Mom Radar

One month ago today Phillip joined our family. In some crazy, miraculous way somehow, overnight, we became parents.

It is all still fairly surreal, but it is also completely natural at the same time. As we expected it is tough -  among other things we don't get much sleep, it is harder to get places, and our schedule is pretty much dictated by this little tiny person - it is an uphill battle when we try to add anything besides hold, feed, burp or change Phillip to it. Also as expected, we weren't able to understand the extent to which his arrival would change things. I never understood how it was that having a new baby could really make it that difficult to have a shower, eat, get dressed and even just get to the bathroom. Everybody says that newborns sleep a lot. I clearly missed the part that added "as long as you don't put them down." I also always heard about how moms have eyes in the back of their heads, but nobody ever mentioned that babies have mom radar.

(Added 6:30pm - the flip side to the difficulty of him not wanting to put down is that he is super-snuggly)

About an hour ago (~12:30pm), I decided to try putting a sleeping Phillip down on the bed beside me. I knew there was a risk that he would wake up immediately, but figured that I would go for it. After maybe half an hour with only a few little startles, I started to plan my next move, prioritizing the things I would like to do that I can't really manage while holding him. Just like most days, the list looks like this:

• have a shower
• get dressed
• brush teeth
• put in contacts
• find food
• rinse diapers (we're still working on our cloth diaper routine so we sometimes have a backup of diapers that need to be rinsed - thankfully it's just breastmilk poo)

Things specific to today:

• get diapers into the laundry

(If you parents out there have figured out ways of doing these things while holding a newborn, please share)

I decided that I could actually hold off on having a shower, but brushing my teeth and putting in contacts would go a long way to making me feel somewhat human and after that I really needed to get the diapers going. I vaguely planned eating and getting dressed for after that, but didn't count on getting that far. I slowly crept away and got up to collecting the diapers from overnight that needed to be rinsed and moving them into the bathroom before the mom radar went off. It couldn't have been more than 5-7 minutes. Sometimes I'll get 15 minutes, but usually not. The nurses at the hospital did say that he responded to the hearing test faster than any baby they had ever seen - maybe this accounts for some of it. 

It has gotten to the point where I actually start to worry if Phillip hasn't woken up within 15 minutes. Yesterday he slept from the time I put him in the shopping cart at the grocery store until after I got home. I figured that he would wake up shortly after I brought him into the house, but he slept for probably another 20-30 minutes. It was great - I got the groceries put away, the dishes washed, got the mail, went to the bathroom, straightened things up downstairs and a few other things, but it was also disconcerting. After 10-15 min I had to check on him to make sure everything was okay.

Back to today - having gotten to 2.5 things on my list today, I came back to a fussy, hungry baby. He is now asleep again and I'm back to debating whether I can set him down again and get anything else done, though getting food has now jumped to the top of the list and I've added picking up the camera cable so I can load photos onto the computer as a nice bonus item.

In the mean time, I'm going to publish this. I hope to get back and add some pictures of the little rascal, but, like everything else these days, we'll see if I get to it before the mom radar goes off.

Rascally baby!

P.S.  We do love parenthood - we wouldn't trade it for anything. Phillip is kind of amazing...and really, really cute (which you'll see if he lets me get that cable).

Update 6:40pm:

After initially publishing this, I was able to run downstairs and get a sandwich. With food in tow, I returned to a wailing baby. He went back to sleep while I ate my lunch. In another quick break I was able to rinse the diapers and get them downstairs. Picking up an only marginally fussy baby, I took him downstairs and put him in the swing while I started the wash. The swing doesn't go high enough for his tastes, so I sat on the floor and pushed it myself until he fell asleep. I put the swing on auto and went to work getting a chicken into the oven for dinner. He woke up just after I got it in and was part way through the dishes. We've since had a few more rounds of chipping away at the list and, despite the fact that I still haven't showered or gotten dressed today, I'm feeling marginally successful. The chicken is done and smells amazing, the diapers are in the dryer and he did finally let me get that cable.

He's our little boy and we love him and he is really sweet and ridiculously cute and that all goes a really long way.

After wetting through his second outfit of the morning earlier today.

Pittsburgh

On the second weekend in November we had a gathering of Butlers in Pittsburgh.  Andrew and Mindy live just north of the city. Maryanne and Jared and the kids made the long pilgrimage back to the land of their residency from Iowa, and Tom and I drove across the state because - hey, Pittsburgh is a lot closer than Iowa.  It was a whirlwind of a weekend, but really fun.  We were grateful that the weather was gorgeous.

