Last week, we took both of the boys to visit Grandma and Grandpa Day's house in Texas for the first time.  It was a great opportunity to hang out with the grandparents and Uncle Alan and Aunt Megan and their girls.

I have to say, packing to travel with kids was a complete nightmare.  I typically have a tough time getting everything in that I need, let alone other people, not to mention a baby!  I was up till the wee hours of the morning trying to get everything packed before we had to leave the house (at the crack of dawn, of course).

Luckily, travelling with the boys was much easier than packing for them.  They were both great on the plane.

Boys on their first airplane trip

I think the primary attraction and highlight of the week for everyone was the easy access to Grandma and Grandpa's pool, right in the backyard.  Charlie had his first swimming experience and Hayden learned to do a lot of new things in the water.  We also had the cousins over to play in the pool and they had a blast together. It was so fun to watch them play.

We also went out in the boat and visited the Dallas World Aquarium; more posts to follow!

Oh, I'm sorry, son. . . has it been a whole hour and 57 minutes since I last fed you?

What a terrible mom I am.  And I stopped to take a picture of you crying and now it's been an hour, 57 minutes and 30 seconds.  That's downright abusive!

AN HOUR AND 58 MINUTES, HOLY CRAP, YOU MAY AS WELL NOT HAVE EATEN EVER IN YOUR WHOLE LIFE!

Seriously, Charlie is such a good baby.  He almost never cries, but there is one glaring exception to that standard: he bawls like, well, a baby, if he is not fed the instant he decides he's hungry.  During the day, that's about every 2 hours.  I feed him, change him, go to the bathroom and it's basically time to feed him again.   I really can't complain much because he's sleeping through the night with no feedings between about 10pm and 6am and he has to make up during the day what he doesn't eat at night.  It is pretty amusing how mad he gets and how fast he gets that mad, though.  He's happy to do an encore performance if it takes more than negative three seconds to change sides while nursing as well.

For those of you who say you don't believe he ever cries, here's proof positive!  Do NOT mess with this kid's food.

Newborn Photos

Here are the goods; the sweetest pictures of the best baby that was ever born.  Huge thanks go to Ashley Roberts for being so patient and getting some really great shots.  Getting usable pictures of a newborn, let alone really specific poses, is a hard-fought battle and I think we came out pretty victorious in the end.

 I love these sweet black and whites.  The last one cracks me up, "No more pictures, please no more pictures!"

 With his bestest buddy, daddy.

Snuggling up with momma.

We're a happy forever family.

He's reading already, although he did start to get scared a bit around book 4.  We may have to put that one away until he's closer to 6 months old. . .

Look at that face, all happy and smiling like he hasn't pooped through 3 sets of clothes today (5 if you count mommy's).  If any of you were secretly hoping to inherit some hand-me-down's from Charlie, you probably ought to come up with a plan B.  The smart money is investing in Oxy-Clean stock, if you ask me.

In all seriousness, these blowouts are ridiculous.  I think maybe it is because his little legs are so skinny; it never comes out anywhere but out the legs (and yes, I meticulously run my finger under and make sure the little poo catching ruffles are in place) and it isn't like it happens when he sits for a while, it runs out immediately.

The great adventure is trying to figure out how to undress him while he is squirming without getting excrement all over his face.  I have visions of him sticking that cute little tongue out and getting a mouthful of something (ew).  Some days I think maybe it's better to just go paramedic style and cut him out of the clothes, but we'd run out of clothes in a week. At least his poop stains like you wouldn't believe. . . that's something, right? 

This afternoon I nursed my son sitting in the front seat of my car, parked along the street next to the train station as a smaller train of homeless men wandered back and forth down the road.  I couldn't tell if they were trying to catch a sneak peak or a little snack.  I don't think any of them got either, but I've definitely found my favorite breastfeeding vacation spot!

Well, it has happened.  I have come to a point in my life where much of what I want to say would be incredibly humorous to some, mildly annoying to others, and intensely odious to a handful more.  I used to have many things to say all over the board.  I might gain or lose people in any given posting (although I don't tend to wax too dramatic on facebook) here or there, but it all came out in the wash because it was well-rounded.  "Hey, watch this funny video of a cat doing something cute!"  "So today I was in line at the grocery store and this guy cut in line in front of me.  Rude!"  "I have to sing in church on Sunday.  Eek!  Why did I aggree to this?"  "Bow ties are cool."

Then . . . then I had a baby.  In all honesty, it really started during the pregnancy to a lower extent.  The plus side to having a miserable pregnancy and then an adorable sweet baby is that you come up with a lot of pretty funny content.  A lot of people tell me they enjoy my funny pregnancy/baby posts.  We all know, however, that there is likely a faction among my facebook friends who are bored to tears hearing one more stinking thing about the wild process of making (and then trying to keep alive) children. With this knowledge, I have often found myself having an internal conversation that goes like this. "Oh, man, I threw up on this lady's tire, I bet I can get a good one-liner out of that one (Opens facebook)  Well, shoot.  I posted about pregnancy yesterday.  Even though this one is funny, I'll let it go as not to overwhelm my wall with only child related topics."  You, my friends, have missed out on a lot of fantastic content due to these decisions.  Content is not the problem.

I've decided that I have things to say about the whole undignified, painful, lovely and beautiful experience it is to get from that twinkle in the eye to making your family whole and raising it up.  I also decided that I couldn't do it the way I wanted to on FB without alienating certain factions among my friends (and I enjoy some pretty diverse groups among my friends with whom I enjoy discussing non-baby content).  I know how to set up groups and change privacy settings, etc., but messing with that seemed intense.  The platform is the problem.

Long story short, I'm using this blog to post the stuff that would be too single-track for Facebook.  If you like those quips and stories, follow the blog.  If not, let's still be friends and talk about politics and religion and way less annoying things than cute babies.

My son has decided to punctuate this post with some pretty serious spit up down my shoulder and back.  We are still trying to figure out his language, but I'm pretty sure this spit up punctuation can be read as an exclamation mark.  Charlie says "!" about this blog  idea.  Mommy won't argue - mostly because I've got to go change out of spit-up clothes for the 13th time today.