Christmas shopping

Attison went Christmas shopping with Sarah, Leslie and I on Saturday.  We had a good day, shopping with an infant in a stroller is not easy.  Those isles were not intended for a large stroller that "does not handle well." (This is according to Tim who ran back and forth from the front to the back of our house with said stroller)  Also, after 5 weeks of using cloth diapers, we agreed paper were easier for traveling.  So what did I forget? Every kind of diaper.  Oops.

On another note...I am thankful for the big stroller though, you should have seen some of the dinkey crapola other kids were in.  Did they fit in the stores? Yes.  Do they have side impact protection? No.Could they cut corners of the concrete sidewalk of the outlet mall? Nope.  Could they have exited the jam packed indoor mall as quickly as we did? No way.  Are those kids mom's a ticking time bomb about to punch a small child ringing a salvation army bell? Probably not.  In summary, our stroller rocks, mom, who can drive a stroller like a NASCAR driver, is working on her anger management and probably doing the rest of her shopping online (for the rest of eternity).

Aaaaand away we go!

Bring it on bear...

Attison is Fulton county proud.  He has his camo on, just chillin on a bear skin.

Rainy Friday, Fun Song

In response to our search for a theme song, our good friend Steve (in bolivia) suggested the "Bavis (Baby Davis)  song" by Endless Mike and the Beagle Club. Endless Mike is one of the better bands Steve has ever turned me on to. 

Steve helpfully pointed out that we would have to change the lyrics to Baby Raufer. 

We'll see. 
Have a listen. 

http://myideaoffun.bandcamp.com/track/bavis-the-baby-davis

A Mobile Mobile

"Behold, behold, a mobile mobile stand!"

I made a baby mobile.  I was going to buy one, but then I thought, heck, I can make one of these.

If Attison slept in his crib, we could mount the mobile above it.  But he doesn't.  He sleeps in a bassinet in our room. He also lays awake in a Rock and Play in the kitchen, and a swing in the living room, and sometimes in his car seat in the living room. So then the problem arises, how do we suspend this beautiful creation approximately 18" above our child so that his brain and eyesight can develop at an above average pace?

Tim and his basement full of rusty crap to the rescue.  7 minutes in the basement and he comes up with this:

But it wasn't practical for hanging over the baby.  So he went back into the basement and came up and said this:
"What we have here is a round peg and a square hole. I don't have a coupling, but I have this flange."
and while he was installing it it, he said "This is great!  Well, except for the rust flakes falling into the baby thing..."

He updated the mobile mobile stand to look like this:

Tim had a bunch of one liners to support his home made contraption. Like this:  "Try to knock it over. No seriously, we are going to put our infant child under this, knock it over!"  I believe the laughter of Katy, Christine and I added fuel to his fire.

 

"No, it is sturdy, it's a 6"x10". Hemlock!  It's a 6"x10" hemlock.  That is sturdy."

Check out the view from below:

 

 That Tim, he is funny.  He makes me laugh every single day.  

We'll let you know if Attison is at all interested in this contraption.

1 month!

Saturday December 1st Attison turned 1 month old! 

We went to our one month check up at the pediatrician today - Attison weighs 11 lbs. 3 oz.  He is 22" long, although we aren't really sure about some of his previous measurements because if you look at his growth chart, they aren't consistent in a way that is logical.  We'll write more on this later, because we can log into the online portal of our pediatrician and see the growth charts. 

I'm constantly amazed by his neck strength and how much he likes to cross his little arms and support his head.  We found this weekend that when in the chest carrier, if he is awake, he prefers to have his arms folded in with him instead of out the little arm holes. 

In celebration of turning 1 month old, we are being more consistent with bedtime, set for 8 pm.  I plugged in the monitors tonight and we let the little bugger cry it out for a bit.  It is a weird feeling seeing (and hearing) him cry but actually, the scary part is when the crying suddenly stops.  So I run upstairs to check and see if he is still breathing.  I believe he has finally fallen asleep for good.  Except that pretty soon he will be hungry again, so I'll head up for another feeding and my own bedtime.

The Pittsburgh Project!

Last night was the annual Christmas Party at the Pittsburgh Project.  Tim and I didn't meet at the project, but we both worked there, before and after we realized we were in looooooove.  We had our wedding at the project too.

At the Christmas party last year, they announced that even though the party is intended to be a celebration of the past year, we had to know that their finances were in really rough shape and at the rate things were going, the project might cease to exist after 2012.  The supporters really answered that call for help and this year they announced that after really difficult cut backs in staff and programming, the project is once again on solid ground.


In 2012, The Pittsburgh Project was able to do the following:

-91% of their elementary students did not have poor homework comments on their report cards
-13 high school students graduated and started college this fall
-57 homeowners received new windows and 25 received significant roof repairs
-hundreds of neighbors had a safe place to swim
-360 people became new donors for The Pittsburgh Project's work

Attison wore his new tux to the party and met lots and lots of our friends from TPP.  We were so happy to show him off to people we love in a place that means so much to us. 

To learn more about TPP and the work they do, visit their website.
www.thepittsburghproject.org

New this year - if you run in the Pittsburgh Marathon, any part of the race (marathon, half marathon or marathon relay) you can raise additional funds to donate to TPP.  I'm running on a relay team of Yorko women (myself, sister, mom, aunt, cousin) and our race fees will be donated to TPP.  If you want to run in the Pittsburgh Marathon, let me know and you can join our fundraising team!