Charlotte with her new robot blanket

Thanks Jen & Steve!

Superchunk

I present, Superchunk, our new affectionate nickname for Charlotte.  She outgrew all her preemie size clothes a long time ago, and her newborn sizes a couple weeks ago.  Now she is starting to outgrow her 0-3 months size clothes in width.  Some of her snap-up sleepers are bursting at the seems.  She also has what my cousin Jamie refers to as "arm sleeves" when a baby's arm fat is such that there is a roll at the wrist so it looks as though the baby is wearing a shirt of baby fat.  It looks good on her.

My Crazy Singing Drives Her Happy

Emily got some footage of Charlotte smiling earlier today during my first performance of "She Drives Me Crazy."  Hopefully the pictures will be post-worthy.

In the meantime, tonight, after getting Charlotte fed and happy, Emily started getting ready to go out with friends. Charlotte and I then settled in together for a father-daughter night.  I broke into my awesome "She Drives Me Crazy" falsetto, and look at the results!

I Drive Em Crazy*

*Conversation with Emily #812

I got ten, maybe 11, smiles out of Charlotte in a five minute span today.  It was pretty awesome.  Well awesome for me.  After telling Emily what was going on, she said, "Is that really the only way you can get her to smile?  I think she's getting sick of it."

What Emily really meant to say is that she herself was getting sick of my smile elicitation method, not Chatlotte.  My secret?  To sing the chorus to this song in falsetto, over and over.

It's Always Smiles Time in Here!

Well, not always.  Charlotte has been smiling randomly and I swear that today she intentionally smiled at me TWICE.  Charlotte was looking me in the eyes and I smiled at her and she smiled so I did it again and she did too.  Ask my mom, she was here and witnessed it.  Pretty freaking awesome.  We'll get pictures as soon as possible.

My Obligatory Storm of the Century Post

Over the weekend we experienced the Storm of the Century! Seventeen inches was the official total in Minneapolis, which is a lot.  It looks like even more after it's been shoveled and plowed into huge piles.  Of course, I love it.  When I was a kid, waking up to a whole lotta snow was such a thrill because there was always the possibility of a snow day.  Even though I don't get snow days anymore, I still feel like a kid when it snows a lot.  Mike, on the other hand, gets snow days now that he works in a school.  I think that now that he can experience the anticipation of snow days he will appreciate snow and cold more, but that is another story.

Our street after it has been plowed.  Love all the clean snow.

Our garage has a cool snow drift on top of it.

Mike shovels our snow, which took a long, long time this weekend.  He would like a snowblower to clear the snow from now on.  I don't think we need a snowblower, but I love the way snowblowers leave these clean slices in the snow.  

Nice square corners.

Fresh, untrodden snow is always pretty.  It's fun to go out after a big snowfall and check things out.  Today was the first day I actually got out to see the snow.  Mike was saying how different it is now that we have Charlotte.  Before Charlotte, we might have had a little adventure in the snow and walked to the wine bar, or down to the river with Poncho.  This year we might not have any fun in the snow together, but in a couple years we get to play in the snow with Charlotte.

Rabbit tracks at the park.

Cool snow drifting around a tree.

Funny Girl

Charlotte took a nap right after a bath today and woke up with this puffy bedhead.

Then later today, she unintentionally sucked her thumb. We thought it was funny.

Charlotte and Poncho

O Christmas Tree

Mike giving Charlotte a closer look at all the shiny objects.   She was underwhelmed.

Mike and I always give each other ornaments.  Here he is showing Charlotte one of my favorites.

Toonces

The cat who could drive.... or the cat who liked to sleep in a car seat.

Outtakes

I am working on putting together a birth announcement for Charlotte so I staged my own little photo shoot yesterday.  Here are some of the photos that did not make the cut:

my personal favorite

fist bump

yawn

look at those rolls!

2 Months

Today was Charlotte's 2 month appointment with the pediatrician.  She is 22 inches and 9 pounds 9 ounces.  You could probably watch her grow right now.  Preemies can grow even faster than term babies, called "catch-up growth", and land on their regular growth chart by 1 or 2 years old.  Charlotte's doctor thinks she will catch-up to her peers by 9 months or so.  When she was born, she was below the 5th percentile for weight and below the 20th percentile for height.  Now, she has jumped to the 25th percentile for weight and 40th percentile for height.  As my mom would say, she is really thriving!

