Birthday Picnic

We decided late last week that we needed to do something to mark Charlie's big day. So we decided to enjoy the lovely weather outside at Piedmont Park in Oakland and it turned out to be SO MUCH FUN. We invited all our friends. We picked up 5 pizzas from Arizmendi. We cut up a watermelon, a pineapple and a cantaloupe. We dug up the old camping cooler and filled it with bottles of root beer, cream soda, coke zero and water. I made chocolate cupcakes and vanilla cupcakes. And in the end I even picked up "favors" in the form of packs of haribo gummy bears for all (this may have been more for mommy than for the birthday boy). We asked everyone to bring blankets to sit on and POOF! Insta-party!

It turned out to be such an awesome, chill gathering of great friends. All to wish our little guy a happy first birthday. We feel so lucky to have the great people in our lives that we do and I feel even more lucky that Charlie has such an amazing group of people in this world that love him.
Patrick, Linds & baby Holland drove up from Sunnyvale.Shawn and I decided to trade babies for a while. Charlie & Berkeley are destined to end up together I'm pretty certain. Watermelon was very popular all afternoon. The fruit and the rind.
I encourage you to enlarge this photo and take a closer look at Charlie's hair. We are struggling with how to apply sunblock without making him look like a total greaser (Berkeley doesn't seem to mind).

Does he look like me at all yet? Since the day Charlie was born I'd say 99 out of 100 people say Charlie is the spitting image of his dad. I'm totally happy with that but I wonder if any Heywood will ever surface (aside from his uber-whiteness). Steve's favorite joke to make is that he's concerned that what Charlie is going to inherit from the Heywood's is an attitude problem. Look how photogenic Patrick can be.
We've been trying to teach Charlie how to hold up his finger for "number one!" Success.
Also trying to teach him it's not polite to point.
Linds was on swing duty with E for a while. New besties.
Pre-cupcake Sam.The Isom's! Little Lizzie was Charlie's first baby friend!

Charlie loves him some Anne.

I'm pretty sure Robyn took this picture because it has a very professional feel to it.
If this is the face Courtney makes when I ask her to smile, it's going on the birthday blog post.


Post-cupcake Sam.Ella apparently approves of this cupcake. I'm pretty sure Berkeley was being punished or something because I only saw her eating pizza crust and drinking water.The Boyd boys made it! Chris spent about 99% of his time at the playground.
Those eyes!Charlie is such a happy baby. Like freakishly happy a majority of the time but usually when we take him to the park he gets really serious and he likes to just take it all in. In true Charlie form, once the party had cleared out this is what we found the birthday boy doing. Partying all by himself. Happy as can be. Happy birthday baby boy. Love you times a million.

one.

One year! Charlie is one! Every week for the past year I've received a babycenter.com update in my email saying "your baby this week..." Then it goes on to tell me what my baby is likely doing these days...what I can expect...what I should not freak out about. Today I got and update that said "your toddler this week." Really? Charlie became a toddler today? He's still my baby to me.

Having Charlie has been so much fun. He makes us smile (almost) all of the time. I feel like everything I can possibly say about parenthood and babies all sounds so cliche. In certain ways our lives feel 100% different than they did one year and one day ago. But it's still Steve & me. We're the same people. Just + one Charlie. And our lives are better because of him.

We gave Charlie a cupcake tonight before his bath and he employed his latest favorite method of eating. Like a dog.

Happy Birthday Char Char!!!!
(stay tuned for birthday picnic pictures!)

Perfect 10.

Here we are. 10 months. Charlie is the best. Like literally the best. We love this kid so much. He has added more to our lives than we could ever have imagined. The past couple of months have been tough in the sleeping department for us (6 teeth all at once) but even getting up 2 or 3 times a night doesn't change the fact that we are so lucky to have this little guy in our life. Here's a random jumbled compilation of thoughts on what Charlie is doing these days.

