Friday, February 8th, 2008 - On the move

We're in trouble now. Charlie's on the move.

Sunday, February 3rd, 2008 - Bathtime

Charlie takes his splashing very seriously.

Just a few hours ago, Charlie's buddy Bertram came over to hang out. Good time had by all, but especially by the two young boys.

And a video. Charlie still isn't crawling, but he sure can stretch if he wants something badly enough.

Sunday, January 27th, 2008

Who needs developmental milestones?

Early on in Charlie's life, I made myself a promise. In all the books on raising children, and on all the websites, everyone likes to talk about developmental milestones. When your baby should first crawl, walk, cut teeth, talk, etc. I realized quickly that one could get obsessed with these milestones, even though none of them had anything to do with the happiness of your baby. So I promised myself that I wouldn't care about milestones, I would just care about Charlie being the happiest baby he could be.

Now, eight months and change into Charlie's life, it's all working out. Charlie is the happiest baby I could have imagined and he is "behind" on virtually every milestone. He doesn't crawl yet, he has no teeth yet, he doesn't talk (or even babble) and he still looks pretty much bald (although he actually does have some light blond hair).

And we couldn't care less. Charlie is Happy! So happy. His happiness is infectious. Walking around with him is like carrying a happy bomb. Everyone smiles.

Charlie has all kinds of smiles, but our current favorite is this giant, mouth-wide-open gleeful smile we have dubbed "muppet face".

Seriously, what more could you ever want from a baby than that?

Of course, in most other aspects of our life, we're giant stressballs. For the first 3-4 months of Charlie's life all the focus was on him, sleeping, nursing, and just surviving as a family. Now that being with and taking care of Charlie is so much easier and SO MUCH fun, the other parts of our lives have started to bother us again. Half our household is currently sick (Jessica and our nanny, Annis), but thankfully Charlie (and daddy) have are so far still healthy (a collective knock-on-wood, please).

And then there's the housing situation. We live in a one-bedroom apartment, so a move to something larger is in our not-too-distant future. We found a place across the street and put in an offer, which was accepted, but the amount of sturm and drang we're experiencing about the prospect of moving, of taking out a much bigger mortgage, of trying to sell our own apartment in the midst of a nationwide real-estate collapse, of making it through a sale, a buy, renovations and a move with our sanity intact...well, it's a lot of strurm and drang.

Jessica and I seem to take turns having panic attacks (which is nice, it will be really hard when we both have one at the same time). The one who isn't having the panic attack always says the same thing. And it's really true. No matter what happens, at the end of it all the three of us will be together. We'll love each other, and we'll have each other. So ultimately, what is there to be worried about? It's just growing pains.

Monday, January 22nd, 2008 - Sleeping through the night

On the eve of his 8-month birthday (1-18-08), Charlie slept through the night for the first time. We put him down to bed at 6:30, and next heard from him at 5:45 the next morning. Miracle of miracles. Since then, he's slept through the night three out of five nights. We'll take it.

He's getting a little chubby (make that a lot chubby) so we've put him on a weight training program. Here he is working out with a 4-lb dumbbell.