The Bathroom Post

Amelia likes her construction! We are getting ready for our friend Brian to come in and redo our bathroom so we were destroying some walls in anticipation of his visit.

One Small Step for Amelia...

A big day for Amelia today! She took what we are calling her first step. She has really been thinking about it for a long time - she will stand by herself and then put her hands above her head and look where she wants to go...but then get down on her knees and crawl. Today, she put her right foot forward and reached out for me at the same time. So we think that counts!

As is evidenced in the second video, it is nearly impossible to get any photos of her standing or attempting to walk because whenever we get down on the floor to take pictures she makes a beeline for the camera and swats at it... so we're working on it. In the first video we are just showing off Amelia's love of having her teeth brushed...it's unrelated to the walking milestone :)

Yummy

I believe that this picture gives new meaning to the term "chipmunk cheeks." If you're wondering, she was shoveling tofu and carrots into her mouth. Her eating style is to shove as much in as possible and then let it sit there until it dissolves. Today she and I went to Friendly's for lunch (mommy was really hungry...) and she had her first grilled cheese sandwich! She loved it and ate almost the whole thing. This is exciting for Mom & Dad because it is one more thing we can feed her... we were feeling bad just giving her bananas, avocados, and yogurt. She also ate waffles for the first time this weekend (homemade by Grammie - she ate the whole thing). She is taking after Mommy in the "love of food will eat anything" department.

The saga of the baby gate...

Amelia has been challenging me with her mobility. She figured out how to climb stairs a few weeks ago but we've always been able to keep her away from them and distracted with toys fairly easily. Until yesterday. (side note -- don't know why this is underlined!!!)
First I tried to block the stairs with a laundry basket. She got over that in about 1 minute...

Not pictured, but after the laundry basket, I attempted to block the stairs with four cans of paint. She also got through those. Having mastered the laundry basket, she was able to scoot right over that and then challenge herself with the paint can Olympics.

So, last night before yoga I went to Toys R Us and bought one of those nice gates that have a foot pedal so you can swing it open hands-free. After several attempts at installation, it was 1" too long to fit in our strange old house doorway. The picture shows this but not that well...
I then attempted to use the 3rd side of our fireplace gate to just block the whole area. She figured out how to move that faster than she managed to get through the laundry basket/paint can obstacle course.
Success! This was the cheap gate that was re-gifted to us by Grammie. Funny how those things work better than the expensive kind! Amelia spent the morning crawling over to this gate and then screaming because she couldn't get through... I win!

word cloud

Thought you all might enjoy this. Wordle takes a file and makes the words bigger or smaller based on how many times they have been used.

Boston and Becky

Part I
Saturday we went down to Boston to see our friends Tucker, Liz, Dan and Whitney. Dan and Whit had flown in from Charlottesville for the 3 day Martin Luther King weekend and my friend Matt, Heidi, Amelia and I drove down.

We had a great time with everyone until the 4 am wake up of Amelia.

None of these guys have kids so we were pretty sure we provided some good deterrence on them having any soon. Especially Matt who had to endure about 1 hour of wailing on the ride home.

Making a big weekend even bigger we got to see Heidi's sister Becky too. Becky and Grammie came over for dinner on Sunday night and we ate lunch together today.

Part II

On a different note...while I was shoveling snow today I had the radio on and they replayed Martin Luther King's speech from the steps of the Washington Monument (I have a dream). At points it made me stop and listen because of how enduring many of the things he said were. While we still have many, many problems it is heartening that the conditions he spoke of in terms of the treatment of black citizens are now universally deplored. I do worry that somewhat irrational fear of people that are different does still percolate through our country. As a religious non-church goer, I worry about taking away the rights of any person even people that we might disagree with. In all of my readings about King (and Ghandi, etc.) I have always been struck by their ability to treat their enemies much, much better than their enemies would treat them.

People much smarter than me have drawn the obvious parallel to Obama and King. But in listening to King's speech I was awed by the way he spoke with such optimism about the future and with such a lack of hatred in his voice. At a time when atrocious violence and mistreatment was being perpetrated upon Southern blacks, King spoke of not falling prey to the easy urge to fight violence with more violence. During this tough time in our history I hope that Obama's rhetoric will be turned into action and ALL people in this country and the world will benefit from his optimism. Beginning tomorrow we will see what happens--but I hope for the best.

Part III

We were greeted Sunday morning with a huge snow storm that I had no idea was coming. You know you live in a snowy place when you miss a 12 inch snow storm. I think it is actually sort of fun. Anywho, I am currently in a battle with the plow truck drivers over how much they like to plow in our mailbox. I know they are just doing their job but they really did plow the box totally shut. Stage 1 of the battle began when I extended our mailbox out a bit (you can see it in the picture) so the mail lady could get to it. (A corollary to this is that if you don't plow out your mailbox you have to pay $500 dollars to the post office to get your winter mail. I wonder if Bernard Madoff is involved in that scheme?) Stage 2 involved the plowers plowing right up to the box and pushing a huge pile of snow right up to it. Stage 3 today, while I was listening to MLK and had just shovelled out the mailbox occurred when the plow once again came by and pushed all of the snow back in front of the mailbox. It was so obvious that 2 cars that saw it happen stopped and commiserated with me. It is good to know that boxes are being plowed in all the way up the street.