Smiling. He's done this since pretty early on and he does it all the time. Even if he's not so happy. If you're friends with me on Facebook, you know of what I speak. We often have people tell us "you have the happiest baby I've ever seen in my entire life." And these are people with adorably happy babies. So we know we are so very lucky to have a little dude that is so pleasant and brings smiles to everyone that he comes in contact with.
Talking. He says dadada, mamama. He growls like a lion. When Steve & Charlie pick me up from BART at the end of the day I sit in the back with Charlie and we have a scream contest. I scream. He screams. We both laugh. I scream. He screams. We both laugh. We are such good friends.
Games. Charlie likes to cover himself up with a blanket and then pull it back really fast to see our expression. We'll say "Where's Charlie??" when he's covered and when he hears it, he moves the blanket really fast. The Bjorn. Charlie loves being in the Bjorn w/dad. They hike, do dishes, vacuum, take out the garbage. Mommy loves it.
Food. He's getting better!!!! Slowly but surely Charlie is taking to eating solid foods a bit. Some of his favorites are yogurt, cream cheese, pinto beans, tofu, cheddar cheese, cheerios, carrots, & french fries. He doesn't eat much of anything but when he does we get really excited. And we don't really worry about nutrition at this point...it's all about getting him comfortable w/solids. He loves to drink water from a "big person" glass. Mostly he still drinks breast milk that mommy pumps.
Mover. Charlie crawls so fast! He also stands up and supports himself on anything. He's started "cruising." I think that's what it's called...while standing, he'll move from one piece of furniture to another without sitting down. He also started waving and dancing this week.

Teeth. Like I mentioned above. Charlie has been a teething machine these past two months. He's gone from zero teeth to 5 teeth with one more ready to break through any moment up top. I'm thrilled the teething pain will take a break for a bit and I love his toothy grin but it's a little bittersweet. I submit for review there is almost nothing cuter than a gummy smile.
Sleep. Charlie was a pretty great sleeper until the 6 month mark. And it's been hit or miss ever since. Two nights ago he slept from 6:30pm until 5:30am. The longest stretch of his entire life. Typical night at the Santos house is up 2x at least. The great thing about Charlie is even when he's up and in pain, he's not a fussy guy. He's just up. He just wants to snug. I know the clock is ticking on how much longer my little baby boy will want to endlessly snuggle his mommy so if I can get it in the middle of the night, I'll get up happily (ok, that's a lie. i'm never happy when i get up in the middle of the night).
Photogenic. Charlie is SO photogenic. He's an expert at smiling for the camera (just like daddy).
Dogs & babies are his favorite things (besides mommy & daddy) in that order.
The bath. Our friend Chris will be proud of us that we've graduated Charlie out of his baby tub and into the big boy bath. When I told Chris at work a couple weeks ago that Charlie still used his little green tub Chris was visibly shaken. He told me Charlie is totally big enough to sit in the big bath. So guess what. We bought a non-stick bath mat covered in octopus decals and turns out Charlie IS big enough for the big bath. Who would have known? My theory is this...when you've already had a baby, then it's easy to recognize when your baby is ready to do things. But when you're a first-timer, sometimes you don't realize your baby is actually getting bigger. The same thing happened last Christmas when Patrick helped us realize that Charlie could sit up. We had no idea. Patrick totally schooled us.

Nicknames: Char, Char Char, Little Char, Little Baby Char Char, Baby Char Char, Sha-Shar, Char-Chee, Peanut, Tink Tink, Tinker, Sweet Pea, Sweet Potato.

Charlie, we don't deserve you. But we'll gladly keep you. We love you so much.

Happy Mommy Day!

