Belly up to the coffee table!

Charli has gotten quite good at getting herself up on her feet the
last couple of days. Here is a picture of her bellying up to the
coffee table on our living room! She even began experimenting with
taking a step yesterday, but her dismount still needs some work.

broke the streak

Charli woke up at 4:30 last night, just like she used to, after just about a whole week of sleeping through the night. I just read somewhere that kids become able to sleep through the night after some neurological development; it doesn't have to do with eating enough or anything like that. Charli must have developed that neuron last Wednesday, but now it's resting.

Charli's also got a fully developed object permanence neuron. She loves peekaboo - it makes her shout with laughter. We particularly like to play after meals. She also looks for things she's dropped. Particularly during meals, when she's supposed to be looking at me, lest I stick the spoon in her ear.

Charli's favorite book is Pat the Bunny, both for eating and for reading. She can do most of the things Paul and Judy can: she pats the bunny, plays peekaboo, reads Judy's book (well, she flips through it anyway), feels Daddy's scratchy face, puts her finger through Mummy's ring. She doesn't care much about smelling the flowers. Thanks for the book, Sally W.! Charli loves it so much, I've already had to tape it all up before she digests it.

Paul and Judy don't play banjo, but that would be pretty hard to get into a book. Fortunately, Brian's got one.

RAR! (2)

Charli's getting her other bottom tooth! I just saw it this morning, although I can't quite feel it yet. She's also continued to sleep all night. It must be the new room...

zzzzzz... (3)

Slept all night AGAIN! A person could get used to this... She actually got up quite a while before we (Brian) went in to get her. She just woke up and talked to herself for a bit.

It's been a gorgeous Saturday here. We were up pretty early, so we went to Stacks for breakfast and ate outside. Charli had yogurt and waffle and toast with us, and had a 10 minute nap on the way home. We tried to put her down for longer once we got home, but that didn't work at all. Then in the afternoon we went downtown to the Container Store to get some bins to put more of Charli's stuff in, and then we just decided to walk all the way home. I mean, it's REALLY nice out. We stopped at Delessio for more food and ate outside again, then stopped by the comic shop and caught Al just as he was leaving for San Diego. Now we are home and it's time to clean up some more of Charli's new room!

dinner

Charli generally dislikes dinner (*gasp* Is she really mine?). She cries when I put her in her chair, but then she stops. Then I try to feed her some vegetables and meat, which she resists. This involves lots of arm flailing, rubbing of eyes, and eventually crying. Then, while she's screaming, if I feed her some fruit, she looks very surprised and eats it and wants more, but I don't want to feed her only fruit! So I try to sneak some vegetables in after a while - not so effective. She might eat one bite, make terrible faces, and then start spitting it out and getting back to her regular avoidance tactics. Very discouraging, especially for someone who thinks her child is starving. Here's a new thing she recently started doing while I'm trying to feed her:



There is light on the horizon, though! I have finally figured out several things:

1) Charli really, really hates chunks in her food. She doesn't like her food to be too thick, either (see chicken). I have started pureeing her food until it's way past the point where I think it makes a difference, and actually, it makes a difference. For vegetables, anyway - it doesn't matter what the texture of fruit is, she still loves it.

2) Frozen food! We went to Trader Joe's, and I got all kinds of frozen organic fruits and vegetables. Now all I have to do is defrost some of them, blend them up, and voila - baby food! I still cook up the meats beforehand, and add them to whatever I'm making, and it seems to be working out pretty well. It looks and tastes way better than most of the jarred baby foods, especially the peas. I made her chicken and peas and corn the other day, and she tolerated it really well.

3) She hates bland! I guess she is my child. I made her chicken and this green bean mix most recently, and she hated it. I hated it too. I tried it and it was so bland I could barely eat it. In addition, the texture was very grainy - green beans don't puree nearly as well as peas and corn. I tried to feed it to her anyway. I fed her one bite, and she hated it. So I put some cream and salt in, and then she actually liked it. She opened her mouth for more, but the texture was not improved, and she couldn't get over that. After a few more bites, she just was not having it. Today I fixed that by adding potatoes and butter, and it's a lot better, and she's eating it.

