Christening in Detroit

While things are fresh in my mind, I thought it would be a good time to write about our visit to Detroit. First airplane ride - check. First visit with great-grandmother Maura -check. First time at the pool - check. Christening - check. It was an overwhelming success; the only downside being how tired everyone is (including Ripley who is asleep in the sling right now).

On Friday midday, we headed to BWI with Ripley's entourage (Chuck, Vivienne, Fiona, mom and dad). It does seem to take a village to get a child on a plane. We divided and conquered with Chad and Chuck parking the cars and Fiona and Vivienne helping me with baggage and baby.

Once on the plane, we used the tried and true strategy of "try to put baby into a milk coma". This worked to an extent, but it took being put into the sling to truly knock her out. I don't think we disturbed the people around us too much - and since Fiona, Chuck and Vivienne were the ones behind us, I think it all worked out just fine.

When we got to Detroit/Dearborn, we checked into the Dearborn Inn. I had never stayed there before, although others in the party had. There have been several McCartan family events that have taken place here - I don't remember all of them, but they usually involve lunch/brunch and then photos by the fireplace (you'll see an example later).

After checking in, we headed to Gertrude Street to see Granny Maura. She and Ripley hit it off right away.

On Saturday, we all headed to St. Mel's for the Christening. Little girl was very accommodating as we put on her dress - it was a team effort.After a beautiful, quirky ceremony led by Uncle/Father Tom, the photos began in earnest (many are linked here at my Picasa album). Ripley didn't flinch when the water was dribbled on her head; in fact, she was asleep for 3/4 of the ceremony, and an angel during the rest. We are so thankful to Culann Kramer and Katie Brisson for agreeing to be Godparents.

There is so much more, including two wonderful brunches at the Dearborn Inn, but I think the most incredible part of it all was having 4 generations all in one place. The love for Ripley, but also for each of us in the family was such a wonderful gift.

Ale Mary's

Went to baby's fourth bar yesterday (7/22 Tuesday) - Ale Mary's in Fells Point. A really fun neighborhood place where we usually run into our friends Megan and Patrick. It is right next door to the very first apartment I lived in on Fleet Street back in 1992! Back then it was called Tony's and then Aftershock and both places were quite sketchy which is probably why they shut down.

Ripley started out in the baby Bjorn, switched to the sling for a bit and then back to the Bjorn for the walk home. She even got to spend some time not cooped up and was a hit with the 4 drunk ladies at the end of the bar.

International Visitors

This is slightly out of order (Artscape adventure was Saturday), but we had our first international visitors on Thursday and Friday. Maura and Lee were visiting from Ireland, so they came down from New Jersey with Granny Vivienne and PopPop Chuck. Needless to say, Ripley enjoyed the attention immensely. I think Fiona has more pictures, so I might try to steal a few more from her. The one on the left is one of the best ones I have of Maura and Ripley.

Baby's First [fill in the blank]

I find myself in the constant mode of thinking about "baby's first [fill in the blank]". Today was baby's first trip on public transportation - the Baltimore subway. For those of you who don't know much about the subway "system" in Baltimore, it consists one one line (yes, you read that right, one line) that generally runs northwest. There is a stop near Hopkins Hospital, which is near our house, so I thought it would be fun to take the subway to Artscape today (baby's first Artscape).

The fun started with getting stuck in the elevator down to the platform (baby's first time being stuck in an elevator). I used the call button to call for help, but Ripley was screaming so loudly at that point, that I couldn't hear what the man was saying. Fortunately, less than 5 minutes later (it could have been less than 3 minutes later, but it seemed much longer), the elevator started moving.

The misadventure continued when we got to Artscape at 10:30, only to discover that it didn't start until 12. Drat. So we walked up to Sofi's Crepes to see if they were open - nope - not until 11:30, so we headed down Charles Street for an extended walk and to take the subway home. By this time, it was pretty darn hot, so we stopped off in Starbucks (baby's first visit to Starbucks), and I tried their new smoothie (the orange mango banana was OK - but I'd recommend sticking with the coffee drinks, but maybe the chocolate one is better).

This misadventure took a lot out of both of us, so we were content to sit around for the rest of the day and watch bad TV. She's sleeping soundly right now, so I should probably try to get some rest myself since Chad is out in West Virginia on a retreat for work and this will be baby's first night without Daddy (aka baby's first night home alone with mom).

Rantings on Day Care

I am pretty sure I've been in denial about leaving little girl with someone else to watch when I go back to working at the office (I've been doing a pretty good job of keeping up with e-mail and projects from home - since very soon after she was born). There is a beautiful JHU-affiliated center (Bright Horizons) literally right next door to us, and I visited back when I was pregnant, but asked about part-time and they don't do part-time so I didn't put us on the waiting list, nor did I ask how long the waiting list was - I now count this as my first big mistake as a parent.

Do any of you out there know how long day-care waiting lists can be? Do you have a number of months in your head? Those of you who were thinking 3 months are super-duper cold; 6 months - pretty darn chilly; 9 months - tepid; 12 months - getting warmer. If you said 15 months, give yourself a gold star. Yes, 15 months for the only center affiliated with JHU. This leads me to two thoughts:

(1) Bright Horizons is the only JHU-affiliated center. The only one for both JH Hospital and JH University. There are apparently 12,000 employees of the Hospital system and 23,000 employees of the University. And one day care center. And it is not as though it is free or anything like that. Close to $1500/month. How are they not making money? You'd think in this free market economy of ours if there were a wait list that long, that someone would open up another center and make twice as much money.

(2) The infant rooms goes up until about 12 months. So I am not sure how people go about getting their infants in this room? Even if you put your name on the wait list when you first find out you are pregnant, you may have to wait another 6 months (after the 9 months of being pregnant) to get in.

