Lazy Baby

I tried really hard not to complain about Papillon's tendency to sleep too much. Really I did. For the sake of parents every where who just wish their child would sleep occasionally for a brief hour or two, I tried to count my blessings when I was up in the middle of the night splashing ice cold water on my sleeping baby's feet to no avail.

But, it is now officially official. Papillon sleeps too much.
She is a lazy baby.
That was her official diagnosis after we spent 7 hours in the ER yesterday.

Our ER trip was complete with hospital gown and IV port thing that was the size of her arm by the time they taped it all up.

I very much appreciate the thorough-ness of my pediatrician. Papillon wasn't showing any other signs of malnutrition (she was happy, slept well, seemed to eat well, etc) so he thought it best to rule out other options.

After lots of tests, I was relieved to hear that everything was normal. But at the same time (and I am sure I am not the only mother who has felt this way) there are few things that make you feel more like a failure than being told that your breastfeeding is not cutting it. When that is pretty much all you spend your time doing, and you feel like it is getting better and better, a shrinking baby is very hard on the ego.

So, after lots of crying (crying at the pediatrician when he said she lost more weight, crying while pulling into the ER just because I hoped not to have to make an ER visit for a very very very long time, crying super hard when they poked her with a needle, and crying some more at the (ultimately good!) diagnosis), I got to meet with a lactation consultant.

Apparently Papillon is so lazy (has been since day 1) that my body is under the impression that I birthed a "tiny 3lb baby" (lactation consultant's words) and so that is all producing milk for.

The scary part is, most people assume that as a baby gets hungrier they get fussier, and so you will be able to tell something is wrong. For some babies that might be the case, but not for lazy babies. Lazy babies will just learn to deal with the lack of calories by becoming lazier. Eventually sleeping themselves into a very poor state of health.

We obviously can't have that.

We are now armed with a hospital grade breast pump, some nifty feeding syringes, and a strict feeding schedule that involves supplementing with pumped breast milk and some formula, and hopefully well on our way to regaining that adorable baby fat.

Papillon takes after her father when it comes to a love of sleep apparently. He had the same problem when he was an infant.
And to think, we didn't think we would get any use out of her "newborn" sized clothes. When she was born, newborn diapers didn't fit...they do now, but hopefully not for long.

Happy 3 weeks Papillon.

Marge's Thoughts on Papillon

So, perhaps you are curious...what does Marge think of this sleeping/eating/crying little bundle?

Over all, I would say that Marge is adapting to the new addition quite well. She investigates her from time to time and tries to lick her. We allow a small amount of foot-licking, but that's about it. Once Marge gets the picture that she is not allowed to touch, she walks away and looks despondent. On the whole, she is a little extra jumpy and seems confused all the time.

The good news is that she doesn't hate or have anything against Papillon.
The bad news is that Marge's apathy has yielded a serious shortage of cute dog-baby photos.
I was really looking forward to some adorable photos of the two of them. But Marge's strategy of ignoring Papillon as much as possible means there is really nothing cute to photograph.

Except for this face of boredom.

Perhaps one day soon Marge and Papillon will be friends.

The New Car

At long last, the promised pictures of the new car.

Ta Da!

Just kidding. Thank heavens.

Apologies to those who may like Jeeps, but I would NEVER buy this car. What is it doing in our driveway then, you ask? Therein lies the tale.

The day before Papillon was born, we had requested that CarMax transfer a car up to our local store. While we were still in the hospital we got a call that the car had arrived and was ready for us to look at. Obviously we did not go to see it that day. Mon Amour did, however, head out to test drive and subsequently purchase the car the day after we got home from the hospital. (Can you tell we were very very ready for a new car?)

He test drove it. Loved it. Bought it. And brought it home.

Only it turns out that the old car was only title in my name, so in order to make the sale of the old car official, I needed to sign over the title and take it back to CarMax. No problem, we decided. We would just head back out the next day with the signed paper work. It would be a fun family outing - Papillon and myself would stay in the car while Mon Amour dropped off the paper work. A quick, fun, first family outing.

Problem #1: They lost our original paper work, every thing that Mon Amour had signed the day before. So he got to sign it all again. So Papillon and I hung out in the car for a bit longer than we thought.

Problem #2: Mon Amour returns to the car, goes to pull out of the parking spot, when suddenly, the power steering cuts out and a warning light comes on on the dashboard. Nice. Haven't even owned the car for 24 hours and its broken.

