Matt and Yoda

Sometimes a puppy looks cuter next to really good looking people. So instead of showing you pictures of me and Yoda I decided to show you pictures of Heidi, Matt and Yoda. (This post is 18 inches long so don't miss the one below it!)

Yoda's first boat ride--he wasn't sure what to think.

With Carter.

Matty--why am I in this boat? Where am I?
Oh--I'm not that self deprecating--here are some of me and Yoda.

And finally a walking stick. I didn't know I had that cut on my finger until I saw this picture. It is now wrapped and healing. I'm definitely better looking than the walking stick...........mabye......the walking stick is an awesome example of evoution.....I think I'm a good example of evolution because I have my mom and dad's smarts.....but I'm not sure that I'm cooler than a walking stick. Especially since I am not both intelligent and resemblant of a piece of wood. But I'm going to say that I am pretty confident that, given the choice, Dan and Whitney would rather have me at the wedding than the walking stick.

(This is my last post before I head to San Diego for their wedding--what a non-sequitor--anyway I'll be out in SD this week for their big celebration and my wonderful, wonderful wife will be home with the baby and our pup. I'm not sure why we decided to have both and infant and a pup but Heidi's amazingness will make it all work out. Starting on Tuesday she will be alone for the week-long-end with both and I know she will be awesome. All the same if you want to call her and say, "Wow, what an amazing wife you are to let your husband go off and be 5th in line at his friend Dan's wedding," I'm sure she would appreciate it.)

I'll be back in a week with picture of the big day. Love to All and especially to the greatest wife in the world.

Church Island

This weekend we spent some time up on Squam Lake and went to church on Church Island where our friend Tim was doing the service. Tim is also the man who married us and someone who has been a great counselor in both good and tough times.

We stayed at the Red House with Margie and Charlie and had a great time visiting with Tim, his wife and two kids and Matt and Heidi. (By the way--did you know that Matt and Heidi got engaged. I feel the need, it seems, in this post to identify how I know everyone so Matt was second in line at my wedding.)

Before going to church on Sunday we were having a very pleasant night's sleep until Amelia woke up ready to play at 1:30 am. Heidi was up with her until 5 when she came and passed her over to me. What was odd about this early awakening is that Amelia was really nice and fun. She just didn't want to sleep.

First we went to Dunkin Donuts to get some coffee and then I decided that since we were up we might as well hike Rattlesnake Mountain which is behind the Red House. We got back to the house, got Yoda out of his cage and started our hike. To prevent bug bites for Amelia I drapped her in white bug netting which she quickly began to inhale. Now that she has two bottom teeth she latches on to anything within mouth reach and begins to gnaw on it

We had a great hike and Amelia and Yoda were both very good on the hike. This was at least 20 times further than Yoda had ever hiked so I did carry him for a little bit of the way down.

After a few hours--and some really good sausage at breakfast--we made it out to the island. Heidi went out on the boat but Matt his Heidi and I took some kayaks.

Here is a picture of Tim preaching. Amelia was still being fussy so I was wandering around at the back. It was actually quite a bit of fun back there because there were 4 or 5 moms with their kids in the back too. We had a little area where there were some granite rocks in a circle and we could all hang out with our squeaking kids.

We were all still able to hear Tim's message about what it meant to actually be a Christian. He did a great job of tailoring his message to a multi-denominational congregation and he referenced a gruesome event where a man went to an Amish school and killed 5 children and then himself. In reaction to this horrific event the Amish of the community--rather than react in rage, went immediately to the wife of the man who had done the murdering. They sought to comfort her and help with what she needed. They also went to the man's funeral and sat with the widow of the man. They reached out to her. Amazing.

No matter what faith you are--all in or nothing at all--it is a universal message of kindness and comfort that I know I would have a hard time living out. But on the days that I'm a buddhist and the days that I'm hindu and the days that I'm nothing--I'll keep trying.

Amelia & Yoda play together

Yoda and Amelia Go Hiking

I went hiking (walking in the woods) with Amelia and Yoda today. Yoda remains very good and follows me so closely that when I turn to see if he is behind me, he is often so close that I can't see him.

Amelia continues to love being in motion (unless that is car motion) and seems to enjoy riding in her backpack. At one point I stopped still to listen to a woodland sound. I soon realized that the sound I heard was of Amelia sucking on her little star--a toy attached to the backpack.

