Tag-Archive for » Riley «

September

We have 2 sitters “hired.” We’ve interviewed them, let Riley meet them, and explained all our needs/wants/schedules to them and they are on board. It’s nice having two people that we feel we can trust a phone call or text message away. We might just go out on a date on Sunday to celebrate. For those who need a babysitter, I highly recommend SitterCity.com. There are thousands and thousands of listings of qualified (and plenty of not-so-qualified) babysitters of all ages and demographics. I had 45 people apply, which gave me incredible freedom in being selective about who would watch Riley, and I’m very happy with the results.

Between now and Saturday night, it’s all studying all the time, but after that, Andy’s free and it might be time to relax a bit. For those who don’t know, he’s taking the second part of the Step 2, the clinical knowledge portion, on Saturday. Yet another 9 hour test. But at least he’ll be free from test taking for a while at that point… until it’s time for the Step 3. Ahhh the joys of med school. On the plus side, he’s finished all his cores and is now on his electives. In about 27 weeks, he will officially be Dr. Andy. The end is finally near…

Riley has been making leaps and bounds, as usual. He now eats chewable food at every meal and feeds it to himself without much intervention from us. He’s not perfect at it, but he’s learning and improving with every meal. He FINALLY cut his first tooth yesterday after weeks and weeks of protruding and receding. His left lower central incisor has broken free! He’s also a crawling machine and needs to be watched much more closely than before. He is so active – that’s another reason we needed the babysitters. He is too smart and too mobile to be left to his own devices anymore. We let him crawl around the living room a few days ago and suddenly he was in the kitchen. He covered a lot of ground much faster than we expected him to, so I’ll probably spend some time this weekend finalizing our baby-proofing. Time flies…

Rating: +2 (from 2 votes)

Category: Atlanta Life Tags: babysitter, med school, Riley, studying, USMLE Step 2 CK Leave a Comment

Searching for Sitters

August

Courtney

I’ve decided that Riley is now old enough for a babysitter. It was a difficult decision to come to because I still don’t love the idea of leaving him, but occasionally I have work business that warrants serious focus and every now and then it would be nice to go on a date with Andy without the baby. I signed up on a web site that has tons and tons of sitters listed with background checks, experience, biographies, and more. You would be surprised at how qualified some of these babysitters are - masters degrees in child development, graduate work in counseling, years of service as nannies, etc. There are filters to add different critieria which I have found invaluable. For example, some of the things I found to be non-negotiable were non-smoking, okay with pets, experience with infants, at least some college coursework, first aid and CPR certifications, and speaking another language is a bonus. Call me sexist, but I also am only interested in female babysitters. In the Atlanta area, that still gives me several hundred people from which to choose. So far there are about 35 applicants to the job I posted and I have two favorites that are standing out above the crowd. It’s going to be a difficult decision, but it’s an important one. I only want to have one babysitter for Riley so he has someone he’s comfortable with and that we know well and can trust implicitly. I’m going to wait a few more days and let the job applications keep rolling in and then by the end of the weekend, I’ll go back over and start setting up interviews. I have to admit, it is a little bit of a power trip and a nice change of pace being on this end of the hiring process!

Rating: +2 (from 2 votes)

Category: Atlanta Life Tags: babysitter, Riley Leave a Comment

Leaps and Bounds in Knoxville

August

Courtney

After a round trip to Knoxville and a day of work in the office and training in just over 24 hours, I’m quite exhausted so this will be brief. However, Riley started making a few strides which deserved recognition. For the first time last night and to a greater degree today, Riley fed himself. He has started grabbing his baby banana snacks with his fingers and putting them in his mouth, chewing them, and begging for more. Now, he is not always successful in the self-feeding and if you don’t hand it to him he is frequently UNsuccessful, but he can do it. He’s better at using his left hand which gives me a vague hope that he will be left handed (lefties are just smarter in general and I say this without the hint of bias, hehe). It was a big step to see him put together grabbing, feeding, chewing, and swallowing, without needing our help much at all.

