Road Tripping

Well, we're off to D.C. this weekend for the National Book Festival. Not that he will remember any of it, but this will be Collin's first trip to our nation's capital. I am hoping that someday he will return as the president (and a progressive/feminest president at that)! There's bound to be plenty of fodder for the scrapbook by the end of this weekend. I spent most of yesterday packing up for the little man. Who knew that one little person would require so much gear for a 3 day weekend? Besides the book festival we'll be visiting with some friends who live in the area. These are friends who have small children themselves, so it will be a nice change to socialize with people who can commiserate! We're staying across the river in Old Town, Alexandria and have booked a nice sized suite (a lesson learned from our California travels). I'm sure there will be plenty to blog about on both the baby and book front. Look for my festival posts over at The Written Word. I probably won't post until Monday when we return...no laptops on this trip!

9 Months

It is hard to believe that Little C will be 9 months old in just a couple of days. Time has really flown. Whenever I see little tiny babies I can hardly imagine that Collin was once that tiny too. These days he seems larger than life. He is into EVERYTHING! Nothing is safe. He wants to explore every nook and cranny of the house it seems. He has started to really cruise around the furniture and I wouldn't be surprised if he skips walking altogether and just starts to RUN one of these days. One thing that has not changed is his emphatic personality, as I like to call it. He is not one to sit idly by while his needs go unmet. He BELLOWS his needs at the top of his lungs...rather like his father in that respect. I see it as a good thing actually. I don't see him as a child who will not speak up for himself when he needs to. If anything, I think his couth will just need some fine tuning....also like his father in some respects!

Every week continues to bring new milestones. This week Collin has really started to wave at us, other people, and every inanimate object that catches his eye. He doesn't seem to exactly know what he's doing just yet...that waving can be a form of communication and greeting, but I don't think that knowledge is too far behind. Our family is really getting into the swing of fall now. The bulbs arrived in the mail yesterday and hopefully they will be planted this week. The Halloween decorations will be going up next week. The basement is on it's way to being transformed into a scrapping/play area mecca (pictures to come). We're thinking of painting it something in the tangerine family. This weekend beings the big D.C. trip and National Book Festival. I'll be sure to post about that over at The Written Word.

The Tiny Tyrant Strikes Again!

This is what the boy generally looks like by the time we are done changing him these days. He used to love laying on his changing table and "talking" to the sticker cows and pigs on the wall while we changed his diaper or outfit. Now, it is our most dreaded task. I shudder to think what the neighbors must be saying when they hear him wailing at the TOP of his lungs several times a day. It's not just a general pissed off cry either. He screams like we're actually hurting him. The only thing that convinces me we aren't hurting him is that the second we are done changing him he is all smiles again. This is a task that has gone from taking us 3-5 minutes to an absolutely horrid 10 minutes or more. Collin twists, turns, thrashes, and gnashes his teeth like a little dragon. CJ has become adept at actually changing him while Collin is standing up in his crib or even in a crawling position. This is something the little tyrant finds very funny. I have had to actually remove myself from the situation a couple of times because it gets so frustrating. I mean, of all the things to get so pissed off about! There is some good news though. I think that last night was the first night in his entire life (all 9 months of it) that Collin "put" himself to sleep. Usually by the time I'm done nursing him at right before bedtime he is out cold. But, when I put him down last night he just snapped himself awake. I literally ran from the room because I didn't want him to realize I was still there. I was anxiously awaiting the crying to begin, when to my surprise he just started babbling to himself. He did this pretty contentedly for about 15 minutes and then he was out for the night. I'm hoping this is the next step on his path to sleep maturity!

Here's my library...Finally!

Books! Books! Books!

In case any of you don't know, I am a true bibliophile and have been as long as I can remember. My sidebar lists a great organization called The Dewey Donation System that is trying to help the libraries destroyed during Hurricane Katrina. I love books and just about anything to do with them. I especially love to collect them! I tried to upload a picture of my "library" at home, but blogger is not cooperating. Mabe next time. Anyway, my friend Stephanie (of Forks and Chopsticks fame) started a new on-line book club not so long ago called The Written Word. She has invited me to be a "guest blogger" once a week or so to share any book reviews, book blogs, book news, etc. that I might find interesting. When you have a chance check it out and consider joining in for our second book: The Secret Girl, by Molly Bruce Jacobs.

An Angry Boy

Here is Collin trying to capture the camera out of my hands so he can eat it!

No Pun Intended, but...

this boy loves his balls! His Fisher Price Roll-A-Rounds Balls. About a week ago CJ brought home 2 packages of these little beauties and Collin is absolutely enamored of them! There are 12 in total and they're each unique...with different colors, sounds, and textures. Collin loves to clack them together non-stop.

Dinner and a Movie

Every Friday night CJ and I have Aunt Amanda watch our little chief so we can head out for date night. We've been doing this pretty much since he has been born and I think the "couple time" really goes a long way to keeping us connected. We've discovered that there is nothing like a new baby to distract you from your marriage...unless you work on it. Who knew it would be this hard? Anyway, last night was a great date night. We had a nice dinner out at a local place (minus the summer crowds) with a nice view of the water. After dinner we went and had a tasty ice cream dessert. Once we got home (yeah! the boy was ASLEEP) it was onto a romantic comedy, "Prime" with Meryl Streep and Uma Thurman. Pretty entertaining. The miracle of it all is that we managed to stay awake until the end! It's really all about the simple things these days!

