Back from the Beach

NEW ADDITION: Jays Pictures

Our week at the Outer Banks (where Don and I got married last year) is over and we made it home (Ryan slept almost the whole ride!) I am posting a few pictures now. If I get a chance this week I will try to post some stories.

Ryan was not a big fan of the pool. He loves his baths but this just wasn't as warm.. find me a pool that is 97+ degrees and he will be all over that.

After the pool experience, he was substantially happier wrapped in the towel.

Jay and Brian the adventurers of the bunch (This was the one picture I have of them where one of them is not on a computer... I will post the link to Jays pictures once I get it. He will have pictures of them Kayaking etc and maybe a few more of Ryan)

The partiers of the bunch: David and Dan (I had to put a picture of David in here or I would have heard about it- even if he only reads the blog every two weeks but I'm sure one of his friends would have told him)

Standing in the water! Strong little legs.

Ryan got to wear his super cool hat when he was at the beach. I don't think he is a huge fan of it but he let it go.

Dan hadn't figured out exactly how to hold Ryan.. he decided that Ryan was roughly the shape of a football and therefore should be cradled as such.. Ryan was a very good sport about it.
Don really liked this picture, he thinks Ryan looks like a pirate :)

Hanging out with Grandma, one of the highlights of the week for everyone. Mom got a break, grandma got to hangout with her favorite person, and Ryan is a huge fan of grandma (he is a big fan of being spoiled and she is a rock star at spoiling)

Ryan played hard and then he slept hard. Good times.

Leaving it Behind

I just finished law school. No joke, today was my last day of law school and it is done. I am in shock, in all honesty I thought this day would never come. I am heading to the beach tomorrow to celebrate for the week!
Oh glorious freedom.

Headache

You know when you have one of those headaches that last through the day making you both exhausted and irritable? Well imagine how it is while taking care of a baby…. Not good. That was my day yesterday, by the end of it I was just about out of commission. I was thinking that I would have to call my mom this morning and have her come over today to help me recover, and then I come to find out that she is sick, cross that off the list. So instead Don insists we go to bed early…. You know who didn’t insist? Ryan. He in fact insisted that he not be left alone, if we did leave him alone he would wake up 20 minutes later. This is very abnormal behavior for him; I am still not sure what was going on. Don being the wonderful husband that he is finally took the baby downstairs to sleep in the living room with him. I have a feeling I am still going to be a mess tomorrow.
My friend Nicki got sick a week and a half ago and it was really bad (like going to the doctor’s a few times) but she still had to take care of her daughter. She has inspired me to suck it up, if she can do that I can certainly get through a day like I am in for. That and I am leaving for a beach vacation for a week on Saturday. Yay beach!

Out of Touch

I admit I have never been 100% into pop culture; I didn’t have cable until I was like 13 and I wasn’t allowed to listen to the radio until I was 16. I did for a short time during law school get into the gossip web pages about celebrities; I blame Rachel for that one. With all that said I feel like at least for the last 10 years I have been pretty good at picking up trends and knowing who the big bands are out there. I never understood why parents never seemed to really understand trends and what music was good (popular) and what was not. I was so convinced that Don and I would be “cool” parents, we would listen to the same music as our kids and just generally get it.
I already stand corrected. I figured out who the Jonas Brothers were through Good Morning America (already a bad sign for my coolness). Apparently they are the end all be all for tween girls right now (the backstreet boys of this generation). Well I was trying to tell Don something about the Jonas Brothers and his response “who are the Jonas Brothers I have never heard of them” even after I played him the music he wasn’t sure he had ever heard it. I am not trying to say that I know anymore then him, I don’t know the names of any of them, who they are dating and I am not 100% sure which songs are their much less the words to them.
I guess the reason parents are un-cool is that they give up all the time it takes to stay current raising their kids. We also have a different perspective on the importance of such things, that and we don’t need to fit in with our peers on such an extreme level like kids feel they need to do when they see them everyday in school.
So here’s to the beginning of being an out of touch parent!

cloud watching

The interesting thing to remember about very small children is that anytime you do anything new it is often the first time they are experiencing it. When we were driving back from Ohio we stopped somewhere in the Virginia mountains to feed Ryan and when we got out it was chilly outside. Ryan looked shocked! He was born at the beginning of the summer and has only seen super hot weather. Yesterday Ryan was tired of being in the house so we took a blanket outside and watched the clouds from our front yard; generally we take the stroller out so again there was something new. It made me realize how much small stuff I don't notice because I am always trying to get stuff done.
We should all take a little time to notice the things around us and appreciate the small things. I highly recommend turning off the TV and the iphone and take some time out to do some cloud watching.

