Cold walk

The gorgeous warm weather of last week disappeared once Erin got here. That didn't stop us from taking the dogs for a walk today, but we kept it short out of concern for poor little Charlotte (she's got a bit of a cold).

The dogs tend to get tangled up when one person tries to walk both of them. Erin pushed the stroller (to practice for Sonia!) and I wrestled with Doofus and Goofus. Here, Doofus (Duke, with the blue leash) seems to be attempting to choke Goofus (Connie, with the red leash).



Charlotte, all bundled up like Nanook of the North, watched the shenanigans with interest.



Charlotte was very quiet on the walk, but she didn't miss a thing!

Bookworm

Charlotte has recently become obsessed with her books. She has a great collection of board books (thanks to NanaB and Dolly Parton, among others) that we leave down within her reach. Originally, she just liked tearing them off of the shelf to make a mess. She also enjoyed chewing on them (Corey once thought that Connie or Duke had gotten a hold of one, but it turned out just to be the work of Charlie Jo).

Now, Charlie can't get enough of me reading to her, and she can't wait to help turn the pages. Her favorites are the books with peek-a-boo flaps. She claws at the pages of other books, searching for flaps to turn. She has a few book with tactile panels (like the old "Pat the Bunny" book), and it cracks me up when she scratches at the furry or rough parts rather than feeling them with the pads of her fingers.

A whole new world

Charlotte has obviously been outdoors before. Last summer and fall, we even used to play on the lawn on a big blanket. Now that the weather is getting warmer (off and on), it's time to introduce Charlotte to the joys of playing outside without a layer of fabric between her and nature. I was petrified that we would spend the entire time pulling leaves and grass out of her mouth, but after doing it a couple of times I never needed to do it again. Either Charlotte finally decided they don't taste good, or else she got tired of me digging them out.

Charlotte especially loved watching the dogs tear around. She laughed and laughed while they ran back and forth. Another magical thing happened that afternoon -- Connie actually fetched a stick (sort of)! She tired of it pretty quickly, but it was amazing nonetheless. Charlotte crawled all over the place, but her favorite thing to do was to crumple up the dried leaves and let them fly away in the breeze.

In case you wondered if Don was really Quinn's dad...

Quinn really is a little Don! Compare Don's photo from when he was first born to one of Quinn's:




LOVE the little car outfit, by the way. Corey has already declared that he wants a matching one (complete with the footies).

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!