Thank heavens for warranties. We limped it over to the service center (a mere couple of yards away) and asked someone to come look at it. They concluded that it needed to be sent to the dealer since it was under dealer warranty and they would fix it there. Consequently they offered us a loaner car. Hence the Jeep. By the time we got all the paperwork worked out, 4-day-old-Papillon had spent over an hour in the CarMax waiting room. Nothing like a little adventure to start life off right.

And so we drove the car above for a couple of days. Papillon and I's first solo outing to the grocery store was in the car above.

But, before too long the car we actually bought, was returned to us, with a newly repaired power steering pump. Success.

Without further ado, here it is. Our new-to-us blue 2008 Mazda5:

It's like a miniature minivan. We weren't ready emotionally or financially for a full size mini van, but needed something with enough space for Marge and Papillon. So this car has 3 rows of seats (officially fits 6 people, though the people in the back better not have long legs). You can fold flat any combination of seats to allow for storage.

One of my favorite features is the sliding rear doors. It makes it so much easier to get Papillon in and our of the car! And unlike many mini-van sliding door windows that you can only open a slight crack, you can actually rolls these down like you can the front windows. Best of both worlds!

The sunroof was a bit of a random bonus.

We are very much enjoying this car.

When we started car shopping, Mon Amour and I swore we would NOT buy a Ford. We both had Fords before this, and even though, if we were being rational, they were very good cars to us, they both had the same problems and so we were very very ready to be done with those kinds of problems.
So we looked at every kind of car except Fords.
Then we found the Mazda5 and fell in love.
I called my little brother (the car expert) and told him we were getting a Mazda. He approved, but asked "Do you want me to ruin it for you?"
I assured him there was no way he could ruin it for me, so go ahead and try.

"Mazda is owned by Ford"

Oh the irony. It seems we did not make a clean break from Ford, but so far, we are pretty pleased.

I love this face

It cracks me up.
And no, she is not crying....just making a mildly discontented face. Her legitimately sad face is much less funny and much more heartbreaking.

Funny Faces

It may not happen for another couple weeks, but I am anxiously awaiting Papillon's first real smile. She doesn't often do "fake smiles" (or "non-social smiles" or whatever they are called at this stage). Some times a yawn will look like a smile. And sometimes she "smiles" in her sleep. But other than that, she mostly makes odd non-smiling faces, like these:

A happy talking face. Almost a smile I suppose.

A contented thoughtful face.

And, quite possibly, her most often used face...the face of concern and/or bewilderment.

Papillon can furrow her eyebrows like none other. I will be sure to post a picture of a serious furrow if it ever stops eluding the camera

2 Weeks

Yesterday marked 2 weeks old for little Papillon.
She is still a champion sleeper.

Though she is also a champion crier now too. When she is awake and not eating, she mostly fusses. That's what babies do I suppose. A typical day looks like this:

6am - 10/11am: 2 or 3 breakfasts with moderately fussy awake time inbetween.

11am - 2:30pm: Totally zonked. Waking her at 2:30pm is a chore.

2:30pm - 10:00pm. Awake, and largely fussy unless eating or being held by daddy. (If I hold her, she fusses cause she figures she is so close, she may as well be eating.)

10pm - 6am: Asleep, with 1 midnight sleep-eating session.


Its still a pretty good "schedule" (I use the term in the loosely since things are still too fluid to really be a schedule), and with 2 weeks gone by already, I have been reminding myself to enjoy even the fussy times, cause they won't last forever, and one day in retrospect I am sure I will miss these beautiful times.

In other news, I have been amaze how quickly my body has gone back to "normal". At 2 weeks post-partum, I have lost 27 lbs. A mere 15lbs to before I am back to my pre-pregnancy weight. Obviously the last 15 are going to be harder than the first 27, but I am quite pleased with the progress so far. Its actually almost odd; I had gotten so used to being pregnant, its almost feels weird to be "skinny" again.

Mon Amour goes back to work tomorrow. Its been awesome to have him around though it will be good to work on establishing a new routine. I feel totally capable of handling Papillon on my own while he is at work, the hard part is going to be wrapping my mind around the fact that Papillon is my job now. I think in my mind with Mon Amour returning to work that I should return to some kind of non-baby work. That my productivity will return to "normal" and that I will be able to get ridiculous amounts of stuff done in a day.