4) Oddly enough, there are certain songs that Charli will eat to. I keep trying more, but so far, only the Monchichi jingle (you know the one: Monchichi, Monchichi, oh so cute and cuddly... thumb... mouth... sweet... blah blah) and Omobolasire (Simon and Milo) work. The Sun is a Mass of Incandescent Gas does not work. Neither does the Rainbow Connection, Cemetery Gates, Twinkle Twinkle or ABC, Frere Jacques or Row Row Row Your Boat. Very strange about Monchichi and Omobolosire, though - I've used them repeatedly; they work every time. She might eat another 15 spoonfuls while I'm singing those songs.

zzzzzz... (2)

Slept all night AGAIN last night, but got up a little after 6am. Brian played with her this time.

zzzzzz...

Charli slept all night last night, from 8pm to 7am. Hooray!

Charli has been pulling herself up on everything she can reach, and she's pretty good at it. Brian likes to make her a nest of pillows covered by a blanket on the couch, and she just rolls around in there and climbs and pulls herself up on every side, and has a great time. She's more mobile all the time, doing more crawling and less worming now. We got some stairwell gates as a gift after she was born, and I took them out, only to find that they 1) mount directly to the wall, so you have to drill holes for them, and 2) do not mount directly to our walls, because you are supposed to mount them between 2" and 3" from the floor, but not on the baseboards, and our baseboards are about 6" tall. So I think we will have to find some wood pieces to put between the top part of the gate and the wall so that we can mount the bottom part against the baseboard, and we have to get some longer screws. What a pain.

Actually, Charli slept almost all night 2 nights ago, too. She got up around 5, and I fed her a bottle and put her back down again around 5:15 or 5:30. She got up again around 6:15, and I'm not sure if she really went back to bed in between. LOVE the new nursery - I got up, took the baby out of the crib, and we went and sat in her play area, where she proceeded to pretty much play by herself for about an hour, while I sat on the floor with her and watched and dozed. It wasn't as good as sleeping, but it was better than lying in our bed with her pounding on my face. :)

2/3

Woohoo! 8 months! That's 2/3ds of a year, Charli!

Charli has been so active lately. She's really ramped up, starting on Sunday it seems. She plays with one toy frantically, chewing on it and shaking it and shouting the whole time. Then she throws it down, rolls from sitting to her knees then back to sitting near another toy, which she frantically shakes and chews and shouts at. Then she climbs on you and hits you and pulls your hair and lips (if you're me) or your nose and lips (if you're Brian) and shouts. Then she starts again. It's tiring just to watch her. But so cute!

new digs

Charli spent her first night in her own room last night. It's not completely finished - I still want to rearrange her clothes, and we need a pile of bins to put various things in, but the important furniture is in there: crib, changing table, rocker. Charli went right to bed, as usual, and woke up fine this morning. I have to say it again: Charli is the easiest baby in the whole world. Nothing fazes her.

RAR!

Charli's getting her first tooth! It's her lower right tooth! She hasn't let us see it (we've tried many times, but she keeps sticking her tongue out or turning her head), but you can definitely feel it when she bites your finger. It hurts! That's right, Kelly - Charli bit me, and it really hurt!

I'm really glad this happened today, because it takes my mind off the previous disaster, due to which I was a wreck for about an hour.

Brian and I were working on rearranging Charli's nursery. I was sitting in her room with her and we were playing with some toys, and that big floor lamp was still in there right next to us. I thought I would move it a little and also try to maybe hide the cord under the base, so I tried to do this from sitting down. O my god, do NOT do that. Stand up and support the entire post of the lamp! The threads that hold the two parts of the lamp post together completely slipped, and the top part of the lamp came crashing down. It fell right over Charli. The shade broke and little sharp pieces went everywhere. It did not touch Charli. She was left sitting right in the triangle of the lamp, with no clue as to why I suddenly felt the need to pick her up and hold onto her when she really didn't want me to pick her up. I was seriously freaked out for almost an hour.