Below are photos of some of the highlights.  Unfortunately, we don't have any pictures from the other highlight of the weekend which, of course, was Saturday evening with Andrew and Mindy.  It was really fun to see them, to see their new house and to meet Elizabeth. The boys were hilarious and as exuberant as ever.  Almost as soon as we walked in the door Parker and Cole wanted to show us their room.  They told us that because of the sloping roofline in their room, they couldn't push the beds up against the walls.  They then proceeded to demonstrate how they could climb over the top of the bed, down to the floor on the opposite side and pop up from underneath.  We love those kids!!  We're so glad we get to see them more frequently now that they are in the same state. We also got to catch up with our good friends Jack and Maya who stayed with us for three months this summer - they really are sweet cats.  We ended up staying much later than we intended but see that as evidence that we were having a great time - we hope Andrew and Mindy see it the same way too.

Here are our adventures with Maryanne and Jared and the kids:

Delicious Indian food for lunch at the playground in Squirrel Hill:

Temporarily resting at the Science Museum:

On Sunday, we enjoyed the children's program at church and then ran into these two:

Levi and Emily (Nelson) Dean (this is such classic Emily that I had to post it).  It was really fun to see them.  We definitely got confused looks from some folks at church who wondered how on earth we knew each other - Brooklyn, of course!

Lunch after church at Schenley Park - the place was packed on such a gorgeous afternoon.

 I love this picture of Eli - too bad he was just about to throw the ball at the stroller.

Thankfully, Isaac didn't wake up.

It's funny how Pittsburgh seems so familiar and homey after visiting Maryanne and Jared there for so many years.  It was nice to see the usual sights and places and, of course get time to visit with lots of family and unexpectedly bump into old friends.  Unfortunately, after lunch, Tom and I had to say goodbye and head home.

My New Friend

I never thought I could be so excited about a new vacuum, but this thing is great.  Some of you have already heard my raves about it.  Here are the details with pictures. Our old vacuum was fantastic on the carpet in our old apartment, but we don't have carpet anymore and it was terrible on our hardwood floors.   I'm not expecting this one to perform on the carpets, but it is a master of the hardwood floors.

Here is what I love about it:

1.  It works - this thing has major suction.  I can see it pulling stuff out from the cracks in the floorboards (yes - our floors are that dirty). The suction is also adjustable with the little dial on the back so it doesn't eat the couch or rug or curtains (for those people who vacuum curtains).

2. It's light - somewhere around 12-13lbs.  I have been appreciating this more and more lately.

3. All of the wheels swivel.  This is an awful feature on an Ikea shopping cart - hello knees feeling like they're getting ripped apart - but something I can get behind in a vacuum. It follows more smoothly and it's easy to kick out of the way.

4. The attachments all hook into to a small collar at the base of the hose so it's really easy to switch between them.  There's no need to open the thing up.  The attachments aren't fancy, but work just fine for us.

5.   Telescoping wand - maybe the best thing ever.  Moving between floors, stairs, furniture and just getting into tight spots is so much easier because of this.  You also don't have to figure out where to put a section of the wand if you do take it out.  Look at all those notches!  That's a lot of flexibility!

6. It has built-in solutions to the problem of what to do with the wand that flops all over the place in storage.   A wedge (not the right word, but it isn't coming to me right now) on the back of the floor foot slides into a slot either on the back of the vacuum for storing it with the canister horizontally or a slot on the underside of the canister for vertical storage or to simply carry it all with one hand.  Also a strong contender for being the best thing ever.

7.  Its entertainment value - at least when you have a dopey cat who is more than willing to face off with it.  All other cats we have had, or that I know of, run and hide at the slightest movement of the vacuum - not Bert, he prepares for battle.

These are things I can get behind.

Wallpaper-Free

After months of scraping and chiseling and spraying inordinate amounts of soapy water onto our walls, they are finally clear.  It finished with a fantastic day with friends and family.  I've been talking about scraping wallpaper, but it really was more than that.  At some point in our home's history, somebody got the grand idea of skim-coating a layer of plaster over the wallpaper and then painting over that.  Things would have moved a lot faster had it not been for that skim-coat.  There were large sections where we were literally chiseling a 1/16-1/8" layer of junk off the walls in order to get down to the plaster.  Here is the transformation of our parlor and dining room from chocolate milkshake brown to bare plaster.

Before:

June 2:

July 27:

September 15:  Making a Mess

Part of the border exposed

Tools of Destruction:  ladder, scraper, spray bottle of soapy water, trash can.  Not pictured: utility knife for scoring skim coat, putty knives

October 12:

Cool Discovery:  Name and Date written on the plaster.  Dated either May or November 9, 1938.    Next to the name and address is the word "pastemonkey"  Perhaps this was the person who did the wallpaper.  

October 27: Work-Day at the House.  Unfortunately, we didn't take quite enough pictures - so we don't have pictures of Kristen and Justin and Tom's parents scraping, scrubbing and sanding away at our walls - but are grateful for their help on a long, productive day.  By the end, we were wallpaper-free - yay!!!