We arrived Thursday night in time for dinner with my best friend (and Riley’s godmother) Erin and her husband Taylor. We ate at a Japanese place we loved when we lived in Knoxville called Wasabi, which Andy and I agree is our favorite Japanese steakhouse. Riley showed off literally the whole meal, trying to stand up in his high chair, eat his own food, and drink from his sippy cup, in between giggles and smiles at Erin and Taylor, but mostly Erin who he seems to adore. When we went back the their house, he was crawling on the floor with more success than I’d ever seen him make and worked out a system for making it about 5 feet in only a few seconds (which he’s never done here). It was really exciting to see him leap forward so quickly.

Today, I was in the office all day, which left Andy with the baby. He didn’t get as much studying done as he wanted, but I’m glad he had the experience of taking the baby by himself for about six hours. Most dads don’t get that much quality time with their children sans mommy. It wasn’t as hard for me as I thought it would be, though I will be glad to be working at home Monday morning. I forgot how hard it was to deal with getting ready for work in the mornings, dress up, and drive to the office. I have a renewed appreciation for my two-flights-of-stairs commute. Despite all that, it was great to be in the office, meet some of my bosses, and touch base with the rest of my team. All in all, a good visit. Now we’re home, sleepy and ready for bed (with the baby already sound asleep).

Rating: +1 (from 1 vote)

Category: Life Tags: baby, food, Knoxville, milestones, Riley, scripps, work Leave a Comment

Grinding My Gears – Courtney Edition

August

Courtney

In honor of Tyler’s return to blogging, I have been inspired to create my own “grinds my gears” post. It’s late and I’m tired, so I don’t have much, but here goes.

Things that grind my gears:

People who think they know more than they do. I have a client right now who owns a franchised location of a larger company. He’s advertising with our agency and just called up his salesperson, telling her that we did a bad job creating his campaign and that he can do a better job, threatening to pull his business if we didn’t make the ad copy exactly what he wanted. Even though he’s a small-time advertiser, we don’t like to burn bridges so I agreed to make the changes knowing full well that what he wanted to do wouldn’t work. Sure enough, Google disapproved EVERY SINGLE ONE of his ads because of trademark violations (remember, he owns only one small-time franchised location of a larger company). So now my “bad ad copy” is being put back because if we don’t use mine, Google won’t even run the ad. I know most people don’t know what I do, or probably even care so this anecdote may not even make sense, but suffice it so say, it really grinds my gears when people act like they’re specialists in something they don’t know the first thing about.
Large groups that camp out at Starbucks for business meetings. Seriously, if there are more than 3 of you, you need to find a larger venue. Starbucks is a coffee shop – it’s a great place for hanging out with a friend or two, a great place for having a small business meeting or interview over coffee, and a great place for studying. But if there are six of you tying up all the laptop plugs, all the chairs and shooting the breeze for hours on end you need to find a different locale. Try an office or your house or a conference room. Chairs and plugs are few and far between at Starbucks and it isn’t fair for six people to host a business meeting that takes up half the seating!
Riley teething. He’s so tough and hardly ever fusses about it, but you can tell his mouth is really bothering him at times.
How much fur the cats shed. I feel like I’m always sweeping, mopping, or vacuuming.
Mosquitoes. If this keeps up, I’m moving back to California where this was never a problem. I have bites all over me right now.

