Carole: This One's for You

After several failed attempts to feed Charles some cheese chunks, and several dissected grilled cheese sandwiches, I finally deduced that the kid prefers melted cheese. So guess what I did?

Oh no, you didn't!

Yes, yes I did. I melted some cheese on a plate and fed it to him with his lunch. He loved it. He didn't even share with Buster. I guess it's a guy thing...

Vampire/Zombie? Camera 1/Camera 2? Plus Some Random...

Vampires... Zombies... so hot right now.

Which is good, because Charles seems to alternate between personification of one of the other. He bites, and it hurts. But we've mostly broken him of that. He walks like the undead, arms out, with a wobbly gait that doesn't look all that stable (though the girls at daycare keep saying he is one of the most stable early-walkers they've seen). He also moves quickly, much like vampires supposedly do. Why, in a flash! he is down the hall and hanging on the gate trying to get down the stairs (thank goodness for the gates). He comes at you with mouth open, trying his level best to get some body part of yours in his mouth. So, is he one of the undead? Only time will tell. Personally, I am hoping he settles on zombie, as modern vampires are a bit too effeminate for my tastes. How did Vampires go from Vlad the Impaler to Twilight?

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Charles tried peanut butter for the first time this week... I think he likes it:

"Yum! PBJ!"

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He spends much of his time walking and crawling between various items of interest on the floor, including two music tables, a wooden spoon, a tambourine, a metal bowl, and the dog. Buster tolerates Charles crawling all over him. Probably because Charles lets Buster eat out of his hand at the dinner table. When we're not looking. They both know better, but Charles thinks is the best game ever.
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My mom is one clever lady. Evidence: she sent up a pie with my dad, but included a note that reads: "Love is not enough. Add sugar."

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I heard uproarious laughter coming from the bathtub last night, so I snuck over with the camera and captured it... Charles was laughing like this, harder even, for a solid three minutes. I think Tony's arms got tired of flapping the towel.

Biped and by golly...

So Charlie is very much a very mobile guy now. For the last several months, almost everyone who has offered their comment on our efforts to get him to walk sounded a warning. "Oh, just wait until he's walking...then you'll really be in trouble." Or something like that. Amelia and I both agree, his mobility is pretty awesome. He and Buster are able to play, which is great. That dog obviously loves his new little human.



On another front (and I hope I'm not horribly jinxing the family here), Charlie is almost sleeping completely through the night. Tuesday night, he actually slept from 8pm to 6am. I woke up at 5:55, double checked the clock was correct, went in to check on him, saw he was fine, went back to bed and pleasingly closed my eyes to hear him signal he was up...figures.

With this development, we have decided we can start to rebuild some semblance of social lives. On Friday, Amelia organized an outing to a local hockey game for her Rotary Club. We took a chartered bus down and back and had a great time. Last night, we went to the Opera/Symphony. There were a few excellent guest vocal soloists who performed with the Skagit Chorale and Symphony. They performed excerpts from several different operas and symphonies. Amelia wore her cape, which made her look very much like a debutante and I did my best to keep up.

Some pics to appease those non-militant types (P.S.- To militant types: We have no intention of appeasing you):

Charlie getting his second haircut

Bathtime fun

General tomfoolery (That is this character's name. I warned you militant types.)
And Charlie unable to escape the clutches of the tupperware cabinet.

And Then This Happened...

Yeah, so now he's a walker. No more than a few steps at a time, but he's making progress every time he does it.

Also, we went to the pumpkin patch for the Festival of Family Farms and had fun. Well, Tony and I had fun. Charles was tired and couldn't figure out what the hubbub was all about. I've helpfully narrated the following photos for your edification.

"Yay! Where are we?"
"Ooof. You guys made me walk a loooong way from the car. I'm tired."

"Ooh! Camera!"

"What is this thing?"

"Geez, pumpkins, big orange gourds, I get it already. Can we go home and nap now?"

"I don't like this wagon thing one bit. Take me out."

"These are scary. They're too big and they look old and they're the wrong color."

"Don't put me down, mama!"

"Seriously, can we go home now? I think I hear Buster whining in the car."

So then we went home and Charles and I both had a nap and Tony did Leland's taxes and then we had dinner and put up Halloween lights and practiced walking and then went to bed. The end.

"Wheee! That was fun! Let's do it again..."

Hello October!

Some belated Whitman photos:

Charles and Stephanie hanging out. I think he likes her!

Playing on Ankeny

Well, well, what have you been up to? 'Round here, we're busy ushering in Autumn in all her glory. My, how I love the changing of the seasons. As George Santayana said, "To be interested in the changing seasons is a happier state of mind than to be hopelessly in love with spring.” So true, and it fits with how I feel about most things: no favorite food, movie, music, time of day, or time of year here. I love them all!

Tony with Baby Jack (he looks like Claire, doesn't he?)

I'm feeling a bit reflective today, in part because I feel like politicians and movie stars and everyone else Americans look up to these days are being huge buttholes. People in DC and Olympia seem more money-hungry and power-nabbing than ever, and each time I hear a politician, even local ones, speak, it's almost like you can feel the slime in the air. I think it's at least partly true that if you actually WANT a political position, you shouldn't be allowed to have one.