12 Week pictures

Getting ready for sleep pose

Hanging out with mom (check out the shirt, I am a big fan)

Hanging out under a tree at the park, Ryan LOVES trees

Developing his strong neck

Ohio follow up

Let’s see, it was a long week so I will just post the important stuff.
Don and I eventually figured out how Columbus worked. You know when you get to a new place and you don’t know where to grocery shop or a nice outdoor area? That is how our first day was. Luckily our trusty GPS can find just about anything. We ended up finding a nice park that Ryan loved, we went out to eat at a whole bunch of different places (Greek, Italian, Mexican etc), and we found the nice places to walk. While I am still somewhat anti-Ohio (sorry all you Ohioites) it wasn’t as bad as originally assumed.
Don and I have had an interesting adventure at the hotel. So with a baby you have to pack a lot of stuff when you travel, it took us probably an hour to set everything up once we got into the room. The next day the hotel informed us that we needed to switch rooms so they could do maintenance on the room we were staying in. UGH. Luckily because of Dons persistence we got a free night and late check-out out of the ordeal. It turns out that the pack-n-play (portable baby bed) works great as a wheel borrow to move everything from one place to another.
My class was 8:30-3 with an hour lunch break where I came back to the room to breastfeed. Then when I got home there was reading to be done and Ryan to be played with and food to be found… It was a lot and by the end of the week I have found myself completely and utterly exhausted. If the class had not been as interesting as it was I would have given up long ago and would have no notes to show for all that time I was sitting in the room.
We are heading back to North Carolina tomorrow. It will be a different sort of trip because we can’t leave until after my class which gets out around 3:30 which means we won’t get home until like 1 or 2am. I have already called my mom and set up some time for her to be with Ryan on Saturday so that Don and I can have some recovery sleep time.
Over-all the trip has gone well, I will be happy when we are back home and back into our rhythm of life.
I will post a few pictures when we get back, I brought the camera but not the computer cord.

Wingman

You know how men sometimes borrow their friends dogs in order to meet women at parks? Well they could just as easily borrow a baby for the afternoon. While I was in class this last week Don had Ryan. He would put him in the Baby Bjorn and walk me to school, then he would take Ryan out to go pick up lunch. When I would get home from class he would regale me with stories about women stopping him on the street to see Ryan and ask him questions about my little man. Ryan developed what I like to call the flirt smile, he sort of looks down like he is being bashful as he gives a big smile at the women cooing at him. In short Don is not allowed out of the house with Ryan any more (Just kidding). I understand where these women are coming from, my men are a pretty cute pair.

Don was approached by one man who asked if he was the man who had given birth to the baby... he said Don looked like him because he had facial hair. Wow, apparently the man hadnt looked beyond the facial hair because he would have noticed that the man who gave birth was Asian! Oh the things that happen when you walk around with a baby!

O-hi-o

We made it to Ohio! The trip was easier then I expected (I had very low expectations- 8 hours of drive time with a baby which of course turned out to be about 10 hours of travel time). Ryan handled it a lot better then I thought he might. Even when he was awake he was for the most part in a good mood. He has started to discover his hands so he played with a little blue bee stuffed animal and this kept him occupied for a very long time.
We only had one tense moment where Ryan had a dirty diaper and was hungry. The issue was that we were in nowhere West Virginia and there was no where to pull over, literally there were no exits. Ryan couldn’t breathe he was screaming so loud, he was freaking out so I was freaking out and poor Don couldn’t do anything to help. Ryan slept for 9 ½ hours in a row the night we got in and has been in a good mood ever since.
It is interesting being in a new city with a baby. We don’t know where to eat, or how to get around and where it is safe to walk etc. I have moved around and traveled a lot in my life but it was nothing like it is with a baby. With Ryan we have a time limit for everything; he gets frustrated if things take us too long to do.
The class itself is actually really good. I went into law school thinking that I would like to go into adoption law and that is the entire focus of this course. The teacher is great and reminds me a lot of one of my friends in Chicago. We have these clickers that remind me of Americas Funniest Home Videos where the teacher polls the class and you have to pick A, B, C or D and then a chart pops up on the board with how the class voted… At least it is interesting. The best part of it is, at the end of next week I will be DONE WITH LAW SCHOOL. That’s right, no more classes! I will post more about the trip when we get back.

