Road Trip!

We have had an exciting and really busy last few weeks so I haven't updated the blog in awhile! Two weeks ago we went to Des Moines (our first road trip) for my friend Megan's bridal shower and bachelorette party. Charlie was awesome in the car and we didn't have to stop at all on the way there. I felt bad because as soon as we got him out of his carseat at my friend Kris' house, he went into full meltdown because he was ready to eat! I don't blame him though!

My high school girlfriends - Erin, Megan and Kris

My friend Erin was due 6 weeks before me and because of Charlie's early arrival, our boys are only 2 weeks apart. Erin lives in Kansas City so this was the first time we got to meet her sweet little Declan! He is a big boy but Charlie seemed to hold his own. The 3 husbands got to hang out all day in the "mancave" in Kris' basement, ate steaks and shower leftovers, watched basketball playoffs, and hungout all day with the babies (and Kris' 2 year old daughter Annie). Brian thought it was great and I'm sure he was thinking how easy it was to take care of Charlie! I couldn't help wishing that Charlie would be a little fussy so Brian wouldn't get off too easy :) It's not quite the same as being at home with the dogs and a bunch of housestuff that you feel like you should be doing! But I'm glad they had a bonding day doing "guy stuff."

After the shower we moved onto the bachelorette party. It felt a lot different than other bachelorette parties. Erin, Kris, and I seemed to have graduated to the "mom" table at the bars!! When I was getting ready to go I mentally had to go through what I needed. Wallet - check. Money - check. Purse - check. Breastpump - check. Yep, let me tell you what an experience it is trying to find somewhere in a bar to pump - not going to happen! And there was NO WAY I was going to pump on the party bus. I'm 95% sure that the creapy bus driver had hidden cameras rigged in that thing and I would end up on youtube!

Because this is a family friendly blog I will only post one picture from the bachelorette party.

All of a sudden last week Charlie started smiling A LOT. It is so much fun and makes me laugh everytime he gives his big grin. He hasn't started laughing but I know that's right around the corner and I can't wait.

Also in his first pair of Gap jeans - and maybe his last! How do they sleep at night charging those prices for BABY CLOTHES? Charlie's lucky I don't make him wear those jeans everyday to get our money's worth!

Sometimes his smile curves a little into a drunken sailor smile but I love it just as much!

This look is saying "Mom - these pants are way too tight. Please take them off." I went to Babies R Us for a few things early last week and couldn't resist this adorable outfit. I'm not sure why I bought the 3 month outfit instead of a bigger size but I kind of still think of Charlie as a newborn. It was 75 at my parents' house last week so it was the perfect weather for this outfit. Sometime in the afternoon I was changing Charlie and noticed that there was an ident on his belly from the waistband of the shorts! Poor kid - he is pretty much already outgrown these! I left them on him for a little longer (the price for fashion!) but eventually took pity on the poor kid and changed him into sweatpants!

Last Wed-Sunday Charlie and I took our first road trip without Brian to stay at my parents' house. Again, he did awesome in the car. We made it both ways without having to stop which is amazing. About 10 minutes from home he started to fuss so I reached in the back and popped his pacifier in and we made it home! Brian is glad he got all the "mantime" in the weekend before because we listened to the Glee soundtrack the entire way there and back. We also watched the new Madonna episode of Glee no less than 4 times on hulu.com while we were at my parents' house. I think I even caught Charlie vogueing a few times!

My mom has been looking forward to this since before I had Charlie. She planned a very cute shower to introduce Charlie to her friends and family. Charlie got some adorable new clothes (which he was happy about so he could ditch the tight pants!)

Here is Charlie with my aunt Rita - probably making some inappropriate comment (Rita, not Charlie!) before I took the picture!

With my cousin Norma. At the shower everyone had to introduce themselves and Norma told how we both came into the family at the same time. She married my cousin Jeff the same year that I was born and she said at the first family gathering we just sat in the corner holding onto eachother and we've had a bond ever since. I blame these hormones but I got a little teary eyed :)

Hanging out on our last night in So Dak with Grandma.

I bought a travel swing to keep at my parents' house and Charlie loved it and it was a lifesaver during meals and when my mom and I played cards. Funny how this bib was the only one she could find all week when I needed one!

We've continued our weekly playdates with Colin, Eloise, and Gwen. It's so fun to get together and talk to the girls and complain about our husbands. I mean discuss parenting topics :) Aside from Oprah, Ellen, Reg/Kelly, Dr Phil, and Rachel, I will miss our playdates the most when I go back to work and will be jealous when they get together without me! Maybe I can teleconference in!

