Ahoy Charlie!

If it weren't for my mom's creativity and hard work and my dad's resourcefulness then I would be embarassed to admit what Charlie's room looked like. Before my parent's arrival to Brussels, Charlie's room decoration was basically a crib in our spare bedroom. I have no talent at decorating and since we didn't know the gender we didn't really put much effort into picking out a theme. But now that my parents have worked their magic, this is where Charlie is lucky enough to lay his head...

I had taken some photos of sailboats when I worked in Nantucket. When we combined those with the blue color of a bookshelf Dad found we decided to go with a nautical theme. Mom worked her tail off while she was here sanding and painting both a chest of drawers and the changing table in a really sweet blue color. The glider is a gift from my wonderful friends at the American Women's Club. Charlie and I rock in it every day and I spend the time thinking of just how blessed I am (and how I would like him to fall asleep).

We bought the crib from our friends Rick and Rachel. Their girls ended up sleeping in their bed pretty often so it is only a very gently used one. We want to hang more pictures on the wall, but at the same time we also want to get our apartment's security deposit back so we are hesitant to put too many holes in the walls.But the pièce de résistance of the room is the bed cover my mom made by hand. She took a standard white quilt and added the blue and red borders. Then she painted on the anchors, added a rope feature over the anchors and then painted an incredibly intricate nautical star in the middle.

Thank goodness Charlie has some hard working and creative grandparents because his parents definitely did not inherit that gene. Thanks so much to my dad and especially my mom for all the hard work they put into making Charlie's room look like a precious little boys room!

He's just not that into you

This is the look Charlie gives us as we kiss, cuddle and coo all over him while telling him how much we love him and how cute we think he is. I like Kyle's reasoning though -- Charlie can only cry, and since he doesn't cry when we do this, then he must like it.

Yes, it is not a good reason to have a baby just so you can play dress up with him.......but it sure is fun!!! I love putting Charlie in different outfits and he humors me most of the time. (Thanks to Julie Smith for this precious outfit).




Charlie is already protesting being seen in public with his parents.


People always comment about how long Charlie's fingers are for a baby. Along with the blonde hair and blue eyes, Charlie also got Kyle's fingers.

Since Charlie has become the main topic of this blog, I am thinking of getting him this onesie (available at the etsy shop Love September so she doesn't think I am stealing her image).

You're so cute!

My mom was so sweet and bought us a Flip Mino video camera that she sent over with Sarah Kathryn. I knew that thing was small, but wow, it is tiny! I have had a great time playing around with it and you can expect a lot more short videos of Charlie once I figure out how to edit them a bit better. This afternoon I told Sarah Kathryn, "I just took a really cute video of Charlie falling asleep." And although she loves him, she looked at me like, "Did you hear what you just said? That sounds so boring." So before I post a seven minute video of Charlie falling asleep, I need to edit some of these if I expect anyone to keep reading this blog. In the meantime, here is one of Sarah Kathryn and I doing what we spend most of every day doing -- telling Charlie how cute he is.

***Note -- we have no clue how Sarah Kathryn and I both started calling each other Tootie (and no, it is not because we toot a lot), but somehow is has stuck.

Frequent Flyer Family

Kyle and I are such uptight first-time parents that we only trust a few people to babysit Charlie. This is why we fly our family members over from the States whenever we need a few hours of help. Just kidding! We have actually been lucky enough that my Aunt Missy is a flight attendant for Delta and has arranged her schedule to fly to Brussels occasionally these past two months. She comes to visit us on her layovers and has been an incredible help in both bringing supplies from the U.S. and giving Charlie lots of cuddle time (and thus giving me some free time to run errands). The most amazing feat is our stroller that she carried over. (It was much cheaper to buy it in the States.) Charlie and I use it every single day and are so appreciative of her efforts as we glide effortlessly over the cobblestones. It has been really wonderful to have a touch of home brighten our days a few times each month. My sister has also hopped across the pond to get to visit with Charlie this week. She arrived this morning and Charlie is already quite smitten with her. I honestly think he is a bit confused by this person that looks, talks and acts a heck of a lot like that other woman that has been feeding him for the last two months. However, as long as a big-haired woman is giving him a bottle he doesn't really care which one it is.And Kyle's mom is coming back over in a few weeks for a visit which we are really looking forward to. She was sick last time she visited, so Charlie is excited to get lots of kisses from her on this visit!Charlie is one lucky baby to be born into such incredible families that love him so much. And we are even luckier to have such wonderful family members that are willing to travel so far just to love on him!

