Separated at birth?

The original Capt. Morgan

One knee up. This is her new favorite pose. She's ready to walk with one leg up whenever her other one decides to follow.

It’s a disease.

More likely, it’s an unhealthy obsession. And, I know unhealthy obsessions like the back of my hand. In fact, I no longer consider them unhealthy. That’s how much I have grown.

There are two words that can stir venom in any mom across the land: Sippy Cup!

There isn’t a perfect one out there. Yet we search and spend to find the best flippin, hoppin, no-leakin, bpa-hatin, magical, valveless, handled, straw-poppin cup there is.

I feel like I have tried and purchased them all until I read reviews online of other sippy cups and see that I at least show a little bit more restraint than other moms. My cupboard is like a museum of pastel plastic. The ones she liked, leaked. The ones she refused, were leak-proof and perfect in my eyes. It matters not, they are all relegated to the empty space behind the margarita glasses.

And, then we went to the doctor, and she asked if Lolo was drinking anything from a cup. I decided not to show my Achilles heel and chose to simply say that she had no interest in a sippy cup. Then she asked, “Have you ever just tried to let her lap a little bit of water out of a regular cup?”

Wha? Regular cup, as in the kind you can get at IKEA for 17¢? The kind with no science or magical tricks? The kind with no reviews to read on diapers.com or thesoftlanding.com? What do you mean, just a regular drinking vessel? Preposterous!

She loved it. There was no work in it. It was easy. She saw the water in the cup, and I tipped it and it came to her. “So … great doctor. What am I supposed to do when I am out and about across this great state being a busy, on-the-go, no-nonsense mom? Just hand this 9 month-old an open cup of milk?”

She said, “Nah. Just get a cup with a straw.”

She mastered how to drink from a straw in 3 minutes. Again, she may not be talking, but her talent … it’s imbibing. She’s good.

Portrait of my obsession.

Chunker

Chunker update:

Well, Lolo had her 9 month checkup and two things came out of it.

1. She is a milk-a-holic.

2. She is in the 75 – 80 percentile in weight and height.

The doctor asked that I add in more snacktimes with solids to help her need less milk but said her growth is right on track and she’s happy with how proportional she is.

She may not be saying “Dada” or “BaBa” yet, but she can drink you under the table and put you to shame.

Eureka!

Saturday was a momentous day in our wee household. We hired a person (a very kind woman with loads of experience) to come over and watch Lolo whilst we left the house without a diaper, a bottle or even one stale Oatio in our hands–gasp! It’s an amazing concept, babysitting. Expensive, but amazing.

We chose an afternoon as the first trial so Lolo could hang out with Max (short for Maxine) while she was awake since we plan on using Max as an occasional Saturday night babysitter. I just didn’t want Lolo to wake up while we were out one night in the future and have what seemed to be a stranger pick her up and comfort her. I thought I at least owed her the chance to have mixer with the sitter. And, mix they did. When we got home, it was nite-nite time and she practically begged to go to sleep as she was so worn out.

As for our activities outside the abode. I didn’t really plan an itenerary (another gasp!) because in my mind, the itenerary could have been rushing back to the house when my daughter had a meltdown after realizing that I was GONE! But, she didn’t meltdown (far from it) and we kind of had a loose afternoon ambling around a cute town very near to us. We found a Christmas gift for Lolo and spent some quality time at a pub watching college football, eating appetizers and drinking pints of foamy beverages. I obsessed about the amount of fat that was probably in my soup and opted to eat more of the free pretzels than the dish I paid for. I should have known that butternut squash soup at an Irish pub would be a tablespoon of squash mixed in a large bowl of warm cream. Ah, relaxation.

My initial idea for the afternoon was to go to IKEA to find some additional cheap stuff for the house. But, Matt vetoed that with a quickness noting that that’s not something you do when you are free of baby care. I’ll admit, IKEA on Saturday isn’t exactly relaxing but at least you can get that natural high of crossing things off the to-do lists that rain in my head.

So, we are prepped and ready for Max to come back in a few weeks for a real night out at a restaurant that does not include a kids menu. We’re stoked and the food better be good!

Busy

Halloween parades, baptisms, grandparents abound and babygate installations.

This was quite a weekend.

Harvest fun

Another Cara visit.

We were lucky enough to have another visit from Cara and Kieran while Big B studied for “the test.”

