Just because this is funny...

Crystal - Children's Literature Critic

In the last few weeks I have started reading to Joseph each day. We had given reading a number of tries before, but he could never really sit in my lap long enough to make it worthwhile. If I catch him right before or after a nap, we are now at a point where he will sit quietly for a few minutes and listen to my voice and look at the pictures. If its a particularly long book, by the end, he's kicking his legs and putting the book in his mouth, but we can get through a reasonable amount of any children's story now. I am now becoming quite familiar with children's books and find myself critiquing them in my head while reading to Joseph. So I have decided that every once and awhile, I'll give you my thoughts on a specific book. I'll warn you that I tend to find very random things about each book to critique.

Tonight, I would like to discuss "Love You Forever" by Robert Munsch. The cliff notes version of this book is that a mother rocks her new baby to sleep and sings him a song, "I'll love you forever. I'll like you for always. As long as I'm living, my baby you'll be". The book takes you through the various stages of the mother raising her son (a 2 year old, a 9 year old, teenager, grown man, etc) and ends with the grown man rocking the old woman and singing her the same song.

In general, I like the concept of this book and I like to imagine Joseph always being my sweet and innocent little boy although I know someday he will grow up, do stupid things and eventually move away. However, there are two things that really bother me about this book.

#1 - At the point where the baby has grown up to be an adult and is living away from his mother, she gets in the car and drives to her son's home (ladder in tow), crawls through his bedroom window (using the ladder), climbs into bed with him, rocks him and sings him the song. Ok, maybe I am crazy...but this is CREEPY! I hope I am always close to Joseph, but if I am driving over to his house and rocking him at night when he is 30, someone please stop me! This woman has major co-dependency issues and should really seek some therapy.

#2 - Something is wrong with the age progression of the mother in this story. At the beginning, she looks the a normal 20-something new mom. By the time the kid is in high school, she's looking more like a grandmother than just 15 years older than when the kid was born. And by the time the baby is an adult (I am guessing he is 30-ish based on the illustration), she's so old and feeble, the son is carrying her. I mean, unless this women has one of those rapid age progression diseases, the illustrations are just off. I know this is nit picky, but these are the things you notice after you read the same book ten times.

Overall, I give "Love you Forever" a B-. It gets points for a good concept and sweet story but loses major points for the creepy mom and weird age progression.

Now, just because he is so cute, here is a picture of Joseph....

I took this on the first cool morning this Fall. It was the first time since he was born it was cool enough to put him in a sweater for our morning walk. This sweater was hand knitted by Ruth, a good friend of my Grandma and Grandpa Conrad. It is quite beautiful and could fetch a pretty penny in a baby boutique. Joseph fell asleep on our walk and looked so precious.

Obama - Good news/Bad news

So I was all excited for the big Obama rally today. I have never lived anywhere where the candidates have ever needed to campaign (NY = always Democratic; DC = always Democratic; NC = always Republican - at least until now) but it seems NC is in play this year, so we are seeing a lot of the candidates. Michelle Obama, Biden and Barack have all been to Charlotte in the last 10 days. I put on my Obama tee and headed on downtown today. As I walked I had some unpleasant encounters with anti-abortion and anti-homosexual protesters and told them I thought they gave Christians a bad name. They promised to pray for my soul and I told them not to bother. But I digress....

As I approached the gate for the rally entrance, I realized there was a line stretching several blocks. So I walked...and I walked...and I walked. I walked about 8 blocks before someone told me the line stretched 4 more blocks before making a right hand turn and heading down the next street over. So I cut over a block and walked back. Finally, I found the end of the line. The whole line stretched about 20 blocks. The line moved pretty quickly and I was surrounded by a nice diverse group of people. I enjoyed talking politics with them and hearing the perspectives of people of all ages, races and across the state of NC. Besides the common thread of loving Obama, we quickly realized that Sarah Palin was probably the most unpopular person among the group. I don't know what it is about her, but she really gets under the skin of liberal women.