Baby Clothes

Ryan has grown out of his 0-3 month clothes… time goes by fast. I was trying to keep him in the 0-3 as long as possible. Last night Don commented on Ryan’s cleavage… apparently the neckline was getting a little too low…

The good news is we get to break out the next batch of clothes including the one below!

Pictures of Ryan at 10 weeks

Ryan with his new friend Fiona who is ONE week old!

Ryan and Dad

Practicing the head lift, he has gotten very good at it this week

Ryan and mom are ready to head outside, we know we look cool!

Updates

A Few Quick Updates:

- Ryan Has continued to sleep well at night (usually around 7 hours at a time) last night he slept for 9!
- I have lost 6 pounds since saying I would start losing the weight that wouldn’t come off on its own after the pregnancy
- Ryan is now 10 ½ weeks old and weighs right around 12 pounds. According to the doctor he is still below average weight (but not enough to worry, about 35%) and above average length (75th percentile)
- Ryan Don and I are heading off to Ohio for a week so that I can take a law class; we are driving which will be interesting. I’ll let you know when I get back how it goes.

Follow up on Movies

I have a follow up to my previous blog entry. This one has to do with the rating of movies. Now I will begin by aknowledging that this will sound very parental of me, but hey I am allowed right?
Okay the Dark Knight was rated PG-13, what is that all about? It seems that there should be something that they look at besides sex, blood and swearing when deciding to give a movie a rating of R. Just because a movie pans away right as there would be lots of blood but they show everything including torture leading up to it does not mean that it is any less gruesome. My imagination is pretty good and when you leave me to think about what happened next I get a pretty clear picture.
There was a child sitting in front of me at the Dark Knight, the child required a booster seat that’s how young she was, probably 6? I know a lot of you have seen this movie (either that or everyone else in the country has seen it at least 3 times to make up for you based on the numbers), would you allow your child to see this movie? My brother and I were talking about it before the movie and he said he would let an 8 year old see the movie, after the movie was over he amended it to older (I suggested 35). Based on the PG 13 rating I would assume a lot of parents would allow their children to see it, how could they know it would be as “intense” as it is?
Here is the screwy part at least in my head, and the part that leaves parents with no idea how scaring a movie is going to be. Clueless was rated PG-13, do you really think that Clueless and Dark Knight should be rated the same? Little Miss Sunshine was rated R… Really? Which would you rather your child see?
Well I have decided Ryan isn’t allowed to see anything but Pixar until he moves out of the house… okay maybe that was a little bit of an exaggeration, but how am I to know what is appropriate for him to see without seeing the movie first myself?
Okay enough of a rant…

Going to the Movies

I have learned something valuable about time and time management from Ryan. With a child you have very little “me” time. Sure I can have the occasional “I’m going up stairs to take a shower I will be back in a few minutes” and the even more rare “I’m going out to dinner with my brother” but these times are often few and far between.
So back to the point: I have learned that when I do get this time I need to make sure I REALLY enjoy what I am doing. No one wants to waste the few hours a week they have alone on something they don’t enjoy doing; what a waste. I am going to get a lot of criticism for this statement BUT I wish I hadn’t spent my free time seeing the movie Dark Knight. I know I am in the minority (Don LOVED it) Okay let me explain.

I went to IMAX with my brother and Don to watch the movie today. It was very well written and the acting was superb. Here were the issues: I was freaked out the whole time, I don’t like creepy characters, I am not a huge fan of violence in movies, IMAX is really loud and big (so the creepy violence was super loud and larger then life), and finally the moral of the story was: everyone is evil if pushed far enough.
I admit I watch movies for a different reason then most people do. I watch movies to feel good, I know lame right? I usually don’t watch them for their cinematography or anything like that... I like to walk out of a movie feeling good. I can see the eye roll from some of you all the way from here, but this is what I like and I am sticking to it. My favorite movies are Enchanted and Finding Nemo if that explains anything… I should have gone to Mamma Mia or Sex and The City.