Beyond Friendship Gate

Until Easter

2011-03-03T15:01:00.001-05:00

Now that we have resurfaced from our winter flus, I have been thinking a lot about what's next. This is typically in terms of creative projects. Specifically Lent is coming up in a week or so and last year I took on a huge creative endeavor with my forty forts.

I am not repeating that again. Whew!

I would like to say for the record that I had a great night's sleep the night before I came up with the idea. And a year later, we are still battling the sleep monster.

Earlier this week, I thought that I wanted to focus on making money. This seems to be the antithesis of Lent. But if you consider that I am not really good at making money, or let's say uncomfortable with requesting money, then it seems like a perfect challenge. Being disciplined about doing something I would rather not do.

So would that be forty days of posting something on Etsy? Hmm... Until I get an Etsy iPhone app, I don't think I can manage that.

Plus during the summer of 2007, I made myself super-depressed in my business building attempts. Could I possibly return to the topic in a healthy way? I don't know.

Then I had another thought. Maybe I need to focus on finishing things instead. I have felt a little frustrated lately because I don't have the mental space for new ideas. I sit down in the studio and try to think. But shuffling materials on my desk is always interrupted by me telling Lucy that she can't climb in Stuart's stuff, which is far more interesting than any of her toys and materials.

I just need to work. I need small productive tasks. Then I realized that i have three projects I have started, a new canvas for church and an idea for a large-scale project where I need to learn the "language" of book origami first. Plus I want to make editions of some of my earlier works and add them to my Etsy shop. So I have plenty to do. I just need to remind myself that they are my priorities even though they aren't attached to a deadline. Well, until now.

Otherwise I have been trying to clean out areas of our apartment. A small space can feel so cluttered so easily. This week I tackled our magazines. But I still have two closets, our bathroom, books and my sock drawer, which has been in a trash bag for a month. Just one of those a week will keep me busy until the end of April.

And finally I am starting a new playground initiative for downtown DC. I emailed our Penn Quarter Parents Group and some moms from church. I only needed eight people to meet with the Washington Interfaith Network. I had ten people within an hour. This is something we have talked about for years. So I am hoping this momentum and Morgan's simple asking of what I am passionate about will help us finally lead to a place our kids can play. Because we are definitely bored of being inside.

I plan to post more about playgrounds and play to my blog in an attempt to gather materials in one place. Plus it is a great way to record our progression.

So that's a full plate until Easter, which also coincides with Henry's birthday. Easter is late this year. April 24th. I can't wait.

My New Site!

2010-02-17T12:47:00.002-05:00

I am making the switch to Wordpress today. I am petrified. But I guess I will figure it out as it goes. I know that one of the most important thing to many of my readers is to have a link to Sarah and Corey's blogs. I promise to add them to the side bar asap.

Please follow me here! This is my new web site. I'm still trying to figure out if there is any easy way to redirect repeat visitors to my blog. So there will likely be many changes over the coming weeks.

Goodbye blogger. I enjoyed our time together.

Little Party Girl

2010-02-16T16:44:00.004-05:00

Thanks to Linda for this great little party dress. Because Lucy is getting really good at feeding herself teething biscuits (and getting them all over her clothes), we decided to have a photo shoot and then a wardrobe change before her birthday party dinner at 2 Amys.

Happy 9 Month Birthday!

2010-02-14T22:13:00.001-05:00

She didn't love the pink grapefruit sorbet. But I did!

Photos of Lucy in her party dress to come later.

Oh, yeah... Happy Valentine's Day, too!

Posted via email from Caroline's posterous

Before the third snow

2010-02-14T22:10:00.001-05:00

See and download the full gallery on posterous

So... How will those huge piles of snow ever disappear? They are hauling it away.

When I was about to fly into DC on Monday, Henry told me H & 6th Street Sidewalks were clear. Hmmm... This is the scene from the Verizon Center last night, five days later.

Trucks are all over the city. We spotted dozens more on our way to Two Amy's tonight. Based on the side streets, there is A LOT of haulin' to do.

Plus I just received an email that we are to expect 4-8" more tomorrow. Before just that amount would be enough to send DC into a tailspin. Too bad we can't transport it to Vancouver.

Posted via email from Caroline's posterous

My Favorite Valentine

2010-02-14T22:01:00.001-05:00

I spent four hours working at the studio yesterday. All. By. Myself. It was wonderful. I put together the print out of this diagram and traced it on to the fabric for embroidery. I'm hoping to have it finished by the March studio opening. That might be incredibly optimistic since I haven't sewn the first stitch.

My goal for this Chinese New Year (my second chance at resolutions) is to spend 20 hours in the studio alone each month. And additional hours with Lucy, of course.

Thank you, Henry. It felt so great to accomplish some work. You would never know at the end of the day I had only had two solid hours of sleep the night before.

Posted via email from Caroline's posterous

Lucy pets Truman

2010-02-13T16:53:00.003-05:00

Last night, Lucy and I visited Rocky to check out the cats. This is about a close to nature she has been since returning to DC. Seems as if it inspired her to speak. Listen for a "kitty" mixed in among the "Da-da-da"s at around the 20 sec mark.

Color Quiz

2010-02-12T14:05:00.003-05:00

As my baby pulls at my leg and I attempt to gather up the creative voice of rehashing last week's strange incident involving feral cats, I opted to take this color quiz at True Value Paint instead. Thanks to How About Orange for diverting my attention. Maybe we would become fast friends, because we are both black. Hmmm... I am a little surprised by that, too.

Okay, nap time. What color are you?

To the Capitol

2010-02-11T21:37:00.001-05:00

I ran into these two tourists on my way back from Safeway on Tuesday. They were puffing cigarettes on the corner and looking for the Capitol. I pointed them in the right direction, but I wonder if they made it in their kitten heels. I'm going to guess they are Eastern European, so maybe they are laughing at us right now. Seems as if our record snowfall has crippled the city. I'm also guessing they are still here.

Good news - a chance for more snow on Monday.

Posted via email from Caroline's posterous

Snowed in

2010-02-11T21:32:00.001-05:00

See and download the full gallery on posterous

These are some shots outside the building on Tuesday BEFORE the blizzard. After squeaking into DC on Monday just before Snow-hysteria 2.0, I ran a few errands before hunkering down for the last 48 hours. Rumor has it the wind gusts are dying down tonight, so we may venture our into the world tomorrow.

Today is Thursday, so that means it's a weekly birthday, but I can't remember which one. I guess we stopped counting. But I suspect by now Lucy has been out in the world longer than she was in the womb. But this week marks a big birthday - 9 months on Valentine's Day. We are going out for pizza with The Adamses to celebrate. Although I'm concerned there will be a mountain of snow in every parking space. We may need to change our destination.

All of a sudden, we noticed that Lucy's hair is thickening up. She is still no Amelia nor Jed, but you can see that she is a little Ginger on top.

Lucy loves to stand. My guess is she will walk before solidly crawling. She certainly moves around, but she won't be winning any baby Olympics in a crawling race. I'm still not really sure how she makes it across the floor.

Posted via email from Caroline's posterous

What a Long, Strange Trip It's Been

2010-02-06T18:52:00.005-05:00

I have had several people check in with me to see if we are surviving the 2010 Blizzard. I respond with I'm actually in NC. I am still not sure which is worse - DC with twenty inches of snow or NC with one inch of ice. Regardless, I have had so many bloggable moments that I hope to hunker down and capture them in one epic blog entry while I have an uncle and a grandma to watch Lucy.

Above you can see the view of Friendship Gate, as in "Beyond Friendship Gate." They were showing shots of the neighborhood throughout the Georgetown vs. Villanova game on ESPN. Henry, Rocky and BCole went to the game. However, we did not see them on TV. I told Henry that he needed to go ahead and recruit them to meet me at the Gallery Place Metro exit on Monday evening to help carry Lucy's stroller and our luggage home. I imagine that we can make it as far as the exit, but there is no way we will be able to push the stroller down the street. I will be wearing my new red galoshes.

Throughout the trip, I was obsessed with the fact that I needed rain boots. I have a pair of pink rain boots that I left in DC. First of all, Henry has a lot of anxiety around travel, even when he isn't traveling. So he kept telling me that I was making a big mistake with all of the stuff that I was taking home. By the time I was packed and out the door, I was almost to the point of good riddance. That is not how you want to leave your husband for a week.

So I kept our return flight in mind as I edited my suitcase. Since I would have to wear the rain boots on the flight, they didn't make the cut. Flying solo with a baby is hard enough. You have to take off your outwear, shoes, break down the stroller, remove the laptop, hold the baby, walk through the security and then redress and reassemble her baby gear. Rain boots would only make it harder.

So once I saw my mom's front porch and took note of the week's forecast, I knew that I needed to buy boots. Target was completely sold out of a pair of cute black boots with polka dots. So I bought these bright red size tens from Wal-mart. The options were extremely limited. I wear an 8.5, but these work okay.

Now I am so thankful that I have them. Because it sounds like I will definitely need to wear them to make it from the Metro to our apartment in the 20" of snow. Now most people would read this and think, why don't you take a cab? Well, if you take a cab, then you have to break down the stroller AGAIN and put it in the trunk and there is no one to hold the baby while you are doing all of this. It is much easier to just get yourself situated and take the Metro.

After I bought the boots on Wednesday, we went to eat at a massive Chinese Buffet in Stanleyville. They offer Hibachi and sushi all-you-can-eat, as well. We were in a section full of children, so they were all saying and pointing baby. The waitresses were really into Lucy. One kept insisting that we should trim a tiny bit of hair off her head to help it grow. She also told us that you take the trimmed hair and create a "pen" with it. I assume that she meant a Chinese brush painting pen. She said that you would write with it when it was older and different, like in China. I believe that Lucy's hair is a little too fine to create a successful brush. But I will keep that in mind if her hair ever thickens.

At lunch the same day, a lady said that she wanted to take Lucy home to her family, "where they could really get a hold of her cheeks." I laughed. But by the end of our dinner, Danny, the son of a restaurant worker, decided to do just that.

He walked up to her and just mashed her little cheeks with one of his hands. Then he proceeded to settle in and cup her chinning squeezing them simultaneously while saying "whoot whoot." As you can tell, Alex did not really know what to do. I was on the other side of the booth, so I just started laughing. He passed Lucy off to Mom, but that did not stop Danny. He climbed into the booth behind us and reached over to grab Lucy's cheeks. She loved it.

On Thursday, Eris and I met for a little shopping and lunch. She wanted to check out re-tale, a new shop in Winston. It is super cute. The guilt-free prices make you feel a little guilty about how cheap everything is.

Cama also loved to pet Lucy. She enjoyed spending time with her cousin. We learned that Cama has named her little kitty "Baby Lucy." Yet, she was having a hard time deciding if she was eating lunch with Baby Lucy or Baby Finley, another cousin around the same age.

We left Cama and Eris to head back to Friendship for J Van's military funeral. This was my first military funeral, so I was somewhat excited. Plus I figured I would learn something new about J Van, our neighbor who ran the little store across the street from us. It had been years since I had seen him, other than at Memaw's funeral. When I talked with him there, he was full of laughs and a cute little old man.

However, when I pulled off of 52 to head north, the car started to shake and the check engine light came on. Instead of risking it, I decided to stop at the Shell station. I told the person inside the station that I was on my way to a funeral and I had a sleeping baby in the car. That did not put them in fast forward. Instead I took my place in the extremely tiny waiting area next to a full ashtray. A classmate of mine was working in the back office. Ironically, I had just seen a great picture of her on Facebook the week before. Very funny how people pop up like that.

We sat there quite a while and the lady next to me told me that she had been there since 11 am. It was 2:15. Once I learned that, I made sure that Alex skipped the funeral and came to pick me up. While we waited I took a couple of pictures. I could not resist.

This Shell station has lots of pictures of the old Shell station, which Sarah helped restore. It also has a layaway plan.

You read that right. "Layaway available for toys, knives, and everything else in the store."

This is a preview of the profile of my new haircut.

Alex did rescue us. On our way to lunch, we were behind a car with http://ruralhalltaxidermy.com/ printed across the back. It obviously worked, because I could not get Rural Hall Taxidermy out of my mind.

Okay, I think that's enough for now. This was all before the weather hit. But dinner has been served.

Trapped in Friendship

2010-02-03T23:21:00.001-05:00

See and download the full gallery on posterous

Hitching a ride to North Carolina, I was a little concerned that we might be snowed out. Alex drove us all the way home before nightfall Monday and, after returning home, he warned that us we should not try to drive down Friendship Road. It was too slick.

So we were torn on whether we should even leave the house yesterday. After all, Dad gave Mom the day off to celebrate Groundhog's day. Well, actually we made brownies for Sarah's birthday. After all of the ice and snow, we just want to plow through to spring. There is no need to celebrate what the groundhog has to say.

I knew if we went to the office, Mom would start working and we would never leave. The office is like a vortex that sucks time right out of your life right before your very eyes. But with the mixed forecast, it was likely Tuesday was Lucy's only chance to see Shelby.

Around quarter of four, we packed everything up and headed out the door. We managed to make our way through the snow and ice to the safety of the car. Instead of questioning the lower driveway prior to getting in the car, we lurched forward and stopped.

My parents have a circle drive with a small incline on one side and a steep dip on the other. It bottoms out and rises back up to meet the road right in a curve. Alex and I spent countless hours sledding this hill as children. After the state's ice crews had made a second pass with the scrappers, the bottom of the driveway was no longer clean. We definitely couldn't stop once we got started. But there was no guarantee we wouldn't get stuck. I told Mom to just back up.

As soon as she put it in reverse and began backing up, Mom's wheels began to spin. A yellow triangle and exclamation point appeared on the dashboard. "What's that?" "That means the car doesn't have any traction." Hmmm... After spinning our wheels a couple of more times, we decided that was enough for today. We made it five feet. I did remind her to put on the parking break.

Last night, when Dad came home, he asked, "Why did you park at the top of the driveway?" Simple. "We're stuck." "Well, now I am, too." Oops. Mom was in trouble.

This morning when Mom went to check on him, I suggested she take Lucy so that he wouldn't be as mad at her. He had freed the cars and left Mom's parked in the road at the foot of Hansel's driveway. Hansel was one of two vehicles we saw while making our way to the car. Both were tractors with plows on the front.

And now the forecast is calling for more snow. I think it is going to ruin our plans for a family gathering to celebrate Grandma Merritt's birthday. Plus I have received a DCAlert that they are expecting 12-20 inches of snow.

Is this a repeat of the Blizzard of 2009? Because I am using the ticket from that canceled flight to return home on Monday. I think that Henry is already lonely and it is only Wednesday. And Lucy started saying Da-da when she heard his voice on my camera. We miss Daddy, too.

Posted via email from Caroline's posterous

Up next, the zoo

2010-01-28T13:53:00.001-05:00

See and download the full gallery on posterous

Lucy loves the baby animals in Good Night, Wasington, DC, which Shannon gave to her long ago. Maybe on their first meeting? I think we may need to visit the zoo as soon as it gets a little warmer.

After the H1N1 booster, Lucy developed pink eye. I'm not sure if she got it from the shot, the doctor's office or church. She also has a little cold. I broke out the portable humidifier, which leaked everywhere. That's one of the reasons she is reading this book in the daytime vs night. We have a little drying station on the kitchen counter.

