Getting bigger!

As Charlie Jo approaches her 1st birthday, I am getting increasingly sentimental about her babyhood. It's so much fun to watch her grow, but I do miss the little cuddly piglet who I could swing around on my forearm without even breaking a sweat. Even if she doesn't seem to be getting much bigger on a daily basis, just a look at a couple of photos taken a few months apart show just how much she has grown!

Taken late last summer or early fall:



Taken last weekend:

Foodie

Charlie Jo has eaten some new foods in the past few weeks. Here is a sampling:

1. Goldfish crackers (Yes I am well aware of all the bad things in them, but I bought the 50% whole grain ones so at least she's getting a little something good.)
2. Cherry-flavored Craisins
3. Nectarines
4. Apple slices (If I give her little pieces, she won't touch them. If I give her a whole slice, she munches happily on it for a whole half hour and manages to scrape off little bits with her tiny teeth.)
5. Frozen peas
6. Carrots (Again, I have to give her a large chunk for her to scrape bits off of. Otherwise, she throws the small pieces on the floor and even the dogs won't eat them.)
7. Muenster cheese (though not Colby Jack or cheddar)
8. Wheat bagel
9. Cheese off of a Chuck E. Cheese pizza, but not a Jet's pizza
10. Pasta, pasta, pasta
11. Guava yogurt
12. Papaya yogurt
13. Passion fruit yogurt

The dogs have also eaten some new foods this week. See above.

Valentine's twin

Charlotte's Great Great Aunt Bev and Great Great Uncle Leo sent her the most hilarious Valentine's Day card. It looks just like her! We tried to take a portrait of the "twins", but Charlotte was coming down with a fever right then and wasn't in the best of moods. This is the best we could come up with:

A well-outfitted bathtub

After a trip to Babies 'R Us, Auntie Ernie and I picked up a few things to make Charlie Jo's bathing experience all she hopes and dreams. First, we picked up an inflatable cover for the faucet (to protect it from Charlie!). Charlie likes the froggies on it.



For CJ's upcoming birthday, Auntie Ernie bought her a bath toy holder in the shape of a ladybug! The body of the ladybug come off so you can use it to scoop up all the toys. The water then drains through the holes.



Charlie thinks the ladybug is hilarious.



Bathtime is always the highlight of Charlie's day, and now it's even more fun!

Cranky pants & Auntie Ernie

Poor Auntie Ernie visited on a weekend filled with fevers, a runny nose, and lots of coughing. Even though Charlotte was not in tip top shape, we still had a good time. After Auntie accompanied us to music class (yes, Nicole Kidman was there with Sunday Rose!), we ended her visit with lunch at Blue Coast Burrito with Alicia, David & Faith Carol. I realized I had taken a grand total of zero photos of Auntie Ernie with her favorite niece, so we enlisted Alicia's help after lunch. You can tell little Charlie Jo is feeling like a punky monkey if even Auntie Ernie and Alicia couldn't get her to smile. Don't you love CJ's new daisy hoodie? Erin will be 25 weeks pregnant on Thursday, and we all think she looks great.

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...