MKF!

Our baby lady finally arrived!

And she's perfect.  And we are complete.

xoxo

To Do

Ugh.  That "have baby" task has been on my little Remember the Milk to do list since April 7.  It mocks me. I don't want to be overly complainy or anything (at least on the internet--call me on the phone and you'll get an earful about how I'm 79 weeks pregnant and I want my body to belong to me again and how much it hurts and OHMYGODGETTHISTHINGOUTOFME).  Last night I was 90% sure I was in labor.  And then I wasn't.  As a result, I haven't been terribly pleasant today.

And then everything just gets thrown into perspective, doesn't it?  Am I really going to sit around and cry because I might have to be pregnant until my due date?  Or because I might have to have a safe surgery (that I still really don't want to have, by the way)?  Seeing and hearing the stuff about Boston has sure helped to provide a much-needed attitude adjustment.  

The baby isn't happening today.  But neither is the shower--let's be honest.  And I'll probably whine and get Matt to vacuum.  But we are safe and happy and have much to be grateful for.

Like a young Jon Hamm, who, thank God, was not one of my peers.  Because if he had been, I would have died every day.

And baby sunglasses.

And this boy, who is going to make a fantastic big brother.

And my new favorite print for the nursery.

And a husband who brings home tacos at midnight.  Those are the best kinds of husbands.  I'm out.  These tacos aren't going to eat themselves.

This and That

1.  So, this little female fetus of ours is already disobedient, and likely a little obstinate (did we expect anything less?).  As you might remember, I decided that baby girl could go ahead and be born on April 7.  And if you've looked at a calendar lately, you might notice that April 7 has come and gone, and I have not yet managed to evict her from my body.  Do I need a judge or something?

2.  Probably not a good thing that I bought three bags of Cadbury milk chocolate eggs when they went on sale after Easter.  Except that it's an awesome thing because OMG they are so good and who cares.  Fat is the new black, right?

3.  My feet are so swollen right now that my flip flops don't fit.  See above.

4.  Best David Letterman guest of all time?  Regis Philbin.  Trust me on this.  I know handsome old dudes.

5.  Charlie is still supes cute, and a little bit insane, and a lot hilarious.  Oh, and he walked!  It was awesome.  I imagine that he'll get a little better at it in time.

6.  Hell yeah, return of Mad Men!

7.  Oh, I did a dresser for our girl!  Maybe I'll give you an entire post about it so I don't seem like the laziest blogger of all time.

8. Someone get this baby out of my body.

9.  How's April 10 sound for a baby girl's birthday?

10.  My doctor said he won't come by our house for a home water birth.  I'm supposed to put bath salts in the kiddie pool, right?  That's basically as good as an epidural, I heard on Pinterest.

I think I need to go to bed now.  But first I'm going to make you look at some pictures of Charlie while he's still an only [human] child.  And one of Mitch.

Calm Before the Storm

So it's spring break, and this year spring break also serves as a kickoff to maternity leave for me (thank you, severe pelvic pain?), and I am feeling surprisingly content.  It doesn't hurt that the weather has been amazing, and apparently my mood and general attitude toward life hinge on whether or not the weather is nice.  Getting to sit in my (clean!!!) living room with the windows open and a slight breeze coming in is often enough to bring my mood up by approximately 30 notches.  And slowing crossing off every task from our "must do before baby" list also makes me happy.   There's really not much left for us to do before our little lady arrives.  Matt and I have been spending our days taking turns napping, really, and then wondering how it got to be 3:00 in the afternoon so quickly.  We've remarked to one another several times this week that it feels weird not to be completely effing exhausted.  And while I feel like I should be spending my time in more productive ways, sleeping is probably the best thing I can be doing with my spare time right now.  If only sleep was something that you could stockpile and then cash in on days when you really feel like you need it.  Can some science person make this happen?

I have all of these things that I've been meaning to blog about, like how I miss the simple days of Mel Gibson and Tom Cruise just being hot and not crazy, and how obsessed I am with our new Rubbermaid Reveal mop (like, to the point where people interrupt me as I go on about it and ask, "Are you like a mop salesman now or something?")*, or about how you should go read the obituary for Harry Stamps and then try to even pretend that you don't wish that he was your best friend, or about how my brother came down to visit with his awesome girlfriend and her daughter and it was hella fun, or about how I've decided (since it's apparently not up to me as much as I'd like to think it is) that baby lady can come on April 12 instead of April 7 because April 12 is David Letterman's birthday.  Oh, and how I turned 32 and how did that even happen that I got so old (see, also: fat)?  And how much I love tulips and how they remind me of JMU in the spring.

Who knows when this girl will claw her way out of me?  For now, I'm trying to enjoy these days with my three boys (can't even think about Charlie losing only child status without starting to cry myself) and to eat as many popsicles as possible (three for dinner--that's not crazy, right?).  Sometime in April (it better be April, or Imma hurt someone!) shit will hit the fan again (hopefully just in a metaphorical sense, but, really, anything can happen, right?) and I'll be wishing that someone had invented that sleep bank.

Here's what it's looking like around here.  Or, should I say, here's what Charlie's looking like around here?

*Seriously!  Go get one!  Washable pads!  Super convenient!  Use whatever solution you want!  Amazing!

One Year!