Happy Mother's Day to you Betsy and to all the mothers out there. As you may know, we became parents last July to a baby boy named Charlie. Since Charlie was our first baby and I didn't have small kid experience we decided to practice before he came. Most people try to keep a plant alive for a year or get a pet for practice but we decided to use fancy electronics.
Since we managed to keep our computer alive for a year we decided we were ready to take care of a child. So Charlie came into our world. We were so excited to meet him and were relieved that he had all his parts and was cute to boot. Meeting him was unreal.
Charlie took to us right away, especially Betsy for some reason (milk).
We were lucky to have a baby that was happy, content and a great sleeper (don't worry...that's all changed lately...can you say up three times last night???).
Every now & then he wouldn't sleep well and I would get picture texts like this.
We've also come to terms with the fact that most people want to hang with Charlie instead of us. People use the excuses "haven't seen you in a while" or "let's do lunch" to get together and when we do, they completely ignore us and play with Charlie the entire time. It's our new reality. Charlie is cooler than we are by a mile.
I think one of Betsy's favorite mom duties is dress up. She loves to put Charlie in interesting outfits and often ridicules her husband for the choices he makes. Because of her efforts, Charlie is one sharp dresser.
Betsy loves to take Charlie out on walks an explore nature. The other night we spent 10 minutes touching tree bark.
We've had several reports that Charlie is "the happiest baby I've ever seen." To keep him well-rounded, Betsy worked with him to develop his "mean mug" or "park face." This is Charlie's "leave me alone or I'll cut you/I'm dangerous" look.
But the truth is, this is closer to reality than the mean mug.
Betsy has also been working tirelessly on transitioning Charlie to solid foods. Her methods may be frowned upon by some, but we'll take what we can get.
Charlie is lucky to have such a pretty, funny, smart, and all around awesome mom. We are so lucky to have her and we love her so much. Not just today, everyday.
Happy Mother's Day!

Ladies Man

Charlie: Hi, My name is Charlie. You new here?
Holland: Yep. I was born last week.
Charlie: Why don't you slip into something more comfortable?
Holland: Ok.
Charlie: Nice Onesie! You look great.
Holland: Thanks Charlie.
Charlie: So, when are we going to go out? I'm free this Friday.
Holland: Um, I just googled you on my mommy's phone, I know about Berkeley...
Charlie: Wait? What? You mean where my crib is at?
Holland: No... your other baby Friend. Wahahahah!
Charlie: Oh, I was going to tell you about her...
Holland: How can you do this to me Charlie?
Charlie: Look at me, I'm handsome! Am I right ladies? GTL!
Holland: Remember how you have no tan? You're a jerk Charlie.
Charlie: Holland, I'm sorry. I really am. Berkeley is cool but she's been hanging out with this guy Finn.
Holland: Whatever.
Charlie: Look, take this foot rub as a token of my friendship. I mean, we can't really date yet anyway. You can't hold your head up and I can't even walk.
Holland: I guess we can get to know each other. We'll see what happens.
Charlie: Sounds good to me.
Holland: Don't forget about the other foot.
Charlie: It was great to meet you Holland. Your parents are cool and I like your crib.
Holland: Hope to see you soon. Call me.
Thanks for letting us come over Pat and Lindsay! Holland is adorable. Congratulations.

We still haven't seen Inception

Inception marked the end of our movie going life as we knew it. We were trying SO HARD to fit in one more movie 7 months ago before we had a baby but it didn't happen. That last week before Charlie arrived ended up full of trips to Target & Babies R Us & I worked almost up until the day Charlie was born. It's been 7 months since Charlie joined our family and while he's totally cramped our movie watching, we get smiles like this instead and it makes up for it times a million.

At 7 months old Charlie is cuter than ever. He smiles, laughs, squeals & gets excited at pretty much anything. At about the 6 month mark he started sleeping like a champ at night. We can put him down around 7pm and he'll wake up once in the middle of the night to eat then he goes back down 'til morning. He's been sick the past week though so the good sleeping has been a little spotty but I'm confident we'll be back on track soon. We've been working on feeding him "solids." I think it's funny that pureed baby food is called a solid. HE HATES FOOD. Like hates hates hates it. Over the past two months we've tried rice cereal, oatmeal, bananas, pears, avocado, carrots & sweet potatoes and it's not going well. We keep trying each day and we try and make it fun vs. stressful for him. I'm sure he'll get the hang of things soon enough. For now he's happy drinking milk and I'm fine providing it so that works.

