As for the singing, here’s the deal… we have a swing for Charlotte that has some little dangling fishes. As she swings, the fish sway back and forth. When she’s in a mood, she sometimes likes to do her whale impression and “sing” to the fishes. Unfortunately, she also notices the video camera the second we pull it out and promptly stops singing. But she didn’t notice a covertly placed audio recorder. So without further ado, I present you Charlotte’s song:

— Just before Thanksgiving, we moved ourselves and our stuff to Wisconsin. Spent the holiday and a couple more weeks at Lisa’s mom’s house in Stevens Point. After the stress of the move and the tryptophan in the turkey, we slept:

— In mid-December, the tenants at our Madison condo were nice enough to leave before the end of their lease term (at our request). They found another place that met their needs and that allowed us to move back into the condo. The moving day was ridiculously cold… like -2 degrees. And our friends who helped carry stuff (Marc, Jenna, Shannon, Noah, Pat) went above and beyond to deal with that weather. I rewarded them with hot Tom & Jerry drinks (except Noah since he’s underage).

— We painted a bunch and set up Charlotte’s nursery first. We’ve now painted three rooms, trim in two rooms, the kitchen cabinets (a chore!), and the bathroom ceiling. Sprucing the place up, covering over some tenant wear. All part of a project of making the place feel like ours again. Here are a few pics of Charlotte’s nursery:

— Six days after moving in, we drove to Huntington, WV to hang out with my family and friends for Christmas. It’s a long drive without a three-month old. With Charlotte along, we split it into two days both directions. While we feared an awful experience, she turned out to be a pretty good traveler. A bit of fussing here and there, but minimum wailing. Honestly, we made pretty decent time.

— Lisa just posted some pictures over at her blog, so you can check them out there. Charlotte’s grandparents and extended family were all pretty thrilled to see her and hang out, as were a bunch of my friends from high school. Here’s Lisa and Charlotte by the Christmas tree:

And here’s my grandmother (dad’s mom) enjoying some great-granddaughter time:

— On the return trip, the car broke down in Crawfordsville, Indiana in a pounding rain. Dead alternator. Fortunately, we were able to roll within 30 feet or so of a gas station. And doubly fortunately, a guy hanging around the gas station buying lotto tickets was able to fix our car the next morning. (It was Sunday, so all the actual mechanic shops were closed.) Here’s the gas station where we broke down — image from Google Maps:

— New Year’s was good, though significantly more sedate than in years past. We joke that Charlotte is on a party girl sleeping schedule, but that doesn’t mean we actually get to do any serious partying. But that doesn’t mean we can’t pretend now and then. Here’s Charlotte practicing her lushing with some three buck Chuck:

We are ridiculous parents. It’s true.

On New Year’s Eve, we went to a little soiree at Kate and John’s house with Adam and Carrie and their lovely new daughter Brynn. Here’s a pic of Charlotte meeting Brynn for the first time back in December:

Now we’re back in Madison for the foreseeable future, which I’m mostly pleased about. The weather has been ridiculously cold these last few days, but that doesn’t stop the fun or the weird shit. And given Madison’s history of protest and dissent, it shouldn’t be any surprise that a few folks were actually protesting winter last February. I love being in a town where people do this.

And things are looking up on the employment front. Lisa got a job doing lab processing at Meriter – a half-time job with full benefits, so that rocks. It looks like her hours may settle into 4:30-8:30pm, so if I get a job with more traditional daytime hours, we might be able to pull off not having to hire any childcare providers for Charlotte. Or at least minimal. Speaking of my job search, while I’m still looking, I have four interviews this week, so hopefully one or more of those will pan out.

I’ll do my best to keep up the blog better now that we’re settled in one place and have reliable computers and internet. I’m usually pretty bad at New Year’s resolutions, so I won’t call it that. But I’ll try nonetheless.

I leave you with a parting shot that has quickly become one of my favorite pictures — taken just before Charlotte’s bath:

Here’s what my schedule has looked like most days recently:

• Between 8-9am: Get up, put on a pot of coffee while Lisa feeds Charlotte. I’m usually still a bit tired at this time, but I’m feeling okay. Certainly better than Lisa, who has been up and down with Charlotte for the whole night.
• 9am until Noon-ish: Keep Charlotte quiet for as long as possible so Lisa can sleep. There are a variety of tricks for making Charlotte calm or sleepy – wear her around in a sling, bounce for a while on the exercise ball, etc, etc. Sometimes she gets hungry and fussy and wakes Lisa up by 10:30 or 11:00.  Sometimes, I can give her a bottle (if Lisa has pumped) and keep her non-fussy  until 12:30 or 1:00. I particularly try to extend it if it’s been a rough night.
• Noon-ish to 2pm: Make and eat some food. Do some chores around the house. Maybe read for a little bit to re-center.
• 2pm to 6pm: Look for and apply to jobs. Deal with housing and moving issues. Try to pick up a little freelance work. Take care of Charlotte (with Lisa). Change a bunch of diapers.
• 6pm: Play a rousing game of “Spit out the pacifier, put the pacifier back in.”
• 6:30pm or so: Start thinking about dinner. Eventually, tie up work and make dinner.
• Evening: Chill out with Lisa and Charlotte, wonder if it’s going to be a sleeping night or not. I say that for Lisa’s sake. Most nights are fairly successful sleeping nights for me because 1) I sleep like a brick, and 2) I’m not the one with the boobs that have to be put to use every 2-3 hours.
• Around midnight: Bed. If Charlotte hasn’t let Lisa sleep any by 4 or 5am, I might take her downstairs for a couple hours.