As you can see by this second video. I couldn't even catch him in the camera because every time I turn around he moves to stay behind me.

Amelia has visitors and Yoda shows off his cute factor...

Amelia visits with Jen - Heidi's roommate from UNH. Jen always brings nice clothes for Amelia to wear :) THANKS JEN!

Amelia visits with Grammy who taught her how to blow raspberries and now she just blows spit all of the time. THANKS GRAMMY!!!

The Plight of the English Teacher

About two weeks ago, I took Amelia to Sears to get her picture taken. It was a smashing success -- the photographer fell in love with her and the pictures were great! Sears has a lot of money making schemes in addition to just selling you the pictures, though. You can buy all sorts of expensive combinations with frames and mats, etc... I really just wanted pictures so I ordered them, but my hormones did prevent me from saying no to just one of their money making schemes. For $10 I could get an 8x10 picture of my hand holding her hand with a cheesy poem about mothers holding their child's hand. I knew this was borderline lame, but I thought I could frame it and put it in her room and it would be kind of nice.

So, yesterday Amelia and I took a big trip to pick up the pictures. The photographer remembered Amelia and called out her name and she turned around to look - the first time I've seen her respond to her name that dramatically. We get home and I whip out the pictures and look for my lame one first. My heart sinks as I feel my English teacher gene come bubbling to the surface. If you turn your head to the side while looking at the picture, you will see the cheesy poem:

A mother holds

their child's hand

for awhile, but

holds their heart for always!

What is the problem, you ask? It should say that a mother holds her child's hand for awhile - not their. So, I realize now that everytime I look at this picture I am going to itch with irritation. I really thought I could just put it on the wall and ignore it - but I really don't think I can do that. Every single time I look at it I'm going to feel like I just heard fingernails on a chalkboard. So I go to bed.

And I wake up this morning to see that Toonces, our cat, has decided to eat the picture - and she ripped off the THEIR. It is clear to me that she, too, could not take this error in grammar, and this picture is not meant to hang on our wall.

Dog Vs. Baby

Tom and I have been pretty excited about Yoda's arrival in our house. In fact, I have observed that we have been a bit more excited about it than when we first brought home Amelia. It is through thoughtful consideration that I have come to understand why -- we have, after all, raised dogs before, but never a baby:

1. The dog did not have jaundice when we brought him home.

2. The dog was able to eat by himself when we brought him home -- no feeding through a small pipette necessary.

3. It is acceptable to put Yoda in a cage when you are tired of him and he just goes to sleep until we go get him.

4. Yoda will wake us in the middle of the night but we can ignore it because, while we love him dearly, he's just a dog. (Although currently Tom gets up and tends to him while I tend to Amelia - definitely an even trade).

And finally: 5. We don't worry that any dog we ever have will come home pregnant by her boyfriend who has a tattoo of a skull on his cheek.

Cute Pictures of our Dog

The Dog and Amelia

A little video of our new dog and Amelia.

We didn''t have enough to do...

so we decided that we could use one more challenge and today we got a dog.

We have wanted a dog for years and decided that, much like kids, there really is no perfect time to get one. This year, with Heidi not working, is the best of all possible scenarios though so we decided to go ahead with it.

Heidi went and picked him up today and she picked out the biggest and calmest one. I hope that he will stay that way for a while at least. He was really gentle with Amelia--licking her hands and allowing her to chew on his ear. His biggest problems will, not doubt, be with the cats. They are already hunting him and I'm sure we will soon have stories of them beating him up.

When will Fantasy Football Start?

It's official; we're idiots

We found the ORIGINAL lost set of keys. Where were they, you ask? In the car. That is correct. We found them in the gearshift of the car.

So, if someone had stolen our car that we left in the Manchester airport - you may recall that the window was open and the keys were in the ignition - they would have also taken off with our SPARE set of keys. What a lucky car thievery break that would have been!

New Porch Furniture

In our never ending quest to live like normal adults and have "adult" possessions, Heidi bought us some new deck furniture this week.

The old furniture:

The new furniture:

Hammock Collage

Oookie

Do you know what an Ookie is?


If you don't have kids there is no way that you do. If you do have kids there is a 25% chance that you do.