Henry sent me a text message to let me know it was making a dripping noise, as he rocked Lucy. I was so happy to have him home considering she has been extra clingy, I didn't even notice until an hour later. So much for the moist air. In the future, any dripping water is an emergency. Got that Henry? Especially with these laminant floors. Ask Rocky.

After a small fridge problem, he has a whole new floor. That's why our loud refrigerator would keep me up at night worrying. This week I finally had our's repaired.

The guy from GE said that it was a quick fix since he didn't have to let it defrost for 24 hours, unlike four or five others in our building. Basically these condos were outfitted with appiances that look really good, but don't last very long. It's hard to believe our building is five years old.

The repair was $100, not bad considering the cost for peace of mind. Our apartment never sounded so good.

Posted via email from Caroline's posterous

Happy Birthday, Alex!

2010-01-25T17:17:00.001-05:00

See and download the full gallery on posterous

Today is Alex's birthday! We are very excited about his trip to visit this weekend. We have his "cake" ready and will be eating it all week.

Lucy loves this fun stacking toy from Ike and Laura. It makes different noises as you remove and replace the rings from the base. Plus it matches her cute new outfit from The Razzas.

In other news, Lucy absorbed a little Chinese at Dr. Lee's office. She waived at the receptionist, who loves and wants to kiss Lucy whenever she sees her. She does refrain herself. But Lucy enjoys the attention and listened to every word of what she was sharing with another patient. She even gave them a wave, her first. We left without a whimper from her H1N1 booster.

Although right now, she is not very happy. She finally figured out how to get on all fours from sitting up. But she still ends moving backwards instead of forwards. I have tried to teach her how to crawl by acting like a dog. It wasn't very effective but it did make her laugh. Maybe I'll try again.

Happy Birthday, Alex! We love you!

Posted via email from Caroline's posterous

Behind the scenes

2010-01-24T22:26:00.001-05:00

We have been pretty quiet here lately. We spent the weekend doing a little computer housekeeping. On Friday night, I finally set up my Etsy shop. (Please take a minute to add me to your favorites, Etsy fans!)

I was so motivated, I spent all of yesterday cleaning up our iMac. I thought my pictures were my problems. Nope. The multiple duplicates of files from about five different computers. I deleted all of my NECTAC files without flinching. I have managed to move all of my files under one directory. What a relief!

In addition to the 22,000 pictures in iPhoto, I had countless pictures from my work computer files. I think that I have also added them to iPhoto. But for safe keeping I started uploading them to Flickr. I hope to finally organize them so that I can easily find pictures from Alexis and Blake's wedding before their fifth anniversary. I started a book for them way back when. Maybe we will manage to edit and order it by April.

Tonight I spent a fair bit of time working on my blog. It's going to be a full web site/blog update. I am getting very close and hope to post it this week. Henry and I even took our respective laptops to Rocky's to work while watching football and discussing Gabe's trip to Thailand.

Now Lucy and I are back home. She is sleeping and I'm searching for the History Channel. I turned Henry's dad on to <a href="http://www.history.com/content/madhouse/bowman-gray-stadium ">Madhouse</a> last week. Madhouse is a reality tv show set in my hometown. I went to elementary school with two of the stars, Burt and Jason Myers. Even then their names were synonymous with racing. The first week I saw my elementary school; last week, my doctor. Who knows what will show up this week. So yes, all of these people talk like me. No, I do not like racing. But this is where it all started, so it is pretty entertaining. Antonio loved the cars and Martina said they seemed like nice people from the country. I think she maybe misses her country roots, as well.

Catch Madhouse Sunday nights at 10. And don't forget to add my Etsy store to your favorites!!!

See and download the full gallery on posterous

Posted via email from Caroline's posterous

Henry's Blogging at globalmedialaw.com - Part Three

2010-01-21T09:00:00.002-05:00

The third and final segment of Henry's Rwanda blog series has been posted at the Global Media Law & Policy Blog. If you missed them, read Parts One and Two here.

Enjoy!

sleep sleep sleep

2010-01-20T20:08:00.004-05:00

We made it back from Florida yesterday morning in what I like to think was our final Christmas miracle since we were technically celebrating the holidays. I guess that you could say that the theme to my weekend was sleep. Especially since by the time we arrived, we were in dire need of some solid hours of sleep.

On night two, we let Lucy cry it out. I did give her some Tylenol because she was waking up every hour chewing on her fingers SCREAMING! At this point, I still can't say that she is teething. I mean those teeth are going to come in at some point. Right? After I feed her again and gave her some Tylenol, she slept all night long. I am sure that she was completely exhausted, as was I.

When I first put her to bed, she was sleeping in the den area. Everything was great until the phone rang and then the answering machine answered right next to her head. She gave me this look, like who was that. Then I tried to calm her again only to get a second call. And an even quicker pick up by the answering machine. So we picked up the bed and moved back to our bedroom. I plopped her down and left. She was not happy. And I was at the end of my rope. I sat crumpled on the couch, hoping that Henry would return from the car rental place as soon as possible. I was writing in my journal about how miserable I was and Martina sat stoically reading a book. It was rough.

I had no idea that she would sleep all night. So by the next morning when she woke up at 7:15 to eat and we fell back asleep until 9, I had a dream-come-true dream. Not a dream-within-a-dream-with-coinciding-events dream. But instead my fantasy came true. It was wonderful. I guess that I was super relieved.

I am sure that my dream was inspired by my wishful thinking because the same night that Lucy slept all night, I could not sleep. Maybe our sleep habits were affected by the fact that we were both wrapped in a lovely blanket of 80% humidity. By 3:30, I started praying that the rain would finally come through and get it over with. The next morning all of my books were warped. Ughh... But the night before I wasn't able to sleep either. It is very hard for me to sleep in the same room as Lucy because I listen to her every noise. And there are a lot of noises.

The night before I had started counting all of the beds I was going to have in my theoretical next house. And these were all beds that I could sleep in. Not beds for my children, unless you count the one that I want to have in the nursery so to speak. I want it to be a little nook that is essentially surrounded by three walls with space for books on one wall, a window as another and an escape route for me to slip away once the baby/toddler/child is asleep and then lock them in a safe place. I told Henry that I am sure there is some kind of version of this in a Swedish home. He said it sounded like I needed an architect. (And needless to say, not very pleased.) In addition to that, there is the guest room with our current bed and our bedroom, which will have a king-sized bed. I was always anti-king-sized beds, until I got pregnant.

I have loved living in a small space and I don't really want to give up the economy of stuff that comes with it. You have to love everything in your space. And you have to periodically purge. But the greatest sacrifice I have found is not having enough options of places to sleep. And for a fragile sleeper like myself, I need a few more places for retreat.

So in my dream, I have a large family home with a brick exterior out in the woods. There may have been a golf course in the back. Although neither of us play golf. Come to think of it, I think it is a home from Travel & Leisure magazine. It was beautiful and I was so happy to host a group of people. I realized that our photo shoot for the National Geographic was going to turn into a family birthday party. How fun! I was so happy. My mom, my aunt Jeannie and my cousin Jennifer were there. Then all of a sudden an old friend from college walked up. I greeted her with half of a hug and forgave her for our silly falling out of 13 years ago. I was about to ask her to be my Facebook friend before Henry woke me up.

We are still letting Lucy cry it out. Right now, as we speak. We have gotten this far, so I hope that this will be the last night. Or tomorrow night. But I have decided that the night in Florida was going to be THE low point of our sleepless nights. At least, I hope.

Lucy at Eight Months

2010-01-15T22:13:00.001-05:00

See and download the full gallery on posterous

We made it to Florida late last night. Granted not as a family. Henry was bumped and arrived in style in his rented burnt orange Dodge Caliber around 11:30 pm. We had quite an adventure and were exhausted by the end. Lucy greeted everyone who got off our flight after us as we waited for her stroller and car seat, including NY Times columnist Tom Friedman, whose wife, along with all the others, commented on our cutie's good looks and behavior. Apparently our stroller bag looks more like golf clubs, so Lucy rode in a wheel chair to baggage claim.

We have had a great time with los abuelos. Sleep is still rough, especially when sharing a bedroom. But I think she is seriously teething this time. Last time I claimed that, nothing happened. But I'm guessing the teeth will come out sometime. And she is crying out a lot and way fussier than normal. Maybe I should check my Wonder Weeks again. But I thought I signed up for an email reminder to warn me.

Christmas continues. Her abuelos have already let her open a present or two. I made Martina rewrap one, since it is from Tony. But based on the preview, I'm hoping it will become a favorite self-soothing sleep item.

While Lucy sleeps, we are hearing war stories about how Henry fell down a flight of stairs in a walker when he was a tot and lost four teeth. Those things are a death trap. Good thing Henry survived. Although I'm beginning to wonder if the fall had lasting effects.

Posted via email from Caroline's posterous

Lucy Finally Meets Mr. Pei

2010-01-12T23:13:00.004-05:00

Just two days shy of her eight month birthday, Lucy finally met Mr. Pei today. He was speechless. Actually, he wasn't, just in this video. But she did an excellent job hanging out while I brushed up on my Tai Chi. She mainly chewed on Sophie, smiled at other classmates, and showed them how she can squeak her little toy. Once class was over, I asked for Mr. Pei to take a picture with Lucy.

I was stunned to realize that I still remembered the moves after almost ten months. That is until about thirty minutes later when I hit some kind of mental wall and I could not remember what came next. I am not sure if that was the most I have allowed my mind to wander in a while, or what. Very odd. Or the exhaustion could have set in around that time. We are hopefully making strides in challenges in the sleep arena. This is probably why civilizations for thousands of years had their children around the age of 13, when it was easier to stay up late.

I decide over Christmas that talking to people about whether or not your baby was sleeping was a lot like the scene at the beginning of The Jeffersons. The clip shows the couples in a therapy session and they are beating each other with foam bats. Except you don't have a foam bat to defend yourself. Instead it just goes on and on, leaving you feeling even more exhausted than if you just talked about how insane Jersey Shore is and you just can't stand watching it. And inevitably everyone asks you how your baby is sleeping, unless you are a parent and know that no one really wants to answer that question. People who know nothing about babies know that this stock question will make them look more interested. Anyway...

We got together with the Joneses this weekend and Taylor let me borrow Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Baby. I engulfed the first half of the book. It made me feel better in that we are not THAT far off from where we should be at this age. Plus the book advocates to be consistent but not rigid. That is a relief, because I am far from rigid. You shouldn't put your baby in bed EVERY night at 7 pm, but around that time. We are not quite to 7 pm, but we are getting closer. But I highly recommend the book to everyone. I don't know why it took me so long to get my hands on a copy. If you are even thinking of having a baby, put this on your Amazon wish list for when the time comes.

I call today a success, especially after last week when I was feeling very depressed. Once Sherri left on Monday, I focused on reinstating Lucy's nap routine. It had deteriorated to nothing during the holidays. She could nurse for half an hour and catch a second wind. It was awful and the marathon nursing was driving me nuts. I finally read somewhere to just start by laying down with her everyday around the same time so that she would expect a nap. By Friday, I was so tired of all the couch and bed time that I pretty much lost it. Henry skipped a work dinner and I headed out to the mall to return a few items.

All of those naps paid off, because this morning she was finished with her nap around 10:38. I realized for the first time ever that we could actually make it to Tai Chi. It was the most motivated I had felt since I can remember. We popped open the stroller, loaded up some toys and headed to the CCCC. Hooray! Then we visited Leah and Paul before meeting Henry for lunch at the studio. We spent the rest of the afternoon there. Lucy spent some time playing in the pack 'n play. She unintentionally slid down and took a nap all on her own. Wow! It has been sometime since that has happened.

I worked on a few projects, tried to start a new one and then finally decided to make something quick and easy just to feel a sense of accomplishment. I will share that with you tomorrow. I hope! I am still teetering on the edge of exhaustion and we are off to Florida on Thursday. Christmas continues well beyond Epiphany.

Help!

2010-01-11T11:57:00.003-05:00

I have 22,174 pictures on my computer. Let me correct that. In iPhoto. Who knows what is hidden under my files from my old hard drive from NECTAC.

Lucy at 34 weeks

I know that this fact enrages my husband. Clutter is clutter, even if it is all contained in a slim little computer. And, well, I am going to try to back up these photos and post them to Flickr before it all comes crashing down. The way the beach ball is spinning on the screen, that could be momentarily.

So how did I get to this point? I can hear Henry about to explode telling me that I need to delete bad pictures. I started deleting them on my camera, but then I found that I had a back up on my camera and just downloaded everything. And let's face it. Babies look like someone else from every other angle. It is a tough dilemma, but one I hope to work through soon.

Lucy and Granddaddy before returning to DC

Maybe I should simultaneously work forwards and backwards, meaning that I make sure everything has been posted since Lucy was born, while also posting photos from 2005. And then deleting them off of the computer for once and for all.

We received a new iFlip camera for Christmas, which I am very excited about. We were able to capture a lot of great videos from Grandma's funeral. In fact, I hit record and propped in the window and caught the entire funeral inside of the church. Heather gave an amazing eulogy, so it was nice to be able to listen to it once again.

"I'm with Dad! Enough with these pictures!"

But our computers are too old for the software. So I have been checking out MacRumors regularly, waiting for the unveiling of the latest MacBook Pro. I seriously hope that it comes at the end of January. I can't stand it any longer. How will the new tablet impact my decision? I have no idea. We will have to wait and see.

A Photo By Ashley

2010-01-07T10:08:00.003-05:00

In the midst of our fall grandparents tour, we had a photo shoot with Ashley Turner.

I was excited to see a couple of photos of Lucy pop up in her Facebook gallery earlier this week. If you are from the Stokes County/Winston-Salem area, I suggest that you friend A Photo By Ashley because chances are you know a lot of these babies' mamas. That is how I first approached Ashley about our photo shoot. I loved the bright, vibrant pictures of Ava, Emma, and all of the mini-Mitchell clan.

For Christmas, I ordered a set of three of these sweet little accordion books. I gave one to each of the grandmas and saved one for Lucy. (Granted, I am not going to let her hold it until she is much, much older.) I also ordered a small hardbound book with twenty-five shots for myself. Mom loved her book, as I am sure that Martina will love hers once we give it to her next week.

Ashley is on maternity leave until the end of March. Good luck with the arrival of your new son, Ashley! We can't wait to see the pictures.

For My Latest Project

2010-01-05T17:52:00.003-05:00

My Great-Grandmother's Children on Dipity.

I am revamping my Welcome project from last May. I was able to create a timeline last night thanks to Dipity. Pretty exciting...

You see Inoo Lala...

2010-01-05T10:19:00.001-05:00

Lucy sees a giant Cheetoo on his head!

See and download the full gallery on posterous

I'm hoping to post our Christmas pictures later today. We have bumped Laundry Day, which is usually on Wednesday, up to today. I hope that means we will have an efficient day of tasks, naps and a yummy farewell luch with Kara, who is moving to Raleigh. We will miss you, Kara! Good luck with your move and new job.

Posted via email from Caroline's posterous

A new year & a new trick

2010-01-03T16:49:00.001-05:00

See and download the full gallery on posterous

During this time of year, we look back at where we started. A year ago, we learned we were having a girl. Half an hour ago, that same babe hopped on her bottom from the blue border of the rug to the center of the floor. Who needs to learn how to crawl? That only seemed to frustrate Lucy when she ended up moving in the exact opposite direction of where she hoped to go. When you can get there one way, why not try another.

