aaagh!

Another milestone... Charli pooped on me today. Brian says it wasn't personal, which is just what someone might say if they weren't the one who got pooped on. At least he didn't tell me it was good luck.

Before Charli crapped on me, we spent a lovely afternoon down in South Bay, attending a surprise baby shower for Manuela, a girl I work with. She's expecting her second baby, a boy, in March. Manuela singlehandedly provided Charli with most of her clothes - hand-me-downs from her daughter, Sophie - as soon as she knew her next baby would not be needing pink dresses with kittens wearing bows, and stuff like that. :) It was the first time a lot of people met Charli, so she got a lot of attention, which she was perfectly comfortable with. She took a nap while we were down there, but after a few hours she got fussy, so we left. I guess we can't really stay places for hours and hours now. Charli just has no stamina.

Yesterday (also before Charli took a dump on me), we fed Charli by bottle all day. I wanted to make sure she would not get tired of bottles after a while, for that distant future when we have found a nanny, and we were also curious to know about how much she actually eats in a day. She ate about 6 times, for a total of 22oz. I think she could probably eat more, but we were not quite prepared to find that she can suck down 4oz in about 3 minutes and then scream for more. We will have to be better prepared in order to get her to her proper fat baby status.

Brian also says yesterday was the first time Charli has had a good deep sleep on his chest. I guess this really does mean that everyone else hogs Charli, because I have had several naps with her that way. She's also slept on Mom, Kim, and Sam. I think she slept on my dad, too. Clearly Brian needs to be more assertive. Of course, having her on your chest that way exposes one to the risk of being shat upon...

Not too much has been happening other than that. Tomorrow my grandma is coming to visit, so that should be fun. I hope Charli doesn't make a mess on her. Then Wednesday, my mom is coming out again, too. I hope Charli doesn't make a mess on her either. On Sunday, the 4 of us (Grandma, Mom, me, and Charli) are all heading to Colorado - that will be 4 generations in one plane row! Brian will come out to Colorado the following Friday, which means he will be 5 whole days without Charli! What will he do? Will he be able to stand it? Stay tuned to find out! At least there is no such thing as long distance crapping upon!

Did I mention Charli pooped on me?

family resemblance

Kelly sent us this picture of Brian as a baby. I can't find any pictures of myself as a baby that look this much like Charli. Maybe she doesn't really tend towards my side of the family...

nothing in particular

Yesterday Charli and I met up with some mothers in Noe Valley, a neighboring neighborhood, to do the Noe Strolls welcome walk. All of the mothers who were there were firsttimers as well, so we just made up our own walk. It was hard. I walked over to the meeting place, which involved going up a big hill. Then we went up 2 more big hills while doing our walk. Hills... stroller... kicked my ass... As you can see, this is the first time I've remembered to bring my camera to one of these things.

After we got home, Charli was a bit fussy. As the afternoon wore on, I practiced not picking her up until she stopped crying. Eventually she worked herself into a rage and screamed wholeheartedly for as long as she could, which is about 10 or 15 minutes (I think. My sense of time became completely skewed, so it felt like an hour). This was so exhausting that, once she reached the point of whimpering and I picked her up, she passed out 2 hours before her regular bedtime and slept 6 hours until almost midnight. Then we fed her and went to bed, and she slept another 6 hours before her next feeding. Poor thing!

Today Charli and I went to lunch with Andrea and Michelle from work, and Andrea's husband Tom. We had a lovely meal at Hotei - mmm, ramen! Hotei is on the same street where I seem to eat all the time lately. It's just a few doors down from Park Chow and a block away from Pacific Catch and Golden Gate Park. After lunch, Michelle and I took a walk in the park with Bobo (her golden retriever), who I hadn't seen in ages. He used to come into the office with her, but we haven't been able to bring dogs in for years now. Bobo was so excited to see me! He's afraid of children, but not until they can walk. Charli pretty much slept through the entire thing - restaurant AND walk, so she still hasn't met a dog.

You know how a few days ago I said she was barfing a lot less? Well, it's not true. She just saves it up. After we got home, she ate a lot. And then she barfed. A lot. No projectile vomiting or anything, just lots of really grody stuff. It started out moderately, but then she barfed all over Brian before we went out to dinner, just as he was handing her to me to put her in the moby. I said "I sure am glad I didn't have her just yet!" We figured that was probably about as much as there was, but we were wrong, because she barfed all over me while we were at dinner.

Charli is about 2 1/2 months old now. Here's a picture of her in her bassinet when she was 5 days old, and a picture from a couple of days ago. Her feet don't go all the way to the bottom of her pajamas in the recent picture (or in the earlier picture either), but still, the difference is amazing!

