The cousins

Charlie Jo is learning a lot about her new cousin, Quinn, thanks to Aunt Stephanie & Uncle Don's blog posts and NanaB & GrandDad's picture shares. She especially loves the video where Uncle Don calls Quinn a "little chicken burrito". Here she is checking Quinn's photo out.



We had sent a stuffed dog a present for Steph & Don to open once Quinn made his debut. Here's a photo of Quinn lounging on it:



The dog is just like the stuffed cow Corey bought for Charlie Jo not long after she was born, so we tried to recreate Quinn's pose using Charlie Jo and Buttercup the Cow. It didn't go over so well with poor Charlie. She's not a fan of being on her back (our pediatrician says this is normal for babies her age, which explains why diaper changes are such a struggle).



We hope to Skype with little Quinn sometime soon, but we know the real fun will come once Charlie and Quinn meet face-to-face in March!

Bad parenting

We know that the super cool wall switches we installed to work the ceiling fan lights in the two smaller bedrooms upstairs have one quirk - if there is even a brief power outage or surge (enough to make the microwave clock lose what time it is, but not enough to affect much of anything else), the lights go on full blast in those rooms once normal power is restored. It happened the first time when Corey's Granny and Grandpa were visiting right after Charlotte was born, and it freaked us all out. In addition to that quirk, we know that when the power goes off, the monitor in Charlotte's room goes off, which causes the receiver in our room to beep because of a lost connection.

At about 5:00 a.m. this morning, the receiver started beeping. I woke up enough to turn it off, but not enough to put two and two together and realize that poor Charlotte was suddenly trying to sleep in a brightly-lit room. Neither of us can remember whether she fussed when it happened, but luckily she fell asleep until her normal waking time at 6:30 a.m. When Corey went in to get her out of her crib, he noticed the light was on. We felt terrible!

Later, as I was talking to my father on the phone and trying to get Charlotte's little sweatpants on, something felt wrong. I looked down and I had put both of her legs in the same leg of the pants and then pulled them all the way up to her waist. Did Charlotte protest? Not really. She was too busy trying to grab my Diet Coke.

We're pretty sure Charlotte is going to need a lot of therapy as a young adult. Sorry about that, kid. At least we haven't dropped you (though you have taken a few big spills off of things).

Valentine ladybug

Fun with a balloon in a sweet Valentines ladybug outfit from NanaB and GrandDad!






But then the balloon popped. Awwwwww...

Warmth!

It's finally a warm gorgeous day outside! After weeks of record-low temperatures, we finally got up into the 60s today. Charlie and the dogs came outside to play in the grass. Here's a picture of the group resting after running (and crawling) all over the place.

Quinn David Sanderson

Charlotte has a new cousin! Congratulations Stephanie & Don!!

Just call her "The Mouth"

Groovy playdate

Charlie had a music playdate with some of her buddies yesterday. Great Grandpa Stringer's old keyboard was a big hit!

Arithmetic in the tub!

Whatcha chewin' on there, Charlotte?



Oh my goodness! Either the mold in that shower can do calculus, or you got some new foam numbers for bath time.



She's correcting an error in the derivative (Auntie Ernie needs to help me out with a fancy math term here).



Hmmm... now where did that nine and that eight go?



When my cousin Abbey was about Charlotte's age, Erin and I were playing with her in her baby pool on the patio. We stuck all sort of foam letter and numbers to Abbey's head and thought it was hilarious. Fifteen years later, it was still funny to do it to my daughter!

EVERYTHING is a push toy now

Charlotte is in LOVE with walking behind her dune buggy push toy. She loves it so much in fact that she turns anything into a push toy now. She especially loves the stools that go with our new table. Go, Charlie, go!





Notice the intense look of concentration. If she was Charlie Brown, she would have the tip of her tongue sticking out the side of her mouth.

New trick and a new obsession

Yesterday at brunch, Alicia and Dan taught Charlie Jo to blow kisses! Well, sort of. About half the time, she holds her hand up to her cheek instead of her mouth. It's still pretty cute. My goal today is to get it on film, but CJ has had a bit of a short fuse the past few days. We think it's because of teething, but who knows?

Her newest obsession is freeze-dried bananas. She used to feed herself regular bananas, but after she had an ear infection a couple of weeks ago her eating habits have become very finicky. The only things she will consistently eat are yogurt and Lil' Crunchies (Gerber snacks that look sort of like Cheetos). I have been mixing veggies into her yogurt, which makes anyone who sees or smells it want to barf. The past couple of days, however, she has developed a new taste for freeze-dried bananas, which I am more than happy to indulge! What a little goofball she is.

Charlotte v. Niki

I have talked to several people lately about who Charlie Jo looks more like - me as a baby or Corey as a baby. While she does have some Stringer features, I think she looks an awful lot like me and Erin. I say "me and Erin" because to be honest, I can't tell us apart in any old photos taken prior to age three or so. Not even my mom can. My dad claims he and my brother always can, but I think they're probably just making it up half the time. I guess that's the problem with identical twins, huh? Here's some old photos of me and Erin:

Love the Sesame Street jammies!



Whoever this is likes dinner time as much as Charlie Jo does.



Nice legs! Notice the cloth diapers. I CAN'T EVEN IMAGINE! How did you do it, Mom?



Where better to play than in the headboard of my grandparents' waterbed?



Thanks to a handy-dandy label on the back of this photo, I can confidently say that this is Erin.



And the back of this photo bore the label "Niki". Nice hair!



But please, oh please let the Stringer genes kick in before Charlie Jo reaches THIS awkward stage:

Sunday brunch at the Opryland Hotel

For Christmas, Barb & Larry gave us a gift certificate to use for brunch at the Opryland Hotel. Due to Corey's work schedule, this was really the first chance we had to use it. We invited the Marshalls to come along, but we have been threatened with legal action if we post or in any other way publicize the group photos we took. Let's just say that no one looked good in those photos -- not even Charlotte. My recommendation is to take the group photo BEFORE stuffing your faces.

After lunch, we stopped along the way back to the car for a few photo ops. That hotel is ridiculous! The brunch was terrific though. Who knew there was such a thing as a breakfast eggroll?!?!