Posted via email from Caroline's posterous

best youtube clip of the decade

2010-01-02T11:58:00.003-05:00

Henry believes this is fake. Sherri promises to have an intervention if this becomes me. I promise that I won't. Just like my 2009 New Year's Resolution was to have a baby, my 2010 resolution is to wean her.

Warning: You probably shouldn't watch this at work, unless you work at my parents' office. There are naked boobies.

best overheard of the decade

2009-12-31T19:42:00.006-05:00

I just checked my stats and noticed that my recent blog post was picked up by DC Blog Noted. Thanks! And since this is a moment of reflection of the past decade, I thought that I would share the best conversation I have overheard in DC. Definitely this decade and probably ever...

I was waiting to cross 6th Street on the northwest corner of H Street. A couple of women were hanging out across the street and a woman next to me invited them to cross over and hang out with her.

She yelled out, "Hey! Why don't y'all bring the party over here!" They ignored her and kept walking north. Then she yelled out, "I got some panties in your size."

the last stand-off

2009-12-31T12:12:00.004-05:00

Last night, Henry and I faced our last stand-off of the decade. At least, I hope.

Since our trip to Florida was postponed, Henry went to work yesterday. Although I believe most of his mental energy was spent on gathering enough receipts to reclaim the money in his flex spending account. By the time the evening had drawn to a close, I was completely exhausted by the compounding of issues, from everything from Overnightprint's failure to live up to its name to the day's purchase of our latest baby gear. We were both working non-stop from the time he arrived home and it was now 11 pm. And I finally had it. Enough. To the couch.

Sorry for the un-pc term of Indian arm burns, but not even those childhood antics would make him budge. I did break into laughter a few times, but I was serious. I wanted him on the couch. Henry knows that he can needle and pester and annoy me a LOOOOONG way and then I am super hot. FIRE ENGINE RED!!! hot.

Eventually I always cave. Once my words of fury are out, they have long left my mind. Which is the exact opposite of Henry, who will bury them away to save for next week's argument. I have frequently told him to hold on tight to those fights and let them harden his heart, because that will just give me more time to date in the rest home.

So last night, unable to scream at the top of my lungs in fear of waking Lucy, I discovered a defense I am regretting now as I type this with burning, sleep-deprived eyes. "I have nowhere to be today. It is icy and we have our groceries. I can stay up all night long if I like." So I marched to our second bathroom, aka our garage, with Henry hot on my trail. "What are you doing? Where are you going?" I reached down underneath the stroller and pulled out every single one of my library books that I had picked up at the library that day. All 13 of them, with more than half filled with embroidery techniques from the Seventies.

I marched back to bed dropping the load square in the center and plopped down. I looked at him and said, "I am having a library book stand-off. I am looking at every one of my library books before I go to bed. I have no where to be tomorrow and I can stay up ALL. NIGHT. LONG."

And with that clear defeat, he grabbed his pillows and headed to the couch.

Within an hour, I had reviewed all of the embroidery techniques and decided which ones I wanted to keep a little longer and those that could be returned today. Plus I was a lot calmer and can't even remember what exactly he was nagging me about. So I was back out in the living room with a request for an apology. Then I told him that he could return to bed.

This morning, instead of being angry from the night before, he woke up singing about the library book stand-off. This little weapon of non-violence is a freebie in hopes of ending all arguments in a more peaceful way. I think that Henry was shocked and amused. Plus I gave him just that much less reason to be mad at me. Instead of letting my mouth take over, I got some free time to cool off and do exactly what I wanted. Look at my library books. Clever, I tell ya! Although I am not sure if it will work next time. Hmmmm... But another great reason to frequent the library. Just in case.

Thanks for a great decade, Henry. It was great spending every minute with you. Even our worst arguments were never quite that bad.

Here's to a fresh start in 2010. Much love... xoxoxo

Tech Support

2009-12-26T10:26:00.001-05:00

It's the day after Christmas and Lucy has spent the morning providing tech support to her Grandaddy. He has talked about the Sirius Stilletto 2 for years now. Thankfully Santa finally listened.

Lucy has so many new toys and new clothes now, we hope she can make it back to Washington. She even receieved a new car seat. What a big girl!

We are sad to say that our trip to Florida has been postponed until MLK weekend. Grandma Merritt passed away at 11 pm on Christmas Eve.

We are very happy to share that we had a final visit with her the day before Christmas Eve, which we all really enjoyed. Grandma loved our Armijo family visit, which pepped her back up a little. Grandma also had many other visits from all of her children and grandchildren, which she enjoyed as well.

A poetic ending, Christmas Eve was always THE night in our family traditions. Although it doesn't have quite the same energy it once had, we still gather together for a family meal. Over the years the younger families have taken on their own traditions closer to their respective homes. I like to think that it was like all the other years where we all went home, and it was time for her to rest, and she just went to sleep.

Posted via email from Caroline's posterous

Merry Christmas!

2009-12-25T10:34:00.001-05:00

These are a couple of videos from Lucy and her new toys in DC.

We are having our traditional country breakfast, which means I will probably only be able to eat country ham. And some orange juice. But next year, I will be sure to eat an extra biscuit and milk gravy.

Merry Christmas, everybody!

Holiday Greeting!

2009-12-24T11:13:00.002-05:00

Since it looks as if we will not be sending out our Christmas cards in 2009, I wanted to share our holiday greeting with you!

Enjoy!

Christmas Sights around the Capital

2009-12-22T13:03:00.005-05:00

We are packed and ready to go to NC. Once Henry gives me the call, we are out the door. I hope that we can make it out of our alley!

This is what it looked like on Saturday in the snow. (Unfortunately, the palm trees have survived the weight of the snow.) It reminded me of a scene from Ezra Jack Keat's The Snowy Day, without all of the color. This was one of my childhood favorites and now I love and appreciate his collages even more.

As we head south from our nation's capital, check out some shots from our holiday outing with Will and Shannon from a couple of week's ago. We enjoyed visiting the Capitol Tree followed by the White House Tree.

Thanksgiving with Grandma Merritt

2009-12-21T10:14:00.002-05:00

Over Thanksgiving, we took Lucy to visit her sole great-grandparent, Grandma Merritt. Apparently we were breaking some law in North Carolina. You can't take children into certain facilities anymore unless they are visiting a parent who is terminally ill. This includes hospitals, assisted living centers and rest homes. I guess that this stems from the recent swine flu outbreak. Maybe they haven't heard of the invaluable benefit of multi-generational care.

Grandma Merritt has been at Springwood since early November. Unlike Brighton Gardens, they do not have a front porch area where you can visit with your friends and loved ones without entering the facility. I thought that we would walk through the front door, cross a hallway and immediately step out into the courtyard. This was not the case. But we are no worse for the wear. And we loved visiting Grandma Merritt.

Lucy wore the dress that Grandma Merritt gave to her, which she also wore during her baby dedication. I showed her the embroidery that I did on the slip of Lucy's name and the date of the dedication.

Grandma is not feeling very well lately. We hope that she feels better. We love you, Grandma.

Today's Horoscope

2009-12-20T20:25:00.002-05:00

Aries (March 21-April 19)
You know an extremely gifted person who inexplicably hides that gift from the world. Your ability to be open with your talent will give others permission to do the same.

It has felt like quite a long time since I have written about something related to my creative musings instead of Lucy updates. I am still feeling pretty low on my energy level. Honestly, I can only manage to attend to my child and garner enough motivation to pick up my living room before Henry gets home. It is just hard. I have time, but I don't have any time to think. So the little, itty, bitty time that I have, I can't think of what I should be doing or how to prioritize that time. Before I had Lucy, I spent at least four pages or twenty minutes writing in my journal a day. And that doesn't include spending time at the page making lists or brainstorming projects. Or blogging, which is also a creative writing outlet for me. And then I would work on art projects on top of that. Before Lucy, I spent a lot of time working through the corners of my mind.

I do have a large project that I have been working on in my head, which is in the same vein as my tobacco rug. I want to make a bound swan wing. I have actually started cutting out Tyvek feathers without a real plan. But I feel like it gets me closer to my goal without really having to think of what I should be doing when I arrive at the studio other than handing Lucy pack after pack of stamps.

Last week Lucy and I attended her first graduate school class when I visited Ceci's final presentation at the Corcoran. She included my tobacco rug piece as a prop. It was great to be back in an academic atmosphere. Lucy did great. If I am exhausted, I just take her out to a room full of people. She loved having the ladies oh and ah over her during break. I could tell she thought she was the coolest kid in the class by the way she looked at me. She did not get too fussy for hanging out for almost two and a half hours. By the time it was over, we were both exhausted. As much as I was tempted last fall to explore the possibility of participating in the new Book Arts program, this is not the time. I'm not quite sure what I was thinking for that brief lapse of delusion.

Several weeks ago, I met with Ceci and discussed her dilemma of what would be the thesis of her final paper. I was able to pull books from my bookshelf, talk about artists and even gave her one of my library books, but beyond that conversation, I couldn't imagine writing a coherent academic paper. I realized that harsh reality midway through our meeting over coffee. There is no way I could do this. That's what went through my head.

Upon leaving the class last week, I realized that what I need at this time is a good mentor/editor/collaborator with whom to share ideas and progress. Someone that I am accountable to other than Henry. He is always very encouraging and probably fits this bill more than anyone. But now more than ever, I probably need an outside resource instead. And it needs to be a give and take person, who is also working on some projects of their own. Ideally we would work both independently and collaboratively.

But I have come to this conclusion: All baby all the time is boring. Period. Including on this blog.

So what does this have to do with today's horoscope? Well, hmmmm... I guess it gives me a little push of where to go with this blog. Maybe I just need to be honest, continue to share funny stories, and post updates on my creative ventures. Oh yes, and post pictures of Lucy for my family.

Since May I have often thought, I should have had a baby years ago, if I had any idea that she would help me get so focused so quickly. Although in the last few weeks, I have wondered just what do I want to focus on.

I began redoing my blog around a month ago, but lost momentum. I do things in waves. Unfortunately, that wave passed before I made the full transition to WordPress. I think that the wave crested when our sleep was disrupted once again. And the reality is I need a lot of sleep before I can reorganize my entire life into a few succinct categories of blog entries.

I think that I frequently lose momentum facing the reality that there are A LOT of super moms out there who have a thriving business thanks to Etsy and other crafty ventures. I am certainly crafty; I am a new mom; and I have been blogging since 2004. I realize that I am very close to this bill, but not exactly. The reality is a small business is a lot of work. A LOT OF WORK. And nobody wants to babysit your business for free. Henry sent me a NY Times article about Etsy. When I read about the woman knitting 13 hours a day, I thought, that's why there are small children in foreign countries knitting sweaters. Kidding! Sort of...

I have already spent many years working on businesses late into the night. It was exhausting. And all of those little boxes of fortunehearts never cooed back at me nor spontaneously started clapping for the first time, as Lucy did Friday night. Plus I promised myself a couple of years ago that it was finally time to take my art seriously. It's what I really wanted to do since I was four.

At this time, I can only take on one big project at a time. My goal is to fully live that project, like my current one, whatever that means. I have been in that I have been thinking about how this piece is related to my past, my present and my future. I have even considered my current exercise regimen as part of this piece. A transformation, if you will. But I also need some time to put pen to paper, or in my case, scissors to paper, or even Gocco-ink to Tyvek. I hope to set up a schedule while in Florida that will give me a little more structure. And time for working on these projects.

My attitude towards my shop is this: I'll continue to add small pieces to my store as they pop up. But I don't want to move back into pseudo mass production. I will make it for you or for me. Then maybe I will sell it or maybe I won't.

One day I dreamed of having my own brand at Target. But now I dream of having a piece in something like The Slash exhibit at The Museum of Arts and Design. If I spend all of my time thinking about all of the little things that I can be making, then I have no room in my brain for the one big thing that I really want to make. And inexplicably, those big ideas are far more rewarding than all of the little products that I have made in the past. The same little products that inevitably someone else on Etsy is making and probably even looks better.

Besides Sue Anderson encouraged me to work big in my very first creativity class way back in 1995. (I searched for Sue and found her included on my first web site on the internet, which pre-dates Herny!)

I wanted to make my tobacco rug for two years before I finally did for a class project. And I probably made it for lack of a better idea since I had already faced the major brain drain of my first trimester. The final result was different than I expected, yet it was also way more informative than I ever imagined. This was an autobiographical piece that helped me understand who I was on multiple levels that weave themselves together in no linear fashion. My feelings and understanding are very well replicated in the piece itself. No one linear sentence is easily legible by the viewer. So I am very excited to see what this current piece will teach me other than being mindful about my posture and sitting up in my seat.

One phrase that keeps going through my mind is "the end of the aughts/the end of the oughts." I made a small piece for the end of this first decade of the new millennium. Which leads me to ask, so what is this an end to? And what is this a beginning to? Certainly a streamlined approach to my to do list. And maybe my expectations, as well. But I think that this shift in a personal creative economy will be more fruitful, I hope.

First big snow

2009-12-18T22:56:00.001-05:00

See and download the full gallery on posterous

In case you've missed the news, we are under a winter storm warning. I wish I knew we would be blanketed by a heavy snow a few weeks ago when I bought a one-way ticket to Greensboro over a month ago. Mainly because Henry keeps asking me over and over again about when I'm going to change the flight. It's been snowing just shy of two hours now. I have no idea what the next 24 hours will bring other than a rumor that Santa is stopping by our house early. Maybe his flight has been cancelled, too.

This afternoon when I was asked once again when I was going to change my flight, I had to end the conversation with the exclamation: WIND GUSTS, WIND GUSTS, WIND GUSTS! It gets really windy here in DC. Almost- turn-over-the-stroller windy.

The commuter plane to Greensboro is just one step up from a prop jet. You have to take a bus out to get on the plane. I am not mentally prepared to hold a baby in my lap flying through the tail-end of a record-setting snow storm. I'm really trying not to pass along my fears to Lucy and that includes my past fear of flying. A prop jet to Montreal in 2002 set me over the edge for many, many flights. Sometimes I still have to tell myself, okay we are just turning a corner, etc.

So we are a little sad that our trip has been delayed, but we will be home as soon as possible.

Posted via email from Caroline's posterous

Brought to you by the letter P

2009-12-17T11:59:00.001-05:00

See and download the full gallery on posterous

Pictures of little people on trees
Playing
Peas
Patting my knee
Pleading
Pears
Preparation of presents

Predictions:
Physical therapy
A party
Pleased with new people
Possibly pizza
Pretending to not be sleepy
Passing out

Posted via email from Caroline's posterous

Styling in Renee's Sweater

2009-12-16T21:04:00.004-05:00

Renee made this gorgeous sweater for Lucy. We have received so many compliments! Everyone assumes that it was made by a grandmother, but I am just lucky enough to have a really talented friend! I think that this is my favorite winter outfit so far.

Here's Lucy studying to be a marine biologist...

Enjoy more photos here!

Seven Months

2009-12-15T14:12:00.002-05:00

flew by quickly...

Six months ended with Lucy's first babysitters, Reagan and Rocky, which she seemed to enjoy. Hooray! I didn't even worry about her. I looked down at my phone and realized I had four texts, only one of which I had seen earlier. Henry had instructed Rocky to text hourly. Oops! I knew that she would be fine because she knows both Reagan and Rocky. Plus they had easy access to a change of scenery by being able to go back and forth between our apartments. Lucy is extremely social and sweet. She is probably at her worst with me. So I was not concerned.