Not too many changes that I've noted in the past couple of days. She hasn't laughed yet, although there have been several times when she looked close to it. When she's sleepy and you hold her, she'll put one hand up on your neck and the other around your arm, and maybe kind of knead your arm. It feels like she's hugging you - it's so sweet! I just want to squeeze her! I can't think of anything better than a cuddly, well behaved newborn. Our next one is going to be the same way. :)

Charli goes to the wine bar

Charli is so great in the morning. Sometimes I wake up and I look at her, and she's already awake and looking around with great big eyes. When she sees I'm awake, she gives me a big smile! It is so sweet it makes me want to cry. Other times I wake up because she's crying. That might also make me want to cry, but it's different.

Today we (all 3 of us) went to a Vino Rosso in Bernal Heights to check out Wine and Whiners - that's right, friends, a family oriented wine bar happy hour! Hooray! We got there towards the end, but there were still a few strollers there. We stayed way past the end of the happy hour (Charli was being her standard lovely self) and had a very pleasant time, celebrating Chinese New Year's Eve in an Italian wine bar. Dad, you'll be happy to know they have Amarone by the glass (well, this week at least). We had wine and cheese and lasagna and dessert. Family oriented happy hour is the bomb!

We (just Charli and I) also went to lunch with Steph and Zac again, this time at Pacific Catch in the Sunset. We had a very pleasant time, even though Charli got a little fussy and I had to feed her at the restaurant. These guys make the BEST sweet potato fries. And they have a parking lot (it's a good thing they have a parking lot, because when we got to the restaurant, I realized I had no baby wheels. I had taken Charli's carseat out of the stroller to put into the car, and then forgotten to put the stroller into the car - duh! Thank goodness I didn't have to walk several blocks carrying the carseat)! We'll be going there again.

Charli's milestones? She looked at her hand a couple of times! Maybe soon she'll actually look at her wrist toy thing! She sucks on her wrist toy thing just fine, but I think it's mostly an accident when she actually gets it into her mouth. She's throwing up less, but drooling more. She has eyebrows! They've been coming in slowly for several days and they're fine and thin, but they're pretty much all there at this point. Brian says she can suck down a 4oz bottle in less than 5 minutes at night - she's not quite as fast during the day. And she's enjoying the "let's drool in dad's mouth" game more and more (see picture). I don't know if that counts as a milestone, but I need somewhere to put this picture in!

I have also reached a developmental milestone. As of today, I can NOT pick Charli up even if she's crying. As a matter of fact, I can leave her alone until she STOPS crying, which she does after a few minutes. It's very liberating. And Brian and I have a game we play, too, in which I read an article about some disease or developmental problem or other bad thing, like autism or being partially deaf, and then I read about various symptoms and how other parents identified the bad thing initially, and then I tell Brian that I think Charli has it. Then Brian tells me that yes, she probably does, and that we should probably be worried - maybe take her to a specialist, which in Brian-speak means "I don't think we have to worry about that; I'm pretty sure she's fine you raving paranoid lunatic". Then I say Well! which means "you big dope; I'm not paranoid; you don't know anything about [insert bad thing here (or 'babies')]!" We will probably play this game more and more often unless I read fewer things online.

goin' to the show

The Parkway Speakeasy Theater is one of those theaters where you can sit on a couch (if you get there early enough) and order pizza and beer or wine while you watch a movie. Every Monday night, the early shows are the Baby Brigade - meaning that kids younger than 1 year are welcome. At one of the mother things I went to last week, someone mentioned that Sweeney Todd was playing, so we went. It was great! It's the perfect way to see Sweeney Todd, since it isn't the most demanding movie... You don't pay full price, and you can talk to your baby during the movie and no one minds. In addition, it turns out that the Baby Brigade movie is pretty empty. We only got there 10 or 15 minutes before the movie started, and there were only 1 or 2 other families there, so we got a nice couch in the middle. Normally to get a couch, you have to get there at least a half hour early. Charli was fascinated by the movie. She watched the beginning, then she fussed a bit and we talked and fed for a while. Then she watched some more, and then she fell asleep. She likes Johnny Depp; I'm sure of it.

p.s. I posted some new pictures on the website.

bad girl!

In a rare show of poor behavior, Charli actually CRIED today when we went out for brunch. Well, sort of cried - she made THREE noises before she fell asleep (which was still before our appetizer donut holes came out). Unbelievable. We just can't take that girl anywhere. In addition, she's started some hard core finger sucking and hair pulling (see picture). If it weren't so cute, we might have to start thinking about some serious discipline here.