Our little baby Charlie turned one on Saturday.  It was weird.  I'm not really one to cling to babyhood or anything, and I actually have liked and enjoyed him more and more as he's gotten older, but I still found that I was a little sad, a little melancholy, when he reached that one-year milestone.  I don't think it was that he's growing up so much, but instead that 1/18th of the time that he'll be in our house has already passed, and while we still have 17 more years of him with us, I know that that time will pass in a blink just like the last year did (albeit a pretty long blink at times).  I mean, it was more than 17 years ago that Friends debuted on NBC, and that basically feels like yesterday!

So, anyway, he's one.  A toddler.  A lunatic toddler.  Oh, Charles.

Sir Charles is getting closer and closer to walking every day, and while I wasn't in any hurry for him to take this next step (oh, awful puns), as he's gotten closer I've started to get more impatient about it.  I mean, walk already!  Charlie also has an uncanny ability to find the one thing in a room that has the greatest potential to kill him, and then to barrel toward that thing as quickly as possible.  So we've been experimenting with some time outs around here.  And even though putting him in time out is like the opposite of fun, we know that we have to be strict and consistent, lest he turn out like Mitch.  Learned that one the hard way.

Brothers play tug.  

Charlie is also hilarious.  Like when he does blanket monster or plays hide-and-seek or speed crawls to his room and then slams the door shut so that we can't get in.  He learned to snort laugh the other day, too, and it was kind of the funniest thing that's ever happened.

I feel really guilty about the fact that we're about to turn his little world upside down in a couple of weeks when his sister arrives, and I have no idea how he's going to feel about it or deal with it.  The best I can guess is that he might try to hit her with a maraca or a miniature frying pan.  Might have to get her a little baby helmet.  Oh, and she might be a little Charlie doppleganger:

Okay, enough about all that.  Let's talk about his party!  We had Charlie's party on Sunday, and it turned out wonderfully.  Matt's mom came down (um, a godsend!) to help us clean and prepare for the party, and I really don't know what I would have done if she hadn't, given that I'm 76 weeks pregnant, in pain, moody, and super tired all the time.

We tried to keep our guest list kind of small so that Charlie wouldn't be overwhelmed by all of the people. And the weather all week was predicted to be just awful--in fact, every day that I checked the forecast it would be worse and worse.  By the day before, the weather forecast basically said, "If you go outside on Sunday you will face certain death."  But by about noon on Sunday, the thunderstorms had passed, the temperature had risen, and the sun had shown its bright shiny face.  So we opened the windows and got going.

All of the food was stuff that we could prepare beforehand, so that on party day we were freed up to talk to people and enjoy ourselves. (Also, I totally forgot to get a picture of any of it.  Shooooot.)  We had ribs, grilled chicken skewers, grilled pineapple, spinach dip, pasta salad and pimento cheese (from Cassie), potato salad (from Matt's mom), and three cakes.  For Christmas Matt's grandma gave me 6" cake pans which I'd been stoked to use since the moment I opened them.  Also, is anything cuter than a 6" cake?  Maybe just Charlie eating that 6" cake?

I wanted the party to be nice, but didn't want it to be overdone or overly Pinteresty or themey.  And I think we found a good balance in there.  Ooh, but you really might need to make the robin's egg cake because it was fun and easy (just put some of those super-addictive Cadbury milk chocolate eggs on top) and festive.

The party turned out exactly the way I had envisioned.  We had a house full of happy friends, Charlie ate his cake (surprisingly, with more manners than he eats anything else), and everyone left full of tasty food.  Success!

Oh, just check out the pictures already.

 Forgot to buy plasticware, so decided to use the fancy silver with our paper plates.  I mean, what's the point in even having fancy silver if you can't ever use it, right?

 Birthday sweet potato lunch.

A Year of Charlie!

Well, the internet.  I've been terrible about keeping you up to date lately, huh?  In my defense, I'm like 76 weeks pregnant, and we've had lots of company, and it's a kind of tough time of year at school, and we've been chasing little Charlie Danger around all day.  And I had some cakes to make BECAUSE CHARLIE IS A WHOLE YEAR OLD NOW! (More on that later.)

We've basically been having too much fun and then been too tired from all of the fun-having to do any kind of online updating of the ol' blog.  Oh well.  If it makes you feel any better, we've also neglected things like cleaning the house or keeping up with basic personal hygiene.

I'll be back later this week (I promise!) to talk about Charlie's birthday party, and maybe even his haircut (Operation: No More Rattail), too.  But right now I wanted to show you something I'm pretty proud of, which is the monthly (okay, bi-weekly) pictures I took of Charlie all year.  I wanted to have some visual record of how much he changed, and really I did them bi-weekly because 12 pictures just didn't seem like enough.  Remember, I do nothing in moderation.

These were super easy to do, too.  I just took the pictures into Picasa (which is where I do all of my photo editing because it's super easy and I'm too cheap to buy Photoshop and even if I had Photoshop it seems a little too complicated for what I need), did a cross-process effect on them (basically an Instagram kind of look), and then did the Polaroid effect on them. Finally, I added the text.  If that sounds hard, just know that it wasn't.  It took approximately 1 minute for each picture.  This approach seemed much easier than having something where I had to have him sit in the same spot or against the same backdrop every time, and I really like that the pictures kind of show what Charlie was into or doing around specific ages.

 For Charlie's party, we hung up all of the pictures so that everyone could see how our little buggle had grown through the year.  It was one of my favorite party details.

So, without further ado, here are way more pictures of my kid than you probably want to see:

I seriously stare at these things all the time.  Which is your favorite?  (I have like 20.)