Sunday night's babysitting was followed by an intro to a night of crying it out. Okay, it was just over thirty minutes. For some reason, I want to say 38 minutes, but that maybe when she stopped crying. She slept all night to begin seven months well rested.

Yesterday, we visited with both Amy and Leah, did a little shopping and napping. We ended the night with a photo shoot to celebrate seven months.

Her sleeping didn't go as well the night before. We put her to bed asleep and then she woke up three times during the night. I let her cry through a couple of times (12:30 and 3:30), but feed her when she woke up around 5:30. Laura asked if I had a plan. No I am totally winging it. The first time she cried it out because I was on the phone with my dad. Sometimes he can be a tad bit repetitive. I'm guessing we are going to have work on this crying it out thing a little bit more than I hoped. But I guess doing it once will only make it easier.

We are pretty solid into solids now. Her foods include bananas, sweet potatoes, applesauce, pears and, as of today, avocados. She literally threw up the avocados out of disgust. I'll try that one again tomorrow.

I think that Lucy has already discovered one of her gifts, which Santa left early thanks to Craigslist. We are slowly getting ready for Christmas here. I still have a lot to do, including cleaning up this little treasure. We did bake our first loaf of bread yesterday, which is totally unrelated to our Christmas preparations. Maybe I will sneak a loaf into my carry-on when Lucy and I fly out of Reagan to NC on Saturday afternoon.

This morning, I made a major decision regarding our flight. I am just taking the car seat and carrying her in my arms. Every flight has been an experiment so far. But I am going to try to avoid breaking down the stroller all together. She is a little easier now that she can hold herself up if need be, but I can't just sit her down on the floor at the airport like I do in our bathroom. So I think that the car seat will suffice. With flying, I have found that less is more. I was pretty proud of my Thanksgiving packing and, even then, I packed too much.

So here is to a busy week. I am hoping that I will get some long overdue pictures up before we leave town.

one of my favorite moments of the week

2009-12-11T15:21:00.004-05:00

I was lucky enough to hang out with a few of my favorite female friends this week (including a few new ones)! It was a great break from the solitary week before. While I watch the loading button spin to upload my Christmas card to OvernightPrints.com, I thought I would share my favorite quote of the week.

I have decided that if I am ever feeling down, I am going to go hang out in the dressing room of Ann Taylor Loft at Gallery Place so that I can eavesdrop on the dressing room attendant. Lia was not as amused, but maybe she missed the following.

"You are in the same boat as me. I am on the sunny side of sixty. And as I like to say, pardon my French, I have to keep it sexy."

Great advice.

playing peek-a-boo

2009-12-10T09:50:00.000-05:00

Last night we played a little peek-a-boo. It took me a few seconds to figure out that I should just leave the camera on the floor to watch her. One day I hope to edit the two together. But not on my current computer. And I am guessing that means I'll never do it. So enjoy!

Christmas Craft Night

2009-12-10T09:20:00.004-05:00

Christmas Craft Night is here once again!

Last year we made the nativity origami. The year before that was a snowflake ornament. Tomorrow night, we will be making an advent calendar lead by me and Christmas cards lead by Sally.

One may point out that we are one day shy of being half way through the advent calendar. Wow! For me, that is really hard to believe. But you can save them again for next year. And look at how cute they are! Big thank you to How About Orange for drawing my attention to them.

Last year's origami nativity scene was a little ambitious for some. Including me when I tried to sit down and recreate it over Thanksgiving. I promised that I would post the directions in a download over the next few weeks. Well, those few weeks turned into several weeks once I tried to create the rhomboid, which would be Baby Jesus. Huh? How did I possibly do this last year? I feel like motherhood involved having an entire lobe removed from your brain.

But the good news is that I haven't given up on Baby Jesus yet. I hope that sometime in the next 24 hours, I will give him another try and pray I will get it going this time. The good news is that I still have tomorrow until it has been a full month. So hold on, Alaska! You may get your wish after all.

I finally had a full night's sleep last night!!! And I think that we could have survived Lucy's latest developmental phase. I hope that means a return to some kind of normalcy. Because when I saw everyone from NECTAC on Monday, I was wondering if they could tell that I was about to crumble into a shell of myself from exhaustion as result of lack of sleep and excessive nursing. At some point, naps and nursing became one. Things began to improve after Monday night. And today, well, today I am SOOO excited. Sleep, sleep, glorious sleep. Now I know why it is used for torture methods. We have already told Lucy that I am way more fun in the mornings if she sleeps all night. We sing and dance and I don't reach for the second cup of coffee.

So we are going for easy tomorrow night at the Calvary Christmas Celebration. Straight lines with exacto knives and a little bone folding and double-sided tape. And maybe next year, we will try something a little more challenging.

Calvary Baptist Church
Friday, December 11th, 2009
6pm (but you can come later)
8th & H Streets NW, Gallery Place

stages of decorating

2009-12-09T19:05:00.003-05:00

We are decorating in stages. Sort of like my approach to gift giving - Christmas here, NC pre-Henry, NC post-Henry, Florida. That's why my gift list was cut way short this year. Plus throw in a baby and a solo flight. Whew. We have a lot to look forward to in the next two weeks.

This video is of stage one when I first showed Lucy the tree. Since she isn't mobile yet, I've decided to put it on the floor next to the exersaucer instead of up on a table like we have in the past. This morning I added more decorations, but the breakable ornaments and wreaths are still strewn everywhere. Henry skipped the corporate Christmas party to hang out with us. So I'm hoping we can find a TV channel with 24 hours of Christmas cartoons and finish this half-finished projects.

Good thing we had a long nap today. I think I just caught my second wind. I've decided I am just going to have to follow the old adage "sleep when she sleeps" if I am going to survive. Hence the lack of blogging and socializing last week. But I am going to try my best to post some pictures to my Flickr photostream with little L shrieking behind me. Her dad is not so found of her new-found voice. To me, anything is better than whining. And she loves it when you shriek back.

Serious work

2009-12-04T14:56:00.001-05:00

Lucy loves these packs of stamps I have organized by color. Who knew when I packed them up a couple of years ago, she would love grabbing them, chewing on the plastic envelope and throwing them on the ground. So fun.

Posted via email from Caroline's posterous

Early Christmas Gift

2009-12-03T23:04:00.004-05:00

Today was beautiful, so we met Henry for lunch at Wok 'n Roll before heading to Georgetown. I have been thinking about presents for Lucy. Mostly I have come to the realization that I probably already have too many for her with four toys. I am teetering on the edge of buying a larger gift of a Brightlings Exploration Stationthat I hope will occupy her time. I am not certain if it will, so I have found it for $10 on Craigslist. I am hoping that it is still available. But if not, I think that I may save it for a Valentine's gift. Maybe by then, I will have a better idea of what it will be like having her mobile.

After spending an extensive amount of time looking at toys for a few other kiddies, I left one toy store empty handed. We made our way to Paper Source to hang out for quite sometime. Good thing I don't work there anymore. I am a total sucker for their goods and had to cut my purchase in half once Stephanie rang it up. I decided to put away the faux bois note cards, but I could not resist these Martushka Measuring Cups. How cute are they!

Needless to say, I already have Lucy a set of nesting cups and I suspect someone else is getting her a set of stacking cups. Does she need three sets of cups? No, but I couldn't resist. Besides I have been feeding her out of Mario Batali Measuring Prep Bowl Set. Maybe I can fit a small bottle of food, spoon and bib inside and have a little lunch to go. That is the practical side coming out of me. I got it from my mom. I appreciate this trait now, but I didn't so much in the third grade.

One year for my birthday, at the height of my love for Strawberry Shortcake, my mom skipped the dolls and bought me a set of eight drinking glasses and a tin trashcan. All adorned with Strawberry Shortcake. Oh how I would have loved a giant strawberry carrying case, like Eris had. But you have to admit we got our use out of these items for many, many years past my doll-toting days. I stored mixed-tapes in the trash can through most of college. And I think that it is still in use in my bedroom at home, maybe. I am not sure about the glasses. They may be hidden away on a top shelf with some of the glasses we picked up from Pizza Hut circa 1980.

So I am trying to be mindful of a balance between fun sweet things and also being practical. I look for gifts that can live with us beyond this current phase. Plus not have three of one type of toy. Clearly on the cups I have failed. But these dolls are legitimate measuring cups. Right? I'm sure I'll ask my sous chef for a baby bottom of sugar when I am 70.

Since we have returned from Thanksgiving, Lucy has been super cranky. It doesn't help that we went from seeing lots of people, which this little social butterfly LOVES, to a twelve-hour day with just me. I am boring after a while. And, yes, she does cry with me. I guess a mama sees all sides. I quickly recalled that she is now in another Wonder Weeks phase (Week 26). She is three weeks behind. These spurts always seem to coincide with a big trip! Right when I just want to rest and recover. So if these cups will help her get through this phase a little quicker, I am all for it.

Lucy's New Move

2009-12-02T13:21:00.001-05:00

We aren't sure where she learned how to do this, but it looks like Lucy left Thanksgiving with a new trick.

We are back

2009-12-01T10:41:00.001-05:00

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving in NC. Although I brought back a tummy bug. So Lucy and I are snuggled up in the bed, like these pictures of her playing fort with her dad.

See and download the full gallery on posterous

Posted via email from Caroline's posterous

We made it!

2009-11-25T16:03:00.001-05:00

We made it to Walnut Cove in under six and a half hours. Well, by five minutes. We stopped once for lunch in Lynchburg. Now Lucy is telling Grandma about the drive.

Posted via email from Caroline's posterous

Lucy sitting up

2009-11-23T21:28:00.001-05:00

books, books, and more books

2009-11-23T16:01:00.002-05:00

Check out this video from BookOpolis 2009 by LeeAnne Smith!

Maybe while everyone else is watching football and leafing through sales fliers, you can get a few minutes to sneak away and dream up a new book.

making a move

2009-11-22T20:03:00.003-05:00

So... this past week, instead of posting note cards or posting almost anything to get that annoying video off of this page, I worked on transferring this blog over to WordPress. I am pretty excited about it. After playing around with the sidebar items, I decided that my next step should be to sit down with my notebook and sketch out what I want my blog to look like. I think that as the site evolves, all of my projects will flow seamlessly into one site. I can't wait.

Until then, Henry and I are struggling with our fundamental differences on how we eat Popsicles. Lucy is in the bed before 8 pm. And when we return from Thanksgiving next Monday, a week from tomorrow, we will drive into the basement of our building and leave the car there and not give it a second thought. We have rented a space and my days of street parking are over. Now that is something to be thankful about!

As we approach the National Day of Listening, enjoy listening to my own YouTube sensation. I received an email from YouTube to say that I could collect ad revenue now that my numbers are growing on this video. Now I just need to figure out why Google AdSense disapproved my application long ago. And what happened to the email that states why.

Lucy at 27 weeks

2009-11-19T14:34:00.001-05:00

See and download the full gallery on posterous

Lucy is sitting on the floor studying her feet. I can't believe she has made it this long without toppling over.

It is a dreary day in DC. She is getting over her first cold and I'm trying not to let mine settle in. I am sure it is the first of many colds we will share. Apparently children have six to ten colds a year. The good news is the more colds they have now, the healthier they will be as adults. Sorry I can't recall my refernces.

I have just enough energy to leave the house, but I think that maybe I should save it up for next week's travel. Not that I'm not going to leave the house between now and then. But I'm all out of Emergencee and chicken soup. Maybe we will go to the farmers market later.

Posted via email from Caroline's posterous

I Love Liners

2009-11-17T13:45:00.003-05:00

Envelope liners... That's what I miss from Paper Source. I was thinking of putting together an order for holiday gracious greetings sales. And I got caught up on the liners. Hmmm...

I am planning to put together new info on Paper Notion this week. I am sure someone (Henry) is thinking, don't tell people you are going to do it. Do it. But I just realized that the video I posted yesterday starts playing every time you open the page and it is super annoying. That means I am going to post a lot of stuff to get him to the next page. Sorry!

Thank you, NECTAC!

2009-11-17T08:35:00.001-05:00

See and download the full gallery on posterous

The high chair is here and assembled.

Last week I started thinking Lucy needs a high chair. In probably one of my quickest baby gear decisions yet, I recalled that NECTAC had sent me a gift card a few weeks ago. All I needed to see was that the Anka high chair folds and several other small apartment dwellers gave it positive reviews. I then asked Sarah if that was the same high chair I spied on Jed's blog. It was and she also gave it more glowing reviews, other than she wishes it were on wheels. Once I saw that Babies R Us was offering free shipping, I was sold! And in a flash, the high chair is here. And assembled! Although, Henry has to recycle the box.

While assembling it, I realized that www.svanusa.com/">SVAN is a Raleigh-based company AND Henry's law school classmate works there. Unless there is another Scandinavian company making children's products in Raleigh. I'm guessing not. So I was very excited about that connection. And it made me wonder if I ever sent Walter pictures from their wedding. It was gorgeous.

Thank you, NECTAC! Lots of sharing and caring to come.

Posted via email from Caroline's posterous

Slash at the Museum of Arts and Design

2009-11-16T15:34:00.002-05:00

Thanks to Renee for sending me this video. I will definitely be visiting NYC before April so that I can catch this exhibit. Very inspiring work of contemporary artists using paper.

Posted via web from Caroline's posterous

Lucy and David Meet

2009-11-15T22:20:00.004-05:00

Lucy celebrated her six-month birthday by hosting a play date with David. What a cutie! We have seen him on his blog, but we must say that he is even cuter in person.

Lucy was coughing and sneezing, so I tried to cover her mouth for her. We still haven't taught her how to cough into her sleeve! So we tried to not let them get too close, although I think that they were both excited about being in the presence of someone just their size.

I am pretty certain that this is the first time Lucy sat up by herself! Plus as Katie noted, Lucy seems to be growing lots of new light ginger hair. We are a little jealous of all of David's hair. I keep trying to imagine what she will look like with hair.

I love this picture of David checking out the rug pattern.

Plus in these next few pics, watch David switch hit on his thumb. Ambidextrous young man!

Okay, enough.

On a related note, sometime during the last week or so, Lucy has lost interest in her pacifier and thumb.

David, we enjoyed meeting you and hope we didn't send you home with an unwanted party favor. All week, I had chalked up her varying ailments to teething. Now it just looks like a cold. So who knows. I should have married someone in a health-related field. Kidding... kind of.

Other birthday activities included a trip to get the swine flu vaccine. We left with just Grandma getting one since Lucy had had a fever in the last week. I hope that she will be able to get her first shot before leaving for Thanksgiving. I am nervous about the cases of flu I see popping up in Facebook statuses from home.

Lucy dressed up for game day, but slept through the actual game. We enjoyed lots of texts from Dad and cuddles from Grandma.

Lucy is looking forward to the arrival of her new high chair tomorrow. Hopefully we will also catch up on some of our social plans we canceled last week. And we have to get this Baby Einstein jumper out of our apartment and into the studio. We have lots of work to do.

All of a sudden, Lucy is a big girl.