But that is not going to happen, and I suspect for a while I will feel like I do nothing all day long - cause cuddling a fussy baby doesn't feel productive, nursing doesn't feel productive, napping when baby naps doesn't feel productive. And its going to be a hard mental shift for me to count those things as legitimate productivity. People do not lie when they say mothering is a full time job. I just need to wrap my mind around the fact that my to do list no longer involves writing contracts and calling vendors. At the top of my priority list every day now I now put "nurse x8(ish)". And on a day when I do that, get a nap, eat enough to not feel faint, and make dinner, I need to remind myself that that was a productive day.

Cute Videos

As a shower gift, my mom and Aunt got us a Flip Video Camera. Which we have been using rather frequently, though Papillon has a tendency to stop doing whatever cute thing she was doing as soon as the camera turns on. So we have lots of video of her just staring blankly at the camera. Not terribly interesting stuff. But here are a few of her actually doing something.

And many apologies for the fact that they are not embedded. I couldn't for the life of me get them to work properly, so I gave up and used YouTube links. Not super-fancy, but it gets the job done.

Sneezing.

Morning Play Time

Hiccups

Stretching (from way back when we were still in the hospital)

Enjoy.

Waking up is hard work

Let me preface this post with the statement that I am NOT complaining. I love that Papillon is an excellent sleeper. Mon Amour and I have been blessed with a very easy baby so far, and I have a huge amount of respect for parents with more difficult children, because even though I can call Papillon nothing but "remarkably easy going", caring for her is still a ton of work. So, many kudos to all the parents out there whose babies don't sleep like this.

Anyway. Forgive the poor lighting in these pictures. The following is a little glimpse of what Papillon does every night when I try and get her to wake up to eat.

A grimace at first nudge.

I proceed to tell her its time to get up and attempt to wake her by kissing her sweet cheeks.
All is futile and with a little lip smack and a sigh as she returns soundly to Lala Land.

I then move on from my sweet attempts to wake her to something more determined.
Time to take off the swaddle and make things a bit chilly.

That elicits a response. One face of disgust from Papillon.

But she is quickly over it, and decides that sleeping sprawled out is just as fun as sleeping swaddled.

No such luck waking her up. But Papillon needs to eat...for my sake mostly!
Eventually she obliges, but it typically takes a good 20 minutes, and a little cold water to get her eyes to open. These nighttime feedings would take a lot less time if she wasn't such an awesome sleeper.

Papillon's Birth Story: Part 3: The Delivery

By the time Mon Amour returned to the room things were obviously moving rapidly. The nurse checked my progress again (couldn't have been more than 30 minutes since the last check), and I was 8cms. That would explain why things were so much worse, we had entered the transition phase, and I had started to wonder if I could really do this. But at 8cms, its a little late to look back.

The speed of delivery was clearly a little too much for Papillon's taste, because her heart rate suddenly dropped.Thus began the most unpleasant process of constantly changing positions in order to try and get her heart rate back up. The doctor was back in the room promptly and kept telling me to move. I told him I couldn't (contractions were right on top of each other), he told me it wasn't for me, I needed to move for Papillon's sake. That got me to move.

They assured me they would move the blankets with me so that I would still be covered up; how nice of them to be concerned with modesty at a time like this. If there had been time between contractions I would have probably yelled at them not to even think about covering me up, I was burning up with hot flashes. Fortunately, Mon Amour could tell what I needed and kept bringing me cool wash clothes for my neck. I didn't know that a cool wash cloth could feel so good!

At one point nurse asked me if I was feeling anything different. Right on cue, a contraction hit and along with it the urge to push. And by urge, I mean uncontrollable instinctual pushing. With that, things sped up even more. After maybe 2 or 3 practice pushes with me not working at them at all, the doctor said very firmly "Ma'am, you need to get this baby out now. Push with everything that you have and don't wait for the contractions".

About 4 ridiculously intense pushes later I screamed that I couldn't do it any more. Mon Amour looked over at me at said "You don't have to, she's here." My first thought was "nice try, but I am so beyond being encouraged by placating sentiments" thinking he meant that she was starting to crown and would be here soon. But no, I realized I half second later he meant she was actually here.

8:21pm, all 9lbs 3 oz of her was here.
And she was crying.
She got a 9 on her apgar, despite the low heart rate scare.