Nothing to fear but fear itself

While I was pregnant I had both small and big fears about so, so many things.

--speaking French in the hospital
--the pain of contractions
--climbing our 50 stairs while 9 months pregnant
--the pain of child birth
--all the bad extra things that happen to you that are associated with child birth


Sometimes I could almost make myself sick to my stomach with everything I worried about. And you know what? Every single fear was realized.
--speaking French in the hospital (Although we managed, it was difficult at times to figure out what some of the nurses were saying and definitely added to our stress.)
--the pain of contractions (Yes, the contractions were more painful than anything I had ever felt before.)
--climbing our 50 stairs while 9 months pregnant. (Climbing the stairs was exhausting and still is.)
--the pain of child birth (Yep, it was painful.)
--all the bad extra things that happen to you that are associated with child birth (My body definitely suffered the effects of birthing a baby.)


And yet I survived. All of that worrying didn't help me to avoid any problems. By no means am I saying that I will never worry again. But this experience has made me realize that worrying doesn't prevent any problems either. Unless it killed me, I was going to have to survive every single thing that happened whether it was painful or pleasant. There was no way around the problem except straight through it. No, it was not fun, and yes, it made for some really rough patches in the last few months. But I came away wholeheartedly agreeing with the saying, "That which does not kill us only makes us stronger." -- Friedrich Nietzche

My friend Amy coined the perfect name for what I felt like these past two months -- I have been in the "mommy cocoon." It is true that all I wanted to do was stay at home all bundled up with Charlie. Between the weather and feeling overwhelmed at the amount of work it took to get out of the house, I basically stayed inside all the time.

Well after two months this (social) butterfly has finally emerged. The sun has started to show itself more often, I've got the diaper bag fully packed and we have a pretty good system for getting Charlie out the door. I have learned through trial and error that staying out of the house for longer than three hours is a bit of a stretch but even just a few hours away is really good for both of us.

Because I am spending some of my freetime outside I find that I don't have much time to blog but I still take lots of pictures, so here are a few of my recent favorites.

What a Charlie-rito looks like. (This is Charlie in his swaddle sack ready for bed).

Charlie and I catching a morning nap since he got up at 6:15am.

What his eyes look like when he can't quite decide if he wants to be asleep or awake. Charlie often has the arm of whichever side of his body is against yours pressup next to his face.

And everyone's favorite...

Today both our internet and Vonage phone were out for about an hour. I am embarassed to say, but I was really at a loss for what to do with myself. I had a whole list of things to do, but after looking at it, I realized that they all related to e-mails, web research or calling people back home. Besides cleaning the bathroom and vacuuming, there was not one thing on my very long list of 20 things to do that did not require the internet.

Wow, what does that say about me and how our society functions? I recently read that the average business person checks their e-mail over 100 times a day. I think for Kyle (and I am sure many others) that number might be closer to 300. If you really think about it, that means that at least 100 times a day you are taking in information, processing it, figuring out how to respond etc. Yes, some of those e-mails are from the same people, but there is a good chance that at least 20 e-mails are from different people. In your mind you have to be able to instantly jump to what happened in your last e-mail with them, what they need from you now, how to respond to that, who to put them in touch with and on and on. It makes me exhausted just thinking about it!

And most every person I know has more than one e-mail address. That means even more e-mails to check and respond to! There is an audio program out there called You are Not Your Inbox that supposedly helps you "overcome e-mail overload". I know nothing about it, but was amazed (and depressed) to read the following paragraph:

Simple math reveals that we waste thousands of dollars and hours of productive time every year sifting through email that doesn’t contribute to our personal or professional objectives. In fact, if you spend just 30 minutes daily reading or responding to unnecessary email, that adds up to a full 3 weeks wasted over the course of the year. That’s more time than most Americans get for vacation.