Robot Slumber Party

Make fun of Emily and me all you want, but we do have a robot collection.  Here are two of the robots whose arms I could manipulate so that they are imitating a sleeping Charlotte.

More importantly, the close observer will note that Charlotte has put on a goodly amount of weight and looks like a regular old newborn and not a premie.  She has her next pediatrician's appointment tomorrow and the professional prognosticators out west have the over/under for her weight at 9 pounds 2 ounces.  I'll put my money on her being over.

Less importantly, take note that Charlotte's pants match her shirt.  Emily is always more than mildly surprised when I dress her in matching clothes.  I do take time to make sure my own clothes match in the morning before I go to work.  But her present level of surprise that I am NOT dressing Charlotte in an orange top with green stripes and pink plaid pants leads me to one of two possible conclusions.  Either I am doing a miserable job of dressing myself for work (oftentimes I do ask Emily if my slacks and shirt go with my sweater), or Emily  secretly wants me to be one of those clueless dads who dresses his kid in comical combinations because stuff like matching clothes just doesn't matter.

Well I don't think Emily will be too disappointed.  Even though I can match shirts and pants for newborns, I am pretty sure there will be millions of other parenthood traps where I will be comically clueless.

Merry Merry

Our $20 free range organic Christmas tree from Mother Earth Gardens.  If you want to see the harvesting of free range organic Christmas trees in Northern Minnesota, here is a cute video complete with Vince Gauraldi music.

Drumroll Please!

 As if it was so hard.  Once I had all the baby pictures lined up, they didn't exactly look like clones of each other.

Mike

Emily

Charlotte

Charlotte sporting the outfit that I wore home from the hospital when I was born.

Winter Storm Warning

Charlotte is wearing an extra layer for the winter weather.

Guess Who?

 

When Charlotte was born, the doctor said, "she has dad's eyes and mom's face shape."  We thought Charlotte looked a lot Mike, especially the eyes and mouth.  My mom kept insisting she looked like me, but  we figured she was not being objective.  Then she brought over some of my baby pictures and some of them could have been pictures of Charlotte.  So, I wanted to line up baby pictures of me, Mike, and Charlotte.  For fun, I dressed Charlotte in the outfit that I wore home from the hospital so that everyone is wearing clothes from the 70's.  Can you tell who's who?

Stats

Charlotte saw the pediatrician yesterday.  She is 8 pounds, 6 ounces and 20 3/4 inches already!  While I was on bedrest in the hospital, they kept saying that every day in the womb is worth two in the NICU.  That makes me wonder if she would have grown even bigger if she was born full term, which is this week.

Just Looking Around

Today

Is Charlotte's due date and also the day Mike went back to work.

Bubbe and Charlotte

Bubbe going in for a kiss.

Poopsmith

Tomorrow I go back to work after taking two weeks off.  I am not looking forward to pile of paperwork that awaits me, but I do miss many of my co-workers and (almost) all the students I work with.  Of course I am pretty sure I will miss Charlotte, Emily, and late morning naps even more.

And so while I go back to Farnsworth to resume my old job, I am pretty sure there is a job here that will always be waiting for me at night.  I realized yesterday, as I was washing Charlotte's cloth diapers, I am responsible for everyone's poop in the household except Emily's.  I tend to the cat boxes, walk the dog, and now am Charlotte's poopsmith.

By the way, the Poopsmith is a character from Homestarrunner.

Mike Nawrocki: Speech Language Pathologist by day, Poopsmith by night.

Meeting of the Minds

Nacho presently weighs three time as much as Charlotte.  Emily was worried that he would smother her.  But the gentle giant really only smothers her with curiosity.   He always keeps a respectful distance and looks to me first before approaching her.  And if he does get too close for comfort, Pancho comes rushing in to keep Nacho atbay.

Auntie

Jess holds her niece

I've been telling my sister for years how much fun it is to be an auntie and now she gets to see for herself.  Charlotte is a very lucky little girl.

