Little Lo Bajoe!

Rob and I have about a million nicknames for Lois. Some from our regular rotation: Lo, Lo-ee, Fussy McFussypants, Fidgety McFidgester, Super Genius Baby, and Bajoe. Right now, "Bajoe" is probably leading the pack. Emphasis on the second syllable, because I know you needed to know that. And it must come from the fact that I often say "Yo, bajoe" as a generic greeting. Does anyone know where I got that from?

Anyway, if you were a fly on the wall here, you'd be annoyed out of your mind listening to us:

- How's the Bajoe?

- The Bajoe finally fell asleep.

- I have a Bajoe passed out on me.

- Bajoe! What is up with you?

Surely other parents go through this weird new language thing, right? But now you know why Lois is going to think her name is Bajoe. The first of many hangups we'll inevitably give our daughter.

Speaking of... right now the Bajoe is stirring, so I'll have to wrap this up. But the Bajoe was super excited that her team won the Stanley Cup this week!

Go Blackhawks!!

Already trying to humiliate our daughter

Rob couldn't help himself, so of course I filmed it:

We're also teaching Lois our sports allegiances:

But Lois is also getting to socialize with potentially better influences than her parents:

 

Lois got to meet Uncle Chris!

 

And Lois loves her Chicago cousins Rhone and Pierson.

Oh, and if you're wondering, yes, Lois is now two months olds as of this past Saturday and nine weeks old as of today. She weighs over 13 pounds and is up just one inch to 22 inches in the height department. So she's officially getting shorter and fatter percentile-wise. We love our little Buddha!

We're still here!

Yep, we're still here. But time has flown by these past couple weeks as Lois is more alert and awake during the daytime hours.

We also realized that this blog has never had a formal introduction of Dunkel (due to our delinquent blogging for quite some time pre-Lois). So first, here is our beloved first "baby," who joined our family in the fall of 2011. Dunkel's name was given to her by the rescue organization where we got her because she's black and Dunkel means "dark" in German.

Dunkel loves loves LOVES Rob. Her favorite place to be is Rob's lap:

 

 

 

If Rob leaves the house by way of the front door, Dunkel stares out the front windows and sadly watches him walk away. If Rob leaves the house by way of the back door, Dunkel flops down on the floor of the back hall and waits for him to return.

 

Dunkel's second favorite place is wherever she can take a nap alongside Rob or me:

 

 

 

 

And Dunkel also likes taking naps on her own... in positions that don't always make sense:

 

 

(Don't mind the junk all over the place.)

 

Dunkel is gorgeous and ridiculous looking all at once. But it can be hard to get a close up picture of Dunkel because the flash makes her eyes glow like she's possessed: 

 





 

So you'll have to come meet Dunkel in person if you haven't already.

Meanwhile, Lois is still adorably awesome:

 

 

 

Rob teaches Lois rhythm

Too cute.

I guess I'm not going to be one of those moms...

... who celebrates every month of Lois's first year of life.

Lois's one month birthday came and went this week. Wednesday, to be exact. She had her one month check up. She is tipping the scales just shy of 11 pounds but she's only grown a quarter inch vertically since she was born. So we officially have a chubby, shorty baby. Love it!

Yup, she's still got those cheeks!

Some people have asked how Rob and I are doing. Well, we are both exhausted but hanging in there. This week is our first full week with no help while Rob's back at work. Lo doesn't sleep through the night but she's inching towards 2-3 hour sleep sessions from between about 9pm to 4am... with a break or two or three to be fed, changed, burped, rocked, etc. So I try to sleep the first half of the night and Rob sleeps the second half of the night. It's not horrific, but thank god it's Friday.

As for my recovery, that's going well too. At the hospital when the doctor told me I was going to have to have a c-section, I didn't really think much about the "after." The first couple weeks were rough. I couldn't walk, sit, or stand without pain. But I'm off the narcotics and down to much more mild pain in my abdomen. I still can't wear clothes that put any pressure on my lower abs -- even maternity jeans get uncomfortable after a couple hours. So I basically spend 24 hours a day in yoga pants. There are certainly worse things.

All in all, we are all doing well, each day is a little easier, and Lo is still the cutest baby ever. :)

Face plant

Lois spends a lot of time laying on my chest and drifting off to sleep, which I love, even though it probably isn't helping her crib-sleeping abilities.