Forget about wasting time e-mailing, I prefer to spend my time taking pictures of Charlie's feet instead.

Charlie Angel

I know there is no better way to tempt fate than to brag about your child to the internet. However, I figure that if Charlie were a fussy baby then I would be complaining about it. Since he is so good, it is only fair that I talk about that too. Kyle and I fully admit that we have had absolutely nothing to do with this. Charlie just happened to be born an angel. He is just so darn good we keep looking at each other and saying, "How did we get so lucky?" I know things can change, but we can always say that he was an angel for at least the first two months of his life.

Charlie wakes up between 7-8am. He has a little bit of trouble taking a full morning nap, but we can't compain about that since he has been such a good sleeper the night before. Sometimes he will wake up only 45 mintues into his nap but once we pick him up he will just look around contentedly in our arms until it is time for his next feed.

He takes about 45 minutes to drink his bottle and burp. Afterwards we put him in his baby chair or let him kick around on the changing table or on our bed. Usually he is working on a little something for us during this time. We have learned to not change him until he lets out a distinctive high pitched scream. That seems to be his signal to us that he is ready to be changed. Through trial and error we have discovered that if you open the diaper any time before that you might see the pooping in action.

At exactly an hour after he wakes up he starts to get fussy. During the day we swaddle him in a blanket and at night we do a tighter swaddle in a Snug and Tug. He loves being swaddled and always calms down a bit after we do it. From that point on he might cry a little bit, but it is a distincive tired cry. A variety of tricks (swaying, patting, shushing, a pacifier, or a hearbeat sound) all help calm him down. And by an hour and a half after he originally woke up, he is back asleep again. Then we usually have about two hours free because he normally goes 3-4 hours between feedings.

At about 6pm he has his last bottle of the day and then he sleeps until midnight. Kyle takes that shift while I sleep and then I take the 3am shift. Charlie wakes up again about 7am and Kyle feeds him and then we start the day again.

Kyle and Charlie getting a little cat nap after breakfast this morning.


What is so wonderful about Charlie is that when he cries, there is a reason. As soon as we can figure out the reason (change his dirty diaper, warm him up, feed him) he will stop crying.


All of this explains why throughout the day I keep saying to him, "You are an angel. You are just such an angel." And he gives me a blank stare in return.




***A note to all pregnant women out there. I was recently discussing the definition of 'time between feeds' with another new mom and we both agreed that we had a complete misunderstanding about that before we had a baby. I always thought, "Oh, they said their baby goes two hours between feeds so that means the mom is getting to sleep for two hours." No, that is definitely not the case. What it means is that if the baby starts feeding at 3pm and takes an hour to eat then they will want to eat again by 5pm. This means the mom only gets one hour of sleep if she is lucky and the baby doesn't cry, need a bath, have a really dirty diaper or just doesn't sleep for that next hour before they want to feed again.

This is Belgium

This country is just a little bit crazy. Even after being here over four years, I am still amazed at some of the things I see and hear. Recently I've had my camera with me when I went out so I was able to capture a few of these crazy/annoying things to share with you. Sorry for the disjointedness of it all, but here goes...

***They have been tearing up the sidewalk and road on our four block street for the last two months! There is mud and dirt everywhere, including all over our apartment from having tracked it inside.

The construction has made the driving here even a bit crazier than normal. Notice below that in a one lane area (because the other lane is taken up by loose cobblestones and the construction zone) there is a biker, motorcycle, car and bulldozer all trying to navigate their way around each other.


I know a lot of people are excited about the changes Obama might bring to the US. And while some might be great, after living in Europe for awhile, I think it is important to share the other side of what all this 'the government keeping everyone employed' looks like. Notice below that a man is painstakingly laying each and every cobblestone into place. Yes, cobblestones are quaint, but the problem is that it takes a long time and alot of work to pave an entire street's sidewalk with cobblestones. I repeat, this work has gone on for over two months and they still are not even done with it. And they have not laid one new pipe or wire. They just tore up the sidewalk only to re-lay it again. Imagine how many tax dollars it took to pay for this guy to work for two months to finish four blocks of sidewalk.