But for Amelia it is the most important thing in her life right now.

See that little round yellow thing near her head--that's the Ookie. She loves it. We put it with her when she goes to sleep. Sometimes she rolls and gets away from it but during the night she crawls her way back to it. Unbelievably cute.

Thanks Heath!

Meaghan comes to visit!

Heidi's friend Meaghan came for a visit last night - she admitted that her main reason for visiting was her hope to make it on the blog. To reward her for her visit, here are some pictures and video :)

Things to Not do with a Baby

Don't worry no Amelia's were harmed during this photo shoot. We did not let her drink any beer. But she really likes teething on anything hard like the top of a bottle. She also was totally safe in the hammock--she actually loved it. And she was able to roll and not fall out.

It was when she rolled twice that I had to put down the camera and catch her.

A couple of videos of Lake George

Pictures

In reverse order here are some pictures from our Lake George weekend. The first one is of us at home taking care of the boat, and they go in reverse to the first moments we arrived for our 3 day weekend at the lake.

Lake George

We are enjoying a fantastic weekend at Lake George.

Amelia loves swimming in her floating toy and the weather has been pretty good.

It is Amelia's 5 month birthday today and it also her Uncle Vanya's birthday too. I think we might be having cake and ice cream tonight.

Not going very well is Amelia's teething situation. She seems to be having a tough time of it and my mother tells me that I got my teeth in my 5th month so this is expected. This morning I drove to Rite Aid and bought baby tylenol, a teething ring and baby orajel to combat the problem. So far she really seems to like the teething ring. You put it in the freezer for a few hours and then she gnaws on it for 1/2 an hour or so.

We watched Scott and Olya sail. The winds weren't too consistent but I think they had fun. And right now Vanya is out in our little 16 foot Penn Yann. Come to think of it he has been gone for a while. Hmmm? I'm sure he's OK.

Oh--when I was in town today I stopped by McDonald's and had their new breakfast chicken sandwich--not recommended. It was dry, so difficult to masticate and improperly seasoned. Sausage is seasoned but in a good way that makes the day better. This sandwich is seasoned in a way to make you want to buy a new toothbrush and some mouth rinse. What I really could have gone for is a treat that I had when we were in Columbus a few weeks ago. Mac's Cafe (which is actually a bar not a cafe) has what is called a scotch egg. They take a hard boiled egg, wrap it in crumbled bacon, dip that in breading and then deep fry the whole thing. It isn't something you want to eat that often--I've only had 3 or 4 life time--but it is quite a tasty treat.

Gooch and Nesbitt come to visit

This weekend we had a great visit with our friends Jim Gooch and John Nesbitt. Some pictures and a video at the end....

Part II of the keys

Heidi already told the ending but I wrote this without knowing that--so my take on the keys :)

Part II
Over the next few days of our vacation I made calls trying to see if the keys were in lost and found or if there was a way to duplicate them without the originals or any proof that the car was ours. Every call to the lost and found was futile but they did often ask, “Where did you leave the keys?” I suppose this is a common first reaction for normal people but I would think that people that work in lost and found would realize that this question is pointless since if the person knew where they had left the keys they could go there and recover them.

The duplicating of keys has, like every other part of car repair, has moved to a digital, electronic and difficult phase. So when I called the dealership they said that they could make me new keys but for $137. Now the original keys were quite nice but I don’t think they were worth that much money. And if you consider that just 10 years ago you could copy keys for about 2 dollars that is quite a large increase.

I tried many approaches during our week in Ohio including a plan where I rented a car that would be ready for us at the NH airport. In this plan we would drive home, search like crazy for the lost keys and then I would drive back, return the rental car and drive home. Doesn’t sound to bad but a 45 minute 1 way trip isn’t exactly what I was looking for after a few plane rides. So we just stopped working on the problem and decided that we would figure it out when we got to NH.

When we went to bed on our last night in Columbus we still didn’t quite know what we are doing [1] but we went to bed anyway with the thought that we would figure it out when we got there. But then at 1am Aaaaaaaaaaaaa! Waaahhhhh! Heidi did her best to calm Amelia and then gave her over to me. She was crying louder than I had ever seen her cry. I was so worried that she would wake up her 2 year old cousin Katelyn that I went down into the basement and tried to walk her to sleep down there. But for the first time she didn’t respond to any of the normal tricks. She just kept crying and crying. To make our flight we had to leave at 4am so I was really hoping to get her to sleep—which I did by 3:20. A restful 30 minutes later I woke up worried that I had missed the alarm and just got up.