Crusing the Catalogs: Target

2009-11-15T12:59:00.000-05:00

Last Sunday, I sat down the newspaper. With papers failing all around us, we decided to support our joint journalism backgrounds and subscribe to the Washington Post weekend paper. Tucked inside was Target's toy catalog and for the first time in a couple of decades, I had a reason to study it intently. I had to figure out if there were any potential presents for Lucy inside.

Instead of finding anything for her, I discovered a few items that I would have LOVED to have if I were a five-year-old girl again. It left me feeling that I might enjoy motherhood a lot more that I could have ever imagined. Plus, where was Target thirty years ago? And finally, why are all of the dolls' eyes SOOO big? I don't get that. They are creepy.

Two toys really popped out at me.

Jakks Hello Kitty Fortune Cookie Maker
Hello! How fun would it be to make your own fortune cookies? Baking, fortunes and Hello Kitty all wrapped up into one? Heaven.

Second is this Circo Tree Tent, which is $30 and available in stores only. At
42.5H" x 49.2W", it would completely engulf my living room. But still tempting. I know that Sarah will love this.

Crusing the Catalogs: Paper Source

2009-11-14T12:43:00.000-05:00

A few weeks ago, I dreamed that we had a family gathering at a paper store. I don't think that it was Paper Source, but it was definitely a lot like Paper Source. For some reason, I lingered at a display of GIANT holiday post-it notes. They were printed on sheer paper and had lots of glittery Christmas trees. Interesting. I guess I miss working there.

So I spent an extra amount of time lingering of the recent catalog and pulled out a few pages to keep in mind. I'm not certain that I will end buying any of these items, but just in case....

I've already mentioned these smell goods in a previous post, but I just love the name AND font.

I know that I would have already purchased this Woodgrain A2 Embossed Stationery Set. And I am not really a stationery set kind of girl. Even though you would think that I am.

And along the same vein, or wood grain... IF I send out a Christmas card, I would pick this one.

I still have the thank you's and birth announcements right here on my desk. I realized this week that I don't really know how to handle taking Lucy out in the rain. The stroller rain cover is confusing, to say the least. So I ordered my stamps online. (Please come today!)

A new job

2009-11-13T19:17:00.001-05:00

Lucy wants to taste a little sunshine.

See and download the full gallery on posterous

Posted via email from Caroline's posterous

Eagerly awaiting

2009-11-13T15:17:00.002-05:00

the grandparents... They are on their way. They are sort of crossing paths with Henry, who is on his way to watch Tim Tebow in action.

Today is Henry's last day of paternity leave, which he didn't completely use. I may regret that later. They spent the morning celebrating Lucy's last day as a five-month-old.

That's not completely true. Part of the morning was spent trying to figure out how to maximize the battery-life of his laptop for a last- minute document review. It involves clipping a book light on the collar of his shirt. Good luck with that. I just received an update that he is going to clip it to his Florida hat.

I have threatened that if they get in any trouble, I get everything on my technology wish list and he won't be getting a new TV. Even if it's described as the perfect size for a kitchen or home office. Ha! I'm sure Rocky will be happy. So drive safely, Hart. And the swine flu counts. So stay away from Bob just in case.

So what are we doing while we wait? We are watching the chefs from Full Kee prep dinner and people smoke in the alley. I hope there weren't any transactions or urination while my head was turned to write this.

Lucy has a cough and upped her dosage for her baby Zantac. Seems this teething thing is just going to complicate things. I pretty certain it was the source of this week's fever. Thanks to my uncle Richard for the diagnosis.

Posted via email from Caroline's posterous

Week 26

2009-11-12T12:21:00.001-05:00

See and download the full gallery on posterous

This morning we spent sometime in Lucy's doorway jumper. Despite my efforts through made up songs and jumping, she still hasn't fully grasped the jumpup part. But after last week's call for entertainment, I pulled out a few forgotten toys and once again avoided buying a mini- exersaucer.

As we enter into a second day of rain, I'm back in the bed with Lucy trying to get her to sleep. I guess that's the ideal way to spend a day like today, so let's go for it. I thought this would be a good opportunity to write a lengthy blog entry.

My blogs are less frequent and shorter because I have somehow overextended my left thumb and Kim wearing a brace to stabilize it. And for some reason, I'm a leftie on my iPhone. So the brace gets in the way. One may consider that this minor irritation is a metaphor for my life, ie. I need more structure. I will keep that in mind.

This is week two of six to eight weeks of wearing the brace. I decided since I'm still counting her in weeks, I can officially take it off at 32 Weeks. But in the last week I've discovered that it smells like an old shoe, so I may opt for 30.

I'm hoping that Lucy doesn't begin to associate the smell with me. Mom told me that Selsun Blue reminded her of Lucy because we had used it for her cradle cap. I was crushed because the shampoo reminded me of an old man who smokes. Good thing Meredith told us about the Paul Mitchell baby shampoo.

Apparently I'm very loose and with all of these pregnancy related horomones, I'm practically falling apart. I knew that before I had her, as I started doing core exercises to help hold me together. Once my physical therapist returned from maternity leave this fall, I started back again. I think the core exercises are working. Again I should have more structure in my day to ensure that I do them, but I don't. I'm working on it.

Apparently I rest on my ligaments instead of engaging the appropriate muscles. So I'm trying to relearn how to stand. Last week, I felt like the tin man about to tip over. I am also trying to untuck my tail, which I know many generations of my family do this. And, yes, I'm trying to sit up straight but not too straight, because your back does naturally curve out mid-back and back in at the neck.

I love my PT. She has a little girl exactly two months and one day older than Lucy. Can she help me change something that's been a way my family has physically carried itself for who knows how many hundreds of years? I know at least one hundred years, because I'm pretty sure I got this from Memaw and Papa. Just in case, Lucy has been carefully studying her at work over the last few weeks. I would love it if she became a physical therapist. But I'm hoping I won't need her. And I'm seriously hoping the numbness in my leg will be obsolete by the time she reaches college.

Memaw was also very loosey goosey, which was probably one of my biggest surprises from her dementia. We would visit her in the rest home and she would always be cross-legged in her bed. I could imagine her doing flips and rolling all around. Most people in their nineties seem stiff and creeky. But not Memaw. One of my favorite stories from dad demonstrated her agility. He was walking down the hall to visit her and he saw two little ladies snuggled up in the bed together. He was somewhat shocked by the odd sight. Then he stopped and realized, "That's my mother!" Sweet Memaw. She didn't have a lot to say in her last years, but she was very affectionate.

Posted via email from Caroline's posterous

Paper Notion

2009-11-11T11:13:00.004-05:00

My shop is up!

I have been working on this for a while. Mainly in my head, but I was so happy to open my shop sometime last week. There are a few iffy things, mainly shipping. I still have my shipping prices from fortunehearts. So if something strikes your fancy, please make a purchase and we can work out any shipping costs. Plus, I know that I need to add my measurements for my small paper sculptures.

I plan to add more projects soon, including a DIY download for how to make an origami nativity scene. We created that project last December at a church gathering. It was a lot of fun and has since been a popular search term on my blog stats. I gathered all of the patterns from various library books. Plus I have had a specific request for the directions. So I need to take some time to put it together in an easy readable format.

Plus if you have any custom requests, please let me know! Christmas is right around the corner!

A few firsts

2009-11-10T10:40:00.001-05:00

See and download the full gallery on posterous

I was finally brave enough to take a few pictures of Lucy while taking a bath. I usually have my fingers under her neck to make sure she doesn't face plant in the water.

I also gave her her first bath toy to play with while in the tub. It's a floating temperature guage. It was fun watching her hold it under the water. She's definitely not ready for any live baby ducks!

And this morning Lucy woke up with her first fever. I should have known something was up when she slept for five hours yesterday. We are off to the doctor. Let me just tell you how upset I'm going to be if she has the swine flu. She is able to get the vaccine this Saturday when she turns six months old. What a way to celebrate.

We were vaccinated last Saturday at Cardoza. It was very well organized and took about two hours. But if you are going to get the swine flu anywhere, it was there. Yikes!

Posted via email from Caroline's posterous

We're off to see the Wizards!

2009-11-07T20:41:00.002-05:00

See and download the full gallery on posterous

Wednesday night was Lucy's first Wizards game. I think she liked it, even though the Miami Heat pulled through in the last minute. It was a very exciting game.

Lucy did great! She loved checking out all of the people. She had a little cat nap midway through the game. Then she jumped when the crowd started screaming at the ref. When they started cussing, I told her that was unsportsman-like conduct. You can never start too early with the learning. Right?

Posted via email from Caroline's posterous

Week 25

2009-11-05T18:07:00.001-05:00

I probably shouldn't have stood her up in front of the laptop, but she was so excited. And it was just a boring page about a WordPress theme with iTunes playing in the background. There is way more exciting stuff out there, babe. You have no idea. I think we will wait a little longer for all of that.

Meantime, I'm open to suggestions on how to entertain a baby going on six months and not quite sitting up. Please comment below.

Posted via email from Caroline's posterous

Open Studio Friday Night

2009-11-05T16:31:00.001-05:00

My studio will be open tomorrow night. Come out to see these stunning silk panels painted by Tsolmon Damba. I will also be showing a few of my recent pieces, including my new little studio assistant.

Caos on F

Tsolmon Damba

Gallery Reception

Friday, November 6

6-8:30 pm

Caos on Fabric
Reception &
Artist Demonstration
Saturday, Nov 7
1-6pm

Caos on F, Downtown Washington's artist-owned and artist-operated gallery of fine art, crafts and furniture, will feature the work of Tsolmon Damba in its space at 923 F Street NW from November 6 through December 23, 2009. An opening reception will take place on Friday, November 6, 2009, from 6:00 to 8:30 p.m. An artists demonstration will take place at a nearby location on Saturday, November 7 at 3:00 p.m.

Tsolmon Damba
Born in Northern Mongolia, Tsolmon is a noted master painter of traditional Mongolian painting and calligraphy. Based in Washington, DC, he has broadened his style and techniques to encompass modern expressions in paint. Collaborating with Caos on F, he has expanded his work to textiles. This show will feature a full breadth of his oeuvre to include traditional work, his famous horse inspired paintings, and the premiere of hand-painted silk panels, the feature of the Caos on Fabric Factory.

Caos on Fabric
This fall Caos on F has been exploring the possibilities of adapting the fine art imagery of our artists to the decorative arts application of hand-painted fabric. Working at 1228 Blagdon Alley, dubbed the Caos on Fabric Factory, the results have been impressive for the first attempts on a new medium. Working "outside the frame" and in large scale, participant artists developed sympathetic techniques to translate their designs to he "new" medium of silk, linen and cotton.

This First Friday event is the premier viewing of the results of the month long, intensive workshop, a breakthrough happening, born from our dedication and commitment to collaboration amongst our artists. The potential of producing unique environments created with the goal of bringing order to your surroundings has been greatly expanded with the launch of what will become our newest product line.

Participant artists include Tsolmon Damba, Chul Beom Park, Madelline Shinn, Lisa Gutierrez, Cherie Lester, Quint Marshall, Mary Bakota and Michael Berman.

Caos on Fabric Demonstration
Mr. David Bell has been extremely gracious in providing us with the facility to advance our concept. Bell Architects, The James Renwick Alliance (JRA) and Caos on Fabric will be hosting a reception on Saturday, 7 November from 1:00 p.m - 6:00 p.m. This event will provide an "in situ" viewing of artworks collected by Mr. David Bell and/or provided by Caos on F. A demonstration of hand painting on silk by our featured artist Tsolmon Damba will occur at our Fabric Factory at 3:00 p.m. The location for Saturday's event is Bell Architects, 1228 9th ST, NW and the adjacent Caos on Fabric Factory at 1228 Blagdon Alley, NW.

Caos on F

Co-founded by painter Michael Berman, and furniture maker Matthew Falls, Caos on F offers a unique blend of fine art, hand painted fabric and furniture focused on bringing order to your surroundings. The Caos on F showroom is located at F St|arts, a suite of arts spaces at 923 F St. NW, in DC's vibrant Penn Quarter neighborhood.

Gallery hours are Friday and Saturday from 12:00-7:00 p.m. and by appointment. There will be an additional reception on Friday December 4. Images and information are available at www.CaosonF.com

Posted via email from Caroline's posterous

Rebuilding Rwanda - Part Two

2009-11-03T22:12:00.002-05:00

Part Two of Henry's Rwanda blog series has been posted! If you missed the first entry, read this post first.

Enjoy!

Booooooo Hooooooo

2009-11-02T19:10:00.001-05:00

See and download the full gallery on posterous

We miss Grandma, too! Thank you for the card. It's very tasty!

Posted via email from Caroline's posterous

Happy Halloween!

2009-10-31T13:09:00.001-04:00

See and download the full gallery on posterous

Our little shrimp tempura made it about a half hour before I couldn't stand the runny paint anymore. She never fussed for a second. Henry said the more wrinkled the Tyvek became the more she actually looked like the shrimp.

But now she just looks a little dirty. Hmmm... I should have added something that would make sure my watercolors would stick. They are non-toxic, I promise.

Just in case you are wondering, this last picture is of the costume flat. I just added a little brad to hold it together. Now that is not kid-tested, mother-approved. But we survived.

Happy First Birthday, Silas! You're a cute little Yoda. And Happy Birthday, Matt!

Posted via email from Caroline's posterous

Lucy at 24 weeks

2009-10-30T11:05:00.001-04:00

See and download the full gallery on posterous

Lucy turned 24 weeks yesterday. We dressed her up in her pumpkin hat and faced the world very early. Honestly I got mad at Henry about something long forgotten and I hopped in the shower way earlier than usual. That got the ball rolling towards a glimpse at my pre-Lucy routine. It was a pretty packed day. The only thing missing was a little Tai Chi.

We walked with Henry to work and then circled around the Civil War memorial close to the White House. I saw a massive sale sign at Banana Republic, so I took advantage to finally find something to wear with long sleeves. Then we went to the studio. I wrote in my journal, feed Lucy and read her a couple of library books.i also began working on her Halloween costume. Then we met Shannon for lunch at Teaism. After lunch, we returned to the studio til almost 3. We were on our way to return some library books when we saw a couple of chefs. A ha! The farmers market ... I almost forgot. So we strolled back down the street and were in and out of there by 3:30. We went back home for a snack and a nap.

Last night Lucy watched her first Charlie Brown holiday special, "It's The Great Pumpkin." It was Gabe's first, too. Although we did not get him in any of the pictures. Lucy was just sortof into it despite Rocky's brand new 52" TV. I think she noticed the cats a little more. And she perked up a little bit once we switched it over to the UNC football game.

We would have watched it Wednesday night like the rest of the country, but I had a conference call. By the time it was over, she was fast asleep... For an hour. Then she was back up and down until her regular bedtime between 10:30-11. Granted she will sleep until 7 or 8 in the morning, but typically she wakes at 7:30. So this is great. Ideal, even. But I often feel like if she's not asleep earlier, then she'll end up a teenage mother on crack. I think that's just peer pressure.

At this point instead of worrying about the evenings, I'm going to strive for getting out of the house earlier. Like yesterday. Otherwise I often find myself trapped until she wakes up. And for the last few weeks, that means we haven't been leaving the house until 1 pm. So... Yesterday was great.