DEVIL CHILD!!!!!!!

Look at that cute face...

First of all, I do not feel like what I have written here is good writing all. I am very, very , very tired and cannot seem to put my words together in my usual witty banter :) Now here is the story. Yesterday we went to visit our friends Liz & Tucker and Dan & Whitney. Dan and Whit were visiting from Charlottesville and we were so excited to see them. Amelia's Uncle Matty joined us, as well. Did I mention how excited we were for all of us to be together?

We arrived and Amelia was a delightful charmer. She was social and fun and played and went to sleep nice and easily. Oh boy were we glad that we had gone for a visit! It was going so well...

Then everything changed. I went to bed around 11 and Tom went to bed around 1.

She did wake up when I went to bed so I decided to just let her sleep with me and nurse - something that NEVER happens at home, but something that I tend to let her do when we travel. She woke up every hour and I just fed her and while I wasn't sleeping that well, it was going okay...It really wasn't a huge deal and I felt like I was managing okay.

4:21 am. Amelia wakes up. I offer her her fourth feeding of the night and she screams. She sits up. Amelia wants to play. She starts squealing in delight YAY IT IS MORNING TIME!!!! I WANT TO CRAWL AROUND AND PLAY!!!!!!!! (no she didn't actually say this, I am just inferring based on body language and squeal sounds).

I really didn't know what to do. Everyone is obviously asleep - Tom and Matty are sleeping on the living room floor. I walk around with her in the kitchen for awhile hoping MAYBE she'd just settle back down. hahahahahahahaha. No. Tom gets up and offers to take her for a little while. He's a saint. So, Tom takes her into the bathroom, shuts the door, and plays with her. I return to sleep on the couch.

A little bit later Tom returns and places Amelia on my stomach. I get up to get her a toy and he has stolen my spot on the couch and is asleep. It's now 5ish so I figure it's my turn so I go with her into the bathroom. She plays with the toilet paper, goes through the cabinets, finds great delight in the nail clippers no matter how many times I take them from her, and opens and closes the doors and drawers in the cabinet many, many times. She is so stinking cute.

At 6am I cannot possibly keep my eyes open any longer so I go get Tom and he takes Amelia and I return to the couch. Apparently I slept for another hour and Amelia ate a banana and continued a third hour of play in the bathroom. When Tom came to get me at 7am I was about to accuse him of not letting me sleep for longer than 5 minutes...until I realize it had been an hour. At this point we decide to pack up and leave to drive home through a huge snowstorm. It only took us 4 hours to finally get home.

Let's hope that we all sleep well tonight - Amelia is in bed and was informed that if she wakes up tonight to play, there will be nothing but a gentle pat on the back and a few toys tossed into her crib...

Wish us luck.

So little, so much trouble...

OK. Here is what happened tonight. I'm sure this kind of stuff happens for Heidi all of the time but it just seems like there is no easy way to do it for me.

1. I chase Heidi out of the house to go to her yoga class because I think her being in the vicinity is making Amelia cry.
2. Amelia continues to cry and fuss for 1/2 an hour after Heidi leaves.
3. I feel like an ass.
4. At 4:50 I decide to feed her because I can't think of anything else to do.
5. She eats well but feeds the last of her food to the dog and pours all her milk on her lap while I am drawing the bath.
6. Bath goes well, YAY!
7. I take her from the bath by grabbing her back with a towel and carrying her to the couch.
8. Unbeknownst to me she has carried the wash cloth with her--more anon.
9. I dry her off and place her on the floor, carpet, to get her diaper on. She is not soaking but damp so in rolling around she coats her body with small flecks of dust and wood chips. She is the small human version of that thing that you use to get dust off of your black pants.
10. I flip her back to stomach side up and apply diaper rash cream.
11. The diaper rash cream is all over my fingers so when I adjust the diaper Velcros I coat them with it and they cease to work.
12. I rub the cream off on my pants and quickly get another diaper while Yoda licks Amelia.
13. Diaper finally on I sit down to watch her play for a bit.
14. I feel wetness. Damn! I sat on the washcloth that she carried from the tub.
15. Finally some success, we read two stories and she seems to be winding down.
16. I take her upstairs, we read two more stories and I put her down.
17. She rolls over, closes her eyes and is immediately asleep.

I'm sure she thinks, "If this guy would just stay out of my way, I'd be fine."

Some pictures of her mischief from the evening.

L'il Mozart

Toonces and Yoda in their daily face off. They love to torment each other - hopefully someday we will catch some of it on video...


Our little Mozart...

today

For a long time I have wondered if the UVM gymnastics sweatshirt that Heidi gave me had a life of its own. Sometimes it had a drawstring in the hood sometimes it didn't. Sometimes it had stains sometimes it was clean. So imagine my surprise when finally the two UVM sweatshirts appeared together.

Today there were two set of eyes trying to escape from the living room.

And here is one of Amelia trying to take the camera away from Heidi. She has a hard time dealing when she does not get what she wants...