Amelia was very good on both flights, possibly due to staying up most of the night, and we arrived in NH without incident. Heidi and Amelia took up a spot near the in-airport McDonald’s I began trying to figure out what happened to the keys. As stupidly as on our first day of the trip, I had worn flip flops but insisted on running to the car to see what the situation was. I jogged, walked fast, dodged cars that were trying to hit me and made it to our car. I walked right up to the driver side door, grabbed the handle and opened it. Oooops! I jumped in and there were the keys in the ignition[2]. As dumb as it was to leave the keys in the car I was very happy to have them and immediately headed back to the terminal to tell Heidi that we could grab our bags and we could go home. The car had been unlocked for a week but I still felt the need to hit the remote lock as I walked away. But it didn’t make the characteristic ‘beep’ sound. I walked back to the car got in again and tried to start it up—totally dead. I had not only left the keys in the car but I had left the car on[3].

There are some more details but I’m going to end it here. We had the attendant at the airport jump the car and we were home in no time. Lesson learned—next time we will take the 8 am flight rather than the 6 am one.


[1] Don’t worry—this story is sort of boring me too but I had to finish it since I said the first part was part 1—next time I have this kind of idea I won’t do part 1 and part 2 since clearly part 2 sucks more than part 1 and part 1 might not have been that good.
[2] Just so you know this approach is not recommended in states other than NH and VT.
[3] Just so you know this approach is not recommended in any states.

Hello

I thought I'd add a picture since we haven't had any in a few days. And as interested as I am sure everyone is in our key saga - pictures are more fun!

Car Key Olympics

It's Heidi here... thought I'd update everyone on what happened with the car keys -- Tom got busy with work (someone has to pay the bills...) and didn't finish the story.

Arriving in Manchester we didn't know what to expect but we were REALLY tired. Our worst case scenario plan was to rent a car, drive home so Amelia and I could settle back in, and then he would drive to the dealership and try to get a duplicate key. Then drive back to the airport, return the car, and retrieve our car. We were really hoping this wouldn't happen.


So, we land and Tom leaves me and Amelia at the food court to sit tight and wait. He goes to get our luggage and brings it back upstairs to me. He then goes to the car...

He found the keys in the ignition of our unlocked car. The battery had run down but he was able to get a jump from the Manchester parking garage people. Tom then had to come back into the airport to get us and our bags - I couldn't carry both bags and deal with the stroller (and Amelia who has learned to launch herself out of her carseat when not strapped in) and he couldn't pull up and park out front as the parking lots Nazi's will ticket your car immediately. So, Amelia and I go and sit on the benches out front while Tom returns to the car for a third time, loads up, and retrieves the two of us.

Needless to say, we all took a big long nap when we returned home that afternoon...

Speaking of naps, Amelia is still sleeping like a champ and we can't believe how much our (my) life has changed in a few short days. It's amazing what a few hours of sleep will do for you!

Baffled

Well, Amelia slept very well last night. We remain totally confused about how to raise a baby. Just when you think you know something--it all changes. She was up for an hour or so around midnight but then slept so well that we had to wake her up at 7am. Then at 8:30 she went down for a nap (with no walking around or anything like that) and she fussed for 3 minutes and then slept for 2 hours. Again we had to wake her up so she didn't sleep too long.

Very odd. But also great news.

Corn Hole

People have been asking us what corn hole is. It is a game played by throwing bags filled with corn at tilted boards with holes in them. Players score 3 points for tossing a bag in the hole and 1 point for a bag on the board. Similar to horseshoes the points cancel each other so if one player sinks a bag and another sinks one and has one on the board, the second player scores 1 point.

The game came to us from Ohio and our friends Justin and Val. I first played it at St. Michael's Maryland while celebrating Alex's 30th birthday. Then Justin and Val came to vist and Justin helped me build some boards before repeatedly beating me on my home course. (He recently proved that he is still the best by beating me 21-0 while I visited Ohio.)

