Watch out, Charlie, here comes Cameron!

First Charlie didn't understand why Mommy was getting so fat. Although he did love taking lots of naps with me on the weekends. Then Charlie was confused when we brought home a teeny tiny person who only seemed to cry and eat all day. Not to mention taking all of Mommy's and Daddy's attention. And now? Well now Cameron is absolutely obsessed with Charlie and would like nothing better than to follow him around doing her pseudo crawling.

Poor Charlie.

A wonderful, relaxing vacation

I landed in Charlotte just a couple of hours ago and already feel behind. Isn't that always the way? It's like I'm being punished for taking a two week vacation! While my 300+ work emails download I wanted to share a couple of snapshots from our trip. More to come throughout the week...

Ned screeches his heart out at Charlie. I have a feeling he will be asking for his very own puppy as soon as he learns how to talk.

Cameron chills on the Boppy while her cousins zip around her.

I get a little cuddle time in with Penny and Ned.

Cameron lounges while taking a boat ride. She loved it!
DH and I had a weekend away while Grammy and Bumpa watched Cameron. It was our first weekend without her and I did surprisingly well. Need I even say that there was a lot of alcohol involved?

Cameron: Five months old

Dear Cameron,

Right now you are napping while we spend a wonderful two weeks in Maine on vacation. This month you met your cousins, your paternal grandparents and charmed everyone. Of course! Mommy and Daddy even had a weekend away from you but you were in good hands with Grammy. I think Charlie missed us more than you did!

This month you have discovered your feet and will spend long periods with them in your hands. You are thisclose to rolling over but your daddy and I are in no hurry to have you start becoming more mobile. We love how much you are laughing now. We never know what will set you off but it makes us laugh right along with you.

This month you toyed with sleeping through the night but are back to a middle of the night feeding. It was nice while it lasted! You are slowly learning to nap better at school but it's still a work in progress. Twice you have had rice cereal and the jury is still out on whether you want to keep eating it.

While in Maine you went on your first boat ride and got to splash in a kiddie pool and a hot tub. Both were so warm you probably thought it was just another bath.
Daddy and I love seeing your smiles when you wake up from a nap. We can't wait to see what you will do next!

Love,
Mommy and Daddy

A fun weekend

DH and I had some friends visit this past weekend. They were our first couple friends in Charlotte who we met while I was interning at BigFinance. We moved here and they moved away to DC less than a month later. And then they moved to NYC. And then to Germany. We were beginning to feel insulted. Did they really need to cross an ocean to get away? But common sense (and a desire to watch sports while drinking American beer) prevailed and they are back in the US temporarily settled in DC again. DH and I put the full court press on for them to move back to Charlotte. We cued up the cute baby and everything.

Time will tell if we were successful. In the interim we ate too much, drank a bit more than was good for us and slept too little. Good thing Cameron likes to nap on the weekends! It did remind me that I'm a mother and I was usually in bed before 11 PM - a big difference from their last visit just before I found out I was pregnant. It was nice to have an extra set of hands but I think Janusz managed to go the whole weekend without holding Cameron. We'll get him to change a diaper the next time!

A rare picture of me and my little one.

Cameron was extra cute while snuggling with Stacy. Yes, her name is Stacy and at times it can be confusing. Stacy indulged me talking non-stop about how awesome Cameron is while our husbands talked baseball. A good division of labors.
It wasn't only a visit for me and DH. Charlie also got to play with one of his best friends, Satchmo. We are convinced they are gay lovers. There was a lot of humping and licking.

All in all it was a great weekend. Move back to Charlotte, Stacy and Janusz, so we can do it more often!!

How is it possible I'm already at 200?

In 298 days I have posted 200 times. That works out to be 2/3 a post a day. Wow, either I'm terribly interesting and have lots going on in my life or I just like writing about things. Yeah. Just like writing about things.

Unlike other posters I never bragged when I hit my 100th post. OK. I'll be honest. I would totally have tooted my own horn but I forgot. So that means #200 is twice as important. And wow, things have changed!