They whisked her away to get cleaned up so that they could focus on me. In the words of the doctor, "She is a big baby and made a grand entrance, so this is going to take a while".

I don't remember a whole lot about the next 40 minutes, for which I am very grateful. I do remember certain things - the doctor saying "I can't even see where that tear ends" and "I am going to need a bigger syringe, the biggest you've got". I also remember the nurse giving me a shot in my leg without telling me what it was - it was remarkably painful and I kicked her without meaning to. More of the medicine got on her than in me. The next day that nurse visited and apologized for the shot; she said she got the same shot after giving birth to her child, and she remembers the pain of that shot more than the pain of delivery. How nice of her to warn me about that...

They gave me a pain killer that they said might make the room spin...they were right. I remember Mon Amour staying with me, and telling me what Papillon was doing (she was hanging out in the warming bed totally un-phased by the chaos.) And I remember just wanting everyone to leave. There were about 8 nurses in the room (it was shift change time), and all I wanted was to be alone with my family.

About 40 minutes later they did leave, most of them at least. And I got to hold Papillon for the first time. It was then that a nurse asked me if I would do it again (meaning without drugs and what not). Less than an hour after birth it seemed like a crazy question.
But the answer would be yes. I would definitely do it again.

They say that you forget the pain as soon as you hold your baby. Its mostly true, in that moment I don't remember feeling any pain, but the memory of it was still there. Now, a week later, the memory of it is very much faded. I remember it hurt, a lot, and all over. I meant it when I said I couldn't do it any more. But now, I don't really remember the pain itself. Its like a dream that you wake up from, and you know it was a bad dream, a terrifying nightmare in fact, but you can't recall any of the specifics, and so with time, the fear fades. And you think to yourself, that wasn't so bad.

Papillon's Birth Story: Part 2: The Drive

Continued from Part 1.

I insisted on walking around the block before we left, even though it was raining. Walking made them consistently 2 minutes apart, still 45 seconds long. So we got in the car.

Getting in the car for some reason slowed things down a bit. I went 6 minutes without a contraction which in my mind (still in denial) meant things were slowing to a stop; so I made Mon Amour pull over into a shopping center so we could walk some more and see if this was really happening. We walked around the dollar store, and then around the whole shopping center, and we were back to just 2-3 minute breaks. I was supposed to be using the words "on" and "off" to indicate to Mon Amour when to time the contractions, and somewhere in the middle of the dollar store, I think I started using "on" as a swear word, repeating it viciously through the peak of the contraction. So Mon Amour told me there would be no more stopping, we were going to the hospital.

The ride was painful, but I still had breaks in between so I thought I was doing pretty well and we talked about whether Papillon would arrive on the 10th or 11th, and whether or not she would have hair, and that kind of thing. I, being in denial, also talked about where we should go out to dinner after we got turned away from the hospital (still not believing that this was the real thing or that I was actually making any progress).

Then, about 10 minutes from the hospital, a contraction hit, and my water broke. Like yikes. Despite all of our careful preparation, we didn't think to bring anything for this kind of situation. When my water broke, my denial of the whole situation officially and abruptly ended. It hit me like a ton of bricks that it was really happening, and I started sobbing. I apologized for ruining the car, and then just cried some more. Mon Amour was a great coach at this point, and eventually I regained most of my composure.

We arrived at the hospital and made it to the registration desk. That's when things really started picking up for me, and everyone else seemed to start moving really slowly. The registration girl was nice, and obviously was trying her best to rush me through. She offered me a seat, but I told her my water had broken and she probably didn't want me to sit on anything at this moment. She agreed. Then another contraction hit and I leaned on the desk and closed my eyes. Just as I did, she handed me some papers to sign but then saw that I would not be signing anything at that moment and promptly handed them to Mon Amour and said it was ok for him to sign them.

The nurse who was going to take us to a labor and delivery room was nice, but moved super slowly (in my opinion). She made us stand by her desk while she "finished up just one thing" on her computer. That took a good 3 contractions.

By about 6:30pm we were in a room.