My point is not to share a woe-is-me story. It’s just to suggest that the routine becomes very consuming in its own meandering way. One day becomes the next and then suddenly it’s the end of the week. Charlotte gets bigger and it’s fun to watch all her new faces and hear her little grunts and noises. And feel closer to her.

And then yesterday – Halloween – she actually up and started smiling at us. Not all the time, and not super big, but definitely noticeable smiles and definitely intentional. Which is pretty rad. Here’s some video Lisa took this evening:

Here’s a still shot from yesterday afternoon – Halloween – one of Charlotte’s first good smiles. Maybe she just likes her Halloween outfit?

A few weeks ago, we took Charlotte up Carter’s Mountain to the Apple Festival. Terrific views, tasty cider, and unbelievable apple-caramel cookies. Being fall, they also had a pile of pumpkins for sale (and photo ops). Here’s Charlotte rocking the pumpkin patch:

As if that weren’t bad enough, Lisa and I took the whole baby-and-pumpkin motif to a new level. Here’s our unknowing daughter sitting in a hollowed out Halloween gourd yesterday:

To our credit, there just aren’t many Halloween costumes out there for infants. And those few that do exist are rather expensive. What’s a new parent to do? Why, put your kid inside a pumpkin of course. I promise, we weren’t trying to be all Anne Geddes, though some friends have pointed out the similarity. Here’s another one, with Lisa giving Charlotte a hat:

All that pumpkin time means it’s time for a bath:

This bath pic was actually from a couple weeks ago. But I think it’s a cute one.

Not much else to report — Lisa has some of the latest news in her recent blog posts over at LifeLoveSoap. Including the fact that our child is already up to nine and a half pounds (she was born 6 lb, 12 oz).  Obviously, she’s not having any trouble getting enough to eat.

Election Day is Tuesday, so we’ll see whether Charlotte’s first four years will be spent amidst a miserable state of affairs or whether there’ll be a shot at things getting better.  She’s a little bit young to vote in this one, but we’ll tell her all about it later.

I’ll get the next batch of pics and suchnot posted soon!

Quick, intense labor and delivery — Lisa woke up shortly before 6am with regular contractions every 3-4 minutes. Within a half-hour or so, the contractions were coming every 90 seconds. They were very painful and came accompanied by all sorts of other unpleasantries.  We made it to the hospital by about 8:30 and Lisa gave birth to Charlotte at 9:46. And all natural, to boot.

All involved are happy, healthy, and fairly tired. Here’s Charlotte 14 minutes after being born:

Lisa holding Charlotte a few minutes later:

And here’s me right after that, looking especially lanky next to my newborn:

We spent a couple days in the hospital to give Lisa a chance to recover and to make sure all was well with Charlotte’s health.  Those first couple nights were rough.  Lisa and I were both prepared for being woken up multiple times in the night for feeding, etc.  But we weren’t so much prepared for Charlotte not sleeping at all.  At least not enough to allow us much of any sleep.  But we managed to improvise a shift system so that each of us could catch an hour or two of snoozing here and there.

Then back to the house on Saturday.  Here’s Lisa resting with Charlotte on the couch:

And me with Charlotte doing pretty much the same:

More later.

Even more important than finding out the sex, we also learned that everything seems to be in order with the baby’s development. Things are proportioned as they should be, no evidence of genetic disorders, etc, etc.

So let’s start things off… here’s a profile pic of our kid. Not sure whether she’s blowing a bubble there or what, but it’s a classic side view ultrasound pic:

We were very glad to see that the baby’s heart has four chambers, pumping the way it should:

She also appears not to have any genetic abnormalities or other problems that can be diagnosed at this stage. Did you know that about two-thirds of genetic problems present with lack of a nasal bone? At least, that’s what the doctor told us today, as he pointed out the fully formed nasal bone in our kid.

Here’s the umbilical cord, showing two arteries in it. According to the ultrasound tech, kids with only one working artery in the cord often exibit growth problems. Fortunately, our daughter has two arteries in there that are working fine:

The Moorelette’s spine. Hopefully, she gets Lisa’s spine and manages to forgo my scoliosis:

Ah, here’s where the pics get pretty cool. The prenatal diagnosis clinic that we went to includes 3D ultrasound images as part of their standard package. Lisa thinks our kid has more of her round nose and more of my mouth, with the full lower lip:

It was ridiculously difficult to ascertain whether our baby was going to be a boy or a girl. Our kid decided to keep her legs together as much as possible, and it was all we could do (short of Lisa doing jumping jacks) to get a shot of the sex-determining area. For a while, the baby actually crossed her ankles in there, which made it pretty tough to tell boy from girl. Anyway, this picture was another example of our kid’s coyness – hiding behind her arm:

Not sure what all this modesty was about, especially with parents like us. But we’re really looking forward to seeing our daughter when she comes out!

I put some music to the video. Starts of with Stevie Wonder (at Lisa’s request), then Beck, the Beatles, and Josh Groban to maintain your interest through the 12-minute video.

Enjoy!

Moorelet’s heartbeat, circa 14 weeks