In honor of my 200th post I would like to share the things that have changed since I started blogging:

I am no longer pregnant. Thank goodness! Now, don't get me wrong; I didn't mind being pregnant. In fact, I had a very easy pregnancy. My biggest problem was getting up 5 or 6 times a night to pee. But I was more than ready to be done around week 32. So the last 8 weeks were very, very long. Plus the anticipation of meeting Cameron was just killing me!

I am now a mother. While I spent a lot of time being pregnant and thinking about Cameron, I didn't spend as much time thinking about actually being a mother. And now that I am one, I can't imagine not having the essence of "motherhood" in my life. Bear in mind that this is coming from a woman who didn't have much in the way of maternal instincts! Until Cameron I never understood what it mean to "fall in love" with your child. There are times that I look at her and I swear my heart breaks (in a good way!). I want nothing more than to cuddle her and protect her every minute of the day. Well, add in 8 hours of sleep...

I have become a juggler. These past few weeks mark my return to work and with it I have joined the world of parental jugglers. I feel like I am always worried about time. I want to make sure I'm putting in the face time and hours at work but I also have a much longer morning routine and want to spend as much time with Cameron as possible. I stress that people at work only see me leaving at 4:30 PM and don't see me arriving at 7:30 AM. But if I get my work done and do it well, it shouldn't matter, right? Then why do I feel so guilty? Gah!

Charlie has moved down in the pecking order. Don't feel too bad for him though; he still gets to sleep in bed with us every night. Interestingly, I think that he listens to me better now (well, with some things) because I don't have as much patience for him as I used to. So far he has shown little interest in Cameron but he does hang out with us while we are putting her to bed and seems to recognize her name. He also enjoys licking her after we get home from daycare. Cameron ignores him too so I guess we'll have to wait a while until they are best friends.

DH and I are now parents. Let's face it, before Cameron came along we had it pretty easy. Our biggest decisions involved home improvement projects and our biggest fight was over how to correctly cut crown modeling. Now we need to be a tight team and have open communication about what we expect and need from each other as we raise our daughter. Given that we are both fairly passive aggressive this is harder than I thought it would be! But I know our marriage is growing stronger as a result.

I'm even closer with my sisters. It is probably not surprising that all three of us have children under the age of 1. Bound to happen with triplets, right? A. was the first to experience motherhood with Finn. And while I love my nephew and even managed to arrive a few hours after he was born, I never really understood what she was going through. Ditto for Mommy, Esq. although I was pregnant at the time so I felt more connected. Now Finn has been joined (in birth order) by Ned, Penny, Cameron and Lucy. And my parents have gone from one grandchild to 5 in less than a year. The best part about all these babies is that I received lots of great advice (and clothing!) and have had two resources for every little question. A. and Mommy, Esq. listened patiently as I nattered on about every detail of Cameron's schedule on basically a daily basis. And I am more than happy to return the favor!

One thing is for sure, life has certainly changed a lot since I started writing this blog. I hope you have enjoyed my posts and I look forward to sharing more!

All hail the king...

King bed that is!


Like most of you, I spent the majority of my sleeping hours over my lifetime in a twin size bed. It appears as though kids today are more likely to have a full or queen sized bed unless they share a room but I am old school. I never knew what I was missing until my post graduate year at Carnegie Mellon. I rented my own apartment and purchased a queen sized bed from a nice Indian couple in Squirrel Hill. It took a few months for the faint curry smell to disappear but the extra room more than made up for it.


And so another decade passed and I found myself sharing a queen bed with a husband and dog. Yes, we let our dog sleep with us and wouldn't have it any other way. Charlie is an excellent sleeper and rarely moves or makes noises during the night. That is more than I can say for some other people! Just kidding, dear.



But when we bought our house in Charlotte we decided it was time to upgrade to a king bed. The queen would be relegated to the guest room (I am thrilled to even have a guest room). I figured that with all that room I would have plenty of space to sprawl out. The reality? Not so much. Now that my burgeoning belly has required me to sleep on my side the dog has decided that I am his pillow. And so gradually over the course of the night he snuggles closer and I end up with about 9 inches of space on the bed. That's OK for now at 22 weeks but give me another month and I'll need at least 10 inches :-)


I do not plan on co-sleeping with the baby or permitting her to sleep with us when she's older. She'll just have to realize that we love the dog more than her. Either that or we will have to order an even bigger bed. And I'm not sure the room is big enough for that!