Since Saturday looked like a washout, we planned on taking the tikes to a local indoor play space, otherwise known to babies as “crack.”

The lovely employees at the place made an error in the schedule (even though we confirmed twice that week via phone that there was indeed a 2 hour open play slot), so by the time we go there, only 30 minutes of “open play” remained. But, they used their time wisely, and I got over my bitterness with the snafu. Kinda. Not really.

Let me tell you this. She is on fire when she is let loose in these padded wonderlands of germs, plastic balls and foam mats.

She’s unstoppable

We tried out another playgroup today over lunch and someone we know had a little bit of a good time. It’s amazing what a few hours with someone else’s toys can do for the spirit.

What do you do when you can’t call in sick?

It finally hit. I got sick last weekend (whilst Matt was away in West Virginia) and then Lolo got sick, too. Wanh, wanh, wanh …

It’s a ridiculous proposition to take care of a baby alone while you are sick. It’s not like I can use the boob tube to entertain her with Nick Jr. either. She wants active play, active play Mama. Oy.

So, I had to turn to drugs.

Once again, those silly commercials marketed to moms finally make sense. You know the one I’m talking about … The mom gets sick and the whole house falls apart. The dog is eating the laundry, the baby is climbing on the TV and the dad doesn’t have any dinner to eat. But, as soon as “mom” takes the magical, advertised medicine, she’s back on her feet so her family can get back to normal.

So, I visited my local CVS for some meds so that I could get back to normal. Who knew that I would have to sign my life away to get anything with real active ingredients? I shopped for the medicine card displaying the product that I wished to purchase since they can’t keep the powerful stuff out in the open lest someone steal it for recreational purposes. I checked out with my cards and they brought me the cold medicine that is kept under lock and key behind the counter. But before I could swipe my debit card and make my sniffly exit, I had to show my driver’s license, the cashier had to scan in my license barcode and I had to sign a waiver submitted by the state! Holy legalities. I couldn’t read the waiver because my eyes were watering profusely from the hay fever I get with colds.

Now the state will know every time I get a cold and that I only buy tissues with lotion because my nostrils are too sensitive for regular Kleenex. So invasive.

Scratch that

24 hours after posting that she still wasn’t interested in crawling across a room, Lolo decided that it was time to explore all the dangerous things that make up a house. I spent a lot of my time in VA chasing or corralling the bean. It’s exhausting to say the least. We even had a visit to a doctor in the neighborhood after she fell and hit her eye pretty badly. This was of course as we were trying to scoot out the door for the long drive home. But, she checked out okay and didn’t develop what we thought would be the inevitable black eye.

In any case, we’re back and ready to share some pictures.

Mama and Lolo visited the Aquarium and checked out all the local fish.

And, we had a lovely time hanging out with our pal, Grace. Notice how Lolo has no problems invading Grace’s personal space and refuses to pick up on Grace’s cues that she’s had enough face time.

Jabber

Jabber talk … Sorry, I don’t know how to rotate the video in GoLive.
Notice how she is momentarily mesmerized by the stripes and thus stops talking for a bit.

What better way to celebrate a Barclays buyout?

Hoo-ray for the Brits.

What better way to celebrate a Barclays buyout than to follow Matt to work and have lunch in the city.

Train into Penn Station …

Lolo loves the Beco!

Who doesn’t love to talk commodities before lunch? Although, the Brits really need to address the lighting. The fluorescent bulbs do nothing for Lolo’s complexion.

Lolo is bullish on coal!

There is nothing this girl likes more than eating at a restaurant. She gets so excited when we eat out!

We’d like to send a shout-out to all the peeps in metals and mining! Peace to Dana, B., Kelly and Chris!

This is the only way to liven up Cubicle Land.

And, what is a trip into the big city without a stop by Rockefeller Center?

She owns this city. Do you know how many people stopped to admire all that is Lolo? So many that it impeded my travels to the nearest Starbucks!

I was happy with the way I handled the bambino in the city. It’s been a while, so it was invigorating to know I still had it. Although, this short trip did make me miss the ciy. Yes, you read that correctly. I miss New York!

When in doubt

In times of stress, we go to restaurants and bars.

Here is Lolo’s first sushi lunch! She’s not up for her own California Roll quite yet, so she stuck with her favorite plum, brown rice and banana concoction.

Lunch out with our friends Stella and Anne.