 

Today it was a bit more of a face plant than a snuggle. Since I don't have many pictures of me and Lois though, I figured I'd offer this one up.

 

And in case you didn't see my favorite Daddy-Lois picture on Facebook, here's Rob and Lois getting ready for Game 5 of the Blackhawks-Wild series last week.

 

 

Don't mind Dunkel's crazy eyes.

 

Lois has also had some visitors. The same weekend Aunt Kyle was here, Uncle Mark also came for a visit.

 

And Grandma has been here for two visits, including on Mother's Day.

 

We even took a little video on Mother's Day with Grandma and Lo. I can't imagine it's too exciting for anyone besides us, but I'm working on getting it to upload just in case. Will post when I can.

Three Weeks Old

I throw my hands up in the air sometimes, saying aaaaayo... I'm three weeks ooooo-old.

Lois is three weeks old today. She's celebrating by not sleeping this afternoon and throwing up on Mom. She's quite the partier.

At her check up last week she was 9 lbs, 7 oz. So she's gaining weight like a champ. She's too chubby (but not too tall) for some of her clothes now. It's pretty cute.

Two weeks with Lois!

Lois is almost two weeks old. Right now, things are fairly routine. Lots of sleeping, eating, burping, and dirty diapers. But she's still adorable. So here are some new pictures:

 

Lois asleep.

 

 

 

Lois yawning herself awake.

 

 

 

Lois gets some snuggles from Aunt Kyle.

 

 

Lois and her nap buddy Dunkel.

Lois at home

We've been home with Lois for four days now. We haven't slept much. Mainly because we are too anxious to sleep, but also because Lois rarely sleeps for more than two hours at a time.

Despite our sleep-deprived states, we love having Lo home with us and Dunkel. Here's a little video of Rob dancing with Lo.

Baby Lois!

Baby Lois is here! And she is inspiring me to restart our blog rather than overwhelm our friends and family via Facebook/email with baby updates. Here is a peek at our little girl who arrived 4/22/13:

Tomorrow we get to introduce Lois and Dunkel. Should be fun!

Happy Thanksgiving!!!!

As in years past, today I am reminded that I have so much to be thankful for. 

I am thankful for my amazing, ridiculously crazy husband, who is the best life partner ever. 

I am thankful to be an aunt to so many awesome kids. I'm thankful my oldest nephew and niece are spending Thanksgiving with us and that they are old enough to do random favors for me and young enough not to say no when I ask. I'm thankful to have spent so much more time this year than ever before with our middle three nephews and niece. I'm thankful for my two littlest nieces, my sisters' girls, who have added a whole new level of happiness to our family. 

I am thankful for my sisters and the fact that they have great husbands in their lives. I am thankful for my parents and for their health. I am thankful to have in-laws that rock.

I am thankful to have a challenging and stable job. And I'm thankful Rob has the same. 

I'm thankful that I've gotten a wee bit stronger and can now rock out an 11 minute mile pace in a 5K... 10 minute mile, here I come!

I am thankful that I count the most fantastic people among my closest friends. Even though most of you aren't local (grumble, grumble), I am thankful that geographical distance is the only distance between us. 

I am thankful to have read some new books this year. 

I am thankful to have started the New Year on a different continent!

I am thankful to have rocked out wedding after wedding of fabulous people this year and thankful for the weddings of fabulous people already lined up for next year. 

Life is good, people. And it's due in large part to all of you!!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

We're back!

I'm sorry we've been missing so long. There is lots to catch up on. Trips to San Antonio, Michigan, London, Atlanta, Vegas, Cleveland and Wisconsin, to name a few. Fortunately some of the trips have included lots of time with our nieces and nephews. Yea! We also had some friends show up in Chicago to visit us as well. Way cool. 

Some catch up pics below. More soon!

A Must Read

We should be back to blogging in just a couple more weeks. In the mean time, a great read about a great judge.

Baby nieces definitely know how to make you smile!

Could our littlest nieces be any cuter? Whenever I'm feeling stressed, I track down pictures of my nieces and nephews. Never fails to cheer me up!

Tess looking up at her dad, I think.

Rhone settled in for her first road trip -- to Indy.

Yet another cute niece wearing Hawks gear

Tess was wearing Hawks gear for the gold medal game too. Here she is with Grandpa.