When we head up to Massachusetts for the holidays DH and I will be sharing a full sized bed with Charlie. I am not looking forward to that at all. It's hard to downsize, isn't it? How about the rest of you? Any couples out there who prefer tighter quarters? Or do you let your kids sleep with you?

Best in Show

When DH and I moved to Charlottesville in the Spring of 2005, I knew we were going to get a dog. We had been living together for almost a year and I was about to embark on a very strenuous first year program at Darden. DH was able to move down to C-ville with me and work from home (which he has done ever since). To keep him company while I was away from home (7 AM - 11 PM most days!) I convinced him that a dog was the way to go.


We knew we wanted a puppy just because we could mold it from the very beginning (he he he). Before we started our search at the C-ville animal shelter, we stopped by a pet store (not one that had dogs for sale) and saw a bunch of dogs outside of it from another town's animal shelter. DH went in to the store to get a crate and I spent time with the puppies. There were two in particular I loved. One was all golden in color and very rambuncious even in the 90 degree weather. The other was a mix of colors but mostly black and was peacefully sleeping in his crate. I picked up the quiet one (named "Bongo") and snuggled with him while DH completed the purchase. After he came out I said, "I want this one!"


As you can see, I got my way :-)



DH was convinced we would find one in the C-ville animal shelter so he made me leave the cute puppy behind and drive off. Well, when we got to the animal shelter they only had one set of puppies who were all spoken for and needed another month before they could be brought home anyway.

I told DH it was fate and we had to get the puppy we saw in front of the pet store. We left a message with the shelter and found out that they were open on Sundays so if he wasn't taken yet we could go the next day and adopt him. I was so worried all night that someone else had adopted him from the pet store! We drove about 40 minutes to the shelter and asked to see Bongo again (the first thing to go would be that name). DH and I walked back to a cage where the dog (soon to be our dog) was with two of his litter mates. There was the male golden puppy and a female on in a similar color. DH immediately wanted to adopt all three but common sense prevailed and we brought our puppy home.

We debated endlessly about what to call him. DH lobbied for Jack Bauer but I really wanted Charlie (after Charlottesville). A little slyly, I said, "Why don't we start with Charlie and see how it goes? We can change it later if we want..." And so, Charlie entered our lives on a hot summer day in June.

If any of you have met our dog, you must admit that he is the best-est dog in the whole wide world. And probably the most spoiled. How, you may ask? Well, let me share.

• He is very smart. As DH and I like to say, Charlie understands a ton of words but he doesn't listen so good. I taught him how to bring DH his work gloves (for when they wrestle together) in two days when he wanted to play.




• He likes to lie in weird positions. Charlie has his Playboy pose and his chicken pose (see below).






• Charlie sleeps on the bed with us every night. Yes, it's true. We have become pet parents. We refer to each other as "Mommy" and "Daddy" when we talk to the dog. We judge other people by how much they love their dog and our dog. We prefer to hang out with people who have dogs so Charlie can play.




• The best thing in the whole world is coming home from a long day at work and having a very excited dog greet you. It will probably be years before I get that from the baby! Charlie also watches out the window when I leave in the morning and whines. So cute!
  
• He loves people, especially kids.


• He doesn't understand that with DH home every day he is luckier than any other dog in existence. Except for maybe Callie but that's because her mommy is home all day too.


• Charlie watches out the window to make sure that the neighborhood is safe and barks to alert us when a person is getting too close to the house. Of course, it is the same people walking their dogs every day but he's not that smart.

I realize that once we welcome the baby into our lives Charlie will be "demoted" to dog. But I still believe he will occupy a special place in our lives. After all, he was our first baby. And it only took three weeks to potty train him!!

A few more cute pictures to start your day...