We have a place for Ripley - at the Tide Point center across town, but I am not sure we would have gotten a spot here if the center hadn't told people earlier this year that it was closing down because it had lost grant funding. Many folks found other places so when the center found out it was going to be open, there were a lot of vacancies.

Still looking at other options, including a couple of smaller centers, but it is looking like it could be Tide Point until we get her into Bright Horizons. That could be next summer at this point, but I have a feeling this year is going to fly by...

You say Goodbye, Ripley says Hello

I figured out how to get video in the right direction, and got a great one of her saying "hello". As you can see, we need to work on saying "goodbye".

More photos of Ripley

This is a link to my photo page on Picasa [UPDATE - the original link went to my personal page so it wouldn't give folks access - the link now should go to the public page and work]. There will be more photos of her at that site than I can post here. There are some other random albums too, but you should be able to tell the ones with Ripley photos.

Baby's First Bars

I hesitated on whether to write about our adventures in bars with a baby, for fear of being judged, but I read a cool blog post today about "sanctimommies", and hope that anyone who knows us won't judge us too harshly.

Yes, Ripley is 6 weeks old, and we took her to her 3rd bar tonight. Here is a recount of where we've been so far. I think we'll keep a running list somewhere. If she is in Baltimore when she turns 21, she may want to use the list for a bar crawl.

BAR 1 - HENNINGER'S
Our first stop was at Henninger's last Tuesday or Thursday. I can't remember which, but Jack was working, so it had to be one of the two. Jack makes the best dirty martinis in town, according to Chad, and he always has a great story, which is important in your neighborhood bartender. Chad had the famed TV dinner (along with the dirty martini) and even shared his mashed potatoes with me. I had the portobello mushroom sandwhich. Ripley slept through almost the entire visit in her sling - the sling will continue to play an important role in our bar visits.

BAR 2 (7/10/2008) - LITTLE HAVANA
Chad's former colleagues from Kennedy Krieger meet up about twice a year for a happy hour reunion. A really nice bunch of folks who didn't realize we had an addition to the family, so when we showed up with the baby in the car carrier, there were quite a few jaws to pick up off of the floor. The last time we saw them was in October, when we knew we were pregnant, but hadn't started telling anyone yet. I guess I thought Chad would have told at least one of them and the news would have spread, but it hadn't, and they gave him a hard time about it the entire time we were there. Once again, Ripley spent most of her time in the sling, but she did make it out for a couple of photos.

BAR 3 (7/11/2008) - BERTHA'S
No, she didn't have mussels - at least not yet. To celebrate Chad's school making Adequate Yearly Progress, we walked down to Fells Point for gelato at Pitango and for Bertha's Best Bitter at Bertha's. Did I mention she likes to spend time in her sling?

Stay turned for more bar adventures...

Things I Can Do - Beginning to Talk

In addition to smiling a lot these days, she is also beginning to communication with us. I have no idea what she is saying, but she goes through bouts of gurgling. This is my attempt to capture this phenomenon - via my camera phone (not sure why it is rotated 90 degrees, but it won't let me rotate it back). The first sound you hear is her, and then she cooperates for about another 20 seconds, making a few more sounds, but she turns shy quickly and then is only making the mouthing motions - the rest of the cooing towards the end is my attempt to talk back to her, which she is having none of...

Ripley at 6 weeks

So, Becca's post yesterday (7/8/2008) coupled with trying to make Ripley's photo book of people who love her, but are far away, got me to thinking I should really try to do this blog thing. As you can see from the archives, I didn't do so well for the 8.5 months she was in utero, but I am going to see what I can do.

[insert break for a baby who just woke from sleeping in the sling. she has an uncanny way of knowing when your full attention has shifted away from her, and she expects this full attention even when she is sleeping]

Let's see how much more of this I can get done before she wakes again.

My intent is for this writing to serve several purposes:

1. To keep those of you far away posted on the life of Ripley.
2. To be a record of my thoughts during this motherhood adventure.
3. To be a gift I can give to Ripley one day - where she can read all about our lives before she was too young to remember (at least I hope she is too young to remember - otherwise, Chad and I probably should stop watching DVD's like Alien versus Predator 2 in her presence)

Per the inspiration for starting up again, I want to write my thoughts about Ripley at 6 week (she turned 6 weeks yesterday - she's been home with us for 5).

Ripley - Six Weeks Old
It is hard to know where to start. This has been an amazing week because she's come into her own with smiling. This morning she lay on the boppy "newborn lounger" (thanks Aunt Jen) and stared up at me for at least 10-15 minutes and just made smiley faces and little coos. She is finding her happy voice, which is a good one to hear as opposed to the high pitched sad wails, which seem to only come now when we don't keep up with feeding her the way she thinks she should be fed.

One of the places she likes to smile the most is on the diaper changing table. Little girl loves being naked - and loves getting her diaper changed. I think the beautiful colorful quilt hanging over the change table is part of it (thanks to friends of my mom's in Texas), but I also think she just loves having her tushy wiped clean. Our friend Kate gave us a recipe for "poop juice" which we can spray on little flannel clothes instead of disposable wipes (although we have some of these for real blow-outs). It has a nice lavender scent - maybe she likes that? Or maybe she really just likes having her tush wiped. Sometimes we consider changing her diaper even when she doesn't need it - just so we can see her smile.

I don't think I am going to get much more time now. There is so much to write - including going back and trying to recount the story of how she came into the world (not too exciting, but seems like it should be recorded for posterity) and about her first week of life. I'll get to that - at least as long as I can fly under her "all-attention on me" radar so she'll stay sleeping.