Conversation with Emily #891233

Today while feeding Charlotte, she kept on eating and eating and eating.  I figured she'd be done so I'd put her down, but then she'd keep fussing.  Finally after giving her yet another of pumped milk, she fell asleep three swallows into the bottle.

 So I said "Charlotte it looks like your eyes are bigger than your stomach."

To which Emily responded, "Actually, they probably are."

And she is right.  Newborn's bellies are the size of a marble.  Crazy.  Since Charlotte's full-term due date is still a a week away, her eyes are indeed bigger than her stomach.

So in the literal sense I was correct.  But in the figurative sense, I couldn't have been more wrong.  After sleeping for about another minute, Charlotte perked up and drank/ate another 30 mL of milk out of the bottle.  You go girl.

Sisters

One of the best things about being pregnant was that I got to share the whole thing with my sister.  She was pregnant with twins and our due dates were 3 weeks apart.  When we both found out we were having girls, I was so excited!  We grew up with a close clan of female cousins, and I always imagined the same for my own kids.  Since she had two kids already, I could ask her all my stupid pregnancy questions and we could share protein shake recipes and pregnancy complaints. 

Of course, we also had some fun photos together.

Me 24 weeks, Jess 27 weeks

Me 29 weeks, Jess 32 weeks

At first, my mom was worried we would have our babies on the same day at different hospitals.  That seemed completely ridiculous!  She was having twins and would probably have them early so the births would be over a month apart.  I would be able to help her out with her newborns weeks before I had my baby.  Then, I was on bedrest and my sister, pregnant with twins, was coming over to make me lunch.  Nobody expected her to make to full term with twins and that I would deliver >6 weeks early .  We gave birth a mere 3 days apart!  Now we can barely find time to talk on the phone with eachother, but once these baby girls are a little older they are going to have so much fun growing up together and making trouble.  Here are their first fun photos together.

Bailey, Charlotte, and Netta.

Charlotte's First Walk*

*and Emily's first walk since early August.

Now that we all live under one roof, I am on paternity leave, and we found the cord to upload our photos from the digital camera, I have the time and means to get caught up with the blog.  As a result, I just cranked out five posts to get caught up with news from the last week.  Also, Emily posted a picture this morning.  So that's six posts on one day.  Sorry for the onslaught of posts.  I guess when blogging, I pace myself the same way Charlotte does when feeding off the bottle.  Glug glug glug glug glug glug.  Post post post...

We made it the river and back.  Good for a one mile round trip.  Charlotte stayed warm.  Emily stayed energetic.  And Pancho stayed patient.  Right after this picture, we bumped into one of Emily's co-worker, who is a pediatrician.  He had no concerns.

Three of my favorite living beings (Pancho, Charlotte, and Emily--not that guy on a bike although I'm sure he's good people too).   Doesn't Emily look great?  In a week winter will make it's debut so we are going to get out with Charlotte as much as we can this week.

Sleeping Beauties

I love how Charlotte ALWAYS sleeps with her arms in a "stick 'em up!" position.  I also love that Emily is no longer ALWAYS wearing this pink hoodie.  Emily said on Tuesday when Charlotte was still in the NICU, "I have to wear this hoodie everyday, otherwise Charlotte won't know who I am."

A Sort of Homecoming

First nap at home.  The close viewer will note the mess on the floor suggesting we weren't quite done getting Charlotte's room in order.  But I am just happy to see Charlotte free of tubes and leads.

Check out the great paint job Emily's cousins and aunts did, and the ceiling painted by Zach.

Charlotte's Last Day in the NICU

The day Charlotte went home was also the day they moved the NICU from the 2nd floor to the 4th floor.  Here are some pictures of her new digs and her last hour before we brought her home.

Emily reviewing Charlotte's discharge report.

Our favorite nurse Dee Dee made this sign.  But we never got a picture of her, just the sign she made.  Dee Dee was the nurse who gave the specific directions to me on how to pace Charlotte's feeding.  It was those directions that helped Charlotte turn the corner with her feedings and finally get to go home with us.

Hurry up and finish that bottle Charlotte so we can go home!

One final NICU family portrait.

Locked and loaded and ready to go home.  Our friend Julie Cannon knitted this hat for Charlotte.  Those aren't her real ears.