Charlie eyes a Christmas ornament on the tree.

Valerie and I celebrated our first Christmas with Charlie this year. He didn’t care about presents, or even the wrapping. He did like the tape on the wrapping paper, which kept sticking to his fingers. And he really, really liked the tree. Soon, our little family will be moving to Roseburg, but for now, we got to spend Christmas in our little rental in west Eugene. It’s the longest Val and I have lived in any one place together.

Charlie James is 4 months old, and man, are we happy with him! He’s been a fantastic kid so far … he’s sleeping through the nights now (as of three weeks ago), he laughs, he chatters to us when he’s happy and he tracks you with his eyes and moves his head when he sees motion. He also loves baths, which is a good thing because he likes producing massive diaper blowouts which make those baths a prerequisite every so often. The soiled clothes for the evening are now soaking in the laundry room, and Charlie smells like baby shampoo. He’s sleeping now in his basinette … he’s been out since about 9 p.m. He may wake up once for a feeding or he may just sleep straight through … but in any case it’s better than 1 or 2 months ago, when he’d wake up at 2 a.m. and want to play.

Everything else in life is going nicely. Val and I still love the church we’re going to, Val will be done with teaching for the year in another week, I take the bar at the end of July and am finding some decent leads for that first post-law school job. Our new dog Flip is finally starting to adjust to life with the Reinhards, and I decided last week I like him after all (it’s a struggle taking in a 5-year-old dog with bad habits when you’re used to a perfect dog you’ve had for 6 years.) I gave him a haircut this week and he lost about 10 pounds in the process, I think.

I’ll try to put up more Charlie pictures later. The one up top is from tonight’s bath-in-the-sink. (Not that there’s any other kind in CharlieWorld.)

Right now, Charlie is enjoying the sunshine through the living room window. It seemed like a good day to post some of his bath pictures from the other week. 

***

Jack, never crabby, investigates the catch of the day.

Our wonderful dog Jack has died, after a 6-month fight with lymphoma. He was 8 years old.

No public services are planned, although Valerie and I will be scattering his ashes at the Oregon Coast sometime this week.

He died on Friday the 13th of March. I guess it shows you how hard it was to deal with it … it’s been almost 3 weeks and only now can I write about it. We got two sympathy cards in the mail from the vet yesterday. I hadn’t cried in a week or two, but those cards set me off. The entire staff at the vet’s office had signed it.

If you have to get terminal cancer, lymphoma is far from the worst of the bunch. Jack spent the last 6 months just acting like normal. He would be a bit lethargic for a half day after his chemotherapy regiments, but he’d spring back and be ready to play. The steroids he was on made him gain weight … so the last month he was shuffling around with 15 extra pounds on him, but he was happy, and that was what mattered.

The Tuesday before he died, Jack went disc golfing with us. He was a bit slow walking from hole to hole with us, but he seemed to enjoy himself. On Wednesday, he started rasping, and Thursday it worsened. Still, he insisted on riding in the car with us when we did errands late Thursday afternoon. 

That night was difficult. His breathing got worse, and worse, and he was pacing and unsteady on his feet. Finally at 3 a.m. or so I put a towel down and let him up on the bed. I had to lift him up; he couldn’t walk any more. He started howling. He would try to get up, and stumble, and fall back onto the bed. At 7 a.m., Val and I finally decided we should take him to the vet to put him to sleep, since he was in so much discomfort. He never made it there, though. Jack died as I was lifting him into my car.

I have so many fond memories of Jack. The way he would comfort you when you were feeling lousy. His incredible enthusiasm when you jingled the car keys. His weird habits — like when he went for a walk on a city sidewalk, he would never step on a metal grate or sewer cover. He always, always walked around those objects, no matter how inconvenient it was or no matter how I scolded him. His fear of lightning, and the tragic but comical way he’d run for cover during a thunderstorm, squirming under the futon and shaking like a leaf for hours.

