Trip to the Mountains

I have not gotten to the point where I really feel like blogging about every day life.  Not that every day life is not drama-filled, but I'm just not there yet.  I don't think anyone would care.  And I'm terrible about uploading pictures, even though it's not very hard and doesn't take very long. 

So . . . I'm going to blog about things that happened a long time ago because I have pictures of them.

The last weekend of February we went to the mountains with Quincy's cousin, Adam, his wife, Megan, and their 4 year old daughter, Ciara.  This is the second year we've done it, we stayed in a cabin near Grandfather Mountain both this year and last.

Ciara and Clara playing sweetly.  Ciara is going to be a big sister in July, she had a good time and did a great job practicing her big sister skills with Clara!

We spent most of the time visiting, eating and relaxing, but we did manage to get out to go tubing on Saturday afternoon.

Tubing at Hawk's Nest.

Adam and Ciara went tubing first session and Quincy and I went the second session.  We took Clara up the mountain and took a few pictures, then Megan and Adam were sweet enough to keep her while we played. 

She knows she's cute in her snow outfit.  Check out those baby Uggs!  Thanks Annalise!

Tubing at Hawk's Next brought me back to skiing in college with Jodie, Ashley and Carrie Konczal.  We stayed in Valle Crucis and "skiied" at Hawk's Next.  I was not good at it at all.

Megan and I did some serious shopping at the outlets in Blowing Rock.  I bought most of Clara's spring play clothes at the Gymboree, Gap and Carter's outlets.  Including bathing suits.  And speaking of, while I blog about the snow, it's warm enough to wear a bathing suit outside.  Not that I would want to do that after having a baby just nine short months ago.

Clara took her first bath in the big tub which was "OMG SO FUN!!  MOMMY WHY DIDN'T YOU BRING MORE TOYS?"  Since then we fixed the drain plug on the big tub at home and Clara is taking baths like a big girl.  So much better than her first baths!

We took a family picture before heading out on Sunday.  Next year, a group picture:

Baby Play List

When you first have a baby you are awake pretty much all the time.  If you have a baby like ours, there is a whole lot of rocking and walking and wiggling and wrangling and really anything that will get the baby to stop crying and maybe even go to sleep.  I created a playlist for that occasion that goes from active to more subdued.  Clara and I still listen to it quite often. 

All of the songs had to be suitable for children and even if slow, they couldn't be sad.  This, my friends, is a tall order.  OK, a tall order for someone who has a limited amount of time in which to put something together.

Here it is:

1.  Put Your Records On by Corinne Bailey Rae (often substituted with "Girl put your sleeper on, tell me your favorite song, now go ahead put your head down . . . ")
2.  Lovin' in My Baby's Eyes by Taj Mahal (the first song we danced to at our wedding)
3.  Late in the Evening by Paul Simon (favorite line "my mother laughed the way some ladies do, well it's late in the evening and the music's seeping though")
4.  Just the Two of Us by Bill Withers (Will Smith's song is loosely based on this one) (really anything by Bill Withers would be good)
5.  Don't You Worry Bout a Thing by Stevie Wonder (because Stevie's Stevie and early motherhood is all about worrying)
6.  As by Stevie Wonder (See Above)
7.  Restless by Alison Krauss & Union Station (babies are nothing if not restless)
8.  It Won't Be Like This for Long by Darius Rucker (literal depiction of having a tiny baby)
9.  How Sweet it is to be Loved by You by James Taylor (self explanatory)
10.  All-American Girl by Carrie Underwood (cheesy, but cute for a baby girl)
11.  Only One by James Taylor (again, self explanatory)
12.  In the Palm of Your Hand by Alison Krauss from the Bluegrass Gospel Collection (I have always loved that song)
13.  Baby Mine by Alison Krauss (the perfect lullaby)
14.  Godspeed (Sweet Dreams) by the Dixie Chicks (another good lullaby)
15.  Kingdom Come by Kirk Franklin and Jill Scott (might be my favorite gospel song ever)
16.  St. Judy's Comet by Paul Simon ("and if I can't sing my boy to sleep well it makes your famous daddy look so dumb, look so dumb," this song inspired the whole playlist)

I would add this if it were available on itunes:

Facebook

I've been a little obsessed about facebook lately.  Not obsessed with looking at the website, but obsessed with facebook as a business (although I do spend plenty of time on facebook, especially on my phone).  It started with seeing The Social Network, a movie that dramatized the start up of the company and the initial building of the website.

Even those people who know me in real life don't really get what I do for a living, but a lot of it was touched on in The Social Network.  When asked, I say that I am a corporate attorney for early stage companies.  People always seem to follow that with "Oh, Mergers and Acquisitions?"  Which, yeah, kind of, but not really.  Few people know what that means (which is why we are having such a hard time hiring a new paralegal).  Mergers & Acquisitions are the touch down passes of corporate law.  It's your exit event.   Someone else buys the company, the founders make some money (my firm gets paid and maybe makes some money), and then the other team takes the field.  Day to day corporate work is more like what was portrayed in the Social Network--like making the $500,000 angel investment happen.  A $500,000 angel investment is like a 12 yard reception for a first down (although with life science companies a $500,000 angel investment is more like getting 4 yards on 3rd and long).  The successful companies keep trucking down the field and their exit events usually look more like a running play on 3rd down after two unsuccessful attempts to score.