And, then we took Papa to our town’s Irish pub/restaurant. It’s a completely family style place that has as many highchairs as they do regular chairs.

Who doesn't bring their own organic bananas to the pub? And, by the way, I'm not singing in this shot. I was talking when Matt snapped the picture. Honest.

Crab walkin’

Lolo is intent on trying to stand and walk. She gets up on all fours and immediately straightens those legs just hoping her torso will rise up on its own. She’s simply perplexed by the fact that her hands remain on the floor.

It’s obvious that she doesn’t want to waste her energy creeping forward on the floor when she can skip that step and go upright. It will definitely take some time but she isn’t deterred.

It’s not pink, it’s “drama violet”

Our Labor Day was indeed filled with, well, labor.

I said I would never do it again, and I meant it, until now I guess. The promise to never paint a room myself again has lasted for many years and many abodes. But, for my daughter, I picked up the blasted paint roller again. The last time Matt and I painted together was in Richmond when we decided that our kitchen walls needed to be orange and our kitchen cabinets needed to be blue. It was great until we moved out and had to paint it all over again to bring it back to white. And, did I mention that we had two blue bathrooms to paint over as well? Good times.

In order to make this large undertaking possible, my parents made the trek from good old VA to take care of the beanie while Matt and I overhauled the nursery. It’s been a task hanging over our heads since we moved in. The yellow hue the room came with had to go in order for us to give Lolo the kickin’ decor she deserves.

I’ve known all along that I wanted her room to incorporate some purple and green in avoidance of “the pink”. But, the hunt for fabric that would include those colors for her curtains has been problematic to say the least. Who knew? I’ve been going back and forth with the fabric for weeks and wanted to have the perfect swatch in hand before picking the wall color. But, at the last minute we chose a wildcard fabric and just went with the wall color that would seemingly make the pattern pop the most, and that would be “drama violet”.

We hit up Sherwin Williams for some Zero VOC paint and got to work.

My mom preps the walls.

Yes, I have chosen to paint in old pajamas that do not match and then go a step further by documenting it with a photo. Do you see anything wrong with that?

It took more than 12 hours in total, but we got it done in one day and even managed to paint the closet an awesome contrasting color (Matt’s idea!!).

I will post pictures of the finished room when I have a chance to take some shots.

I didn’t have time because we had to prep last minute for our roof to be torn off! Yes, after recuperating from the paint job, guess who gave us a call Monday night? The roofers that’s who!

When they said they would be ready to redo our roof this week, it turns out that they meant they would be at our house with 10 men on Tuesday morning at 7 am. They actually arrived at 6:55 and had the whole house tarped by 7:10. So much for trying to be out of the house for the morning.

I was really worried about Chloe being able to sleep through the noise but guess what, I apparently produced a miracle baby. She is currently sleeping as they tear, rip, saw and nail wooden materials on our house. Don’t ask me, man. It boggles my mind. I can only attribute this talent to her noise insensitivity training in Brooklyn.

It's pandemonium outside.

Oh, and, by the by, this is also the day the painters were scheduled to come and remove our back door so it could be stripped and painted offsite. No door with plastic sheeting covering the hole is nothing compared to our house feeling a construction war zone.

You can’t hold us down

We’re both on the move these days.

Lolo is up on all fours and rocking back and forth with her fabulously toned core muscles. It’s amusing to see her intention to move forward and then see her bewilderment as her body takes her backwards instead. She wants so badly to move ahead but right now she only has the reverse scoot mastered.

She has also found renewed glee in standing. It seems she understands that being in an upright position would provide the most freedom and carry the most prestige. She is still super wobbly so I don’t expect that she’ll be able to turn her nose up at scooting around the floors for a while.

I am also on the move as I huff and puff my way through workouts at the JCC. Dude. I have taken two group exercise classes, both of which had titles like “Dance and Sculpt Party” and “Cardio Blast and Tone,” and they are kicking my butt. These are the classes that I would have laughed at before the bambino. I could have done these routines with my eyes closed while snarfing Luna bar to boot. I used to feel so sorry for the women that were truly getting their heart rates up from these “light workouts”. And, now that’s poor pitiful me. I am in an aerobics room with women that are twice my age and they are winning. But, have no fear, I will be back in good form in no time.

