Happy Holidays!

Two of our family Christmas celebrations have come and gone and we look forward to the third next week with Tony's family. At this point Tony, Talia and Grayson are recovering from illness and injury and I am waiting for one of the two to take me down. Still, we have had good holidays so far. This is the year of the train for Grayson and I'm expecting him to add that to his word list soon. I think that we are now at about 25 words and phrases that he uses. Christmas Eve he briefly added "Santa" to the list, but then decided that it was better to call him "Ho Ho Ho." Talia turned three months old on the 17th and we suspect that she is celebrating by teething. I see no tooth buds, but she's drooling and chewing and has actually become a bit cranky at times. She weighs in at 13 pounds 10 ounces and Grayson is battling to make it to 22 pounds (on Monday he was 21 pounds 15.5 ounces).

Below you can see Talia and Grasyon each enjoying their Christmas morning and with Amy's family the weekend before Christmas! Have a wonderful New Year!

Our Contribution to History

I love it when election day falls on my birthday! I always feel great when I vote and so election day sets me up for a great birthday from the start. I do mean from the start as we've set up a tradition of voting first thing in the morning and then going out to breakfast. We tried to keep up this time, but living on baby time slowed us enough that breakfast was out. Still, the four of us made it to our polling place by about 7:15. Talia helped me fill in the little ovals on my ballot by not wiggling too much. Grayson enjoyed spinning in circles and thudding his heels on the table while Tony filled out his ballot. Amazingly, no-one seemed bothered by the toddler antics. I credit this to the magical good feeling that comes with voting.

And ... for the first time ever my candidate won! I'm so excited to see how President -Elect Obama tackles the challenges ahead. I'm almost as excited to watch our country respond to his leadership. It's going to be wonderful to tell the kids about their first presidential election and what it meant for the country. I can't get enough of hearing African-American parents saying, "Now I really can tell my kids they can grow up to be anything they want," on NPR.

We're still working on teaching Grayson to say Obama, but he's almost there.

Halloween Early

Halloween is important at our house. We were planning on dressing up the kids and going to Zoo Boo, but due to cold weather outside and everyone recovering from colds, we opted for the College Football Hall of Fame instead. Talia actually slept through most of the trip, but we got these pictures in a bright-eyed moment. Grayson had a blast. There were so many things to point at and say "Whazzat?" about.

It's been 2 weeks!

It's hard to believe that Talia is already 2 weeks old. She's amazing! She eats and she sleeps and messes her diaper and then eats again. Except for an ongoing disagreement about sleeping arrangements at night (the cradle won't do, the co-sleeper won't do, on top of Mommy is the only appropriate place after midnight) she's easy. Who knew a baby could be this way?



Grayson is great, too. He loves his little sister, just needs to learn that he is twice her size plus and so cannot cuddle on top of her. He also needs to work on his gentle patting of her head. Sibling love is great!

Welcome Talia Elizabeth Pawli!

Today, at 12:20 pm, Talia entered our world, adding 8 pounds, 7 ounces and 21.75 inches of joy to life as we know it.

She looks a lot like her big brother on day one - with a little more hair, a little less pudge and a little more length. Her temperment so far has been completely opposite from Grayson's - she is very calm, doesn't startle, has slept a lot and screamed very little.

But I digress. I know what you really want to see is photos so here you go:


Amy getting the scar tissue from her previous c-section cut through.


Talia's big debut.


No baby is happy being evicted from the womb.



Post bath adorableness.


And just for good measure, let's make sure Grayson gets some attention, too (he got plenty today, playing hard with Grandpa and the Grandmas). This picture is not from today, but it's still awfully cute.

The Next Big Day ...

Is tomorrow! Mom and Dad will be here between 5:00 and 5:15 and Tony and I will be at the hospital by 5:30. This is in the am. Have I mentioned how nice it is to have the hospital only a few blocks away? Surgery is scheduled for 7:45. Hopefully by 9:00 the next Bauer-Pawli baby will be out in the world! I'm looking forward to meeting her and hoping that Grayson does well while I'm in the hospital. We'll let you know as soon as we can. Until then, enjoy some belly love!

News News News

There has been a lot going on since I last posted. Grayson has been talking a little at daycare and at home. He doesn't use a lot of nouns, though. He's opted for the command words. When more formula was offered him at daycare he pushed the bottle away with an, "All done!" When the friend that he was playing with was picked up he cried, "Stop!" The best that I have heard was on Thursday. He was walking along behind his push car chanting, "I go". He will also say "Daddy" (this sounds like da-DEEE) and Tony has heard him say "Ducky" as well. He may have said "kiss" on Thursday, too. He's just learning about kissing and his kisses tend to be mostly licks, but I'm not worried that he's trying to bite my cheek or nose anymore.

Squeaker's doing great. We've got 2 and 1/2 weeks to go and she's starting to get into the head down position. She's not nearly as kicky as Grayson was, but she likes to stretch. Every once in a while I'll feel a punch in the left side of my pelvis followed by a kick under my right cage, then the left side of my rib cage and finally another punch in the right side of my pelvis. Just not a lot of space left, I guess.