Fall Project List

Well, with the arrival of football season comes the Fall Project List. My husband, the master of lists in our house, has quite the ambitious agenda for us three. Needless to say, sometimes my priority list is a bit different from his. My top 2 projects for the season are: 1. Clean out and organize our as yet unused finished basement. This will enable us to create a kid safe space for Collin to crawl around it. I'm also hoping to create a little bit of a scrapping station down there, so that the dining room table is no longer scrap central. 2. Fall bulb planting also tops my list. Last year was our first planting bulbs...mostly tulips. They turned out ok, but I learned that for some real effect you need to plant masses of these things. I have about 2oo on order that should be arriving any day now. I told CJ that all he needs to do is dig me the trench and I'll do the rest. For some reason he looked slightly unbelieving!

On the boy front, he continues to run us pretty much ragged. He is averaging 3 big falls a day and several minor ones. It doesn't matter how close by you are to him. He still manages to fall all over the place. Today he craweled, at high speed, into the knob on the tv cabinet and now has a knob shaped bump on his forhead. He also loves to experiment with standing on his tippy toes and has tried this approach to climbing the shelves in the fridge. He is truly relentless!

Are you ready for some football?

Anyone who knows us knows that we are a football household. I've been a Cleveland Browns fan since I was a little girl and my husband is a long time Dallas Cowboy follower. Football is actually one of the things that really drew us to each other...we're both very passionate fans. I take an annual "road trip" to Cleveland once a year with some girlfriends to see my team play in their home stadium. CJ has been known to go into a 3 day funk over a Cowboy loss. So, it's no surprise that there has been some heated competiton between us to see who can woo Collin over to our own preferred team. Not to mention that we have other interested parties (i.e. Raider and Giant fans) trying to bring him over to the dark side. Yes, we are starting early! I feel that in the long run Collin will be a Brown's fan because he will know that I gave him life and he owes me. Don't little boys always love their mother's more? If that's the case, then he's a little Brownie through and through. But, who knows? CJ is definitely taking a more subtle and subversive approach.

To celebrate the start of the season we dressed the boy up in multiple outfits representing each of our teams. The boy HATES getting dressed or undressed, so this was not a pleasant experience for him. It's sad to say though that our teams went 0 and 2 for week 1. We're hoping it goes uphill from here. GO BROWNS!

Remembering

This cracked me up...

I really wish I bought this little sign I saw yesterday at a craft fair. It said,

"Raising children is like being pecked to death by chickens"

I know it's not the sweetest sentiment , but it really hits the nail on the head for me sometimes!

Off the wagon...Big Time

OK...since I got pregnant with Collin I have been trying to live by the philosophy "Nine months on...Nine months off" when it comes to the pregnancy weight. I gained about 38 pounds during the pregnancy, but it could have been SO much less if I had just stayed away from all those cherry cokes! Anyway, I lost 20 of it very quickly and have really been struggling with those last 15. All of the sudden that 9 month mark is creeping up and I still have a good 12 (or 15) pounds to get back to my original weight. The last month or so, I've been great about exercise and watching what I eat. But, let me tell you...the last few days I have really fallen off the healthy eating wagon....yesterday I had 4 beers, 2 slices of pizza, and a plate of butterfly fries at my town's end of summer bash. It's all of these special events that kill me! I try not to be too hard on myself about the weight and I'm not looking to get "skinny", but I don't want to be stuck carrying around extra baby weight, especially when I've got another couple to pop out! Tomorrow is a new day though and I'll be starting fresh with a kick ass boxing session in the morning.

Odds and Ends of a Crazy Week

The week has flown by and I'm not quite sure what happened to it. There was not even a moment to post on Collin's Chronicles! The end of the official summer season is upon us and we're thrilled! One of the great things about living at the shore is that once all the "bennies" go home on Labor Day we have a little second season...the weather is gorgeous throughout September and sometimes into October. I personally have nothing against all the visitors during the summer, but it does make for bad local traffic and crowded beaches. In September the locals come back out! Anyway, Daddy is out playing in the annual "King of the Beach" volleyball tornament, so Collin and I are waiting for Auntie Grace to come down and join us for the day. Tomorrow is another big day in this household...the first day of football season. It should be interesting to see how much of our usual football routine the boy will go along with. Probably not too much! The days of plopping down on the couch and watching 8 hours straight of football are gone. It will be fun to dress him up in all of those Browns's outfits I bought when I was pregnant.

Collin's sleep trend has continued and I'm soaking up the 7, 8, 9 hours of sleep we're getting at night. I feel like I'm trying to recoup a year's worth of lost rest...basically, that's actually what I am doing! This week we're making the big jump to stage 3 foods. We're a bit behind on the food front, but we're taking it slow due to CJ's history of childhood allergies. Collin seems pretty fed up with the babyfood at this point. He pretty much gives me the stink eye whenever he sees me taking it out of the cabinet. He does, however, love drinking my Pelligrino right from the bottle!

Baby Blogging

I read a very interesting post on baby blogging yesterday and thought it did a great job of articulating my very own thoughts on the whole matter. One of the concerns some family members had about me writing this blog was the very real possibility that some sickos out there (paedophiles) could use Collin's pictures to their own ends The thought of it disturbs me as well. But, the truth of the matter is that even if that happens Collin is not actually hurt by it. Sadly enough, as the statistics tell us there is a much greater chance of Collin being harmed, be it physically or sexually, by someone in our own circle.

As far as baby blogging goes, why should I not post pictures of my gorgeous kid so that family and friends can enjoy? The writer over at Alas, a blog makes a great point in that the whole issue is comparable to the "rape prevention" tactics that women are taught. Instead of working to actually hold rapists accountable for their actions, our culture teaches women to work their lives around the possibility of being raped in order to protect themselves. Don't get me wrong, any form of child pornography is completely unacceptable, but should we alter our lives around a fear of them?