Next week, I think we will venture out for the H1N1 vaccine. Although she can't have one until her six month birthday on November 14th. Last night at Rocky's, we discussed Bob's recent run-in with the swine flu. Fortunately we went to dinner at The Adamses instead of spending the evening in #22. Close call. But I developed a sore throat and cough just thinking about it. I came home, gargeled with Listirine, drank an Emergence and Airborne. Just in case.

Posted via email from Caroline's posterous

Wonder Weeks

2009-10-27T11:30:00.000-04:00

I wrote this post over two weeks ago. Thankfully we have made it through her recent developmental phase. I normally skip any posts that rests in drafts for this long, but I thought I would go ahead and post the blog entry for future reference. Wonder Week 26 is right around the corner! Well, technically in Lucy's case, it will be week number 29 since she was born three weeks early.

Ever since we returned from Florida, Lucy has acted like a different baby. She has been clingy and cranky and does not want to sleep. I chalked it all up to a shift from a lot of attention from both of our families to being cared for by a single mom for four days. (Major props to all the single moms out there. I don't know how you do it!)

But when things continued to get worse after two weeks, I almost lost it. I called Natalie to check in with Nia's development. It's great to know moms with babies about six weeks older than you. Their mind hasn't been erased yet thanks to what I consider human nature's way of ensuring further procreation. I was about to cave and give Lucy some rice cereal.

I wanted to wait six months due to allergies and my milk supply issue, but I couldn't figure out what else could be wrong. Natalie assured me that you build up from a teaspoon to a quarter of a cup over weeks. So this is not really that drastic of a shift. Fine, no biggie. I planned to take a trip to the store to buy the cereal and baby spoons.

Then I discovered the concept of Wonder Weeks by googling not sleeping 21 weeks. There in seemed to lie the answer to my question. Lucy is in the middle of a developmental leap. This blog described her to a T. She has been cranky, clingy and even scared of others for the first time. She had also stopped talking on the phone, just looking at it instead. Henry even agreed that these symptoms were on target. He looked back at previous stages to see if they matched up, as well. Appears so.

Whew. That was a relief. Some of the moms on the message boards said that they had introduced solids, but it hadn't helped. Their babies were still having trouble sleeping. So I reviewed the list of what I could try to help her with this developmental stage and decides to wait a few days on the rice cereal.

Just having some sense of what I can do helped me feel better, which probably helped her feel better. At least I postponed my plans for implementing an earlier bed time in the middle of this phase. And that made everyone in my family much happier. Thank you, internet. I love you.

I gave Lucy her little doll to cuddle while she sleeps. The company named her Mini Yupik. The mini is because there is a bigger Yupik. But I'm guessing Yupik means you pick the sex. I realized this when Henry referred to the doll as a boy, while I always assumed she was a girl. Actually, Yu'pik is an Eskimo from Alaska, according to Wikipedia.

I also bought a yoga mat to help Lucy get better traction. Last week this lap quilt and her activity mat would wind up in a wad underneath her. And boy, was she mad.

I was about to buy a large activity mat for kids until I realized a yoga mat would do the same trick. And I could buy one right around the corner at City Sports. And MAYBE one day I'll really take up yoga. So it will have a life beyond Lucy learning to crawl. If not, the packaging promised that it will breakdown easily in a landfill. Of course I bought the environmentally friendly one. I had just spent the afternoon at The Green Festival.

I seriously debated which mat to buy. There was a Nike option, this one and a third made out of natural rubber. When I saw that the natural rubber was on clearance, I picked it up planning to buy it. But then I ended up accidentally rubbing my mouth and tasting my hand. Yuck! It was disgusting. It tasted like rubber!

Ummm. Guess what babies do. They lick, chew, and taste everything. This grossness will not go over well. Besides even my kisses on her face will not taste good to me either! Pat, the breast whisperer, advised to taste whatever you put in your babies mouth, including all of those wipes you use to clean off pacifiers and toys. Genius. I would have never thought of that.

So I stood there for a while wondering how I was going to confirm which mat tasted awful. I should have assumed that it was the yoga mat on clearance. But it was also heavy and ugly. So it could have been on clearance for a number of reasons. So I stood there waiting and waiting and waiting until the timing was right. Then I licked it. Just a very teeny touch of my tongue on an interior side of the roll. Ughh... That was it.

I could only imagine all of these young, beautiful professionals going to an early morning yoga session feeling healthy and green only to end up frustrated with this disgusting flavor embedded in their pores all day long.

So I returned to the front of the store on a mission. Did the other two taste bad, too? I had to wait a little longer to taste the mats. But they were in the clear. So I opted for the more environmentally friendly since I assumed Lucy would spend tummy time with her mouth on it.

But I was wrong. The yoga mat gives a lot of traction. A LOT. She couldn't go anywhere. But when I placed the lap quilt back on top of the mat, it didn't wad up on the rug. Problem solved. You can see that Lucy, who is wearing her first pair of tights, is on the move in the photo above. I placed her facing her library book and toys in the upper left hand corner. The blanket is still in place. So maybe I could have gone with any yoga mat, but at least I like the color.

The Great Pumpkin

2009-10-26T13:25:00.001-04:00

We are getting ready for Halloween this week! Last week we read a book about a little boy who hates the costumes his mom has made for him. Since I've decided to make a costume for Lucy, I'm a little self- conscious about another conceptual inantimate object. I already made a major mistake last night as I cut up her travel mattress when I thought it was the remnant. Let's hope I can pull off a green blob before Thursday at 6pm, which is diapers.com deadline for Friday delivery. We need more diapers anyway.

Set your calendars for Wednesday night. It's Lucy's first Charlie Brown special.

Posted via email from Caroline's posterous

Lucy at 23 Weeks...

2009-10-23T11:57:00.001-04:00

and a day. I deleted the title "How are we going to survive this one?" But I imagine that it, too, shall pass sooner rather than later.

(Again, I don't know why these pictures don't email in order, but I bet you can guess that the second one is actually the last.)

See and download the full gallery on posterous

Lucy is rolling over like a champ now. I found her rolled over and crying this morning in her crib for the first time. These pictures are from her nap. Or attempted nap.

Since today is the first day of her rolling over in her crib, I may look bedraggled in a few days as she continues exploring her new skill. I bought the crib because it was small and rolls through doorways, but I found her fifteen minutes ago with her face planted in the rails. She needs to be placed closer to one side so that she has room to roll over. (And no, I haven't rolled the crib out of her bedroom, but it is super easy to roll and find her paci.)

All of this leads to a blog entry I started last Monday and have yet to complete. Maybe this will motivate me to share what I've learned about disrupted sleeping patterns and developmental stages before the day is over. I predict that I'm going to need easy access to the developmental chart.

Posted via email from Caroline's posterous

Lucy's First Solid

2009-10-22T22:27:00.002-04:00

Lucy is 23 weeks old today, but this video is from last Thursday when I let her taste her first solid. We were reading on the floor and she seemed interested in my apple. So I let her gum it. My mom has already told me to stop doing this. I have. It was an innocent one-time thing. Well, until whenever we work up to that point again in a few weeks.

She got really into it. She was holding my hand and pulling it back to her face. But don't worry. She was nowhere close to the seeds, even though it does look like it on our side of the apple. I don't think that she actually swallowed anything. Just some yummy apple flavor.

In the food department, I have a book of rice cereal ready to go. Plus I ordered a set of spoons. I thought maybe we could skip the infant size, since one of the reviews said that her baby loved the toddler size. Now that I have the toddler spoon in my hand, I am not so sure it can fit in her mouth. Maybe I will let her play with it tomorrow.

I also bought the book Feeding Baby Green at the Green Festival a couple of weeks ago. We even met Dr. Greene! I am hoping to read it in the next couple of weeks as we dive into solids. But she has been keeping us quite busy lately. I need a Cliffs Notes version.

When you were just a zygote

2009-10-21T23:59:00.002-04:00

Last week, Mom reminded me of a phone call I had made to her probably right around one year earlier to the date. Martina and Antonio were in town for the weekend. We had just returned from our Pacific Northwest vacation just a couple of days before.

I had planned a tour of the PNW - Seattle, Vancouver and Portland via Amtrak. We couldn't wait. I ended up going to the doctor a couple of days before our trip. Yep. I was pregnant. I was a tad bit sad. I told him that I had planned this trip to taste all the deliciousness the Northwest has to offer: coffee, sushi, oysters, beer and so on. All of the things you can not have if you are pregnant. In fact, I told him I was hoping to get pregnant on the trip.

At this point it would be amusing to reread those blog posts. I never threw up, but most of Portland was spent in the hotel bed. And one night I was certain our neighbor had come home drunk, left the tub running, and the entire hotel was going to flood. Otherwise I was pretty much a zombie, just like the rest of my first trimester.

I think I may have been six weeks pregnant, which might as well be two weeks, but pregnancy has it's own set of rules. But it is way early and honestly too early to tell anyone. But I did because our friends in Portland were peer pressuring me to have a glass of wine. And I wanted to tell my mom before I told Henry's parents.

So I'm back home from our trip walking into our bathroom, when I notice something that was BRIGHT. NEON. ORANGE. through our blind. Yes through the blind. What is that? I opened my blinds and there stood two giant palm trees. They were the most hideous things I had ever seen. One was orange and the other green. I had been so pleased with the beautiful new deck in our alley and improvements with the new restaurants. But what was this?

Later that night, Henry's parents arrive. We tell them the big news, because they needed to know why I was permanently implanted in the couch. And that I would not be able to eat any smoked salmon nor Brie cheese. There were tears, mainly from Antonio, who like my mom, had given up all hope of being a grandparent. He wanted to record the very minute he heard those words.

Later, things turned a little sour. It was dark and, well, that's when I discovered the matching running lights that dance across every fake palm frond. They crowded around the window laughing and excited. I think I heard the word beautiful, but I'm not pointing fingers. I shreiked in horror. I probably even cussed in front of them. Long story short, I lost it. LOST IT. And I did what any distraught pregnant woman would do. I went to my bedroom and called my mother. With my back to the window, of course.

She told me this weekend that she remembers exactly where she was when she received my call. She was driving up Rosebud Road close to Mother Shore Hill's farm. She said she thought she was going to have to pull over. I was sobbing. It took me a full minute to catch my breath and assure her that no one was dead. Then it took me a couple of more minutes to explain that there were two palm trees outside my window that looked like massive highlighters. Plus you could see them through my brand new blinds, which I waited over two years to buy and are too big, so they've scraped all of the paint off my walls. Arggh... Another sore spot for me.

And the very worst part was the only bit of natural green that I can see are the ginko trees lining 5th Street. As corny as this sounds, I would look at them out the window while I wrote in my journal each morning. I'm from the country and now I face a dirty alley. Those leaves meant a lot to me. Now my one connection to nature was visually blocked by ORANGE. ORANGE. ORANGE.

I watched as the owners worked so hard to connect a cable and secure them in place. I thought we were in Chinatown, not Margaritaville! What do neon palm trees have to do with sushi? I even sketched a plan for a soothing Zen garden with white twinkle lights. I would love to eat sushi on the deck in our alley. But how could I dare? I had made such a fuss. I contacted our local community activist and neighbors. I prayed they would be stolen or blown away. I had my plan ready of some beautiful pots and bamboo. They are still there.

Carol drove her mom through the alley and she promised that my baby would LOVE the palm trees. Maybe so, but I never will and I still don't. There is a new staircase built between the two of us. It helps me feel a little more disconnected. Lucy hasn't even noticed them, except maybe she did last week.

The best line of this story comes from my aunt Karen. As soon as my Mom shared the story about my hysterical phone call, she said, "She's not pregnant, is she? I know all the signs."

Posted via email from Caroline's posterous

Crazy Dreams

2009-10-20T11:10:00.004-04:00

This morning I was deep in sleep when Lucy woke me up around 7 am. I was on top of a hill trying to figure out the best path to take down. Essentially very few had a curb to exit down to the sidewalk. A guy was shoveling some sand along with of these paths. Then I finally saw an exit off to the right. I was working my way down and I heard someone talking about me.

When I was in the seventh grade, like any adolescent girl, I was completely paranoid that people were talking about me. Finally my friend looked at me and said, "They are not talking about you!" From there on, I stopped worrying about it. AND if I thought someone was talking about me, I completely ignored it by either leaving the room or trying to distract myself enough not to be able to hear what was being said. I would rather not know.

So this morning in my dream, I had a tinge of anxiety when I heard a woman start to say something about me in my dream. But dreams are revealing so I listened up. Right? She said, "Now that she's gone, I don't have my bookie." She made a book arts joke in my dream! Ha!

I made my way to get Lucy out of her bed to feed her. As we returned to the bed for her morning feeding, I knocked over my glass and broke it. Broken glass and water galore. I told Henry that I needed help. Then I just stood there not knowing what to do. Henry told me to get in the bed and feed her. Lucy was screaming her head off.

I feel back asleep and I was still having vivid dreams. This time they were mini-nightmares. None were awful, but nightmares none the less.

I went to a discussion with a friend. This friend did not like how the presenter had changed her results after her study and got up in her face until their noses were pushing up against one another. (This could be related to a story presented on NPR.) Then I realized that I had been sitting in this group of women with one of my breasts exposed. I guess that I had finished breastfeeding and completely forgot to close up shop. Then I returned home to realize that I had the wrong baby. This baby was more like a doll with skinny cheeks, curly blond hair, blue eyes and writing all over her. She even had a screen on her belly that scrolled up and down like an iPhone application. I had to go back to find my baby. Then I went into the bedroom and the furniture was rearranged in an awful way so that there were a row of dressers lined up on one wall side by side. They looked awful. I couldn't take it anymore.

Whew! So now I am up with coffee in hand. I'm hoping to get back into a routine now that our guests are out of town and the baby dedication is over. I have more pictures to post soon.

Here is Lucy with me at 5 months

and a day later at 22 weeks

Lucy's baby dedication

2009-10-19T12:51:00.003-04:00

This weekend, we celebrated Lucy's baby dedication at Calvary Baptist Church.

I am pretty certain she knew exactly what Pastor Edgar was saying about her in Spanish. And she loved Amy's baby parade to meet the congregation. It was a very sweet event. To top it off, it was also the Children's Sabbath.

After the church service, we had a sheet cake during coffee hour. Then we ate waaay too much food at Jaleo. Once our lunch at Jaleo was over, I thought, I wish weddings were that easy.

Here are some excellent pictures from Claudia. I will download and post mine (and others) soon, including a picture of her embroidered slip. So far, we have been resting today and trying to tackle some of our leftovers from the weekend.

See and download the full gallery on posterous

Posted via email from Caroline's posterous

I'm five months old today!

2009-10-14T21:38:00.001-04:00

Posted via email from Caroline's posterous

Congratulations!

2009-10-12T23:36:00.002-04:00

Big news in my baby blogosphere...

Emma is home!

Amelia is here!

And, Silas is walking!

Lucy started reaching for the laptop for the first time when she saw this picture of Silas. Could she possibly remember him from our outing to Baltimore? Or maybe she was excited about interacting with someone closer to her size? Or maybe she just thinks he's cute! I don't know.

Here are our pictures from Baltimore from way back when. I guess the chances of a long detailed blog entry are pretty slim. But I will add that the American Visionary Art Museum is AMAZING. Yes it lives up to being the fourth best museum in the country BEFORE they added the gift shop. And I loved this incredible work by Dalton Ghetti. He creates sculptures out of pencil leads. Wow.

