a confluence of events

Well it sure has been great having Brian home so much.  We go out to lunch a lot, and he has been making the lunch for Charli's play school that we have to make once a week, and he fixes things up around the house...  While I was on maternity leave, I would even go walk around the hill while he ran, so he got me to exercise, too - what a miracle!  We've been having a lovely time.

My parents have been visiting a lot, too, to hang with the grandkids.  They recently bought a new RV (a small one), and drove it out from Colorado.  Then they left for Hawaii for a month and a half, with plans to leave the RV at my uncle's house in Santa Rosa.

Well, heck, say I!  Brian's got nothing but free time, plus some severance pay; I'm not doing anything terrifically involved at work seeing as how I just got back from maternity leave and there's kind of an interim thing going on; Charli is not in real school yet; and we have access to an RV for a month?  Clearly we're going on a road trip!

It took a while for us to get the most important logistic worked out, which was how to get the carseats safely into the RV, which doesn't have any forward facing seats in the back with seatbelts.  After much frustration, Brian came up with the brilliant idea of using rock climbing gear as additional straps, and the car seats are in there facing in the proper directions and solid as rocks.  We took a test trip last weekend (a road triplet, as it were) to an RV supply store a little over an hour away.  It took us all day, and it was awesome!  We stopped for lunch, we stopped to buy diapers because we sort of forgot to bring any with us, we toured some seriously decadent RVs at this RV store after we bought some very important supplies (like lights to hang on the awning), we stopped on the way home to feed Buster...  It was completely relaxed, and Charli could see out the windows and talk to us about all the stuff she saw, and Buster slept most of the time the car was moving.  When we were stopped, Brian lounged on the bed and read his iPhone.  Breastfeeding in a Toyota Matrix with 2 carseats in it = no fun.  Breastfeeding in a Tiger van with 2 carseats in it = no problem!

Of course, we saw this on the way home.  Someone's always got to have a better house on wheels...

Meanwhile, Buster... partied!

So a week into our road trip we finally managed a day where all the timing worked out right. We got to our campsite (aka our parking spot) at a decent hour, about 5:30, and our delicious noodle dinner is on the table at about 7:30. And Buster isn't sleeping! He's partying with Charli on the top bunk!

Breakfast in Oakhurst, CA

We just got out of Yosemite and spent the night at the Days Inn about 16 mi. south of the park in Oakhurst. Yosemite was completely unbelievable. The 2 highlights were 1) the awesome first-come-first-serve campsite we got and 2) glacier point, which sits atop the edge of Yosemite Valley. Oh my God. Anyway, we survived it and are now regrouping before we head south. More later...

we're off!

Hooray!  It took us an extra day to get out, but we finally managed it.  We made a quick stop at the MOM for a ton of instant noodles, then we were off to our first real stop: Railtown State Historic Park, where they have a 40 minute steam train ride.  Charli even wore her girl train engineer outfit, even though it says the size is 18 months.

We got there in time for the last ride of the day, and it was baking hot.  My fragile San Francisco self could barely handle it.  We rode in the open train cars, because as the train lady told us, the closed cars were hotter than a biscuit.  Buster really didn't like the train whistle as we were waiting on the platform, but he was OK with it while we were on the train.  It turned out the train is not actually a steam train, and the route is just a 6 mile out and back ride through not tremendously picturesque areas, but it isn't bad, and a lot of movies were made in the area (there's not a lot of stuff around to indicate what century it is) and that's interesting.  There was also a lot of gold mining done in the area, and we found out the interesting fact that the Sutter's Mill gold mine is supposed to reopen next year.  If you wait long enough, everything comes back around!

They also had a real live roundhouse, so we went to see that, and all the fancy steam trains are actually in the roundhouse,

We will be staying in some random RV park outside of Yosemite tonight, because several of the campgrounds inside the park are first come first serve for sites, meaning you can't make reservations for them.  They take longer to fill up on the weekdays, so we figure we'll camp outside one night, then go straight in the next morning and get a campsite.  Then Nina and Bella are going to join us for a couple of days of camping!  How exciting - we can hardly wait!

Something other than milk!

Check it out! Charli got in on the action and gave Buster his first actual bite of food - pureed Japanese yams from the baby food store down the street. Preliminary indications are as expected: if it's near his mouth he's eating it!

oooh all night (cue the lionel richie)

Well, dear Reader, Buster the Duster slept all night last night, and I got 6 1/2 straight hours of sleep - the most since he's been born.  He actually slept all night this past Monday as well, but Charli peed in bed around 2am (after calling for us several times first - that girl got to come over and wake us up - she thinks we're going to hear her calling from her room through 2 closed doors and a humidifier when we're sound asleep?!) and then had a fit, and we both had to go over there and fix things...  We just finished Buster's 6am feeding, and I'm so rested I couldn't get back to sleep!  So I thought, 'It's the perfect time for my first blog post!'  Good thing Brian's been holding down the fort.  If it was just me, you'd think we were all dead!