And the problem with doing all this back breaking work is that the cobblestones are only held together with some type of sand mixure. Now let's put 2 and 2 together. We live in a place where it rains all the time. And what washes away sand? So the result in just a short while will be a sidewalk like the one below on a neighboring street. And they will never come back to fix it, so every time we walk down this street we have to avoid the loose cobblestones so that we don't twist our ankle.

***And now a little story -- our friend's husband was in incredible pain with a kidney stone. While he was screaming out in agony, she drove him to the hospital only to find the entire entrance locked up and dark with not a single light on anywhere. Her husband ended up passing the kidney stone in the car while she was searching for another hospital. It turns out that the hospital had closed down its emergency wing for two weeks while it underwent construction. The only thing was that they didn't put up one sign to let anyone know that or any information as to where the next closest hospital was. Thank goodness our friend was only passing a kidney stone instead of delivering a baby!

***Only in Belgium are they so used to dogs peeing and pooping everywhere that they put up a statue in honor of it.

***The other day I did a double take as I saw two cars look like they were about to run into each other at 1mph. The trams were backed up for some reason so each car had tried to pass them only to be left in a game of chicken.

***A recent e-mail Kyle sent me from work -- Outside my window just now, I heard the siren of an ambulance that clearly wasn't moving. I looked to see why, and it was because in front of the ambulance was a bus that had stopped to pick up a passenger, and remained stopped while the driver sold the passenger a ticket. Better that the STIB get its 2 euros than the guy in the ambulance make it to the hospital!

***This photo was taken in Madrid, but it always makes me laugh. How often must the cleaning crew having to come and empty this trashcan?

***During the second week Kyle and I were here we arrived at a store promptly at their opening hour of 9am. We were surprised to find that as we walked in the store, so did some of the employees, ready to start their work day. We wandered the aisles as employees cleaned the floors, had their morning coffee and re-stocked the shelves. Apparently they have never heard of coming in before the customer to get that kind of thing done. Below is a very common sight in the grocery stores around here. They re-stock during store hours which can create quite an obstacle course with a shopping cart. (This was taken on a Monday afternoon at 3pm).

Luckily enough Belgian beer helps all this craziness to make a little bit more sense!

Charlie the leprechaun wishes you a
Happy St. Patrick's Day!!!



Unfortunately Charlie took the celebrations a little too seriously and we had to cut him off from his Guiness. Thank goodness he can't drive yet.

Being a mom isn't all spit up and diapers! Thanks to my good friend Kelly for sharing her babysitter with me and organizing a great lunch out in the sun!

Unfortunately Charlie read the holiday dress code memo wrong. He thought it said to 'dress up like a reindeer' instead of 'wear green'.

Too bad the real leprechauns are actually an ocean away in Mobile, Alabama.

Our life in photos

This is our log of everything Charlie does. We write down when he wakes up, eats, sleeps, pees, poops and is fussy. Yes, it seems very 'first time parent' but it has really helped us when we have needed to look back and see how he reacted to a certain type of formula, if he was constipated or how long he has been asleep. We have even taken things a step further and put the data into an Excel spreadsheet so we are able to see if there is a trend of things. It seems that right now he is on a pretty regular schedule of waking up between 7-8am, not doing well with his morning nap, sleeping well the rest of the day, going 3 hours between feedings and then sleeping well during the night.
Sweet Charlie swaddled and asleep...

This is my view about seven hours a day. Charlie eats eight times a day (Kyle takes one shift) and it usually takes him almost an hour to finish a bottle. Charlie and I have alot of time to look at each other.

The scene in our kitchen every evening. Because we have to clean and sterilize the bottles every night, we are already tired of being at the sink by the time the real dishes are ready to be washed. This is why I have been trying to make more and more one dish meals (also known as sandwiches).

Charlie does a great job of always kicking off his socks. Because of this talent, the photo below is a very common view of our floors -- socks strewn across it that have been kicked out from under his blankets.

The word bottle has taken on a whole new meaning in our lives.

We spend a lot of time at the changing table.

But we spend the majority of our time cuddling with Charlie and taking pictures of him.