At about 1:30 pm we got news that Obama had started speaking and we were still 4 or 5 blocks from the entrance. I continued on, hoping I would be able to catch the last few minutes. As I arrived at the entrance gate around 2:00 pm, the campaign music started playing. He was done and I had missed it. I was disappointed, but excited that so many people had turned out. The local newspaper reports an estimated 20,000 got in the gates and another 10,000 were still in line when he finished speaking. That's pretty impressive for a conservative city like Charlotte! I hope this is a good sign for November as the Republican rallies don't get turn out like that.

I had wanted to take Joseph but he didn't sleep well last night or nap well in the morning and I knew he would just be fussy in a stroller for that long and with that many people around...so he stayed home with Grandma, aka Silla (who better not have filled his head with conservative propaganda while I was gone - haha). But before I left, Joseph sent me with a message. I took the following picture below as he was giving me these instructions for the rally.

Another reason (like I needed one)...

Not that I really needed another reason, but I now have one more reason not to vote for John McCain.....Donald Trump endorsed him. That guy's a joke, I wouldn't vote for anyone he is voting for.

In other political news, Obama is in Charlotte tomorrow at a free, open to the public event. I am taking Joseph in his "Tiny Democrat" onesie. Maybe a pic with the future President will be posted tomorrow?!?!

Success...at last!

Some of you may know that I am obsessed with this online message board called The Nest. The obsession started 6 years ago when I was a senior in college and I was planning my wedding. At the time the board was The Knot and I spent every spare minute between classes on it, talking about weddings and reading about weddings. I am sure my college room mates remember making fun of me (hmmmm....Erin???). Once my wedding was over, life got busy (I sort of had this thing called a job) and The Knot was forgotten. But last spring when I got pregnant, I re-visited the website (which was now The Nest for pregnancy and baby related topics) and got sucked in once again.

Shortly after falling off the wagon and resuming my addiction, I miscarried. I wanted nothing to do with The Nest and the awful baby boards with happy, pregnant women in blissful ignorance of the fragility of pregnancy....but then I discovered The Nest had a pregnancy loss board. I gave it a try. In response to my first heartbreaking post, two wonderful chiquitas, Mandie and Harmony, who had just miscarried that week themselves, responded to me. From the start they were kind and supportive and understood every emotion I was experiencing. We immediately formed a connection through our pain and I could always count on them in the weeks and months after my miscarriage. When I lost it in Hallmark because the Father's Day cards put me over the edge or when I saw a pregnant woman and had horrible jealous feelings that I wasn't proud of, they always understood. We were travelling the same road of loss and sadness together. As much as I loved (and still love) my closest family members and friends, no one I was close to had been through what I was going through. At times when I felt lonely and thought my friends were tired of hearing me cry about my miscarriage (which maybe they were or maybe it was all in my head), I would log on to The Nest and these two girls were always there for me. There were days that their words on a website were the only thing that pulled me through my grief.

We all moved on to trying to get pregnant again. I screamed with joy last August when Mandie announced she was pregnant again. She and Harmony celebrated with me a week later when I announced with much anxiety and excitement that I too had once again seen two lines on a pregnancy test. A few weeks later when I logged on and saw that Mandie had again lost her baby, I sobbed like it was happening to me. Every month, I would wait with much anticipation to see if this was the month Harmony would be pregnant again and my heart would drop with disappointment when she would announce it was another unsuccessful month. My pregnancy continued on. It was not without its scares and Mandie and Harmony were always there to comfort me, even though they were going through so much pain themselves. At times I felt guilty for my success coming so quickly and easily while they were still trying to achieve it, but they were always happy for me.

And then at the end of last year, it happened for them both...they were pregnant again! And these pregnancies would stick!! My little Joseph came first in April. Harmony's precious little Aidan arrived at the end of July. I remember getting her e-mail and seeing his picture and just being overwhelmed with happiness. And then this week, the final success was achieved when Mandie welcomed Anderson into the world. I cried tears of joy for her. After four losses and too many tears to count, there are three little boys in this world as proof of our success!

I have never met them in real life, but consider them true friends. I love you girls and can't wait to see our little guys grow. Congratulations to all three of us!