Yesterday Quinn had his 4 month drs appointment - Brian took him!  All is well - he is 15lb 10oz and 26 inches long.  Going down slightly in his percentiles (I though for sure he'd be 16lbs by now), but still way over average, and I'm so over that 'worrying about the weight' thing...  I'm making milk much better than I was with Charli, and unlike Charli's continuous barfing, Buster hardly throws up at all.  He can go days without anything coming out of his mouth but drool, and when he does throw up, it's usually like a little dribble.  It's amazing.  So he's eating like twice as much as Charli did.

Speaking of eating, we're about to start him on some solid foods.  He's definitely ready - he's had some broth from Charli, and he's sucked on peaches and watermelon (actually he got a piece of the watermelon, and he mouthed it a while and then choked and spit it out).  He sits at the dinner table and looks longingly at everyone eating.  He looks so wistful, and then he starts smacking his lips...  I think we'll be cooking up some applesauce soon, and there's a little place around the corner that makes fresh baby food!  I'll give them a try, too.

Quinn has already had a pile of firsts, but since I haven't posted you've all been missing them.  Here's a big list.  :)
 

He had his first bottle at 3 1/2 weeks, and it was easy.  We gave him a bottle every now and then, and it was no problem.  Then we started a schedule, where we would feed him on bottles at night and I would pump, and I was putting away SCADS of milk!  It was awesome!  Then we got lazy and complacent, and started breastfeeding him again at night, and didn't give him a bottle for a long time.  We gave him a bottle again just before Binka left, so maybe around 9 1/2 weeks, and he wouldn't take it.  In addition, my milk production (as far as pumping goes) went way down.  So we struggled with that for 3 or 4 weeks, with me bemoaning my complacency all the while, but after I went back to work he seemed to be OK with it.

He started smiling socially around 9 weeks, and now he laughs occasionally.  Now he's even a little bit ticklish! 

He had his first visit from the paternal grandparents and awesome Aunt Kelly at 11 weeks.  A grand time was had by all, although we did not make it to the model steam train this time.

At 12 weeks, he also rolled from his back to his front for the first time.  Now he can roll either way, although he's not so good at front to back.

Buster loves his toys.   Around 12 weeks, he started playing with this big roll of Bugs Bunny wrapping paper that I had near his changing table.  We would go to change his diaper, and he would bat at and kick the paper, not to mention stare fixedly at a particular picture of Bugs.  I wonder how that's going to affect him when he's 25!  So I put him in his play gym, and he really was interested in it - he could lie there for 1/2 hour, batting at the toys!  I swear I could see his motor skills improving just as he was lying there!  Charli was never really interested in that stuff.  I would hang things on her car seat or stroller, and she just ignored them.  Buster bats them and grabs them and pulls them, and now he puts them in his mouth, too. 

He's also very talkative!  He takes turns gurgling with you, and he looks in your eyes while you do it.  Brian was just recently noting how he has always looked at your eyes rather than at your mouth, which is what most babies look at for a while (including Charli) before they figure that out.  He even talked to Binka on the phone once, smiling and taking his turns in the conversation just as if she were there!  It didn't work again after that, tho.


He had two teeth coming in, neither of them front teeth - the upper right canine, and the lower left canine.  We could see them both on the sides of his mouth.  He will look funny if those come all the way in first!  I say 'had' because the upper right seems to be gone now (I couldn't find it, at any rate), and the lower left feels slightly smaller.  I don't know exactly how that happens...  They were bothering him worst in the evenings, but once he fell asleep for the night he was fine again for about 20 hours.  :)

As I noted before, he started sleeping much longer at a time at about 17 weeks!  He has been getting up 3 or 4 times a night most of the time since we've been home.  About a week ago, he graduated to only getting up once a night, and occasionally none a night!  Hooray!  Sleep is getting so good again!

And lastly, a first for both Charli AND Buster (it's kind of sad that this is a Charli first...) - on July 4th weekend, we finally went camping!  Just for one night, unfortunately, but given that it was planned Sunday July 3rd, what more can you ask?  More details on this in a later post.

Charli loves Buster, and Buster loves Charli.  Lately she has been reading books and singing songs to him, and whenever she's around, Buster just watches her and smiles.  Last weekend, he woke up in the morning and was crying, and Charli ran in and told me "No, no, no, I'LL get him!"  She climbed into the crib and soothed him a little; it didn't work immediately so she turned on his mobile; that didn't work immediately either so she went back to talking to him and distracting him and he stopped crying and started smiling at her.  It was great.

I went back to work on June 20, and Nina's been taking care of Buster.  It's been 4 weeks now - just about time to take a vacation, right?  More about that in the next post!

Whipped cream!

In another display of the awesome diet that we have Charli on this morning, here we see her licking the bowl here the whipped cream was whipped. Soon, waffle feast!

Chocolate croissant!

Chilly morning at the farmers market, but chocolate warms the heart! Meanwhile, Buster slept.

Cleaning up the rig...

By some miracle of parking fate, Ray and Shirley have been able to park their camper right in front of our house in San Francisco. Twice. In a row. And the upshot of that is that Charli is able to just go outside and clean it!