As you can see, we're throwing away the lamp.

*pant pant*

Phew! OK, I have caught up the website pictures. Check 'em out before I'm out of date again!

Yosemite

Well, our trip to Yosemite was SORT OF camping. I mean, we didn't have bring a tent or sleeping bags, and we didn't have a campfire, but we DID stay in something with canvas sides and no heat and no electricity and no running water. O, wait, my bad - there was a wood stove for heat, we just didn't use it. I'm not sure if this pseudo camping thing is good or bad, but we certainly had a nice enough time!

It's about a 4 1/2 hour drive to Yosemite, another 1/2 hr to our tent (White Wolf lodge/campground), and another 1/2 hr to Tuolumne Meadows, where we dropped off Kim and Brent. It took us a little longer, because, well, we got lost and probably had a 45 minute or hour long detour. Oops! Charli was being really good, though, and we weren't in a giant rush (especially since I had already made us leave 2 hours later than Brent wanted to leave. I told him the night before that there was no way we were leaving at 7am - he took that to mean, well maybe 7:30. I didn't mean that either, and eventually we left more like around 9), so it was pretty relaxed.

When we finally got into Yosemite, we went to Yosemite Valley, which was not in the direction of our campground, but it IS where all the big sights are. We parked and put on Charli's backpack and moments later we stopped under a canopy in the parking lot to readjust. Charli's backpack was on the ground, someone was holding Charli, and probably 4 of us were under the canopy when I think Kim noticed a car coming along that had a flat tire. Poor guy, we thought! Until we realized that he apparently wanted to back in under the canopy we were under. He drove by the side of it, drove over a bunch of cement parking space things that were off the side of the pavement (gee, I wonder how he got a flat tire), starting backing into the canopy (we were all still there, not quite realizing what he was doing yet), backed into the canopy support as we were all shouting at him to stop and broke it off the bolt holding it to the ground, forwarded a little and then continued to back under the canopy as we all scattered. The guy was a menace. I should have flattened the rest of his tires for him, too. It seems impossible that he didn't see us, but he didn't show any awareness of our presence at all.

Once we got over that and Charli's backpack was adjusted (to Dad), we wandered around and saw some waterfalls and El Capitan and Half-Dome. Yosemite has BIG ROCKS. They are, like, BIG. It's like whole mountains made out of one big rock. It rained on us and we put down the rain shield on Charli's canopy. I didn't have a rain shield. We then wandered around the visitors center, and then we got dinner at the food court. Charli was a disaster at dinner, and she didn't want to eat anything. Then we drove to our campground, at which point the joy of a perma-tent became obvious. It was already set up, and it had beds in it, with sheets and comforters, and candles ready for lighting, which was great since it was well after dark (and Charli's bedtime). We set up the pak and play inside and put Charli right to bed, and she went down like an angel. Kim and Brent slept on the floor using their backpacking gear, and we all went to bed.

The next morning there were mules behind our tent, so Charli got to see and touch them. We saw one lick giant boogers right out of its own nose; after that I didn't want to hang out with them anymore. After NOT taking down our tent, we had an awesome buffet breakfast at the White Wolf Lodge. I mean really awesome. Delicious biscuits and gravy, eggs with cheese, yummy sausages (the bacon looked gross), fresh orange juice, good potatoes... The fruit was good too, or so I heard. I didn't have any. Charli ate much better - she had oatmeal that I brought, malt-o-meal from the buffet, a bunch of Dad's toast, a tiny bit of eggs... Actually, she ate better at that meal than she had in days. Camping does that to babies, too, I guess! The funniest thing was that everyone was talking about how good the biscuits were even without gravy, and Kim was eating a plain biscuit with butter, and she gave me some, which I ate. What I didn't notice was that Charli was watching me eat the biscuit very closely, and when I ate the last bite, she burst into tears! Fortunately, Mom had a little bit left, too, which she gave to Charli and then everything was OK.

