Happy Birthday, Diana

Happy Birthday to Diana

The best wife and mom in the whole world!!!! Zoe, Charlie, and I would be lost without you.

Wedding Weekend

Mr. and Mrs. Spencer

The girlsThe dance machine (I spy brown liquor)

This weekend we celebrated Connie and Nick's wedding and had a blast. The weekend started out on Thursday with a welcome party at Fado. This was a great chance to catch up with the bride and groom in a casual and festive way and it gave us a chance to meet Nick's family and friends who made the trip from England. I have been friends with Connie since junior high and I am just so happy that she ended up with such a great guy. All weekend the two of them were just totally adorably happy. Now, I am just keeping my fingers crossed that they'll really move back to Chicago from New York soon!

The wedding was gorgeous and the reception was so much fun. We had a great time on the dance floor -- Jody was tearing it up with some sweet new moves! Courtney and Jeremy were in town too, which is always a total treat and makes me wish that we lived in the same city as them. In addition to celebrating Connie and Nick, this was also the first time in a while that Jody and I got to enjoy a fun night out sans Zoe. (Huge thanks to Jody's mom for watching Zoe the whole day and night!) It took some planning and creativity to figure out where and when I was going to pump all day long, but it all worked out just fine.

Connie was a gorgeous bride and Nick had the biggest grin on his face the entire day and night. Totally cute.

Congrats to the happy couple! Next up, Courtney and Jeremy!!!

Top Dog

Today is a very special day in the Schirel household. It's Charlie's "Birthday." Although we don't know exactly how old our little pooch is, we decided April 5th is his birthday because that's the day that we adopted him two years ago. We think he's just about 3 years old, but we don't really know for sure. He certainly still acts like a puppy! For all who don't know, we got Charlie from a rescue group called Adopt-A-Pet, Inc. They rescue dogs mostly from kill shelters throughout the state and put all the dogs in foster homes until they find forever homes. It's a really great organization and we owe them quite a lot for bringing Charlie into our lives. If you're looking to get a dog (and I'm a big proponent of rescuing a homeless pet vs. buying one from a breeder) check out their web site at the link above.

Charlie was rescued from a high-kill shelter in Southern Illinois. They didn't know his whole background except that he was abandoned, brought to the shelter and then rescued by Adopt-a-Pet. The rescue group had named him "Coco Puff" and we changed it to Charlie pretty much the instant we got him home. I could not imagine why anyone would abandon Charlie--he is such a great dog. And I cannot imagine our lives now without him. He is seriously the most loving, loyal and adorable dog and we feel totally lucky to have him.

We got Charlie a special bone thing to celebrate, and Charlie's girlfriend's owner (our neighbor) brought us some cake tonight. (Even though we don't think she knew it was his birthday, it was good timing!)



Special birthday bone



Charlie Zoe bonding time

Buh-Bye

Good news, people...Our smoky neighbor is finally moving out! Hooray! Ever since our condo board got on him about smoking in his unit (thanks to Board President Jody!), things have gotten better. But, every now and then the office/nursery still stinks like smoke. But, now he's outta here and I couldn't be more thrilled.

Now, however, Jody and I have to figure out when to start putting Zoe to sleep in her crib rather than keeping her in the bassinet in our room with us. I am not ready for her to head into her own room, and I had the very legit excuse of not wanting her to be sleeping in the smoky room. But now I don't have a good argument.


I know it's important to get her into her own room at some point. But we're still jumping out of bed every now and then, even though she's been a pretty good nighttime sleeper so far. We'll see what happens.

Playdate

BFF alert! Zoe and Lydia finally got to meet each other the other day and it was quite fun. Although the two of them didn't really pay much attention to each other, it was good for me and Kristin for sure.

Kristin and I went through our pregnancies together, which was great and it's been so awesome for me to have a friend learning all the ropes of parenthood and going through the same stuff at the same time. With the girls just 11 days apart, it'll be fun having them play together once they get older. For now they mostly just slept, ate, pooped and cried (more Zoe than Lydia!). But when we put them in the pack-n-play together it was total cuteness. Zoe is such a mover that she kept flailing her arms at Lydia, so we'll have to work on Zoe's punching problem. We can't wait for Baby Boy Stierwalt to join the party this summer!

Tummy Time

Zoe loves tummy time. She's holding her head up like a champ and last week she actually rolled over. She seems to really enjoy her tummy time, even though Charlie always tries to bust in there to see what's going on. Even though we know tummy time is all about helping her develop her strength and all that good stuff, I'm pretty sure she's just happy that she can get her fists into her mouth, which has been her main goal since birth.

One Month

We recently bought a sling because our little girl loves being held and using the sling gives us our hands free. She seems to really like the sling and even stays sleeping in it when it's off.

We can't believe it's already been over a month since Zoe arrived. In some ways it feels like the time flew and in other ways we feel like Zoe's been in our lives forever.

We went to her one-month check-up today and she's doing great. My biggest concern was her weight and I'm happy to report she's packing on the pounds! She's almost out of the stage 1 diapers, weighing in at 9 lbs, 10 oz. The doc said she's in the 75th percentile for weight. I'm really not sure what that means, but it sounds pretty good. She's also in the 25th percentile for height, which is quite an improvement from her 3rd percentile score at her newborn visit. There still may be hope for our little shrimp to be a normal short girl instead of a super-short girl!

Here's a few new pics to tide you all over as well.