Things that don’t grind my gears:

How much Riley is learning and doing every day. We were playing together Saturday morning and he turned around from his toy and gave me a big hug, something he’d never done before. My heart melted and it was just about the best moment of my life. Later that day, he gave Andy a big hug as he took him upstairs so he was able to experience the awesomeness of baby hugs.
Travel Channel. I love Samantha Brown, that’s all I can say.
Finally getting Riley back on schedule. Because he’s going to bed at 8:45 now and his schedule has regulated after all the time changes, visitors, traveling, and teething that the first half of August entailed, I have time to read and exercise at the end of the day now. Maybe those last few pounds will finally come off and my jeans will look good again. It really grinds my gears that so many of the people I know who had babies around the same time as me have lost all the baby weight; I constantly have to remind myself that they don’t work 40+ hour weeks and thus have ton more time to exercise, go walking, etc.
Seeing my best friend on Thursday! Riley loves his godmother so I know he’s just as excited as I am.
My new rice cooker. I made chicken, green beans, and brown rice in it the other day and it felt so weird having all this free time to play with the baby, straighten the house, and relax as the rice cooker cooked everything for me. It was a beautiful thing. It does also make rice, which is pretty cool.

And that, my friends, is what does and does not grind my gears.

Rating: +4 (from 4 votes)

Category: Stuff Herdas Like Tags: grinds my gears, milestones, rice cooker, Riley, starbucks, work Leave a Comment

Blog Rejuvenation

August

Courtney

As you can tell, Andy actually posted on the blog for the first time in many many many months. It’s nice to see a little activity as I’ve been going through a serious slump in my writing lately, a slump characterized by complete and total mediocrity. It’s easy to blame this writer’s block on a lack of interesting moments in our lives right now, even though our days are filled with Riley’s milestones and freakishly ahead-of-the-curve antics. But part of me hesitates to write about it even as I’m bursting with parental pride because it seems braggadocious, immodest, and more than a little shallow. When my time isn’t occupied with the baby, I’m working and working hard, but the status of my marketing campaigns is hardly the stuff of captivating blog posts. That leaves me with little else in my life of consequence as the full-time jobs of mom and marketing analyst leave little room for much else. Frankly, most days I’d rather use my free time taking a shower or sleeping than blogging. But perhaps some new post categories (like Andy’s MythStarters column) and some new bloggers on the blogroll will revitalize the site.

For those uninterested in reading about the baby, skip to the next paragraph.
As it is essential for all the grandparents, great-grandparents, aunts, uncles, and other family members who do read the blog, I must give an update on how Riley’s doing. He’s just over six months old now and according to his pediatrician, quite a bit ahead of the curve. He is fairly mobile and can crawl-ish. His form isn’t pretty but he gets around pretty well. He sits up by himself for several minutes at a time and even longer if he has something to grab onto either in front of or behind him. He claps, laughs, smiles, and plays constantly. He entertains himself really well, preferring cell phones, remotes, blocks, and now measuring cups I have gifted him. He has his first two teeth just about to break through, though they seem to protrude and recede constantly but they’re right there at the surface. It’s pretty evident he’s uncomfortable but he’s a really tough little man and hasn’t had any noticeable negative effects from teething. At his 6 month weigh in he was 28 inches tall (92th percentile) and 19 pounds 4 ounces (75th percentile). He’s as healthy as can be and eats everything we put in front of him. He loves all sorts of foods and eats everything including fruits, vegetables, meats, and grains. I have yet to find a single food he does not like. He’s wearing 12 month clothing because he’s so tall, though it often gaps at his waist which is comparatively quite small. He said “ma ma” the other day for Andy but we’re having some difficulty getting him to repeat it – Andy says it counts, I don’t. He’s back on a normal schedule finally after our San Francisco trip, so everything relating to Riley is wonderful.

So having updated the world on the status of my baby, I’ll take a break from blogging for the night and hope for more inspiration tomorrow. And if all else fails, at least Andy has a few funny tidbits to add for the time being.

Rating: +5 (from 5 votes)

Category: Atlanta Life Tags: andy, baby, check up, milestones, Riley, updates Leave a Comment

The Rest of the San Francisco Trip

August

Courtney

: More of the two boys!

: Union Square

: BANANA SPLIT!

: Riley with his Uncle Christopher

: Riley loves his Aunt Allison, though!

: Dylan is still on the fence about Riley

: Cousins!