Also, this whole Roman Polanski thing? Creeps me out and pisses me off. I CANNOT BELIEVE that some people think that he shouldn't have to answer for his actions, that what he did wasn't even wrong, just because he is an "artist." Rape is rape, Whoopi, get it straight. A blogger I admire said it best in this post. Disgusting. Even more disgusting that celebrities get to be the "authorities" on everything from rape to the economy to the climate. Since when do millions of dollars and a succesful acting career make you a judge/economist/scientist?

Gah, enough of the heaviness. Did you notice how I tried to tone it down by distracting you with photos? Crafty, eh? I haven't been getting enough sleep lately (what else is new), though it appears that Charles' new teeth have receded for the time being. I could see them through the gums for a couple of days and then - poof! - gone. Hooray. We'll just have to go through all that screaming all over again.

What, don't you vacuum your children?

Anyhow, the sleep thing is the normal nonsense. He goes down without a fight every night at about 8 pm. Then, sometime later, say midnight or one am, he wakes up screaming. Tony goes in after 5 or 10 or even 15 minutes of wailing to let him know he is not alone, gets him laying down again, and Charles returns to sleep. Then, he wakes at 4 or 5, sopping wet and ready for food, goes immediately back to sleep after changing and nursing, and is up by 6 am, ready to take on the world. I don't usually get to bed before 11. This timeline sucks.

Also, eleven months. He's eleven months old. Yeesh.

That's all for now, stayed tuned for something more interesting next time, I swear.

Happenings

We left for Walla Walla on Saturday last.

Visited friends, drank wine, took in the amazing scenery of the transformed Walla Walla Valley.

New buildings on campus... could hardly resist the urge to grab some freshman by the shirt and tell him/her "why, in MY day, we weren't so lucky! We had only two elliptical machines in a tiny gym, no art building, and no campus center! My first semester, the library was under construction and I had to order books from a little desk and wait two days for them to get to me! The library wasn't even open all night! YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHAT WE SUFFERED, in my day."


Sometimes, it's hard to believe that colleges go on without you. It's as if, like some mythical Brigadoon, the whole thing existed only for those four years. Without you, it's not the same.


But, it is there. And it is the same. But different. I half expected to see people I knew walking across Ankeny field, heading to the library to write their theses. The transportation was surreal. Especially when I looked at Charles. He didn't belong there, in my college world. In my personal Whitman Bubble.


I can't find my camera, so I don't have any photos of that trip to show you right now. The College visit was a teeny-tiny part of the whole weekend, which consisted more of hanging out with old friends, discussing the future more than reminiscing about the past. Also, of Charles getting licked by a couple of friendly Boxers. He's a tasty guy.


We drove from Walla Walla to see our new nephew in the Tri-Cities.


We took photos of that, too, so perhaps we left our camera there. That, or it's buried under a mountain of sand in the backseat of the car, which I'm sure is great for cameras.


You see, from there, we drove to the beach. It was a long trip. Charles wailed from Wauna to Ilwaco. I guess there's only so much car a guy can take.


We were reunited with the dog at my folks house, but then Tony left us on the Amtrak to go back to work. The same day our friends the Specks drove down for vacation.


We had fun.


Charles enjoyed lasagna:
He really enjoyed lasagna:

We visited Beachdog (lilliputian photos stolen from Kelleigh) (giant dog borrowed from Kelleigh) (the dog will be with my folks for Thanksgiving) (I'm thinking of getting a saddle):

And Charles got to bathe with the ladies, both Adriana (almost age 2) and Tessa (age 3 months). Both were more demure than he was in the bathtub:

We also went to the beach, many times, running the dogs ragged.

Buster chased the stunt kite our friends flew, dutifully protecting his family from that noisy beast:

Charles didn't eat any sand. Bonus!

Tony drove down yesterday to be with us. I guess he loves us. How blessed are we?

Four Years

I was going to do a "then and now" comparison of this photo (now):
with a photo from our wedding (then), but I can't find the discs of all our wedding photos, which is just on par with how the rest of today is going, so fine, I'll roll. I just hope they aren't lost forever, as I have never uploaded them to our current computer, the one that has the hard drive backup and everything.

You'll notice from the above photo that Tony is in bed (well, we got in bed with him for an ad hoc photo shoot, though you can see that Charles wasn't too thrilled with that idea). His largest incision got infected and he has to clean it every day (I'll spare you the details, it's pretty gross), and fighting infection along with general recovery from surgery a week and a half ago has made it impossible for him to be up and about for more than an hour or so at a time.

I cancelled the babysitter for tonight. Don't know what we would have done or where we would have gone, as I was hoping Tony would surprise me with some awesome idea, but instead, I think I will pack up Charles this evening and we will go watch football with my brother. That way, Tony will sleep and hopefully recover faster. At this point, I'm not sure he will feel well enough to go to Walla Walla and the beach with us next week, but at this point, I am committed to going. Plus, Buster is already at my parents' house, and I miss him.

It is tough wrangling a child and taking care of a household all alone. I don't understand how single moms do it.