typically after i've had breakfast, done the dishes, swept the kitchen floor, and expressed some breast milk-from the monitor comes a soft little coo: conrad is awake. i drop everything dead in its tracks and hustle back to the bedroom because my new favorite thing is about to happen. i peak over the bassinett to see the little guy staring up at his mobile in awe and wonder and then i say "Hello Conrad" to which his eyes grow big while moving to the sound of my voice and there when his eyes reach mine, they almost jump right out of there sockets and a huge smile takes over his face. it's absolutely priceless!



it's been an awesome past 10 weeks here in the eggert home. our lifes are so vastly different from before conrad: the living room has become an obstacle course of toys and swings and bouncers and playmats, our evenings are spent reading picture books and making silly faces, and conversation usually revolves around what the other one missed while not looking or working or grocery shopping.

before just a couple, but now, so much more, a family.

and that little addition that made the family, little C, he's more adorable than ever. always surprising us with his personality and developments and the ability to suck on me till he throws up. he's also very particular, and that i didn't see coming. one of his points of desire is to be held facing out. which would be a whole lot easier if i had a durable baby carrier but we don't so my poor, poor arms and back are getting the toning of a lifetime.

next weekend we'll be going back up to portland for conrad to meet his aunt michelle. i'm really excited about my sister not only coming to see her nephew, to spend time with me, but to see and fall in love with the city of portland. it's been something i've been wishing for since we moved here.

my birthday was last week. i'm 27 now. and whereas at 26 i still felt young and fresh- now that i've turned a year older- i all of a sudden feel old and dull: that my early twenties have left me for good, and all that lies ahead is the impending doom of aging. and yet that melodramatic nature right there keeps a little of my youth alive. ;)

we didn't do much. cross that: we did nothing. the weekend before jon made me bread pudding and that was that. it seemed fitting although. like taking the effort and time to celebrate me would be all wrong. i don't know why, it just did and does. (although i did celebrate the hell out of the manolo blahniks michelle sent me.)



i was blown away to see how many still remember despite the distance and time that has come between; it never ceases to amaze me at the collection of good souls i somehow managed to collect and keep as friends through all these years.

be here with me

the air has chilled. the grass in the front yard has turned back to green. the roses outside the window are in bloom. it's perfectly cloudy. magnetic fields is playing. the wind chime on the front porch is chirping. the baby is sleeping in his bouncer.

the dishes wait for me. as do the blankets on the bed, the weeds in the flower bed, the dust on the entertainment center, the bills, and the sirloin in the fridge.

we'll be having fagitas tonight.

and i'll have flowers from our yard in a vase on the kitchen table; the pink ones that just recently bloomed. i've been itching to get my hands on them.

i have plans and ideas and an overwhelming desire to have my sister here to carry them out with me.

like a herb garden. and a membership at the local rock climbing gym.

so how bout that ranch in northern california, twenty minutes to be here with me sounds good enough.

my sunshine, my only sunshine

one year ago you wouldn't have been able to pull me away from a night out with stephanie and free boozes, yet this past thursday i was wanting nothing more than to pull jeremy and myself away and down the road back to salem, back to little C. i realize just how much i've changed when what was comes face to face with what is: the social butterfly to the mother. an old aquaintance who has one on the way himself wondered if everything really does begin to seem sooo unimportant when the baby arrives and "more than that", i told him, "you wonder what priorities were before your child was born".

that same night conrad turned 7 weeks. we celebrated it with lunch on a patio in the hawthorne district, diaper changes in a tour bus, a bottle under a nice shaded tree, lots of new faces, being held by miss stephanie, and a million kisses from his mommy.

here are some pictures from our weekend. hope you enjoy!