: Trying to stay warm

: Strolling through Chinatown

: My sleepy angel

: Riley fell asleep with me

Rating: +2 (from 4 votes)

Category: Vacations Tags: Dylan, family, photos, Riley, San Francisco, vacation Leave a Comment

SFO Photos, the First Few Days

August

Andy

: Excited for our first day in SFO!

: Waiting patiently for the cable car to take us up the hill

: Looking down California towards the Financial District

: Standing out in front of Powell Place

: Now it’s time to play with our feet

: Nordstroms

: Nob Hill Cafe

: Aaaand he’s out

: Having a fun time at Pier 39!

: Alcatraz!

: Sea Lions!

: Salty the Sea Lion, himself!

: Hyde Street Pier

: Some random tree

: We steal a nap whenever we can.

: This pulley is much easier than the other two!

: Ghirardelli Square

: The Balclutha

: Protecting your eyes is cool, man

: Hercules the tugboat!

Rating: +4 (from 4 votes)

Category: Travel, Vacations Tags: boats, cable car, photos, Riley, San Francisco Leave a Comment

June, July, and Beyond

July

Courtney

Yes, I am aware that I haven’t posted anything in weeks. I could list excuses for pages and pages, but the fact is I just haven’t felt like it. Work has been beyond busy. So far beyond busy I can’t even see “busy” anymore. ”Busy” and I are just casual acquaintances. Frenetic, I think is more correct. It seems that my coworkers have re-discovered that I actually work at Scripps and remember now how good I am at my job, so now I’m doing my job and more than likely enough work to make up a couple other jobs as well. It’s been fulfilling at least, but truly, bone-deep exhausting. Oh yeah, and then there’s that sweet angel baby to take care of as well. Between my important job as a mom and my important job as a marketing analyst and my equally important job of being a wife and running a household, I don’t have much (any) time to sit and blog about life, the universe and everything. If I’m not working, breastfeeding, cooking, cleaning, dissecting web sites in my head, watering plants, playing racquetball (our new hobby), feeding fish, feeding cats, feeding a husband, or feeding a baby, I’m passed out in bed waiting to do it all again. Not that I’m complaining, I like having a good job, a baby, and a happy, albeit busy, home life, it’s just a lot right now. Work is slowing down slightly, the baby is remaining on his schedule, and Andy’s rotation is predictable.

The last thing I wrote about was Riley at 4 months, but time has flown and he’s now 5 months old. He loves the cats more than anything in the world, probably even more than me. He yells at them, makes crazy noises, and like everything else, tries to put them in his mouth. Peanut and Reagan are less than thrilled about this, but Andy and I never get tired of seeing his face light up when he sees a kitty (and hearing the excited scream he makes!). He hugs, smiles, and laughs all the time and about 95% of the time is a total angel. When he gets fussy or starts crying, it’s one of two things: he’s hungry (that happens about every four hours), or he’s tired (he goes about 2-2.5 hours between naps), so he’s very predictable. He goes to bed between 9 and 9:30; I’ve been creeping back the bedtime from about 11:30 and I’m more than halfway to my goal of 8:00. He sleeps until 7 or 8:00, giving me all the sleep I need. He rolls around, creeps, shuffles around on his tummy, and seems so close to figuring out how to crawl. Every day he gets closer and closer. He can sit up by himself for up to a minute and can tripod sit for much longer than that. He loves food and we have yet to find something he has a distaste for. All in all, he’s a pretty cool kid. The only thing we need to work on is his need to be held, but I keep telling myself that in the not-too-distant future he won’t want to be held by me anymore so I’m enjoying it now while I have the chance. He loves attention and he gets it wherever we go. People just go crazy for his bright blue eyes and are amazed at how alert he is. He takes everything in, listens, and looks around anytime we’re out. The women at the daycare at the gym love him and they all get excited when Riley strolls in. It’s nice that I can trust them with him so Andy and I can play racquetball for an hour and a half or two hours at a time and I can keep working on getting back in those skinny jeans, which still hasn’t quite happened.

