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.