The nurse felt my stomach and concluded that this would be a small baby - 7 lbs maybe. "Unless she is hiding it" the nurse said. The nurse than proceeded to ask a long string of ridiculous questions and started punching answers into her computer. I tried to answer politely. The most memorable question was when she asked me about my allergy - sulfa drugs.
"What happens when you have sulfa drugs?"
"I don't know"
"You don't know"
"No, I haven't had them since i was probably 2"
"So you don't know what happens. Rash? Vomitting? Anything?"
"No clue"

We kept going back and forth like that for a while, until finally she concluded "Well, I guess we will just play it safe and not give you any sulfa drugs". So....if my allergic reaction had been something like "just a rash", would they have given me that drug anyway? Note to self -in the future, just tell them that sulfa drugs send me in cardiac arrest or something. That should simplify things.

Soon the doctor came in to check my progress. He was a very nice doctor; I didn't notice at the time, but Mon Amour informed me later that the doctor called me "ma'am" the whole time. He seemed to take a long time checking to see how dilated I was. I tried to be patient, assuming it was the pain making things seem so slow. But no, after a little while the nurse piped up and said "The suspense is killing us all!" And finally the doctor informed us that I was 5cms.

5 was good, but in my mind (as well as the nurses, I think) 5 still meant that there was a long ways to go. Time to fill up that tub and settle in. Mon Amour went to get our things from the car (exercise ball, etc etc).

Little Papillon Rouge, however, had other plans.

To Be Continued.

Papillon's Birth Story: Part 1: The Denial

I have read so many of these birth stories and now that it is finally time for me to write my own, I fear that I may get a bit carried away. This is going to be long. Bear with me (or just skip it) if it is a boring read. Here it goes.


While labor did not officially begin on Friday, in retrospect, that is where the story starts. Friday was the day I discovered a new found level of exhaustion. I took 3 solid naps, and managed to accomplish pretty much nothing else the rest of the day. It was kind of ridiculous. And being the type who has a tendency to (sinfully) define my self worth by how much I accomplish in a day, the napping was thoroughly frustrating to me. But, it turned out to be the best thing I could have done on that Friday.

Saturday started off pretty normally. I was having some uncomfortable, but not truly painful cramps when I woke up at about 8am, and I figured this was the beginning of what could be days of false labor, or just general discomfort while my body prepared for delivery.

After breakfast, Mon Amour and I went to run some errands, during which time I noticed that my discomfort was definitely corresponding with the tightening of my stomach, and that the pain/discomfort was definitely coming and going. This was the first time I thought they might be legitimate contractions (previously I had experienced mild discomfort, or a tightening of the stomach separately, and the only time those two things happened together was when I had one long (say 30 minutes long) cramp while stressed due to sitting in traffic for 3 hours). But seeing as they were no where near as painful as I imagined they would get, I opted to ignore them.

Mon Amour and I came home and started working on reupholstering the glider rocker we had gotten at a yard sale. At this point, perhaps I should have taken a hint that labor might be starting, when, every few minutes, I would stop working. And if Mon Amour asked me to do something, I would ask him to give me 1 minute. And true to form, about 1 minute later, I would be totally fine....for at least another couple minutes.

My mental preparation for a natural child birth had mostly been to keep reminding myself that it was going to be far worse than I could imagine (the pessimist way of prepping I suppose, and probably not for everyone) and so with each contraction, I would assess the pain level and conclude it definitely could get worse, so it must not be time to do anything about the pain.

We had some friends over for lunch, which was a wonderful distraction from the contractions (which I wasn't calling contractions at the time). I was definitely uncomfortable, and I suspect (though I don't remember exactly) that there were times during the conversation that my sentences would trail off or become vague as I worked at ignoring another contract. Again, I probably should have taken a hint that things were starting when, for the first time in my life I was holding a baby (our friends' son, my little godson!) and I felt like I really wanted to give him back (I am never one to pass up a chance to hold a baby). It was not his fault of course, but a contraction would hit and all I could focus on was how unpleasant I felt. Similarly, during lunch, for a couple minutes at a stretch, lunch would taste really really really good. Then...contraction...and I couldn't fathom taking a bite, and wondered why I had eaten so much already. But, shortly thereafter I would be eating ravenously again.

After our friends left, I told Mon Amour that the pains were continuing, and could quite possibly be regular, though I doubted it. This is where the legitimate denial started. Mon Amour started timing contractions.

45 seconds on.
3 minutes off
40 seconds on
3.5 minutes off.
50 seconds long
2 minutes off.

And so they continued. I still insisted they were not that painful. Even as I was pausing form doing the dishes to lean over and breath through a contraction, I was describing them as "rather intense, but probably not the real thing". Yeah, the denial was in full force. Fortunately, Mon Amour didn't listen to me. He started packing.

