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?