Some Winter Hiking

While Heidi and Amelia enjoyed swimming lessons in a 90 degree room, my friends Nesbitt, Matt and his fiance Heidi hiked Mt. Webster. Our original plan had been to hike Garfield but we realized that would be a 12 mile day. So we opted for the Webster Jackson loop which would put us in for more like a 6 mile day. This was a good move, as we wound up breaking trail for much of the hike.


The day was uncharacteristic for a NH winter day. We often have clear weather but that weather often comes with high winds in the mountains. There was a little wind at the top but for a region that can have sustained winds near 50 it was a calm day.

It was very, very cold though. We were all outfitted with warm gear, except for Col the dog, but we had some cold cheeks and some frosty eyelashes.

And at the end of the hike we went to Matt's house for some food and drink. We were all so tired that we were in bed by 9:30.

Check out all of the pictures from our hike below--its worth a look--there are some good ones.

http://picasaweb.google.com/crumlives/WebsterHikeWinter2008?authkey=Lv7nFTvD7Ys#

Update.

As predicted, there was a situation during diaper-free time. And let me just say it wasn't pretty. We're looking forward to this healing up soon - hopefully the new cream recommended by the doctor will work!

Happy Friday!

Amelia enjoys some diaper-free time yesterday afternoon. She has been battling a fire engine red diaper rash for the past week, so we let her dry out after every diaper change. So far, no problems (but I'll bet there will be today after I have said that there haven't been any...)
Amelia examines the presents that arrived yesterday from Aunt Liz & Uncle Scott. I organized them to look nice and holiday-ish for Tom when he got home from work and Amelia decided she just wanted to mess it all up :)
Amelia is impatient while I try to take out her new toy cars from the box. Tom had to get out a chainsaw to get them out (just kidding - but it did take awhile with a lot of work from the scissors and a knife...)

Our other child

Heidi's birthday

Our friend Dan taught us that a 30th birthday is to be celebrated not for a day but for an entire month. So we have gone through a few of the stages for Heidi's birthday already. Stage one was Christmas. And even though we are all seen here having fun I was told by and outside consulting firm that Christmas with one's in-laws does not constitute a birthday celebration.

So we moved to New Year's where, with friends we celebrated the birthdays of the New Year, Ted, Heidi and Elliott. I was informed later however that a celebration where Mr. C. stays up until 2am with his friends and Mrs. C. goes to bed at 12:30 and takes care of the baby all night is not a celebration for Mrs. C.

So we move seamlessly to Heidi's actual big day. Here we hit closer to the mark. Heidi's mom made and awesome and tasty dinner at our house.

Our next step is to have a little gathering here in NH. Hopefully this weekend. That should really get the "Heidi birthday month" vibe going. More news to come.

Amelia in Action

Here Amelia helps Tom grade some papers. Then Heidi fed Amelia and left me for shopping....

This left me, Amelia and Yoda alone.

Just some cute pictures.

Amelia at church on Christmas Eve - she stole the show standing up and waving to everyone (her new trick).

Amelia all bundled up at the Columbus zoo -- note her giant hands. We find it easier to just put adult gloves on her than try to squeeze her hands into tiny baby mittens...

Just like Davey Crockett and his skunk hat?

One of Amelia's favorite games...

Rolling around with Yoda

Katelyn helps feed Amelia.

Heidi Gets Crafty

The sugar/salt scrub - soap combo deal...

A plethora of homemade soap... the amount of work involved was not worth the outcome - they looked kind of blobby with different colors...
My pride and joy - wooden boxes painted, stained, and accessorized for Katelyn and Matthew...although Katelyn was more excited about the box of packing peanuts used to ship the boxes... :)
Picture frame... not that exciting :)

So this year for Christmas I (Heidi) got crafty and made almost everyone's gifts... It was fun and something I think I"ll keep doing - but no more soap. That was stinky and messy and it didn't turn out that great. Sorry if this is a boring post but I wanted to share my cottage industry as Tom has started calling it!

We're Back

After a week in Ohio we are home. Travelling with Amelia is always interesting but she did great on the flights and OK sleeping in 5 different places in a week.

We began with a few nights with my sister and her husband and kids. This photo is of her and her most recent child--Matthew.

Here is one of the Crumrine girls and the Irwin girls. Oh and Matthew there in the pocket.

And one of Aunt Betty and Amelia.
After some time with family we spent a few days with friends to celebrate the new year. Our friends found a great hill top cabin for our stay. We had some drinks, played a ton of game and enjoyed walking in the hills around the cabins. It actually brought me back to days when I used to walk around my Grandpa and Grandma Laux's farm.

The evening time views were great.

Today was the ride home and that began at 4am. Elliott was kind enough to get up at 4:20 to take us to the airport. The first and second flights went well and we were in NH by 10 am. The trouble began when we got on the ground. Amelia was mis adjusted by the early wake up and she had a tough time in the afternoon. She couldn't nap and at one point I swear she was weeping even though I was carrying her around. Every time either of us tried to put her down she screemed. She did have a good dinner though and we we hope the night will go well.