He showered, packed, straightened the house, let the dog out, insisted I call the doctor. All while I paced distractedly around the house cringing through the contractions. During a contraction I would think "yes, Mon Amour is right, its time to go". Then it would stop and denial would return, and I would point out that those 2 contractions had been 4 minutes apart instead of 3, so things must be slowing down.

I did call the doctor like he insisted, but I was in a denial moment when I talked to her, so I spoke really calmly. I told her the contractions had been 3 minutes apart, 45 seconds long for at least 2 hours. Because of my calm tone, my doctor undoubtedly thought I was one of those silly first time moms who was calling at the first sign of braxton hicks. So she told me to come in if I wanted, but not to rush.

Mon Amour decided she was wrong, and told me it was time to go. Reluctantly I agreed.

To be continued...

One Week Old

Papillon is 1 week old (as of last night).
And goodness, has she spoiled us. Not that there haven't been tough times (largely thanks to post-pregnancy hormones, and the painful joys of breastfeeding), but really, these first 7 days of new-born parenting have been a delight.

The cuteness, of course, helps with that delight.

As does the essentially sleeping through the night part. Papillon is a sleeping champion. Consistently asleep by 11pm, I force her awake around 3am for the shortest feed ever, after which she falls sound asleep until I make her get up at 7am.

Trying to get her to wake up is the hardest part of our night time routine. Trust me though, I am NOT complaining; I am enjoying it while it lasts (guessing it won't last forever).

And one more picture for good measure. One of her many pensive looks.

More Hairbows

A yellow one this time.

Baby wearing

It took a little figuring out, but after just a couple times using the ring-sling I love it. Totally into this babywearing thing.

Papillon loves it too.

...as does Mon Amour. Pictures of that father-daughter cuteness to be posted eventually.

Pretty In Pink

Every little girl needs a ridiculously large pink bow, right?

I think so.

And look, her eyes are open. Take it in folks, this is a rare occurrence. Papillon is a sleeping machine. (and yes, we are very grateful for this and do not take it for granted at all)

And, just for fun, a cute foot:

Adventures at 4 days old

This is actually from 3 days old, but the hair bow was too cute to resist posting.

Half asleep is her favorite state of being, by the way.

On to day 4 of Papillon's little life. Time for her first doctors appointment.
She got dressed up for her appointment, but had to strip to her diaper before the doctor even saw her. Oh well, she looked cute for the walk in.

This marked her 2nd car trip (her first obviously being the trip home from the hospital), and her and my last car trip in this faithful old vehicle:
I know, who wants to look at a car when there are baby pictures to be viewed. But, it had to be documented that today, we sold this car an upgraded to a wonderful new-to-us vehicle. This little white car had been with me since 2007. In those 3 years, I put 70 thousand + miles on it. It had an amazing 141K miles on it, and it was time to say good bye.

Pictures of the new car are forthcoming.
In the mean time, let me summarize the last 4 months for you:
New job for Mon Amour
New House in a new city
New Church
New Baby
New Job for me.
New Car.

That's a whole lotta new. Hopefully things will settle down a bit from here
For now, Happy Anniversary Mon Amour (3 years today), and Happy 4 Days Old to Papillon (4 days old at exactly 8:21pm).

Classic Papillon

I guess it was to be expected, seeing as how Mon Amour and I are both rather tall...but yikes does Papillon ever have long legs. (...and big feet)

And this is a classic Papillon face. It usually means she is hungry. Which is pretty much any time she is awake. I guess one must eat a lot to support all 9lbs 3 ozs of oneself.

Papillon Rouge is here

Details of her arrival and what-not to follow eventually, and trust me, it will be an exciting story.

But for now, here she is.
Papillon Rouge (not her real name)
Born Saturday, July 10, 2010
8:21 pm
Weighing 9 lbs, 3 oz
21 inches long.

Papillon's Room

Did you want to see Papillon's Room?


I thought you might.


Here is the official blog tour.

I will refrain from saying which parts are my favorite, because pretty much I love everything in the room. So consider it all my favorite. Starting with her book nook.

A well stocked bookshelf for a not-yet-born little girl, if I do say so myself. Complete with many of the classics like Kippers Toy Box (of course), Madeline, Frog and Toad, If You Give a Mouse a Cookie, Curious George, Splat the Cat, Dick and Jane, and many many more.