There was also that incident where Eduardo Saverin's stock was diluted down to nearly nothing after he executed an agreement he didn't read.  We are the attorneys that try to help our clients make sure that if a founder is not there actually helping to build a company either with money or hard work, that founder does not reap the benefit of the work of others.  I also do all of the things that get companies geared up to make money--like employment agreements and equity arrangements for executives and employees, leases for their shiny new office space, contracts with their clients, agreements to license their intellectual property from the Universities or big pharma companies that own it, plus there is a fair amount of counseling on how to deal with conflicts when they arise and how to stretch funding when cash runs low.

(As an aside, because everyone asks, I am back to work four days/week.  Clara is home with a nanny whom we love.  The extra day off has been a wonderful thing for both Clara and me.  Finding good child care is a subject for a whole different post.)

I became interested in this type of law when I worked for two (now defunct) internet start ups in the late 90s, early 2000s.  Although my practice is now focused on life science and biotechnology (read drugs and medical devices) companies because of the partners that I work for, I still have a special place in my heard for tech companies, and still do about 20-25% of my work for such companies. 

Facebook's founder, Mark Zuckerberg, has spent the last 5 years embroiled in litigation.  He built it, he started it, and now everybody wants a piece.  I mean, I get it.  If I were the Winklevoss twins I would want a piece of facebook too, but do they really deserve it because they had a few conversations with him about building a Harvard dating site for them?  And they got $65M from him and still won't go away?  Facebook is certainly much more than a dating site and if they could have built facebook, they would have.  Lots of people had thought about social networks--examples are myspace.com and friendster.com, but neither is nearly as good.  So I've thought a lot about what differentiates those websites from facebook.  I think the answer is simplicity and the News Feed.  The News Feed makes facebook like US Weekly Magazine but with people you actually know (I did not make that up).  All my facebook friends get to see cute pictures of Clara that I can easily upload straight from my phone and I get to keep up with them.  It's made communication with family, friends, and even friends from other stages of life much more simple, because both parties have a base line of "what's been going on" from facebook before we even get on the phone.

We got a whole lot of support when Clara went in for tubes after I posted this picture:



(As an aside, did you know that cameras on phones are replacing point-and-shoots?  The guy at Peace Camera told me that cameras are getting so good on the phones and the difference between digital SLRs and point-and-shoots has gotten so drastic that people who take even an average number of pictures are going with a phone and a DSLR).

Also amazing has been the reconnection with friends from the distant past.  For example, Jaime (Rivet) Tommasello was one of my very best friends at Ligon Middle School.  She moved to Wilmington in 9th grade and we saw each other a few times.  Then she moved to Marietta, Georgia and we lost touch.  Through the magic of facebook, we're back in touch!  And she has a baby that is two months younger than Clara!  And he's adorable!  And now I read her blog! 

It has been said that facebook is strangely obsessive and I do believe that to be true.  My mom won't join because she says it would feel like meddling in her childrens' lives and Quincy's mom does not understand the draw.  There is a certain amount of over sharing that is a draw back, but for me, it has been a positive addition to my life.

I wish one of my clients would invent the next big thing and invite my firm to invest.

Pure Joy

Oprah Says!

Hand on your hip makes the most flattering pictures!

Months 7 and 8

It's getting a lot harder to take Clara's picture each month.  Month 7 went pretty well:

Although she did do a fair amount of rolling around and trying to get off of the couch:

Month 8 was nearly impossible.  This is just about the best one I got:

First she grabbed my shoe and took it with her up onto the couch.  She wanted to eat it, which obviously she couldn't do (shoe removed before above picture):

Then she started rolling around:

Then she got ahold of the remote:

Then she got distracted by online shopping (like mother like daughter):

Then she decided she needed to get down and put on her shades:

By that point she'd drooled all over the sticker and the colors ran onto her onesie, so I gave up.  The pictures are still pretty cute!

At 8 months Clara is army crawling, pulling up to a stand, waving (though not often), saying mamamamama and dadadada indiscriminately,  and moving from her tummy to a sitting position.

She is eating baby food and feeding herself table food.  She started with puffs and also enjoys bits of banana and ripe pear, soft peas and carrots, hard cooked egg yolk, whole wheat pasta and anything else that we are willing to give her off of our plates.  She enjoys table food so much that we have to feed her baby food before putting anything on her tray or she won't eat it. 

In the past month she's developed a serious case of separation anxiety, which is enough to drive me nuts.  I am hoping this will be a brief phase.  The big, open mouthed kisses definitely make up for it.

She's a sweet, precious little girl, we're having such a good time watching her grow!