The nice thing about the game is that it is cheap, easy to make and much easier to learn and play than horseshoes. It is also possible to play with your daughter in the baby bjorn. It throws off your ballance a bit but you can still play pretty well. When Amelia was in her big crying stage I would play by myself walking from end to end and the motion of the walking would put her to sleep.

The video here shows Matty and Tucker playing. They came to visit the second week that Amelia was born. This was a very fun trip.

Fun with Katelyn

Olympics

In the spirit of the Olympics we thought we would post constantly as Amelia begins her sleep traitng. We had read many books, as I referenced earlier, and tonight began putting Amelia down and not going to her when she cried.

We were totally prepared to check on her every 10 minutes until she fell asleep. My guess was 1 hour, Heidi's was up to 2.5.

Heidi gave her a bath and put her down. Heidi then took a shower and I was left to check on Amelia. The system was that I would check after 5, 10, then 15 minutes--just to make sure she was OK. (For those of you trying to learn from this blog it is page 183 of the Ferber book.) The plan was that this pattern would continue until she was asleep--no matter how much crying she did.

After 5 minutes I checked on her and she was sqwaking a bit but comfortable. After 10 minutes she was asleep. YES that's right our insanely hard to put to sleep baby fell asleep on her own in 10 minutes. She certainly has been playing us for the last few weeks. At this writing she has been asleep for over 2 hours on her own with no coddling from us.

We shall see how the rest of the night goes...

Amelia Tries to Stand?

So here Amelia does her best version yet of tipping over and trying to get herself into a crawling position. Much like T-rex she doesn't yet have the arm strength to get herself on all 4s. She also may have inherited her mother's T-rex arms (I never noticed them until she pointed it out but they are quite not long). For the record I think my wife looks beautiful and I wouldn't change a thing about her.

On another note we are trying sleep training this week. Sounds so formal and brutal. Very much like football 2 a days which are starting right now. Heidi has read many books on sleep and I have read the sections that she has highlighted for me and it seems like what we are doing is basically letting Amelia cry it out while checking on her every once in a while. Supposedly it is only meant to take a few days and then they sleep through the night. But if you have ever read this blog I'm sure you will agree that it might take longer for our dear one.

Final, but different topic, I looked up how Amelia was doing in comparison to Verne Troyer AKA mini-me from the Austin Powers movies. I thought that maybe she had surpassed his height and weight. She had not--he is 2 ft. 8 inches and 35 or so pounds. I did learn that I was not very original in my mini-me idea. I found several other parent blogs that marked when their child had become bigger than Verne.

Amelia meets her cousin!

One of the highlights of our trip to Ohio was that Amelia got to meet her cousin, Katelyn, who is 2. Katelyn seemed to take to her well and wanted to hold her and pat her head and help her jump in the jumper. She calls Amelia "Meel-ya" and it is very cute. Follow this link below for many cute pictures and video of Katelyn & Meel-ya!

http://picasaweb.google.com/crumlives/OhioWithAmeliaAtChrisAndLauraS/photo?authkey=UOGPbcFzq70#5231789285672865602

Bizzaro Amelia

How does a kid this cute still spend hours at a time crying?

Our friend Emily Elliott, who has 3 young kids of her own, put forward a theory that there are actually two Crumrine kids. There is cute Amelia that is out during most of the day, at parties, in front of everyone and basically any time non-parents are watching. Then there is fussy Amelia, sort of the bizarro Superman of baby world, that cries and fusses and basically makes life tough--but only when no one is watching.

This is the Amelia that we saw the night before we left for home. Luckily Chris and Laura have a big house so I was able to go down to their finished basement (ahh imagine a finished basement--ours is similar to a prison from the 15th century) and walk back and forth to calm Amelia. This sadly began at 1:30 am and lasted until 3:30. Not bad but we had to wake up at 4am to go to the airport so we didn't get that much sleep.

On a related note when we were home in Tiffin I took Amelia out in my parents front drive to walk back and forth to put her to sleep. This wound up taking longer than I had hoped and when I had been walking back and forth for 1/2 an hour I tried to think of something that I could do to pass the time. I decided that I would calculate how far I was walking. So I paced off the drive, estimated how many times I had done walked it and then multiplied. Between 1 mile and 1.5 miles is how much I walked. I suppose that's how I lost my baby weight. 10 pounds so far.