Mini-me

About 2 minutes after Joseph was born and was laid on my chest, I thought to myself "he has my nose". At the time his little face was so squished and red from the birthing process, that I couldn't really discern any other resemblance to either Rich or I. However, within the next 48 hours we quickly came to realize that this little guy was all Mommy (with the exception of his chin and ears - which are 100% Daddy). As time goes on he looks more and more like me. Having stared at my own baby pictures growing up, there are times I look at him and see myself smiling back. My parents agree. Strangers have even commented on the resemblance.

Despite the obvious similarities, I could never really get a good picture to compare and contrast with my own baby pictures....until last week. We were at the beach and I got a picture of my mom holding him when he was smiling and it reminded us both of a similar picture of me at 4 months. Both pictures are below...what do you think??

Crystal at 4 months (August 1981)

Joseph at 4 months (Septmeber 2008)

He may look like me but he has Daddy's personality. He is full of energy and nothing holds his attention for long...and he knows what he wants, when he wants it...and never takes no for an answer! I guess he got the best of both of us.

Let's give this blog thing another try....

So I guess I pretty much suck at blogging since I have made one post in over 2 months. At the time when I started this blog, I was spending a lot of time awake from 4am until 7am, just watching Joseph sleep. He would only sleep on his tummy that time of night and the world has moms convinced that belly sleeping = certain death, so I spent a lot of time staring at his chest go up and down. I would take my eye off of him occasionally to poke around on the internet and ended up with a blog. However, shortly after that original post, and after a bout with kidney stones that left Rich and I broken, broken people, we made the very tough decision to let Joseph sleep on his belly full time. We invested in a movement monitor, which will send off an alarm that would wake the dead if he doesn't breathe in 15 seconds. That gave us peace of mind and suddenly, everyone was sleeping in our house. So as much I wanted to blog...sleep quickly became the priority. Joseph still isn't a great sleeper but we can average 6-7 hours every night, which for a mom who swore she couldn't survive on less than 10 hours before having a baby, is still not enough but its enough to keep me sane.


I'll give the quick update on Joseph since he has changed so much since last time I blogged. He rolls over like a champ. He showed no signs of rolling over and then one night, shortly before he turned 3 months, I went into his crib and he was on his back. For about two weeks, he'd only roll over in his sleep and I never got to see it. This did not aid sleep as he hates being on his back and he would wake up very angry that he was no longer on his belly. We still are having issues with this problem. Around the same time he started smiling in response to us. I am probably biased, but he may have the most beautiful smile of any baby EVER. You can judge for yourself with the picture below.








He is also giggling and "talking" to us. No one can get him to giggle like his Daddy. His favorite thing to say is "boogers and snot" and Joseph just laughs his head off at it. I think by the end of each day, he is sort of tired of me and the minute Rich walks in the door and he hears his voice, he is nothing but smiles. He loves his Daddy!


The last two weeks have seen a lot of development from Joseph. He is really starting to recognize his toys. He reaches out for his favorites and knows what he likes! He also recognizes his bottle. We put his bottle in front of him and he waves his arms and kicks his feet. He even gets excited when he sees us drink from a water bottle and watches us intently when we eat. This prompted us to start him on solid foods. He pretty much hated rice cereal by itself. He dry heaved and refused to take it after a few spoonfuls. I started mixing it with applesauce and he's now loving his one "meal" everyday. Next week we are on to sweet potatoes. Yum Yum!


He started rolling back to belly this week as well. We had to coax him to do it by putting his toys out of reach. Eventually he started reaching so hard for them that he was able to roll himself over. Now he rolls back and forth all day long. We think he will crawl pretty early as he already knows how to "scooch" his knees to get to a toy.

He continues to be a chunker. At his 4 month appointment, he weighed in at 15 pounds 7 ounces...in the 75th percentile. We are noticing a slight slimming down in his face as he gets more active, but he's pretty much still a fat guy.

I can not tell you how much joy this little guy brings to our life. Those of you who are parents, I am sure understand but there is simply no ways words can describe it!