Colin was born 4 weeks after Charlie but we're pretty sure he weighs more than Charlie already!!

Gwen was getting ready to go and we didn't want to disturb her so we just put the carseat on the couch with the other kiddos! I think Eloise is beating up on Charlie because she likes him. Just like in elementary school - she's just advanced for her age.

Jess kept telling Ellie "gentle gentle" so then she grabbed Charlie's hand like "What mom, I was just holding his hand." She looks so innocent :)

I haven't put very many dog pictures on lately but I've taken some cute ones. The girls still beg for treats - they just work around Charlie now. Here they are waiting for some ice cream.

I'm hoping this video works - it's my first attempt and if it works then I will upload more at the next post! I love how Rachel Ray is playing in the background. I'll have to remember to mute next time! He started out "talking" and then was getting upset towards the end. Proabably wanting me to put the camera down and play with him!

2 months!

Guess who turned 2 months yesterday????


This guy!





Yep, Charlie turned 2 months and had his first round of shots at the doctor's office. I asked Brian to come to the appointment for moral support - for me, not Charlie. Charlie was great - he screamed right after the nurse was done and 20 seconds later he promptly fell asleep.




First..the stats. At 2 months, Charlie weighs 11 lbs 13 oz (50th percentile) and is 23 1/3 inches long (50-75 percentile). The doctor said she wouldn't even consider him a "preemie" when looking at his stats.


Charlie has been working hard on strengthening his neck muscles. He likes the bumbo chair and does pretty good in it for awhile.






And then he starts to get a little tired....




We've had a very busy 2 months and I can't believe I go back to work in a little over 3 weeks. I don't know where the time went. I have to say that in the middle of the night when I'm feeding Charlie at around 3 AM, I come up with the most hilarious (in my sleep deprived mind) blog posts. But I never write any down and then I've forgotten everything in the morning. But I really wanted to get all of these fun pictures posted!


His first smile that we caught on camera. He is not very accomodating when I get the camera out but I caught him with my phone!





Last week Brian's sister and her family came from New York. It was their first time seeing Charlie. Because Molly and Ryan have 6 kids (yes 6!), they don't get back to MN very often so it's a treat when we can spend time with them and our nephews and niece. We did a lot of fun stuff while they were in town - went to the MOA, Science Museum, celebrated Grandma Pat's birthday, and Easter!

Cousins!



The Science Museum lets the kids do experiments and it's so darn cute. My nephews Austin and Garrett were doing a DNA swab of their cheeks!



My friend Sara and her girls came to visit us when they were here from Des Moines. Sara used to live in Minneapolis before we were both married and the first summer I lived up here we went to the pool at her apartment every Saturday and Sunday. Yes, I know how bad that is for my skin but we had such a good time that summer. And now we're both married with kids - our swimming pool days of laying out and reading magazines are over!


Reese and Charlie



Sydney and Charlie. I realized I pulled up Charlie's pants a little too high - he looks like an old man with his pastel pants!! Poor kid.


Last Friday Charlie and I went downtown to visit Brian at work. Brian has never had pictures of me at his desk or invited me up to see his cubicle or meet his co-workers during my MANY lunches downtown but of course Charlie was invited up to meet people and thankfully Brian let me tag along :)


Charlie learning about pallets and trailers and produce, oh my!




Brian's floor has an awesome view of the new Target field so I had to take a picture. Brian took our newphew Chris to the exhibition game and then he was able to go to the home opener yesterday. Can't wait until Charlie and I can go too!

A post from a guest writer...

We have had a lot of excitement this past week. The first time in the bumbo, cousins from NY visiting, and Easter!! I will post and upload all the pictures later this week but for now, I'll leave you with a few Easter faves and Brian's first (and possibly last) post...Enjoy!

He is obviously not impressed!

I love how worried he looks. He's thinking, "Mom - are you seriously thinking that this is cute?"


After all the family and cousins left. I have a similar picture of Brian in a meat coma from too much ham.

And now to Brian's post...

Surly – you can’t be serious"

So as I sit and read the blog my wife won’t let me write on, I am thinking to myself, ‘how am I going to document all of the great pieces of advice that I want to give to my son but he is too young to remember and I will forget by the time he is old enough to not listen to me?’ And then it donned on me – Add a column to Robyn’s blog that I can put advice down on, along with important talk about what movies to watch, beers to drink, and the sweet torque of a perfectly thrown ball (curve, foot-, basket-, doesn’t matter). You know - the important stuff.

