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Congratulations to Dan!  He passed his real estate test for California and has joined a small brokerage group that focuses on commercial properties.  We drove down to Dana Point (a coastal town between LA and San Diego) for Dan to attend a meeting and I took Reily to the Harbor for some peaceful sightseeing.
As you can see, he thoroughly enjoyed the trip!

Reily is quite peaceful in the car, but when we started out on our trip, he quickly started his pee pee dance.  For the non-parents out there, this is when he kicks his legs rapidly and begins a full high pitch scream with out any warm up.  Reily does NOT like to be wet!  So we pulled over and I attempted to change his diaper in the back seat.  Funny little man was not done, so when I turned my head to dispose of the old diaper, he showered me and the back seat!  All I could do was to throw the new diaper on the stream and hope for the best.  I had to pull out diaper #3 and clean urine off the leather seats.  OK, fine.  These things happen.  Lots of other mom’s have told me about this fun little game.  Except our son thought it was so fun, he repeated it!  The 2nd time, he got me twice in the same change!

Dan thought this was absolutely hysterical until Reily decided to “spit up” large amounts on his nice shirt.  As Dan shifted Reily to the other side to clean himself off, you guessed it, he “spit up” on the other side.  We thought we had it under control and proceeded to walk around a nice mall, when a security guard approached Dan and told him he had throw up all down his back!  We officially give up.  We smell like new parents: urine and puke. 

To top of the day, we stopped at Starbucks to get coffee for the road.  Having gotten my coffee and leaving Dan at the counter to pay, the young man behind the counter asked “Do you know if you’re having a boy or a girl?”  Dan whipped his head up quickly saying “what?!”  the young man then saw the small baby in the stroller for the first time and meekly stuttered “Nothing”.  Oblivious to the entire thing, I return from adding my splenda to Dan with a huge grin on his face because he can’t believe I didn’t hear any of it.  I actually wasn’t too upset because it was late in my second trimester that I learned that I would look pregnant for a while after having Reily.  Besides, we live in an area where the Mommytuck is quite popular.

We are slowly getting our baby legs under us as Reily continues to grow up right before our eyes.

It certainly has been some time since our last post and for that we are sorry. But we’ve certainly been busy so we’ll try to catch everyone up here and then let you know that we’ve agreed to start ’scheduling’ our posting – like every other aspects of our lives lately, we’ll be taking turns! So here is what’s going on…

• It may not be widely known, but about 2 days before Reily was born, we had a unique opportunity to fulfill one of Christine’s ‘101 Things to Do Before You Die.’ We had the chance to buy a yoga studio – the same studio that Christine had been going to throughout the entire pregnancy. (www.yomamayoga.com) It left a very profound impact on us during the pregnancy and we wanted to offer that opportunity to other couples during their pregnancy. So, I’m sure that there will be more on this in the future, but we have an excellent team working at the studio and are busy coming up to speed on the industry.
• Reily celebrated his 1 month birthday.  So he’s now officially in his 6 week going on 2 years old. He’s done with day sleeping thing – fighting to stay awake as much as possible; fearful that he’s going to miss something! Does that sound like anyone in the family – like say, his G-ma? He’s incredibly talkative in the early morning hours – as you can see here:
• We recently took a trip up to see some really good friends in San Francisco. We took the Pacific Coast Highway all the way up the coast – LA to San Fran! Its a 12+ hour drive hugging the water and is perhaps the most amazing views we have ever seen. Well….at least that Christine got to see it…I was so focused on the road! White knuckled stuck at 10 and 2 for 10 of the 12 hours – so I made her take a bunch of photos from the back seat! Here’s a example of the trip: It was an awesome trip and Reily did such a fantastic job in the car…excluding when I tried to ’stretch’ his potty or feeding breaks. He agreed to meet battle of wills by screaming from the back seat until I agreed to pull over; which is rather tough on a divided highway with no pull offs! On the way back, we just scheduled regular breaks – everyone seemed much happier!
• I passed my real estate exam and am beginning to work with a firm out of Orange County – between LA and San Diego. We are concentrating on solely commercial, investment properties. I’m pretty excited as I really appear to be on the same page as the founder and we are working on details for me to open up another office for him.
• We took Reily to the park to stage some photos on Saturday – given that Notre Dame was off, I agreed that it was acceptable to leave the family room for a location that doesn’t have a tv. We got some fantastic pictures and had a great time. Here’s some of the pics that we took:

• On Sunday, Reily took his first trip the LA Zoo. We’d love to be able to show everyone how excited he was to see the zoo and all the animals except that in order to be able to do that, he would have to have been awake while we were there! Yup, he slept almost the entire time except when Mom and Dad woke him to stage some more photos (here he is with his favorite animals – that Mom and Dad have chosen for him! A Turtle and an Elephant):

So that has been the extent of the major events in our life…Christine’s birthday is tomorrow – celebrating the big 2-5! (I’m learning to try to head off any major meltdown from both love’s of my life and ‘truth’ is always subjective!)

