liked the attention that he got at the polling station. My little brother never got his absentee ballot so he drove 6.5 hours from Vermont to Philadelphia to vote and then got back on the road! He single-handedly made Pennsylvania go blue....! I told him he should have tried to sneak into the Dixville Notch voting booth in neighboring New Hampshire - I'm sure that they wouldn't have noticed...

Anyways, here's a picture of us going to vote. I just noticed the sign in the background - I guess you can get your car washed, hit the flea market and vote all at once.

We got to see DC go crazy after Obama won. We were near the White House and hundreds of people were in the street dancing, screaming, holding signs and yelling for Bush to get out of the White House. People in cars were honking and high-fiving strangers they passed. I can't imagine that people would have been that excited had Kerry won 4 years ago. It's Obamania. It's so amazing to me that the first president that Baby Charlie will grow up with will be an African-American named Barack Obama. What a world of difference from growing up with Carter & Reagan - not that I remember anything about Carter or Reagan....Here is the baby awaiting the elections news - clearly he is excited....


Thursday was also a momentous day because the baby and I separated for a whole day!! ahh!! I went to Atlanta for work. The day started at 4am when I woke him up to nurse and then left for the airport at 4:45am. He had to deal with formula for the rest of the day which I hear didn't start out so well. He refused to take it if my mom held him close to her chest, but finally he would take it sitting in his bouncey chair. So much formula might not have agreed with him as he did a record-sized poo that went all the way up his back - even to his armpits!! Sorry mom! The funniest thing was that she told me that she kept the diaper in case I wanted to inspect it. No thanks.... The good news is that waking up at 4am is no longer difficult! I felt fine the whole day - how sad. I'm not sure if he was happy to see my when I got home, but I was soooo happy to see him.

I decided to spare you a picture of the poo, but here are some others...

Where the Wild Things Are

It was Halloween morning and when I awoke I didn't find Baby Charlie in his bassinet. Instead I found a Wild Thing. He growled and grunted and kicked and demanded food. We tried to put him in a pumpkin to keep him contained. But he would have none of it. He wanted Halloween candy! So we took him trick-or-treating and tucked him into to bed. In the morning our little Charlie was back again.

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!