L'aventure américaine

So, having a kid is fun and all.  But, having a kid is AWESOME at Halloween.  Especially when the kid has no opinions about his costume and especially when your last name is Pope and the current Pope happens to be fantastic. I was very proud of my first homemade kid's costume and smugly judged all of the other costumes at this year's Halloween trick-or-treating extravaganza.  (I don't know how many we had, but I'm guessing that we had around 600-700 trick-or-treaters.)  All of the other kids came up short.  Milo Pope as Pope Milo won top prize .  (Obama would have loved Milo!) I deemed Milo's first holiday as a huge success. In fact, the fun never stops in Klamath Falls and Randal has been very busy improving the downtown.  He's been painting the building like a madman, although he recently had to slow down, since the temperature have dipped a little too low to powerwash and paint a giant building. I even helped paint one afternoon, al...

Last night, I had a very vivid dream about emptying a sink full of vomit.  It was so gross.  I had to reach my hand in and pull the plug.  Disgusting.  In my dream, it smelled just terrible. Upon waking, it makes me think that I should change the sheets.  Evidently, the smell of spit up and spoiled milk has permeated my subconscious. Gross. In other news, Milo was in the paper!  Okay.  You can't actually see his face, but he's there, tucked away in his Ergo Baby.  You can find the article here .  He is a big supporter of the Complete Streets model and improving the built environment.  Randal is on the Built Environment Blue Zones committee, so will be instrumental in downtown improvements.  Some ideas include making our downtown streets two-way, removing push buttons on walk signals so that they turn automatically, and improving our alleyways. Milo celebrated his one-month birthday in Denver where Randal and I went for a f...

Tuesday morning, Milo woke me up to sing happy birthday...  the crying and grunting version.  (It really doesn't sound much like happy birthday...)  I was, of course, very happy because it was my birthday and because Milo is the cutest.  Case in point: The morning was great... until all of a sudden, it wasn't.  Milo went back to sleep at 5:30am and woke up again an hour and a half later and wouldn't be soothed.  He didn't want to eat much and the nice shirt that I had put on in honor of my birthday was soaked with breastmilk in about 5 minutes.  (The other side got soaked an hour later...)  I sat down and tried to nurse him and made the mistake of reading a book about parenting. Holy moly.  I was already failing...  less than a month into this.  I have not mastered one handed diapering.  I have not started to read stories to Milo at bedtime as recommended by the American Academy of Pediatrics (starting at birth!). ...

Randal was going to take three weeks off for paternity leave from his collective workspace. Yesterday he told me that he was going to go back from 8 to 12 every day and I immediately got my hackles up and said that he should get more time off when the three weeks were over since he was going back early.  Oops. It's been three weeks. He has to go back to work.  My, how time flies.  Milo is doing well and continues to be the cutest and smartest and strongest baby in the history of the world.  Mom and Dad are here helping out, which is great. And the Carr family came for a visit as well. (Quite different from their last visit... A lot more breast milk and a lot less wine...) I'm sleepy, but happy. As long as I take a nap, as Randal has to regularly remind me. And all is well in Klamath Falls. 

We're over a week into this parenting thing and I have to say, it is pretty great. A little sleepless - but great.  Of course, I do burst into tears about three times a day.  Of course, Milo poops countless times per day.  Of course, I feel like I leak and he leaks constantly.  But... I miss him when we're apart for an hour.  But... I find his facial expressions endlessly amusing.  But... I take great pride in things that are undoubtedly developmentally normal (even though I'm pretty sure that he's advanced beyond his eight days).  So, I've turned into a sappy, ridiculous mom. Oh geez... Maizie and Bogey discuss this newest inconvenience while Randal explains to Juneau that Milo's are not for licking.  First outing of many. Success! Milo sports a new outfit. He looks great. He has to change it when I spill breast milk all over it. Oops. 

So, this happened last week.   He's pretty cool.  We'll keep him.

I think that I am in a very surreal part of my life.  When I initially got pregnant, while happy, the overwhelming emotion was just a sense of...  This is weird.   Eventually, I adjusted (kind-of) to the idea that I was pregnant.  I feel that I've been pregnant for a long time and have had a chance to add that to my identity. However, my sense of weird is currently heightened.  I have a 30 pound weight that constantly hangs off of me rendering a little tricky to sleep, stay awake in appointments, take deep breaths, and other regular functions.  But, I generally feel fine and not miserable at all like everyone told me I would feel at the end.  The thing is...  the thing that I just can't wrap my head around...  is that I'll be a parent in a couple of weeks. I was talking to Randal about my schedule at the beginning of this week.  I said, "Well, this week will be insane, but next week will be a lot easier.  And th...

We went to Bend this weekend for Bend Brewfest. Last year it was rather a raucous affair and we wanted one last weekend with our friends before hunkering down to work in the final weeks of pregnancy.  The morning of Brewfest, we played in the Deschutes River. Randal and I canoed and the rest of the crowd floated. It was great. Maizie swam and swam and Juneau tolerated it. They both looked quite dashing in their life jackets.  Evidently, energy wanes during the 9th month of pregnancy though and Randal and I opted to be designated drivers and sit out of the festivities. When the crowd came home, quite happy and full of joy and karaoke, it wasn't quite as charming as I had remembered.  The next morning, as Randal and I went to breakfast with the middle-aged, pre-hangover crowd, we mourned the upcoming change and potential loss of pre-kid selves. Of course, we also had a five minute wait for Sunday brunch, so there are perks to waking up at 6am on a weekend.  And so it g...

Summertime flies by and we've been happily busy here in smoky southern Oregon.  There might be too many things to update, so we'll have to do with a photo log of our life since our trip to Boston (which was fantastic, by the way).   So, returning to June... We've enjoyed weekly dinners with Adam and Lindsey.  This was taken on their deck (they'll be hosting our baby shower tomorrow, which will be quite fun!).  Siobhan and daughter Maeve are also featured.  Siobhan, her husband, Liam, and Maeve live two doors down and been my good fairy of maternity and baby supplies.  And now, Siobhan is pregnant again!  It's a fertile block in our neighborhood.  (Another neighbor just had a baby last week.) Randal's family came for the 4th of July.  Unfortunately, I was terrible at taking pictures, but this is Randal's Uncle Glen and I on a hike on the hill with the pups.  It was great to have everyone in town! Chris Paasch came for a...