We’ll be returning to a more regular posting schedule and appreciate your patience! Hope all is well with everyone and we’ll continue to find better ways to update Reily’s fan base!

Well, we didn’t want to be those people. You know, the ones who off-load the raising of their child to someone else all in the name of productivity and the almighty dollar. But we had no choice…I need to get some work done and Christine needs to get some personal time in the name of sanity!

So we did it – we are now employing a nanny. I’m not sure if this nanny has all of her papers and represents a legal alien or not but that for someone else to deal with. Our objectives and more have been met – not only does she get him to stop crying and fall asleep, she also cleans. Although not all that thoroughly at the moment so we might be upgrading to a more ’self-propelled’ model in the future.

So with out further ado – here is the video of our amazing Nanny!

(WARNING – THE FOLLOWING VIDEO IS RATHER LOUD – ABOUT EQUAL TO THE SOUND OF A VACUUM CLEANER!)

Well, this marks the first October in years in which we don’t have Yankee baseball. A sad day indeed; but it reminds us that there are other things that happen in October…like Notre Dame football…like USA showing House marathons…like harvest time in Napa Valley (which we are heading to next weekend!!!)…like Mom’s birthday!

And judging for this picture, I think that Reily and I are going to give mom some sleep!

And truth be known, Mom’s doing great and is learning to balance bursts of sleep. She’s got so much energy (tough to tell from the pic!) but its a good thing because our little poop machine is really starting to wake up.

Our biggest challenge appears to be not to allow himself to get ‘over-stimulated’; as this usually leads to an short, intense blood-curdling crying episode. Just to the point where he gets so bent out of shape that literally he’ll fall asleep instantly. And two seconds later, he can actually be witnessed laughing in his sleep…he certainly finds his little episode funny!

Reily and I usually spend the early (I mean real early hours) together back in the family room.

he loves to help Dad read the latest book – we are currently reading ‘Everyday Blessings’ by Jon Kabat-Zinn (book about mindful parenting). And then we can be found watching a little tv…

And on the final note of the evening, Reily got his first bath! And he loved it…he ate it up. He got to lounge in his new bath chair who G-ma and Poobah gave him. He smiled and laughed – and Mom and I had another emotional moment together. Here are some the pix:

And tomorrow brings in October…and October like none we’ve experienced together. Absent of Yankee baseball but filled with our newest obsession!

It’s very hard to believe that he’s only been here for 3 days. Its tough to keep that in mind when we’ve spent every moment with him; and its equally as tough to think of a time that I won’t spend with him. But I suppose that it might be a little awkward for your dad come to school with you every day or for mom and me to double date with him to his prom (and I’m certainly willing to head back to college with him!). And with all that forward thinking, its easy to lose focus on the current moment.

Christine and I are constantly reminding each other that something was ‘his first’ – his first time having a bandaid, his first time having Nurse Lisa take his vitals, his first time having Nurse Greg take his vitals, his first time pooping so hard that it blew out the back of his diaper and dad had to clean off between his shoulder blades while he laughed at what he had done – all of these seemingly non-memorable moments, that we might soon as much dismiss at any other time of life, are cherished and bottled as we struggle to fight back the tears.

Its often easier for Christine from an emotional outlet standpoint – she’s raging with hormones and pills and gas – so people expect her to be incredibly emotional around all of these ‘non-events.’ But when I become choked up and struggle to put to words what it is that I am feeling, that is a different ball of wax. The truth is that I’ve never been this emotional about anything – sure I pouted, whined, and threw temper-tantrums as a form of emotional outlet in the past, but that was college and this is different. And with Reily, everything is different – the rules have all changed – actually there aren’t any rules. I thought that it was my ‘job’ to teach him right from wrong, good verses bad, yankees over the red sox, and everything else that it is imperative to know in order to be successful in this ever changing world. And then it happened – I held him. It was then that I realized, I’m actually the student – and class is officially in session! He’s already taught me that flexibility will not be optional, that effective communication has nothing to do with fancy words, and that it will be futile to try to suppress ‘those emotions!’

There is no book that could have prepared me. No talk with other parents. Advise from other first time fathers. Observing other couples push their little ones around. None of it – nothing can prepare you for that unbelievable moment of holding your child! And then your heart no longer belongs to you and you are completely content with that!

*And some firsts don’t need to be experienced ever again – for example, I would be perfectly happy if he only pooped IN his diaper and didn’t follow it up by peeing on me!*