After breakfast, we headed on to Tuolomne Meadows, where we walked around on the PCT with Kim and Brent for almost a whole hour! We didn't get very far, since we kept stopping to look at Soda Springs and Parsons Lodge and take various pictures, but it was still fun. Dad and Sam tried Brent and Kim's backpacks, and Dad said, unsurprisingly, that Brent's backpack was a lot more comfortable than Charli's backpack. It probably doesn't pull his hair, either. Kim and Brent were supposed to leave us at Parsons Lodge, the northernmost point of the PCT we reached, but instead they had to come back to the car with us because Kim realized she'd left her wallet there. It was bad, but a lot better than if she'd remembered 2 hours later!

After that we had to take off, because we had to get back to Oakland airport to drop Sam off for her flight. Charli was much grumpier on the way home than she was on the way out, but unfortunately we couldn't really stop, since we actually had a schedule to make. Sam made it in plenty of time, and we went home and unloaded the van. Right about when we were going to take the van back to the airport (where we had rented it from), Brian got back from his trip. I told him he could meet us at the car rental drop off if he wanted a ride home, rather than taking BART, which he decided to do. Dad drove the van over and I drove our car to bring everyone home. Unfortunately, Dad got lost on the way to the car rental dropoff (the signs are very confusing), and ended up swearing a blue storm when Brian called to check on where he was. Brian said he paid for Charli's college right there, but alas, Charli was not actually around, so it didn't count. Dad finally found the airport, Brian found Dad, eventually they paid for the car and left and found me and we all came home and are going to bed.

Phew! Super long post! More pictures here.

Mirror Lake

Here is a nice view of the mountain we climbed yesterday, taken at
Mirror Lake.

Summit!

This is a picture of the shadow of the mountain that we are on top
of! We are at 11230 ft. Got up at 2:45 am to start our hike in the
dark. It was pretty tough and we had a bit of a scare when a big
boulder cut loose up hill from us. The guide had us all hit the deck,
which of course we did, but the boulders went by without any incident.

Dinner on the mountain...

None of the 7 guys on this trip have ever eaten a freeze dried meal.
This shows, because while we remembered to bring the dinners we forgot
to bring the spoons to eat it with. Bummer... This picture is of our
great view at our camp and our weary bikers trying to figure out how
to fashion a spoon..

Nice way to spend a Saturday

Climbing Mt. Hood...

bad cold, bad night

Charli is having her first bad cold, which has resulted in her first bad night. :( She woke up last night at 3, and couldn't get back to bed for 2 hours because she was so stuffy and congested. Of course, that means I couldn't get back to bed either...

Today she is still congested, and we have finally started making proper use of the snot snorker - you know it's proper use because now she hates it. It really helps, though. Well, it helps when I can actually get it into her nose, anyway. She's become very adept at avoiding what she doesn't want to have done, e.g. having a spoon put in her mouth, having her nails trimmed, having her diaper changed, having her face wiped, having her snot snorked...

Even though she's sick, she's still very happy in general. She's a little needy, but smiley and loving all the attention that comes with all the visitors. We have a lot of company coming today, so it's a good thing she's not all over the map. I hope she's a lot better tonight, or I'm going to have some serious second thoughts about this camping thing this weekend.

everyone's here

Well, the house is definitely full now.

Mom and Dad arrived yesterday, and I'm glad to say that this time, Charli seems perfectly comfortable with Dad. Dad's pretty happy about it too. I have had his picture in her picture book for months now; maybe that actually helped. Sam arrived today, and Charli loves everyone.

We've decided to skip the Tahoe weekend in favor of staying home mostly, and spending one night in Yosemite before Kim and Brent leave. They don't want to skip any parts of the hike, so they need to start back up in Yosemite, where they left off. Brent rented us a perma-tent, which is, well, a RIDICULOUSLY EXPENSIVE tent with a concrete floor and room to sleep 4. We also had to rent a van big enough to get us all there, since the 7 of us and our gear are definitely not fitting into our Matrix.