Charlie started sitting up around Christmastime and has just started to lunge forward from the sitting position. The first few lunges forward resulted in him face planting on the rug but as of yesterday he seems to understand that if he puts his arms out, he can hold himself up and preserve those smashing good looks of his. If you lay him on his back he instantly rolls over onto his belly and gets in cobra position. He's starting to get frustrated that he can't crawl. If you put something just out of his reach he'll lay out flat and stretch his arms out in front of him as far as he can to try and grab it. When he can't, the whining begins. If you give him something to push his feet off, he'll scoot forward. It's super exciting to watch these changes happening but we're also very aware that the days of our little guy that we can plop down somewhere and he'll just sit there happily enjoying one spot are numbered.

He's still pretty bald but we think his hair is going to be sandy blond. It's obvious he's inherited his mom's fair skin and he has his dad's dark dark brown eyes. It seems to work for him. He's friendly but is just now getting a little bit of stranger danger. No teeth yet but I'm predicting any day now. One of his new favorite activities is the swing!

We love this kid so much. Side note, I also love Steve so much. There's a lotta love around these parts. I shall leave you all with this picture. Steve, the plant biologist, teaching our son to love flowers too.

Half Birthday

Wow. I cant believe Charlie is 6 months old today. It seems like only yesterday he was born. We realized at lunch today that it was his half birthday so to celebrate we drank a chocolate shake at St. Francis Fountain with the McMillan's while Charlie observed (we thought maybe making him jealous of our chocolate shake might make him enjoy rice cereal more).

Finn likes to give Charlie love-head-butt-kisses.

It's amazing how fast Charlie has grown. He has his six month check-up this week and we can hardly wait to find our how much our little guy weighs and how tall he is. Here are some fun things that happen at our house these days:

Charlie likes to look out the window and wait for mommy to get home.

He's still a big fan of the bath.

Although happy 95% of the time, he's starting to "mean-mug" sometimes.
He loves to dress fancy. Everyone who loves this shirt raise your right hand and say "I!"
He is the proud owner of a new high chair that he uses to play with toys, not to eat (mommy & daddy will prevail...you just wait).
He loves nature and open spaces. He only travels by covered wagon and already has good pioneer stories.
He loves to do push-ups with his shirt off.
(Seriously ladies, look how cute I am.)

He has a girlfriend named Berkeley (he also has a girlfriend named Olive but she moved to the mid-west...outta sight outta mind).
Other things...Charlie sleeps great sometimes and horribly other times. We're working on that. He loves to scream and squeal and can be quite loud when he wants to. Sometimes in the morning he wakes up in his crib and just hangs out in there for a while making cute noises. We love going into his room those mornings b/c his smile when he sees us is HUGE. He sits up like a total champ and rolls both ways. When you hold him on your lap he only likes to stand. He has had two colds so far and made it through both!

Back to the birthday celebration...After brunch we all went to the park and Charlie went on the swing for the first time and loved it. Take a look. (Disclaimer: This video is kind of long with lots of swinging footage.)


Liz (photographer extraordinaire) captured a few amazing stills of the big swing adventure. He was a bit nervous at first.
But then caught on rather quickly.
Probably because Finn was showing him how to do it. This picture doesn't really depict what was happening. Imagine Finn flying high and Charlie moving about 12 inches back and forth slowly. That's more accurate.


We are so happy to have this little guy in our lives. He always has a smile on his face and brings so much love, joy, fun into our lives. We still don't feel like we really know what we're doing but here we are, six months in, and we're just fine. Maybe we'll never really feel like we know exactly what we're doing and maybe that's okay. Man, we love this little guy and can't wait to see what the next six months bring. Happy half birthday Charlie!