Actually, I should probably really take a moment to describe how fabulously behaved Charli really is (so I can come back and appreciate it when she is a toddler and completely out of control). She is so great when we go out to restaurants - she seems to love the background noise and it just puts her right to sleep. She hardly ever fusses when we're out. As a matter of fact, often she seems quieter (and sleepier) if I take her to a restaurant for lunch than if we stay home during the week, even if I have the radio or tv on. It's too quiet at home, or too boring, or something.

In addition, she goes to sleep by herself at night. We put her to bed between 8 and 9pm, and she's almost always awake when we do it. We just put her in her bassinet, turn off all the lights except the nightlight, and close the door. Then we go upstairs and listen to the sound monitor - we can usually hear her cooing and sucking her fingers for a while, and eventually she just falls asleep. And then she stays asleep for six to nine hours. Seriously. She is an angel in both appearance AND demeanor!

On the development side, Charli is making a lot more noises and enjoys talking to us. She didn't much like all the Obama videos that Sam sent us, but she really likes Lost (maybe it has something to do with the fact that Obama's face on my computer is about an inch tall, whereas everyone's face on our 60 inch tv screen is about a foot tall). She hates being put down on her tummy - after a couple of minutes she starts making the most pathetic whimpery noises (it's so cute!) - but she likes to be carried around on her stomach. Her head control is really improving and her neck is very strong. She can hold her head up pretty well, even when she's flat on her stomach (this picture is not the highest she can hold her head - she was getting tired by the time I actually got the camera and started clicking). She seems to be eating larger amounts less often. She sucks on her hands all the time now, and makes these little grunty noises when she does it. Sometimes she misses her hand, and just makes the grunty noises with her fist on her cheek, which is pretty hilarious. She likes to lick everything - the barf rag, her blanket, your arm, your cheek, your shirt... Well, maybe not everything - she wasn't interested in licking my Clif bar at all. She seems to have graduated from her old favorite trick of taking a dump right after you change her diaper (sometimes 3 times in a row - she used to have the most mischievous smile when she did this) to wiggling around on you until she's just past the edge of the barf rag and then barfing.

Well, that's more than you probably wanted to know. In closing, we still haven't quite figured out what we're going to do with our new printer. We might have to (oh no!) go down to the Apple store and give them some more of our money. If they have a demo MacBook Air there, we might end up giving them a ton of our money. I am seriously coveting one of those.

so busy...

We've been so busy lately! I've discovered a new social group - they're called "mothers". Previously I only knew "IT professionals". :)

We went to a mothers group for 0 - 7 month babies on Thursday, which basically involved sitting around in a rather cold, dim room. Why were the lights not on? I don't know. But it was so great not having to worry about your baby disturbing anyone or whether or not one should breast feed in public and yet being able to talk to other adults. Hooray! Steph told me about it. Then 5 of us went to lunch and took over the back room of a restaurant with all our strollers and equipment and boobs and stuff. After lunch I was going to go home, but it was raining and we were in the Castro about a block and a half from Daisy's house, so I called to see if she was home and we visited her for a few hours. The rain did not stop, so she gave us a ride home. Then on Friday we went to a different mothers group for a big walk around Golden Gate Park - it was really nice. The sun was out for a change, although it started raining just as we were finishing up our walk. Then we ate at Park Chow again with a couple more mothers! So we're getting much better at filling up our days, and Charli is still a complete angel when out socializing. She fusses occasionally, but not too much. If I was smart, I would take my camera to these things so I could document our adventures better, but I always forget. I suck.

Charli has grown out of a pile of clothing. I almost bought her something to wear, because she didn't have enough pants that fit her, but I controlled myself and it was a good thing, too! Why? Because she was given so many things, and I had simply forgotten to look at the drawers in which I had put things that were too big for her when she was born. Well, it was like Christmas once I DID look - she has practically a whole new wardrobe. Including plenty of pants.

Today we discovered Charli's toys. We put the spinny music box on her mobile, so now it plays music and turns. She loves it, if staring at it and smiling is any sign. We also put these little wrist toys on her wrists that rattle/have bells. She doesn't even know they're there, if completely ignoring them is any sign. I still like to play the kissing game with her, but Brian has discovered a different game called "let's try to drool in dad's mouth". Gross.

And here's some more firsts:
1) Learned how to put Charli's carseat in a car that doesn't have the base in it, when Daisy drove us home from her place because it was raining. It's pretty easy.
2) Jeans! Charli's got jeans! And ANOTHER pair of socks that stay on!
3) She reached for the bottle. Brian was feeding her, and he took the bottle away, and she put her hand on his thumb, as if to prevent him. Definitely a Yang.

In other news, which doesn't have anything to do with Charli and therefore is probably of little interest to anyone, we got a fancy new printer for printing photos. It prints really nicely and really fast, but we can't figure out quite how to fit it into our network. I like it. Also, Brian's boss got fired. So weird!