Other than Riley’s daily developments, things have been pretty quiet around here. We had a nice 4th of July with our friends Marc and Ericka and their kids, just grilling, setting off a few fireworks, and hanging out together. Andy loves his rotation and we have started the process towards his residency match. We’ve made our list of programs and will continue to shuffle things around over the next few months as we look into each of the programs, the cities, the hospitals, etc. more deeply. We have friends coming into town this weekend (yay for Tyler and Matt) and then head to San Francisco in two and a half weeks. I’m a little nervous about flying across the country with the baby, but all I can do is be prepared and hope for the best. Things have been so busy lately that I forgot today was Bastille Day (which I never forget). Andy texted me earlier in the day and asked what kind of French feast I would be cooking (as I always do) and I felt dreadfully sheepish telling him I forgot about Bastille Day. Even on the island, I cooked for Bastille Day! Oh well, c’est la vie. I hope everyone else had fun celebrating la chute de la Bastille aujourd’hui!

Rating: +2 (from 2 votes)

Category: Atlanta Life Tags: 4th of July, milestones, Riley Leave a Comment

4 Months!

June

Courtney

I can’t believe my baby is four months old! At last weigh in he was 15 lbs, 6 ounces (60th percentile) and 27 and 1/4 inches long (a whopping 97th percentile). He’s a big boy now and more active than ever. He’s creeping like crazy, moving all over his crib constantly. He’s been rolling for almost two months now, but he’s now a professional roller. We’ll put him on his tummy to play and if he doesn’t want to do that, he’ll roll right over and smile at us. I’ll put him on his back and he frequently vetoes that, showing us that he’d rather sleep on his side or tummy now. Sometimes when I check him out in the video monitor, he’s in a vastly different position than I put him down in. He plays with all his toys, grabs at things, pushes buttons, tries to grab cell phones and remotes out of our hands (to put them in his mouth, of course), etc. He’s healthy, happy, smiley, and just a really awesome kid. Our pediatrician said he was ahead of the curve for developmental milestones, which I, of course, heartily agreed with (what parent wouldn’t?). He also LOVES his solid food and usually smiles as soon as you put him in his high chair (because he knows what comes next). So far he loves everything we’ve given him, including rice cereal, oatmeal, chicken, turkey, and peas. He also tries to feed himself with the spoon and will hold his bottle by himself. Every day I’m impressed by how much he is learning and growing.

Riley's Baptism

In addition to the four month check up, we celebrated Riley’s baptism last week. We drove up to Nashville to welcome him into the Catholic community with our family and friends present. Riley got to spend some time with his godparents, Greg and Erin, his grandparents, great-grandparents, and various adopted “aunts” and “uncles,” like his “Uncle” Tyler. The ceremony, held at Holy Family Catholic Church in Brentwood, felt slightly mass-produced (there were three done right after mass and it was a little impersonal), but it’s not so much about style and more about the symbolism and the meaning behind it, which was tangible. Riley was very good during the ceremony and only got a little fussy towards the end when hunger pangs struck (as seen in this picture). He loves water and the baptismal font was hot hot hot that day so I knew he would be fine with getting his head wet. After the ceremony, we all went out to lunch at Mere Bulles in Brentwood and had a great meal together. Andy and I loved being able to see our best friends and wished we didn’t have to say goodbye when we all headed off in separate directions (Greg to DC, Erin and Taylor to Knoxville, us back to Atlanta). Nevertheless, it was a fun weekend, an important moment in Riley’s life, and a great opportunity to catch up with friends. To see more from his baptism, click here to see the full album of pictures.

Rating: 0 (from 0 votes)

Category: Riley James Tags: baptism, catholic, check up, milestones, pediatrician, Riley Leave a Comment

Disney World Photos

June

Courtney

Here are some of the photos of our trip to DisneyWorld. We stayed at the Dolphin resort and spent two half days at the pool and then ventured to Epcot and Magic Kingdom. Enjoy!