I traded in Clover the Beetle for a 2007 Camry yesterday. I'm still getting adjusted. It was so nice not to have to crawl across the back seat to get Grayson into his car seat, though. It won't be too much longer and we can even consider turning the car seat to forward facing - he was 19 pounds and 7 ounces this Wednesday! I'm sure that he'll reach 20 by the time Squeaker gets here.

Therapy Fun

Before Grayson started his occupational therapy in November, I wondered what exactly a baby does at therapy. The answer: play, play, play! He loves both occupational and physical therapy and his face lights up when his therapists and nutritionist come to the house. While we hope that little sister won't need the extra help it's definitely a joy to see Grayson have so much fun!

Of Dark Knights and Due Dates

We went to see The Dark Knight yesterday as part of Tony's birthday weekend. There's a lot that I could say, but I don't want to spoil anything so I'll just give my overall impression. It was a good movie, a very very good movie, but not a fun movie. None of the small children there had to be taken out screaming, but I bet that there were nightmares in the under ten crowd. Go see it, it's well worth the money but I think that the kids are better off playing with their fast food marketing toys and watching DVDs of the animated series.

On a lighter note, we had a follow-up ultrasound for our Squeaker-girl on Wednesday. Sure enough she's big just like her brother. As of Wednesday her weight was estimated at 3 pounds (weight-wise where she would be predicted to be about a week to 2 weeks from now) and with 10 weeks until my due date and the predicted growth of 1/2 to 1 pound per week she's probably going to be bigger than Grayson was. So, I've got a c-section scheduled for September 17 in hopes of minimizing complications by avoiding labor.

More from Grayson

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I believe that the above roughly translates to:
"I'm all worn out. The past 2 weeks I've gotten to eat dairy and I've done well. I like yogurt. Today I discovered that ice cream is also pretty good. Most of my day was spent creeping around the house, standing up and cruising around the furniture. If I could just reach the doorknob, I could spend all day on the porch watching traffic, but I'm not tall enough yet."

We had a birthday party!

Grayson's first birthday was on the 17th of June. We jumped the gun a bit and had the party on the 14th. He had a great time and the volume of his toy collection doubled! We are so exicted about year 2 for him!

Last few months in pictures

Lots of Stuff!

It's been way too long and lots of blogworthy events have transpired whihe we've been incommunicado. First of all, Grayson is awesome! He had surgery on February 27 to put some bits in their proper place and repair the associated hernias. We expected to see some improvement in his mobility after the surgery, but what happened blew my mind. The Monday before surgery Gray could sit unassisted for all of 8 seconds. The Monday after his OT timed him at 10 minutes and now he'll sit and play on the floor for 15 to 20 minutes. He's been doing a lot of bouncing and rocking for the past few weeks as well. When he sits on Tony's or my lap he's fearless about flinging himself after whatever object strikes his fancy (usually the remote or the phone). I can't say that we have a new kid, because he's still just as sweet and happy as ever, but he's really making headway and we hope for crawling really soon.

Our life is also being shaken up by the presence of a (developing) second child. Yes, we were trying to prevent such an occurrance. Some time over the holidays this little one squeaked by our precautions and so in September Grayson will be a big brother. This means that we'll be losing the guest room and rearranging Tony's work space. It also means that Clover the VW Beetle will have to be traded in for something with 4 doors. I'm begging your indulgence in advance because life will pretty much be a mess for the next 2 or 3 years. A happy mess, I think, but a mess nevertheless. Tony and are are accepting, but still working on excitement at this point. Fortunately we have the Grandmas to bring their complete enthusiasm to bear on the entire situation. Thank the Powers that Be for Grandmas!

My parents celebrated their 40th anniversary on Sunday. We visited and got family portraits with everyone but the dogs.

My brother, Dan, defended his PhD and should be graduating in May. If anyone is looking for a cultural anthropologist who is fluent in Spanish and has established relationships and research in Ecuador, let me know.

I think that's all and with a bit more time I'll even get some pictures up!

What Grayson has to say

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Creepin' Crud creeps on

In a surprise upset, Tony is still on the edge of health, but Grayson has become the silver medal finisher in the race ftowards brochitis. This means that Amy and Grayson have medicine and will be feeling better soon. And Tony has no medicine. And will probably slide slowly into illness, never noticing how bad he is getting, and end up far worse for wear.
Some days it just doesn't pay to be Tony.

Creepin' Crud

It's been awhile and I probably should post something about how much fun Grayson's first Christmas was or how happy we are that he got a good bill of health at the gastroenterologist's office a couple of weeks ago, but I'm not going to. Why not? Because right now I'm sick and it's much more fun to whine about being sick. Actually, I'm feeling better today. I did the smart thing and went to see Dr. Galanes on Wednesday (she's so great!). So, instead of being the third person at the office with pneumonia I'm hoping to halt it at a sinus infection and tracheitis. So far Grayson seems to be hanging in there, but Tony might on the edge. I promise, there will be more cute pictures soon!

i can wearz food?

At the top, we have the lovely prune beard and at the bottom banana beard. I have yet to document apple beard, pear beard, oatmeal beard, sweet potato beard and carrot beard.

Currently Grayson would much prefer to eat pork (sausage links and steamed dumplings in particular), but as his tooth still isn't quite in, he will just have to be patient and bearded.