USA Settles for Silver

Major bummer to see the US lose the gold medal match. Resa put Rhone in hockey gear right before the US tied the game to head to OT. Sadly, it was not enough to get the victory. But if the US had to lose, at least Rhone got to see three Blackhawks earn gold medals.

Maaaaaaaaan, I am tired

So much for being a better blogger in 2010!

Hmmm.

I am working too much per usual. It's pretty rough.

But there are some silver linings:

1. We spent a recent weekend in Boston. The impetus for the weekend was a Penn Law Wives Club reunion ... aka three Penn Law alums (me, Ali, Sophia) and our "wives" (Rob, Eddie, Fritz) gathered in Boston where Ali and Eddie live. We chilled out (with Sophia, Eddie and I squeezing in way more work than we should have over the weekend too). But wow. I needed that. The chill part anyway. Good friends make life so much better.

2. Since we were in Boston, we snuck over to Bill & Claire's to catch up and meet their 18-month-old daughter Maggie. So wonderful to finally meet her in person!!

3. And we snuck over to Deborah & Josh's to see them for the first time in years and meet their little guy Ephraim, who is destined to be the funniest kid ever given his parents comedic talents.

More to come on Chile and the rest of our lives. For now just know we're hanging in there. We love you all for checking in.

Go Colts!

Our second youngest niece Tess has great taste in football teams....

Welcome to the world our new niece Rhone!

Yesterday (Saturday), our newest niece was born at 8:03pm. Her name is Rhone Parker (last name not included because she doesn't need an internet presence just yet, but it's Nick's last name for the curious).

Resa went into labor on Friday, probably in the morning some time. Her water broke around 2:30pm on Friday. She went to hospital at 8pm. And then... the marathon really began, culminating in a three hours pushing session before Rhone arrived into the world. We were sooooo happy to see her.

Resa was beyond amazing through such a long and hard labor. She was so strong and so fierce, I was just in awe. And I was so happy to be with her and Nick for the experience. It was very special to see the moment Resa and Nick first met their baby girl.

When all was said and done, the adrenaline began fading. Rob and I left the hospital a little after 10pm and I logged a solid 11 hours sleep last night. Definitely needed it. Rob was also a rock star -- essentially running non-stop errands for me, Resa and Nick the whole time we were at the hospital.

Without further adieu, here's little Rhone!

Uncle Rob and Rhone. She's about 1 hour old. Naturally Rob is wearing his Blackhawks hat.

And here's Aunt Kathy with little Rhone. She looks so much like her mom in this picture. I can't believe how happy I look in this picture given my sleepless and unshowered state!

Chile - part 1

I am having some serious annoyances uploading pictures on this blog lately. Booo. So for today's post about our first leg in Chile, the pictures are in reverse order. Naturally.

We left for the airport in Chicago early in the afternoon on the 22nd. We landed in Miami a few hours later. We were infuriated by LAN Airlines' check-in system for our flight to Santiago -- which basically involved not checking anyone in for an hour. Our plane left a little late, but our 10-hour LAN flight wasn't too terrible as far as 10-hour flights in coach go. (Not that I've ever experienced a 10-hour flight anywhere but coach.)

Finally we arrived in Chile on the 23rd around 9am... which is 6am Chicago time, I believe. We picked up a rental car and hit the road for Colchagua Valley, one of Chile's wine regions. Just a couple hours later we arrived at Casa Silva. We had a lovely lunch - including our first tastes of Chilean wine in Chile! - while we waited for our room to be ready. We ate in a gorgeous courtyard in perfect weather. It was a fantastic beginning to our vacation!

We grabbed a quick nap after lunch and then raced out the door to Lolol, which we thought was about 30 minutes away but which was in fact 60 minutes away. We were meeting Andres, the man who runs our friend Erica's vineyard. Our miscalculation and some other misadventures (including our inability to find a phone - there is a single public phone in the small town of Lolol - and our inability to figure out how to use that phone) got us to Andres much belatedly. But he took us to Erica's vines and showed us some gorgeous views of one of Chile's many wine valleys. (Picture below.)

We left him around 7pm but still had to kill an hour before anything would be open for dinner. Most Chilean restaurants begin dinner service at 8 or 9pm. We landed at Pan Pan Vino Vino for dinner right as their doors opened at 8pm, where we got our next delicious sips of Chilean wine and laughed at the friendly dog wandering around the restaurant.