So in lieu of any formal sponsorship, and under threat of copyright infringement by ESPN’s Bill Simmons’ pack of wild lawyers, I cannot call this section of advice I give to my son the "Miller Lite Great Call of the Month." Instead I will call this the "Surly – You Can’t Be Serious" advice section of Robyn’s Blog, where I pass advice on to my now 7-week old son while giving free publicity (to all 8 family members who read this) to one of my favorite beers, Surly(www.surlybrewing.com). So now, an open letter to Charlie:

Charlie –

As we begin this great journey called parenting I want to take this time to tell you what an awesome kid you have been over the first 6 weeks of your life. As you snuggled in my arms this morning while we were watching Die Hard (one of the best Christmas movies ever) I was hoping a tradition was being born: hanging out on the couch, eating a bowl of cereal while Mom is sleeping, and watching a really great 80’s action movie. Of course, once you are two I won’t be able to watch those movies with you until you are 14 or so, but for now it is great.

I would also like to thank you for being born just before the NCAA basketball tournament. Now I can use you as my excuse for not wanting to go anywhere, when instead I just want to hang out in front of the 3 TV’s I have set up so I can watch as many games as possible. I can already sense a Father-Son trip to Las Vegas when you are old enough (if it is still the place it is today in 21 years).

This brings me to this Month’s "Surly You Can’t Be Serious’ moment: a word of warning about the NCAA basketball pool. Don’t agree to a bet with your wife thinking that there is no way that you are going to lose. In the NCAA tourney – anything is possible. It just takes a couple teams to get hot and before you know it EVERY ONE of your Final Four picks have lost and the next thing you know you are taking your wife to the casino for an evening of hot Nickel-Slot action. At least they have cheap buffet’s. (I’ll explain those to you when you get older). For now I will leave you with 5 great 80’s Action Movies that you can count on seeing when you’re old enough:

- Die Hard

- Lethal Weapon

- Rocky

- Predator

- Top Gun

Now I just have to convince your Mom to put this in the blog.

Love, Dad

Make New Friends But Keep The Old

One is silver and the other's gold. That was one of our girlscout songs. We sang it in a round - now that I look at the words, it doesn't make much sense. Your friends are silver and gold? Guess it didn't have to make sense when we were 1o. I've been thinking a lot about girlscouts lately because it's girlscout cookie season. I pretty much single handedly kept the girlscouts in business this year. Brian came upstairs a few weeks ago and asked me what the hell all the checks for Troop 19484, Troop 32043, Troop 24845, etc were for. I reminded him that the ordering sheets came out when I was 34 weeks pregnant and could not be held responsible for my actions. 25 boxes later.... and no, I'm not joking. I also only order 3 kinds - thin mints, samoas, and trefoils. I didn't even order one box of tagalongs for Brian. Poor guy. Good thing they freeze well!


This is Charlie's wubba nub which is a pacifier attached to a little puppy. He likes to hang onto the puppy - so cute.


I also have been thinking of the girlscouts because for some reason when I want to sing to Charlie, I can only think of girlscout songs and sorority songs. Not a single lullabye. Poor guy. But he really seems to like whatever comes out at 3 o'clock in the morning. His favorite starts out "Hoo rah hoo rah hoo rocks the house, we do!" Catchy, right? :) We think he is on the verge of smiling a true smile at us but we can never get it with the camera. Hopefully in the next few weeks.



Charlie turned 6 weeks old last Friday. I cannot believe 6 weeks have already come and gone and my maternity leave is 1/2 over! We are amazed at how Charlie is growing and changing. I swear, he goes down for a nap and wakes up a pound heavier. Although that pound could possibly be the huge blowout in his pants. He can track us with his eyes and looks for you when he hears your voice. I love when Brian comes home and says hello as he walks in the door. Charlie looks over in the direction of his voice and gets this funny face like "Thank god! Save me from this woman and her reality TV shows." He's also losing his hair pretty quickly. Like someone else we know who shall remain nameless but it rhymes with "cryin".

We've also been making lots of new friends lately! The group of 4 of us that were all pregnant at the same time have finally had our babies!! Colin Krieg was born on 3/15 and Gwen Endorf was born 3/21 and we've already had fun getting together as moms and dads! Our nights sure have changed. We used to meet up around 8 or 9 and now we get together at 5 and are usually home by 9 PM. We used to pack coolers of beer and jello shots and now we're packing diapers and breastmilk. Thank goodness we're going through all of this together!