Protect Penn Quarter Farmers Market

2009-10-08T12:56:00.006-04:00

This sign is not exaggerating. It is the best bread in the city. I have to refrain myself and stick with a quarter loaf, but I could eat the entire loaf by myself. Easily! It is available at the Penn Quarter Farmers Market on Thursday afternoons from 3 - 7 pm.

Each week people gather from office buildings and their homes to buy the most glorious food. Seriously, even if you haven't been into food lately, you would fall in love again with one visit. Plus the cut flowers, orchids and gelato make it feel like a small retreat into heaven.

So many options totally knocked Lucy out during our trip with Leah in late July.

I frequently set dates to meet people at the farmers market. I've written about meeting Leah on several occasions. And then, Shannon, Kara, Natalie and Nia! Plus Henry.

When I first moved here, I would browse and buy one or two items a month. My purchases seem to increase each season. This summer I have tried to shop primarily from the Farmers Market. It may be a tad more expensive, and that can probably be argued to be a myth. But I don't throw away nearly as much fruit, because I don't end up buying an excessive amount of produce just because it's a good deal. Not to mention the environmental benefits of low food miles. AND how nice it is to hand cash to the person who gathered the food and loaded it on their truck THAT morning.

Plus one of the most impressive parts of the Penn Quarter Farmers Market is to see all of the chefs gathering to pick out food for the neighborhood restaurants. Local foods served at local restaurants. Yum. On one of our first visits of the season, I was standing next to celebrity chef Eric Ripert. I felt like a mini-celebrity because everyone commented on Lucy, who was hanging out in my sling, and respectfully giving him his space. On another visit, I saw the chefs rolling a cart down the sidewalk from Poste. Their web site even offers an exclusive "MARKET TO MARKET" dining experience. And Henry saw Jose Andres last year. (Jose even brought Anthony Bourdain to the market when Anthony was in town for No Reservations.)

The Penn Quarter Farmers Market opens in a couple of hours. Be sure to visit today and show your support. It is under threat. Someone who parks in the block has to drive a different way home on Thursday evenings. That adds an additional fifteen minutes onto his commute. He therefore wants to have the Market moved. Hmmmm... I have thoughts that I will refrain from sharing, but we need to be vocal and make sure that this one squeaky wheel doesn't get the oil. As I suggested in the comments, maybe he could telecommute on Thursdays.

21 weeks

2009-10-08T11:20:00.001-04:00

Wow! Time flies.

Lucy is much happier this week than last. Daddy is home (and has been for a week).

Here she is checking out Grandma and Grandpa. She frequently sucks her right thumb, as you will see below.

See and download the full gallery on posterous

Posted via email from Caroline's posterous

Not really sleepy

2009-10-08T10:02:00.001-04:00

See and download the full gallery on posterous

Since our two-week trip, Lucy has started to cry everytime I lay her down. Before I could just put her in the bed while she was still awake and leave her. She would fall asleep within minutes.

Now we are trying new tricks, including a bedtime book. She looks quite pleased. And I'm getting really good at reading Dr. Seuss out loud.

Before our trip, I had a very strange dream where I was reading out loud to three men in a car. But that wasn't nearly as strange as the sea of pink-tipped Yorkies I was swimming in while we were visiting Florida.

Posted via email from Caroline's posterous

Tonight's TV: Craft in America on PBS

2009-10-07T19:19:00.002-04:00

Season Two of Craft in America is airing tonight on PBS. (And plenty of other times, as well.)

The first episode, Origins, explores North Carolina pottery, including Mark Hewitt, a popular stop on the Chatham County Studio Tour. The second episode, Process, features book artist Julie Chen. Her work is quite remarkable.

Thanks to FAU's Jaffe Center for Book Arts email list for putting this on my radar screen. Anyone living in South Florida should sign up. (ie. Alexis and Blake) And anyone else interested in book arts or anything loosely related.

Baby Crack

2009-10-07T12:05:00.002-04:00

I am trying to upload pictures from our recent grandparents' tour.

I took a series of videos of Lucy enjoying Cama's bouncy seat, which is at Mom's. She LOVED the little monkey.

Enjoy!

Today's venture to Friendship Heights

2009-10-06T18:12:00.002-04:00

While in Amsterdam three years ago, I saw this embroidered nightgown created by an artist who intends to wear it for her burial. It is covered with the names of all the people who have been important to her during her lifetime. It was so stunning, that it was the first reason I whipped out my camera.

In a couple of weeks, we are having a baby dedication for Lucy at church. It's essentially a small proclamation at the end of the regular service. As Baptists, we are baptized by choice. So this is not a christening. It is a liturgical ceremony where the church promises to love and care for Lucy as she grows in the church. Oh, and I guess that Henry and I make some promises to be good parents, too.

This idea of embroidering the dress has always stuck with me. I decided to embroider Lucy's name and date of the event on her slip, leaving plenty of room for other babies, mine, her's or whomever's. Who knows at this point.

A couple of days ago as I was gathering my supplies, I realized that I didn't have any embroidery floss. Lauren suggested several places that might have some. All of which involved driving. After Sunday night's dinner with Ike and Denise, I may never drive again. We might as well have burned Lucy's feet with hot coals. But she immediately went to bed from exhaustion.

So I found The Point of It All in Friendship Heights. We took off on the Red Line despite the morning fire on the tracks. That's where we met Connor, a six-year-old, heading home with his father and sister. They had just been to a Bach concert.

He was quite chatty and said, "We have a nine-month-old at home" as he hung on to the pole above her stroller. He may as well been 36. I learned that he was the oldest of four children. I'm guessing that since he had "finished school early that day," he was homeschooled and they were taking advantage of the city's cultural offerings.

I told him that my name was Caroline. He responded, "Like the movie?" I said, "Well, I came around a long time before the movie." I assumed that ge was talking about Coraline, which is a variation of my name. But with my Southern accent, what's the point in trying to correct him.

I asked him if he had seen the movie. He said, "No." He paused. "And I don't want to." I told him it looked scary. It seems a bit like an animated children's version of the Stepford Wives. He agreed.

Then he said, "Can I tell you a secret?" I nodded (and now look at me telling the entire Internet). He said, holding the back of his hand up to the side of his mouth shielding his lips from his family, "I scream like a girl." I told him that was okay; sometimes my husband does, too. (Kidding... sort of.)

We went on to discuss the Metro map and where we were both headed. I told him that I lived in Chinatown and he exclaimed "China!?!" No, Downtown.

As we approached my exit, he asked where I was going. I told him a store to buy something. I thought why get into the whole embroidery thread story. Besides I would miss my stop. In all seriousness, he looked at me and said, "Are you going to buy dinosaur donughts?" What? Not what I was expecting. I told him I had never heard of such a thing. Then he said longingly, "I miss them."

Posted via email from Caroline's posterous

Velocity DC in Penn Quarter

2009-10-02T18:40:00.001-04:00

Just had the most exciting fifteen minutes of walking through the neighborhood with VelocityDC's performance art. And that's saying a lot.

Enjoy! (Photos are out of chronological order.)

See and download the full gallery on posterous

Posted via email from Caroline's posterous

It's been 20 weeks.

2009-10-01T22:31:00.002-04:00

No update on Question Air today. Does that mean...???

I cried out for adult human contact today on my Facebook status update. We had a day filled with visitors. It was great. Amy, Leah, Ike, John and Leah, again. And most importantly, Henry returned from Colombia.

Apparently Leah was a little too early for the AJ Jacobs event at 6th & I. If Henry had returned just an hour earlier, I so would have been there.

See and download the full gallery on posterous

Lucy wanted a little more human contact, too.

Skinny Jean Disease

2009-09-30T22:32:00.007-04:00

As I mentioned sometime this week, I am really enjoying Corey's blog about adopting Emma. They are now officially her parents. Woo-hoo! BUT... I must say that I enjoyed JC's blog entry today. He shared his thoughts about the culture in St. Pete's. It sent my mind spinning with so many different stories that I want to share.

First, the whole European skinny jean thing reminds me of my first trip to Spain. Alex was studying abroad and we met up with a group of his friends. This one guy approaches me and starts speaking to me in Spanish. Finally, I looked at him and said, "I'm Alex's sister." He stopped short and said, "Oh... I'm from Cary." Later I told Alex about what happened. He instantly pointed out that he would never confuse me with a Spaniard. My jeans aren't tight enough.

Second, there is a disease that you can get from wearing tight jeans. Disease might not be the right word for it. But it is probably not what you are thinking. It is actually a pinched nerve causing numbness down the exterior of your thigh. Why do I know this? Because I have it. Not from trying to stuff myself back into my pre-pregnancy wear. I'm still enjoying the ease of not using a zipper, at least part-time. (Reason to buy those below the waist maternity jeans, moms-to-be!)

For some reason, I have meralgia paresthetica, which is triggered by pregnancy, obesity, diabetes, and the recent fashion phenomenon of extremely skinny jeans. One person complained of the issue after leaving her laptop on the same position of her lap for too long. Another gave up wearing their wallet in the front pocket. Is this the opposite of George Costanza's fat wallet, which included some hard candy in his back pocket? I am willing to bet that my wallet is in the top ten percent of smallest wallets out there. And I rarely, if ever, carry it in a pocket, causing any additional clothing constraint against my body.

At one point during my labor, a new nurse appeared around my right foot. When a contraction hit, she pushed my leg up to my shoulder. Okay maybe not, but I remember thinking wow! She can help me pop this baby out. She must have been delivering a message to another nurse, because after that she was gone. But I often wonder if her super strong resistance is the source of the pinched nerve in my hip.

Later in the hospital, I tried to get out of the bed. I left my right leg in place and dropped my left leg to the floor. This sounds totally normal. But instead I received an electric jolt down the exterior of my thigh. I kept asking the anesthesiologists about it, but they swore it had nothing to do with the epidural. Neither did my numb top digit of my left hand middle finger. I'll give that one up to a psychosomatic injury after how I felt about my delivering chief resident. My OB said that things loosen up and get pinched and it should eventually go away. It hasn't, but it has improved.

I seem to notice it flare up as I rub my feet together. Brendan informed me that it is called "the fly" when I rub my feet against one another. It drives Henry nuts. While I was pregnant, he threatened to tie our child's feet apart if they picked up the trait from me. I promised that he would want them to have some sort of self-soothing mechanism like sucking their thumb or rubbing their feet. I pulled out a specially curved pillow to place between your knees to help with hip pain. And that seems to help.

The first week after Lucy's delivery, I had Peter, Dr. Wu's son, come over to do a little acupuncture. This helped me recover tremendously. Before my first treatment, I would have electric shocks rip through my legs, especially when I laughed. How awful is that! But that has seriously subsided. Now my leg mainly bothers me when I am sitting in certain positions. In some situations, I don't even notice that the outside muscle of my leg is completely numb. At other times, it is tingly. When it bothers me the most, it feels like an itch that can't fully be scratched. Tickling or light touch really bothers it.

I did receive one treatment from the chiropractor when I took Lucy for her breastfeeding issues. It miraculously worked for her. But my treatment seemed to help me carry her comfortably in her carrier more so than heal my outer thigh. But instead of continuing treatment from the chiropractor, I have had my primary care physician, who is a DO, stretch me out. It is great. I always feel so tall after my visits.

I even ordered another two Miracle Balls in attempt to find a miracle. These are grapefruit-sized exercise balls that you lay on to stretch out tight muscles. I took them with me to my delivery. I couldn't find a helpful position for them and one never found it's way back into my bag. So now I have three different sized Miracle Balls. But the larger five inch seems to help when I rest on it just above my hip while resting on my side.

I have tried acupuncture a couple of more times. But each time my right leg would completely drop down so that it looked like my big toe was at about two minutes down to about 11 minutes. My hip was certainly relaxing, but I think that part of the problem was my hip is too loose to begin with. Then when you get pregnant, everything loosens up to let the baby out. Good thing I have skin and muscles to help hold everything together.

When I took Dr. Wu the article about the woman lactating after a mastectomy, he read it after he applied the needles on my front. At that time I didn't know where the point was located. But based on his reaction, I wasn't sure that he did either. He told me that I should eat fish soup and pig's feet. I know. I remember Peter told me the same thing. Mrs. Wu gave me a bag of herbs, which are at my studio for a future art project.

As a final request, I told him that my shoulders were very sore. He asked me which one and I said both. So he put needles around my right shoulder. I was so tired that I didn't ask for him to do my left. When I returned home, my milk actually improved on the right side. Even if I didn't know where the point was, Making More Milk suggests getting an upper back massage and loosening up your shoulders. So I thought, I definitely need to have my shoulders treated. I waited until I was almost too old to have a baby.

As college football season made it's debut in #22, I left Henry and Lucy over at Rocky's. (Yes, I do let that baby out of my sight.) I sat down and made a wish list for acupuncture. Since I was having low milk supply issues again, I was determined to make sure Dr. Wu hit the right spot. I spent a good hour going through this acupuncture web site, picking out problems that I am having. I googled points along with terms like "meralgia paresthetica" and compiled them in a word document.

I finally honed in on a point (BL40 Wei Zhong) that was mentioned in a Korean academic article. Of course, I couldn't read the article, but with the magic of Google, there was a brief English statement that gave me enough evidence to try the point. It couldn't hurt (besides being stuck with needles). Seriously, in some extreme cases of meralgia paresthetica, Western medicine suggestions you kill the nerve... or place something against your spine. Are you crazy? I would rather just have someone stick needles all over my body and sleep under a heat lamp for 45 minutes. Once you get past the needles, it is really relaxing. And it is like multi-tasking! Plus Dr. Wu throws in another 25-30 for good measure, for issues like stress and balance. According to the following descriptions, GB30 will heal me from Malaria, Mental Disorders and Tinnitus. You have to love that. I don't even have Malaria. The other two, well, maybe a touch of both. But they are not why I picked it.

These were my requested points:

SI11 • Tian Zong • Small Intestine 11 Celestial Gathering (for low milk supply)
BL57 • Cheng Shan • Bladder 57 Mountain Support
BL40 • Wei Zhong • Bladder 40 Bend Middle
SI3 • Hou Xi • Small Intestine 3 Back Ravine
GB30 • Huan Tiao • Gall Bladder 30 Jumping Round

Coincidentally, they were all on my back. So I wanted to make sure that he knew which ones I wanted. I printed each of these descriptions out, highlighted the name of the spot, the location in the picture, and the disorder I was hoping to correct.

That was my most restful visit to the acupuncturist ever. I had creases from the sheets on the front of my body. Plus acupuncture is like meditating a little. This phrase kept popping up "rest assured." I finally felt rest assured that I will be able to breastfeed Lucy. But besides that, my thigh feels better. It is still numb, but not quite so electric. I am hoping a couple of more visits will help it spontaneously heal.

Until then, I try to be careful with sitting and how I stand, which is good anyway. I have a tendency to pop my knees back and hips forward, which is an awful, unattractive habit I inherited and further aggravates the pinched nerve. Plus I'll continue to reexamine other bad habits with things like clothing or accessories. Just like George.

While Dad's Away {Part 2}

2009-09-29T21:28:00.001-04:00

As soon as Lucy rolled over, she started crawling toward her spinning ball. But she doesn't know how to use her legs.

See and download the full gallery on posterous

And she was sooo mad! Especially when I picked her up. Soon after that we had to leave for the grocery store as a much welcome distraction.

Hmmm... This growing up is going to be a little harder than I thought. Maybe she's a bit like her daddy.