On the 24th we visited two fantastic wineries. We started at Montes where we got a private tour of their vineyards and winemaking facilities and then had a wine tasting of some of their best wines. (A picture of us in front of the vineyards is below.)

Then we went a couple doors down the road to Clos Apalta, which is the high end part of the larger Lapostolle. We were joined on our tour by a very friendly American couple who had just come from Patagonia, our next leg in Chile. They gave us the helpful hint of buying ski caps for our hiking in Patagona. I'm so glad we did!

We didn't think wine facilities could top Montes, but Clos Apalta did. We got to see a giant wall of granite across from the barrel room, which is the granite they blasted through to build their facility. They left some of the granite untouched and exposed to serve as a natural, temperature-regulating wall. We also got to feel a wine barrel made from 500-year-old French oak. No word on when the wine cooking in there is coming out.

Our wine tasting at Clos Apalta was on top of a giant stone table in their small barrel room. And, surprise, the table actually opens up and you can descend a staircase into a hidden, gigantic wine cellar - the personal wine cellar of the owner! Alas, the table didn't open for us, we only got to look through the table top into the cellar below us. We left Clos Apalta with a bottle of their Borobo, since it's unavailable in the US. We tasted their 2009 Clos Apalta as well, which we loved. The 2005 Clos Apalta won Wine Spectator's wine of the year award. Not a surprise given how great the wines were that we tasted. We picked up a bottle of their 2007 upon our return to the States! (A picture of the gorgeous Clos Apalta facilities is below.)

As it was Christmas Eve, everything was shutting down after we finished our tour at Clos Apalta. We made our way to our next hotel, Hotel Santa Cruz. We did a quick wander through the town of Santa Cruz, one of the larger towns in Colchagua Valley, but still not very large at all. We found a small restaurant where we had a gigantic pile of grilled meats for lunch. We tried to go to the town museum, but it was already closed for the day. So we relaxed until dinner time at the hotel.

We splurged on the Christmas Eve special dinner and it was excellent! At the end of the meal we ordered tea... and our waitress brought a gigantic vase of herbs to our table. She had to explain to us that we needed to pluck a variety of herbs, throw them into our tea cups, and then pour hot water over them. The tea was delicious! (You can see the herbs and us in our summery Christmas eve attire in a picture below.)

Christmas Day was for sleeping in. The hotel gave us a small stocking full of candy. Awwww. Then we made our way to Vina Santa Cruz - the only place open that day. We were joined by the same American couple we met at Clos Apalta. They were also staying at Hotel Santa Cruz. Small world. The vineyard has a cable car that takes you to the top of their hills where we had gorgeous views of the land. (A picture of the views is below.) Also hilltop were a few model buildings based on different Chilean cultures, so we got a nice history lesson as part of the tour. While the wines we tasted at Clos Apalta were the most exquisite of our trip, the wines at Santa Cruz were the best everyday drinking wines. Sadly, they're not available in the US, but we've already informed our local wine store that they need to make this Chilean connection for us!

We took the long way back to Santiago after our tour. We wound our way up the coast, stopping in a small village for some empanadas and then stopping just outside the beach town of Pichilemu to take in some gorgeous ocean views. (A picture of the windy clifftop near Pichilemu is below.) We loved winding through valleys and catching glimpses of the ocean and small rivers. Eventually we made it to the highway leading into Santiago, where the Andes greeted us from the horizon. We stayed at the airport that night to make it easier to catch our 8am flight to Patagonia. I'll blog the Patagonia leg next!



Pichilemu is in the background behind me and the Pacific waves.

The views from the top of the hills at Vina Santa Cruz -- one of our favorite views in Colchagua Valley.

At the end of our Christmas Eve dinner at Hotel Santa Cruz. Note the vase of tea herbs to my right. And note our summery clothes courtesy of Christmas in South America.

The top of the Clos Apalta winemaking facility peeks out of the hilltop... but it actually extends four stories deeper into the ground. The granite they had to blast through now composes walls, stairs and other features in the building.

In front of the vineyards at Montes. We got to ride up the hill behind us as part of our tour.

The view at Erica's farm. Her grape vines are at the bottom of the hill in the center.

Next up: Patagonia!