This is the view as you come into the room. Note the wonderful glider rocker (a yardsale find) waiting to be reupholstered (tis super comfy despite the slightly dated fabric), the "Moses Basket" (aka amazingly portable bassinet type thing), the baby swing (another yardsale find) and the jungle animals around the window.

Also note the rather loud window AC unit which I anticipate Papillon will get so used to hearing that she will have trouble sleeping in the relative silence of anywhere else. Its like teaching your kid to fall asleep to a certain CD of lullabies; then they can't sleep without said lullabies. Only in this case, the lullabies are much more mechanical sounding. Oh well.

To the left as you walk in, is the front window / changing table stand (another yardsale find) fully stocked with diapers, wipes, burp clothes, blankets and more, with an alligator overhead, just for fun.

Then their is the armoire (a yardsale freebie, if you recall), fully (and I mean super-fully) stocked with baby clothes. Dresses, jackets, onsies, socks, hats, and everything else. Papillon has a ridiculous amount of clothes. It all fit perfectly in the wardrobe a week or so ago...then more clothes came in. You will note the recent additions sitting on top of the armoire. I figure this is the only time in her life all her clothes will be clean at once; so I just need her to get here and get some dirty so they will all look like they fit in the drawers again.

From inside the room, you can turn around to view the beautifulness of the jungle animals on the doors. Though jungle animals tends to be more of a boy-theme, who can resist the cuteness of monkey wall appliques? Not me. So Papillon's room is perhaps the first ever purple-jungle themed nursery.

Coming full circle (note the book nook on the left) we have her crib. Jungle sheets, jungle mobile, monkey wall applique watching over her....

...now we just need Papillon and the room will be complete.

Weddings and the People you Encounter at Them

Mon Amour and I have had the pleasure of attending quite a few weddings.

We very much enjoy weddings.

The bride was gorgeous, and the groom could not have looked any happier.

My sister was in the bridal party, and of course looked fabulous!

Perhaps the most fascinating part of this particular wedding was running into a person from my past. About 4 years ago, my sister and I went on a whirlwind, insane 3 week trip to Europe. We had heard that it was a super fun idea to just pack your bags, and armed with a train-pass, just fly by the seat of your pants on an ad-libbed trip through Europe. We were in Europe for perhaps 2 hours before we concluded that this was insane.

So, we were hugely grateful that our friend (the groom in this wedding) had given us the name of his cousin who lived in Paris. The very first thing we did when we got to Paris was call him. It was probably the most random call he has ever received - "Hi, you don't know us, but we know your cousin, and we are in Paris, and are in need of rescuing"

That's essentially how it went. And he did rescue us. Found us a hotel, and gave us some traveling advice (in a nutshell - don't show up in a new city where you know nothing, no one, not even the language, without some semblance of a plan).

Well, he was at the wedding. And it was quite fun (though mildly embarrassing) to see him again.

Lots has changed since we saw him last.
He has a son, and I am expecting a daughter.
Little Sister has gotten much more savvy world travel....and I have not.


Weddings are always an excellent place to encounter random people from one's past.

Catching Up with Friends

One thing that is super fun about our new city-life, is that there is a lot more opportunity to randomly catch up with friends. People never "just happened to be in the area" of our farm. But here in the city, from time to time, we get word that someone is going to be in town, and we are always like to at least try and meet up with them!

Earlier this week we had just such an opportunity - and even though schedules were tight, we managed to make it work! We met up with one of Mon Amour's friends from high school, who currently lives many hundreds of miles away, and who just got married. It was fun to catch up and meet her husband!

It's not the best picture, but was worth documenting anyway.

So, consider this your general invitation. If you are in the area, or just passing through town, let us know! We would love to cross paths!

You might be nesting when...

You might be nesting when pitting about a million cherries for freezing seems to be of the utmost priority.

And when the only thing keeping you from making more freezer meals is the lack of space in your freezer.

This week's grocery shopping was forced to center around pantry-items due to the lack of freezer space. Perhaps a picture of the pantry will follow later....

And yes, in case you are wondering, 95% of my nesting urges have involved food. The house still needs a thorough cleaning, and I really should figure out what I need to pack for the hospital (I am half-packed), but all that takes a back burner when there is food to be stockpiled!