I do find it fun though. The JCC does not shy away from aerobics-styled activities that pull from Olivia Newton John’s “Let’s Get Physical” days. And, why not? They are catering to women in their 60s. But to modernize it a bit, they hire college-aged teachers who play their hip and snappy modern music to get your enthusiasm pumping and your endorphins flowing. All is takes is a a nice “WOO!” from the teacher and I am in the zone. It is ever-so-satisfying to see a 65 year-old woman in spandex jamming it out to a Rihanna song.

Sometimes …

Sometimes you just need to get up early when you’re visiting friends because they have a different exersaucer than you. And, what better time to try it out than the crack of dawn?

Teeth and the JCC

My girl is currently cutting 4 teeth at once. They all reside on the top of her mouth and are coming down at different rates. But, she’s actually been handling it quite well. We had one rocky weekend where she awoke in pain a few times, but she’s doing much better now and truckin along.

She now enjoys screeching like a Pteradactyl just to hear herself out loud. I’m not quite sure if her ear piercing exclamations mimic an actual prehistoric bird though. For that, I would have to consult my favorite dino expert, Henry.

She also has new style of laughing which involves her grinning wildly and then inhaling and exhaling out of her nose rapidly to mimic a sort of snorting. It’s quite amusing.

She is doing okay with solids. It seems that her palate just hasn’t caught up with her desire. She’s getting better though, so I am optimistic. One thing is for sure, it’s affected her digestive system in a major way. I will save you the vivid details, but let’s just say that she became a little blocked up. And before the very watered down prune juice (as instructed by the nurse) could take effect, I had to take measures into my own hands, literally, to relieve some of the issues.

And, as promised by the title, the JCC should enter into this post. I did in fact join the JCC and worked out alone for the first time last week whilst Lolo played in the infant care room. It was glorious. They even gave me a beeper in case they should need me to return to help her out in any way. Love the JCC.

Not so breakable afterall

We just finished a weekend of house hunting in Westchester County, NY, with one rental car, two adults, one adorable newborn, one grandma and 1,700 pounds of baby stuff in case ANYTHING should arise with Lolo. Should she need to change outfits seven times? We were covered. Should she need to eat 4 times her body weight in formula? We were covered. Should she pee 50x her normal rate? We were covered.

Matt was a little taken aback but the amount of sheer crap that we needed to pack for an eight hour outing just because we had an additional seven pound miniature guest. But, he just doesn’t know how these little babies can run right through your ample provisions. And, yes, I tend to overdo the packing, but even a rational adult would have at least agreed with 2/3 of my supply list.

While we didn’t find our dream home, we checked off one more experience with Lolo where she was a super star. She slept most of the time and was more than agreeable even though she was strapped into her car seat the majority of the time. I realize that this is no huge feat for a newborn as they are supposed to sleep the majority of the day, but it’s huge for new parents who have no idea how the day will turn out. Every time a new experience turns out to be incredibly “normal” and uneventful, it proves the point that we really won’t break them and that everything will be okay in the end.

On top of all that activity over the weekend, we crossed off another huge milestone today as well. I had a doctor’s appointment in the city and afterwards, Lolo and I stopped by Lehman Brothers to say hello to Papa. It really is something to have your tiny mite newborn strapped to you whilst strolling through Times Square. God, I can’t wait for that plastic baby bubble to arrive from amazon.com.

(Below is a picture of us dropping off Mama Mayo at LaGuardia Airport after a long weekend of driving around Westchester in a Zip Car.)

Motherhood

Holy dirty diapers, this motherhood thing is really quite amazing and overwhelming at the same time. It seems every time that we are out and about that people want to share the advice and/or wisdom that it gets easier after about 3 months. I guess they are worried that new moms might return babies to the store if they think it will be this chaotic for 18 solid years.

In the meantime, we try and catch sleep where we can and do a load of laundry or seven.

Lolo’s newest thing is to not want to sleep unless attached in some way to Matt or I. So, we have both spent our fair share of time on the couch with her resting on us. The minute we think about transferring her to her pack-n-play, she has some words for us. She also likes to communicate in “grandpa” sounds. She kind of huffs and puffs and grunts when she is dissatisfied with the current state of affairs.

While Lolo doesn’t notice Zoe yet, Zoe sure does notice Lolo. In fact, Zoe has taken to barking in the apartment more now in what we think is an attempt to protect the family unit.

We are all doing well and trying to carve out some sort of routine where we can. Everyday is a little bit better than the last and every day, she has something new to show us.