This is Eloise and Charlie on their first date. My friends laugh because Charlie seems to always be asleep. We're extremely lucky that he continues to be a very mellow baby! He slept right through his first date although Ellie tried to put the moves on him - check out that arm! :)







Colin joined the fun in his super cute Michael Jackson onesie and Charlie thought he might impress Eloise if he showed his super strong legs so we put him just in a onesie.



Here is Colin moving in on Eloise.


Picture of the proud dads when we first went to meet Colin! So cute! Can't wait to get a picture of all 4 dads with the kids!


Our newest addition - sweet baby Gwen. They had just come home from the hospital. Charlie didn't seem that impressed with being inbetween the girls and it looks like Eloise was trying to comfort him!


The UNI basketball team made it to the Sweet Sixteen for the first time ever!! Charlie joined in the action by borrowing a tee shirt from his buddy Trey (thanks Allison) so he could cheer on the team. He's laying on my UNI afghan my mom made when I was in college. Lots of team spirit!


Daddy and Charlie watching the big game!


Charlie has also been trying out some of the new baby equipment that we have. He enjoyed both his activity mat and his bouncy seat. Since I'm on maternity leave, I've been lucky to meet a lot of friends out for lunch during the day. I never noticed before but they have these slings at restaurants where you can put the carseat in and not have to take your baby out. It's genius. I've been to 4 places in the past 2 weeks and have used the sling. This morning we went out for breakfast and they brought one and I realized after Brian put the carseat down that I've been putting the darn carseat in the sling the wrong way!!!!! All those waiters and waitresses must have been laughing at me but I didn't even realize it - I'm new at that stuff! Oops!

The very exciting activity mat. I went to go get the camcorder to take a video and when I walked back into the living room he was asleep. Maybe next time!

Enjoying his bouncy seat!

Also, stay tuned for a potential guest writer. "Someone" keeps asking me if he can write something for the blog and somehow I keep forgetting to give him the password. So I sent him an email that said "If you're interested in adding something to the blog, please send your submission to the editor by 5 PM on Fridays. Submissions will be reviewed within 7-10 business days and a decision will be emailed directly to you."

Happy St Patrick's Day

Things have been going well around here. The weather has been gorgeous for the past week. I think it got up to 68 on Sunday!!! We haven't quite mastered the stroller and leash combination but Sasha doesn't seem to mind if the stroller bumps her - she's just so glad to be outside and so are we! I heard a dirty rumor that it's supposed to snow next week though. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised. We always get one last snow in March.

I call this McCrabby because he was hungry when I took it and I should have just waited.

Charlie is up to 8 lbs 13 oz as of this past Monday. His newest BFF Colin Krieg was born on Monday at a whopping 8 lbs 14 oz so I can't wait to get a picture of these two together!! They were due only 4 days apart so it will be fun to watch them grow together. Sara bought us matching baseball outfits for the boys to wear to Twins games. We went in with 4 other couples on Twins season tickets this year. We ordered last summer when there were no babies and by the time season opener comes around, there will be 4 babies!

My friend Allison gave me this adorable shirt and it was Charlie's first time in pants! They were so cute even though I didn't get a full picture of them.

I love this picture because it looks like Charlie is having a conversation with his sheep

The best example I can give of what sleep deprivation has done to me is tell you about what happens almost every night. Sometime in the middle of the night, Charlie must make a noise and I half wake up. For some reason, I wake up thinking that Charlie is in bed with us. NOTE: we've never let him sleep in bed with us or even lay in bed with us so I'm not sure why I wake up thinking that he's there. But I proceed to pick him up and get up to go to the nursery...only to realize that I'm holding Stella. I then fully wake up and realize that I'm holding Stella like a baby and Charlie is fast asleep in his bassinet. Poor Stella has started to sleep closer to Brian the last few nights to try to avoid being disrupted and hauled around like a baby! Last night I had just fallen asleep and Brian got up to get a glass of water, I must have heard something as he was coming back in the room because I opened my eyes to see a shadowy figure entering my room...and started screaming my head off. Brian started yelling at me (because he spilled his water on the floor), Sasha took off for the spare bedroom (nice watch dog) and Stella just burrowed in deeper to the covers. Charlie didn't even move. Good thing he's immune to his mom's night terrors!

More 1 month pictures.

When Charlie was a week old we had an amazing photographer come to our house and take some newborn pictures of him. Brian thought this was a waste of money because we could take them ourselves but after getting back the pictures, he agreed that it was money well spent! Now I just have to decide which ones to print and hang all over our house :)

To view the slideshow - go to: http://jmphotomn.com/viewing/?slideshowID=18490