Back in action

We had a fabulous time in Ohio with Corey's family. More about that later once I get a hold of some better photos. We took almost no photos for some reason, but I'm hoping to steal some from others who took more. We got home Sunday afternoon and caught up with the Marshalls, who had been gone for a few days in Philadelphia. They brought Charlotte back an adorable sporty little outfit with the Liberty Bell on it.

On Monday we had a nice day of crawling practice. I worked on my super secret favors for the baby shower I'm throwing my sister-in-law, Stephanie, at the end of November. Now that Charlie Jo can entertain herself by crawling from toy to toy and tearing everything off of her toy shelves, I can get quite a bit done with two free hands.

Tuesday was our wild day. We started off by voting, and then with a shopping trip to Target during which Charlotte tried to dive out of the cart about 1,000 times. She REALLY wants to get a hold of, well, everything. Why can't retailers anticipate my grabby daughter and put the clothing racks a little further apart? After that, we grabbed a burrito at Blue Coast Burrito and considered doing a little more shopping. When I saw Charlie had zonked out in her carseat, I decided to head home. Unfortunately, while we were sitting still at a light, a Barbie lookalike with a huge SUV and a bad attitude rear-ended us (not very hard, but enough to scratch up my bumper). It didn't help that she denied it, told me I must not be a Christian since I had to get firm to get her to pull off the road so I could get her insurance information, and then insisted on calling the police because she didn't trust me to report the damage accurately. The amazing part? Charlie didn't wake up until right before the cop arrived. She's a champ.

Charlie's sleep skills continued to amaze me when she was able to fall asleep for a good half an hour at a bowling alley! After the accident, we cleaned up and went to see Faith Carol's team bowl. Charlie loved all of the commotion and looked all around until she decided to fall asleep on my shoulder. So now Charlie has fallen asleep at a rock concert, slept through a car accident, and snoozed through a bowling match. Maybe we should go to a gun range to see if she could sleep through that. There's nothing wrong with her hearing - trust me! I think she's just absurdly good at blocking it all out when she wants to.

This morning, we arrived at Pinkerton Park for Stroller Strides only to find that they were filming a Krystal commercial there! No, Charlie Jo was not discovered as the next child star, but we had fun watching the commotion as we worked out. Now, Charlie is conked out in her pack 'n' play. She should sleep well because she had a rough night last night. All of the sudden she seems to be having problems sleeping through the night, so I'm going to finally go buy Ferber's book and see what I can do about helping her to learn to put herself to sleep.

Here's my favorite photo of Charlotte from Ohio. It was chilly there, so we bundled her up in her Michigan State gear while we shopped in Oxford. She was acting like a real goofball during lunch, and Corey took this photo.