Preview for Kim & Brent...

Today we began our mountaineering training on Mt. Hood and on our way
to the training area we crossed over the Pacific Crest Trail! All I
can say is that you guys have a lot to look forward to in Northern
Oregon!

California is burning...

I managed to get to SFO in plenty if time for my fight up to Portland
for the 2008 installment of the 9 Guy Trip. This year we have but 7
of our 9 guys, but I don't anticipate that putting a damps on things.
My flight boarded on time and left about an hour late. It's no big
deal though, as it gave me a little time to catch up on the sleep I
have missed in the days leading up to my departure.

Now that I am safely on board and en route, I have some time to sit
down and look around. By some disastrous twist of fate, there is no
tonic water on this plane, so I will do my relaxing without my gin &
tonic. Heineken will have to do. They cost $6 now and United is
still not making any money!

But enough of my hardships. I looked out the window and saw something
potentially much worse - wild fires all over northern California. I
must have seem 6 or 7 separate ones, finally deciding to take a
picture of this one, which I believe is the northernmost extent of
these things.

Normally I wouldn't be too concerned about these, as "fire season"
happens every year and this is part of the natural cycle, but this
year they will be hitting a little closer to home as Kim and Brent
continue their hike up the Pacific Crest Trail this weekend. Brent
tells me that about 100 miles of the trail is currently closed due to
fire, and they don't really know what they are going to do about it.
Not finishing the hike because of sickness or injury is disappointing
enough, but not finishing due to external factors beyond your control
would be even worse. Hopefully this won't be the case.

I have started my initial descent into PDX, so I'll sign off for now.

getting ready for the baby

We started getting the baby's room ready this weekend - we finalized our color scheme, got paint, and started painting. The colors are really nice (I'll post some pictures later), and they look great with the glider cushions we got. I am trying to make one wall look oceany, but currently it looks sky-y. Still nice though, and I have a lot more work to do on it! Soon I will be able to put up the whale and turtle wall hooks Mom bought, and some lights... Maybe I should get some of those cute letters to spell her name? It's going to look really nice with her crib!

What's that you say? Charli's almost 8 months? Whatever. She's lucky she gets a nursery before she's 6.

Anyway, that's what we spent our 4th of July weekend doing. It felt pretty productive!

In other news, we have surprise visitors. Mom and Dad are coming out on Thursday, and Sam is coming out on Friday, and we were all going to go up to Lake Tahoe to meet Kim and Brent for the weekend, as this weekend was supposed to be the time that they were closest to SF during the PCT hike. Unfortunately, Brent got really sick - bad water somewhere on the trail (or the worst case of food poisoning we've ever heard of - 3 days!), they think - and they took a day off in Yosemite to see if it got better. Then they tried hiking some more, and it didn't go so well. Brent was NOT better. So yesterday we got a call from Kim, and then they caught a ride with a friend of a friend and showed up on our doorstep! The house is a wreck, the guest bedroom unlivable, and they are here just in time to help us finish painting and clean everything up. How fortunate!

Anyway, Brent seems to be on his way to recovery (although you'd never know from looking at him - he's lost over 20 lbs on this hike, and the last few days have not helped). At least he's keeping a bit of food down. We will drop them back off in Yosemite after the visit this weekend, and we haven't decided if we'll head up to Tahoe or not (I'm leaning towards not).

Kelly, we need to get you out here! I know you'll have great ideas for the nursery!

*klang*

WAAAAAAAHHH!!!!!!

That's what I woke up to this morning. Of course, if I hadn't been asleep, Charli wouldn't have fallen off the bed...

Yes, it's true. I let Charli fall off the bed this morning. I am a bad mom. Usually she hangs out and pulls my hair and lips and kicks me in the neck and stuff, so I can't fall asleep, but I guess she had long enough to get bored this morning, and eventually went to explore elsewhere. She climbed over Brian's pillow and fell onto the metal feet of the stool by the bed. She recovered quickly, and apparently still loves me, but I still feel terrible. Bad mom! Bad mom!