Posted via email from Caroline's posterous

While Dad's Away {Part One}

2009-09-29T21:14:00.001-04:00

Lucy rolled over from her back to front and pulled her left arm out unassisted.

See and download the full gallery on posterous

But now she wants to crawl...

Posted via email from Caroline's posterous

closely following

2009-09-29T10:21:00.000-04:00

While away, I've been closely following the pending arrival of two new family additions.

First, Corey is in Russia right now awaiting the day when she can put Emma on the plane with her.

Second, Kim and Dean are down to single digits before Amelia's due date.

So if I see And Emma Makes Five OR Question Air has recently been updated in my blog list, I pick either of those first. No offense to my other blogs.

Back from the two-week family tour

2009-09-28T20:11:00.001-04:00

Well, we all were for about two hours before Henry left for Columbia. I made him read me the color PowerPoint on how to avoid getting kidnapped. Seriously. That wasn't the title of the handout, but the gist. And, of course, to relax and have fun. Bogota is a wonderful place.

Lucy slept great in her little bed. We bought a cotton padding to add a little extra comfort. I think that's the key otherwise her changing pad is way more comfy than this little Eddie Bauer bag bed from Target. But the bottom piece is just vinyl-covered cardboard. No wonder she didn't want to sleep in it in Chicago.

We snoozed a lot in Florida. We slept so much the first two days we were there that I ended up with a headache. By Saturday, after eight Oreos, I imagined that I could still do a cartwheel. I guess somewhere I have some pent up energy. Good.

By the time I arrived at PBI, I felt like I had been beaten. Granted Lucy slept with me the night before at Alex's. And we had a 9:30 flight out of Charlotte. (Bad Idea) We aren't cut out to be co- sleepers. Over the last few weeks, she has established that she likes to sleep flat on her back with her arms raised and surrendering to slumber. It certainly sounds like a battle with her paci, or like she might devour it before she passes out.

Plus while we were home, I tried to keep up with mom at her normal pace. This involved essentially three different events a day, seeing anywhere from 30-100 people at each. I'm certain that this is an exaggeration. But not really. Plus when you have two to three hours between eating and sleeping, it makes extra stops at the post office, rest home, and bank really exhausting. I think after a couple of days, Mom figured this out. We skipped a final lunch in Walnut Cove and I had her help me come home to pack before an afternoon photo shoot in Reynolda Village.

Before I left Mom's, my milk levels were pretty low. I kept pumping every night to build up to around six ounces for the flight to Florida. I did leave a couple of bags in the freezer. I kept pumping, because as frequent readers know, I have issues with low milk supply. But on the last pitiful one and a half ounce show, I just didn't care. That is saying something.

Fast forward to Friday morning, after two days of not leaving the house and meals of three proteins and one veggie, I pumped a whopping 5.75 ounces. This was back up to mid-August numbers while I was in my stride. I was so excited. So excited.

I realized that when web sites like Kellymom and books such as Make More Milk recommend taking a nursing vacation, where you spend two or three days nursing very frequently, they mean a vacation. It's more successful if you don't do anything else. I spent two weeks prior to our trip on a "nursing vacation." But that just means I added more feedings and pumpings on top of everything else. I really longed to be close to my family because I knew that I could probably talk at least an aunt to come over and watch Lucy while staying on top of things.

I think my in-laws should rent out their extra bedroom for other struggling moms. I did pretty much nothing but nurse and read Facebook status updates. Then they would have dinner ready, which one day consisted of boiled shrimp, chicken, steak, broccoli and wheat thins. That was after a breakfast of boiled shrimp, smoked salmon, scrambeled eggs, plus toast and jam. Food is a really big deal in our family, to say the least.

So... I didn't write my thank you notes, update Lucy's first year calendar or journal, nor read my library book. I did spend about ten minutes watching a baby dragonfly wriggle around on the floor.

I guess I should have spent that time saving the poor dragonfly, because when I looked over later, it was gone.

So now we are back. And I'm determined to transition Lucy to her crib. Even if that means sleeping in this bag bed in her crib. I saw her eyeing the Moses basket while I was reading her Maybelle the Cable Car. Yes. We were gone a long time. Almost one-tenth of her life.

I declared this week a week of leisure before Henry arrived in Florida last Thursday. I plan to catch up on all the TV I missed. I only watched half an episode of Project Runway while in Florida, which was a record.

We did do a few fun things while in the Fla, which are their own blog entries. Bu as with any new baby, out came the pictures. I know this blurry little shot doesn't do this photo justice. But check out the ladies man.

Posted via email from Caroline's posterous

With the family

2009-09-24T23:02:00.001-04:00

A few shots from yesterday...

In this picture, which was my only non-blurry shot, Lucy doesn't look as excited as she really was to be with her family. She spent most of the day telling everyone about her trip. Here she is with Abuelita Martina.

With Abuelo Antonio

Lucy meeting her Tio Tony for the first time.

See and download the full gallery on posterous

Lucy enjoyed crawling over to Tony.

She has been doing this little crawl move from day one, so I never counted it. Ken told me it counts. Okay. She pretty much just spun around 90 degrees and inched her way towards Tony. She's not going anywhere fast.

Posted via email from Caroline's posterous

News from the Crib: Lucy comes to town!

2009-09-24T22:29:00.001-04:00

More pictures from our trip to Raleigh!

This is another test to see how links using Posterous. Sarah posted some pictures from our trip last week.

So far the day has been all eating and sleeping puctuated with Henry's arrival. I have a headache from either too much sleep or withdrawal from all that delicious sweetened tea. We have to go to Target tonight for soy milk for my coffee. Tomorrow we need to face the world. Otherwise Lucy's clothes may end up on backwards again.

Posted via email from Caroline's posterous

We made it!

2009-09-23T12:01:00.001-04:00

We made it to Florida. The humidity gave us a great big welcome hug once we left the airport.

Fortunately Alex was flying to LA today and was able to help me up until boarding. And I was lucky enough to be seated next a woman who has a five-month-old at home. Plus the person in the window seat just let me slide over instead of everyone getting up and letting him in. Thank you!

We are in the car on the way to the abuelos. Rumor has it they are all decked out for a baby. We can't wait.

So far so good. We only sacrificed one bottle of unopened apple juice, which rolled away at some point in the flight. May it land at someone's feet who is very thirsty.

I'm looking forward to a day of rest before Henry meets us tomorrow. And food! Oh me, my dry Froot Loops didn't hold me.

Happy Birthday, Mom! I love you. I had a great week. Sorry we left on your birthday.

Posted via email from Caroline's posterous

Chances are

2009-09-22T15:49:00.001-04:00

Pretty high Lucy won't fit into this little cradle the next time we visit NC. Maybe if she sleeps at an angle.

See and download the full gallery on posterous

I received this cradle for Christmas when I was three or four. Jill also received one. Back then, Santa would also visit us at Memaw's.

I just learned this summer that Kemp Savage made it for us. It's very sturdy. I'm easily guessing that it will be around for my grandchildren. Whenever that may be.

Posted via email from Caroline's posterous

Pooped

2009-09-21T15:49:00.001-04:00

We have had a super busy week so far! Lucy and I are both pooped. Last night she slept ten hours, skipping her late night meal. Most of my pictures are on my camera, but here are a few highlights.

Lucy in her exersaucer at Grandma's.

On Friday we went to Raleigh to visit Sarah and Jed's new house.

Sarah and Jed

Jed showing Lucy his jack-in-the-box before the final episode of Guiding Light.

Shelby and Lucy coordinated their outfits this morning.

Posted via email from Caroline's posterous

Ready for game day

2009-09-17T21:57:00.001-04:00

See and download the full gallery on posterous

Thanks to Uncle Alex for Lucy's game day gear! We will remove the tags before Saturday.

Go Heels!

Posted via email from Caroline's posterous

Lucy Meets Jennifer

2009-09-17T10:27:00.000-04:00

It has been brought to my recent attention that I have not been posting as thoroughly as I should be. One place I have fallen short are highlighting Lucy's visitors this summer.

I really wish that I had taken pictures with all of her visitors. I know that my dad would have managed this. I guess I didn't marry my dad. And since I am in charge of the baby, sometimes I forget about the pictures. And then there was that one time when she ran off Dave, Lily and Veronica upon their arrival. Sorry, guys! Their visit last week looked a little like this shot with Alex and Jennifer:

She just needed her paci!

Before the tears...

Alex, by far, wins the most frequent visitor award. I am not sure if his miles will beat Sherri's trek from San Diego, but I am imagine that a simple Google map check might resolve the answer. However, he hitched a ride with Jennifer, who was heading to DC in early August. Jennifer and I had a chance to catch up sans baby when I picked Alex up from the hotel room. But we were able to successfully direct her downtown from beyond the beltway. She finally met Lucy. Here are a few more shots from early August.

a few more favorite songs

2009-09-16T11:08:00.002-04:00

Lucy and I are off to NC this morning. The last time I was home, I purchased a couple of forgotten favorites from iTunes.

First, "You Should Hear How She Talks About You" by Melissa Manchester. There was a big buzz about everyone meeting Lucy for the first time at Mom's cookout. So I sang this to Lucy all week before we left for July 4th. You have to love the recording directly off of Solid Gold reruns. I'm sure I was sitting there watching this in the original airing.

And this creative video of a 45 RPM playing Kenny Roger's "Love Will Turn You Around." Thanks to Eastbound and Down creator/North Carolina native, Jody Hill, who reminded me of this song. The show has been renewed for a second season. I guess Danny McBride must have turned down the offer from the Pensacola Pelicans.

Lucia No. 2

2009-09-15T16:05:00.001-04:00

Look at this beautiful packaging on these sweet Lucia Soaps. Of course, I couldn't resist with a beautiful name, as well. I have a tiny bar of guest soap in Lucy's window. The William Morris pattern ties in lovely with the curtains, plant and little porcelain figurine. These may show up on top of Christmas gift packages. AND if MerriMail still existed, they would definitely be in the next package.

One of my goals of October is to finally photograph Lucy's nursery and create a nursery tour.

Hello Month Number Four

2009-09-14T20:54:00.005-04:00

Lucy clocked in at 11 lbs 10 oz, 23 5/8" long this morning at the doctor. She's holding strong around the tenth percentile.

I have decided to delay introducing any foods to her even though she is able to begin eating rice cereal at this age. I am concerned about her tendency towards food allergies at this point. Plus it runs in the family. Two other cousins in her generation of my family have the same issue. I'd rather be safe than sorry. Even though I wouldn't give her milk before a year, I would rather sacrifice now than have to avoid ice cream for the rest of our lives. It's my dream to have a pizza oven in our back yard one day, which will cover with lumps of my favorite food - fresh mozzarella cheese. Oh, cheese... it has been so long.

Before I had my most recent milk supply scare, I kept getting this idea that I should give her breast milk through 18 months. I don't intend to breast feed her that long. But I have a rather large supply of frozen milk without a real plan. I have a couple of months worth in Taylor's basement. When they asked me what my plan was, I really had no idea.

Let's just say that last week was crazy with a capital K. I can't share all of the details here; my dad reads this and, well, the stories are so great I am waiting on a book deal. Let's just say some of the most shocking conversations happened at church, aka The Zoo, according to Leah. Nice to find the humor surrounding me when I really just wanted to cry.

Yes, this is the third time I thought that my milk was vanishing before my eyes. But I managed to keep it together and went to work. I started pumping, increasing the number of feedings from 5-6 to 9 times a day, plus I started popping herbs again, and drinking Guinness. I also had a couple of sessions of acupuncture and bought another batch of Oreos.

Coincidentally I had sworn off Oreos the week before my supply went down. I hadn't really picked up another snack. And by the time I realized that things were looking bad, I wasn't hungry anymore. I thought this was a bad sign. I have been starving since 9:15 am four months ago today, way beyond anything I experienced in my pregnancy. Maybe there is something to this whole "Milk's Favorite Cookie" thing. I wasn't taking any chances. While reading Spin Magazine, there was a reference to Axel Rose that said, surprisingly, he was the sanest crazy person the author had ever met. This quote really resonated with me this week.

When I realized I needed to return to the pump, I took a deep breath and asked Paul, the church business manager, a question I had never hoped to utter. Our conversation went something like this:

"Paul, as a trustee, I hope this is the strangest request you receive today."

"Yes..."

"Can I store my breast milk in the freezer downstairs?" We need to insert Leah's remarks to describe the look on his face here, because I was too embarrassed to watch.

Well, who cares about the rest of the conversation. But he said it was fine as long as I CLEARLY label it. I told him that each of the bags say "My Mommy's Milk" on them. But I would do my best so that there wouldn't be any confusion.

Once I received the okay, I took the bear to The Container Store and bought a couple of containers. The next day, I bagged up my little packets according to date. So it's approximately two weeks per gallon bag. I zipped up the container, set it on top of my grandma cart and started rolling it down H Street.

Talk about a surreal experience. First of all, it made me love my stroller even more, with its adjustable handles and agility. In fact, I want to come up with some collapsible cart accessory for the top of my stroller to use as a grocery cart for many years to come. Back to the story, for every person that gave me an odd stare, I thought do you know what I have in this container with this baby strapped to my chest? I am all hunched over and doing my best to keep it balanced on top of the cart without running into anyone. And I am trying my best not to let her flail around too much. Thank you neck muscles.

Right around the H Street entrance to Gallery Place and the Chinatown Cultural Community Center, a woman was standing dead in the center of the sidewalk. A friend was with her and looking at her with a somewhat stunned reaction. I usually keep moving as fast as I can, but this time I sort of stopped and huffed. She was probably about 5'10" and 350 pounds, wearing a tight yellow shirt. After about fifteen seconds, I figured that she wasn't moving. So I started to move my little cart bit by bit. It was like a ten point turn around her body. When I finally make my way around her and get back on track, I hear her hock a loogie. I thought, surely that is not at me. I did not look back.

I rolled into church with my "liquid gold" and asked for the easiest way to get to the kitchen. That's when I met Polly, my breast milk guardian. She gave me a milk crate to sit it on and I told her my story of how I have to keep ahead of Lucy or else, this will end very quickly. Plus I am concerned about her food allergies, so I have an added incentive to keep at it. She totally understood and was great! She also pointed out that the freezer is set to negative sixteen degrees. She added my milk could last for five years in there. Good. That's what I needed to hear.

So when I return upstairs, I share this story to Eric and Leah, who are meeting in the break room. Eric has seen the woman in yellow. He tells me this and I think how could he possibly have seen this woman before. I don't believe him until a couple of days later when he told me that he frequently sees her standing on the street spitting at people. Once she pulled a drink out of the trash and threw it at someone. Wow. This is my life.

But we are back on the up and up. Our feedings are still a little more frequent than I would like. But I'm hoping that will work itself out over the next couple of weeks. New moms, watch out... things can dry up between 2-4 months overnight. OVERNIGHT. That is not an exaggeration. Now that it happened to me, I remember Pat's warning. I should have marked my calendar.

At Arts on Foot, I showed Leah my books from the Library Book Sale. I picked up a dictionary of American Sign Language. She asked me if I was going to use to sign to Lucy. I told her, no, it was for art projects. I flipped it open to God. She said, "Look, she is talking to you." I thought, good, because I have been praying very hard. This week only confirms that God has a serious sense of humor. It has been very entertaining to say the least.