I got Jack the day I graduated college. He lived in Klamath Falls with me, when I had my first newspaper job. I packed him into my Saab when we moved together to Arkansas for a year. He was there for my first date with Val, as we walked him along the Willamette River and I held Val’s hand for the first time. He was there when I walked with Val on the beach near Florence, where I kissed her for the first time, and where I proposed to her 14 months later. He graciously accepted Val’s status as half-owner when she and I got married at the end of 2007. And he managed to stay alive long enough to see Charlie.

Val and I will always be dog people, and there will be many dogs that brighten our lives. But Jack will always be that big dog I wanted as a kid, the one I was never allowed to have when growing up. 

Val and I are both going to miss him.

Jack and Charlie take a much-needed siesta.

So Valerie and I have managed to contract a wonderful cold. I went to the doctor on Thursday and he said I had bronchitis. Just that afternoon, Valerie started manifesting her own symptoms. Wonderful. So now we’re doing everything in our power to prevent Charlie from getting sick. Dr. Bigley is a strong proponent of breast feeding, and he assured us Charles had a good chance of staying well, just by noshing on breast milk. We’ll see. In the meantime, Val and I are seriously considering buying surgical masks so we can avoid spreading our cough to Charlie James.

Being sick is not without its amusements, however. The other day, Valerie was changing Charlie’s diaper at about 4 a.m. I wandered in to Charlie’s room make sure everything was going ok, and as soon as I got through the door, I let out a terrific sneeze. It startled our kid so much, he immediately peed over himself, Valerie, his clothes and the changing table. Nice.

Sickness kept me from school on Wednesday and today, but it didn’t stop us from taking a walk to Valley River Center yesterday (to you non-locals, that’s the shopping mall.) We parked on the far side of the river, and walked across. Now, 1/2 a mile may not seem impressive, but it is when it’s a) 40 degrees, b) you have a child with you, c) your wife is recovering from a C-section and d) you both are sick. The mall really isn’t any more interesting when you’re sick than when you’re well, but it was nice to get out of the house.

Valerie and Charlie, best buddies.

Well, Charlie is changing by the day. For the last three days now he’s been waking up every hour or so and screaming at us. It’s interesting, in a natives-are-getting-restless kind of way. The payoff, though, is he’s grown by leaps and bounds, and he is VERY interested in everything these days. Val had a lot of Charlie time today as I was at school, and she told me when I got home that Charlie apparently loves the soundtrack from Annie. Especially when the songs come on where little kids are singing. His eyes get really wide and he listens in rapt attention. He’ll even stop crying. :-)

It’s been a whole week since little Charlie James made his debut, and what a week it has been! I’m glad that Brook has been able to keep everyone updated on this amazing week, and I’m also glad that I’m functional enough now to add my own thoughts to Charlie’s blog! 

Having Charlie at home has been a huge change, but one that I wouldn’t trade for the world. Since Brook and I were released from prision, er, the hospital on Monday, we’ve had a great time getting to know Charlie better, and getting in practice being new parents. While trying to heal up from the c-section is a major drag, there are enough distractions with Charlie to make the week quite interesting.

Among our distractions? The mystery of diaper engineering. Last night, as Brook has mentioned, we realized that Charlie had sprung a leak. We went through a lot of baby clothes, trying to figure out why on earth our baby just kept soaking through all of his diapers. This morning, I took it upon myself to try to figure out why the diapers weren’t water tight. So far, the only conclusion I’ve come up with is that we weren’t putting the diapers on tight enough. We were somewhat nervous about making them too tight, and in our caution, ended up making them too loose. So far the problem SEEMS to be mostly solved, but we’ll see what happens as we progress through more diapers.  :-)

In other news, Charlie is so incredibly adorable. I have never found any other little person or creature more captivating! Being a mom is more fun than I would have imagined, and while I am tired out and sore right now, there is still utter enjoyment to be found in changing tiny diapers and clothes, and talking to a tiny person with big, bright eyes and a sweet baby smell. I am entirely looking forward to this wonderful parenthood journey with Brook, and can’t wait to experience everything that is waiting for us.