Happy Thanksgiving!

We had a very low-key Thanksgiving weekend this year, and unlike last year, I even remembered to take a few pictures:). We celebrated Thanksgiving with just our little family of three this year. With my mom in Tahiti, my brother working, and most of our other family far away, we were kind of on our own this year. When I first realized this, I was kind of down and feeling sorry for us, but then I realized that there are actually a lot of advantages to on-your-own dinners. For example, I ate Thanksgiving dinner in my jammies:) And, there was no pressure of a set time to eat, and if anything I made turned out bad only Ken and I would be forced to eat it. We debated over going to a restaurant, but decided against it for a multitude of reasons, including (1) toddler in restaurant = too much work for Mommy:) and (2) restaurant Thanksgiving = no yummy leftovers. I also briefly considered ordering in dinner, but I'm a little particular about my Thanksgiving food and (not to toot my own horn:), I'm a pretty good Thanksgiving food cook. This year, I even made homemade rolls for the first time, and they weren't half bad (although they were the one thing that I made that I would probably not have served to other people:). Luckily, Charlotte was in love with the rolls and ate them all up...along with the stuffing, yams, and pumpkin pie:) Charlotte loved her first "real" Thanksgiving, and she should since last year she slept through dinner and her meal consisted of formula. Normally, I keep Charlotte on a relatively healthy diet of low-sugar, minimally processed foods. Since I'm such a nice mommy, I decided to let her go crazy for the day (or two or three:). I can honestly say that I have never seen Charlotte eat so much food before in my life! It was insane (and made me realize that it's probably a good thing that she eats healthy, not-as-tasty food the majority of the time:). And since Charlotte is getting better at feading herself with a spoon, I decided to strip her down and let her go to town for all of dinner. Here she is enjoying herself:
Even though she's pretending like she's using the spoon, she ate most of the meal by dipping her fingers in the food and then sucking it off her fingers:) I was worried that she was going to get sick after she ate all that food, but she managed okay. For the rest of the weekend, Ken and Charlotte relaxed while I drove all over town with the rest of the crazies on Black Friday hunting down the best deals. I think next year my plan is to just wait for Cyber Monday. It's not like I'm buying TVs and Playstations and waiting in line to save a few bucks on Little People and talking vacuums just doesn't seem worth it. That being said, I pretty much finished off my shopping in two days and plan on relaxing for the rest of the holiday season:) Now if I could just get up the motivation to actually take out and put up my Christmas decorations, all would be good.

In non-Thanksgiving news, everytime I turn around, Charlotte is doing something new. The other day, Ken was standing with his arms folded over his chest and I looked up to see Charlotte copying what he was doing. It's a good thing she doesn't speak well enough to copy words yet because I had a few choice ones while cooking this weekend:). This morning, I finished doing the dishes and walked into the living room to find Charlotte like this:
Charlotte climbed onto the coffee table all by herself! I was kind of hoping that the climbing phase would not happen for a while longer because next thing you know, she's climbing on the couch and sitting on the arm and falling off and breaking an arm. And I can't deal with a baby in a cast! I think it's time to grease all the furniture with Crisco and wrap little Charlotte in foam padding to help us avoid any hospital visits. I'll keep you all updated on how that goes:)

This is Why I'm Going to Have a Nervous Breakdown Before I Turn 35

I will admit it--I am a little bit crazy. (Some may argue more than a little bit:) I try to do too much, I like when people "ooh" and "aah" at the creative things I do, I want everything that I do to be perfect, and once I get fixated on something, I have to follow through with it. This week was a perfect example of my craziness. I decided last weekend that today was going to be the day for Charlotte's Christmas card picture. I could have just taken her to Sears or Portrait Innovations, but I think, "Why?". Then I have to buy their Christmas cards and I don't think they do a fabulous job anyway. I would take her to a nice photographer, but it's not really in our budget right now (according to Ken:). I, as usual, decided to just take her picture myself. I could have taken her picture in one of her regular outfits, but I've been eying those cute little tutus on etsy and photography blogs. I could have bought one, but that would have been too expensive (and too easy:), so I decided to make one. (Sidenote: I have a cute tutu available to anyone who would like to borrow it! It depresses me to think that after 8 hours of cutting and tying all that tulle, it will probably just be worn once.) After I finished the tutu, I then debated about what she should wear with it: leg warmers or bare legs, what shirt should she wear, what about something for her hair, etc. I think in two days I went to five stores in search of tops and potential leg warmers, made a pair of leg warmers and decided they didn't go with the tutu, and made a hair bow. (I then had to spend half the afternoon today returning all the things I didn't use:) Now that I had an outfit, what about a backdrop? I knew I was pretty much going to be stuck with a white sheet, but I needed something to jazz it up. I finally came up with the idea of some cute ornaments that I had seen at Sams. After I finally had everything set up, I knew the hardest part was yet to come...getting Charlotte to be remotely cooperative. Our last couple of photo shoots have been less than successful and today was no exception. It's very, very hard to get her to stay in one place for more than half a second. And to get her to smile while doing it is even harder. (This is where the trained store photographers have a definite advantage over me!). I tried to enlist the help of my trusty assistant, Ken, but frankly, if he were getting paid, he would be fired! He tries to pretend that he's all helpful, but he spent half the time watching a rugby game online and the other half saying, "Charlotte, look over here." Like that works! And he looks annoyed the whole time. It's probably because I go a little psycho during the whole process with lots of meaness and yelling, but I'm trying to get something done here! After 112 picutres, I had about a dozen halfway decent pictures. Considering I was just going for one, I'm pretty pleased with myself. The best pictures actually came from me giving up my ornament deal and just letting Charlotte run around outside. Here are some of the rejects that didn't make the Christmas card.
And this one is my favorite. It's actually one of the ones on our Christmas card, but I'm sure you'll all act surprised when you see it there again:)
So, you see, the craziness was all worth it in the end! Now I'm just driving myself nuts getting the card right. I have one that I did in Photoshop, but I want it printed on cardstock instead of photo paper, but I can't find a website that lets you do a flat 5 x 7 card on cardstock, and I've spent the last four hours looking. In the end, I'll probably just settle for the photo paper and be annoyed that I wasted all that time searching for something that I can't find. And all of this, my friends, is why I'm going to have a nervous breakdown before I'm 35. My biggest problem is that I like to try to do things myself. If I see something cute someplace, I think to myself, "I can make that" and then I'm not satisfied until I do. That's why Charlotte has a drawer full of handmade clothes and bows and bibs and burpies and blankets. I think my New Year's Resolution will be to not make or do anything creative for the whole year (with the exception of cards for my mom because I don't think she'll let me get away without making those, and it's important to keep the Grandmasitter happy in case she ever decides to come back from Tahiti:). If I did that, maybe I could channel all my OCDness into something productive, like losing the baby weight before Charlotte turns 2. Now there's an idea. But being creative doesn't make me hungry, sweaty, or tired...just a little bit crazy:)

Here's What's New With the Charlaroo!

I feel like I've been neglectful in not talking about all the language progress Charlotte has made in the last month. So, here's the update, interspersed with cute pictures of the munchkin to keep you entertained. Feel free to skip the boring talking part and just look at the pictures instead:)

In the last month (maybe two), Charlotte has gone from almost exclusively yelling, "aah, aah, ahh" for everything to actually being able to communicate. We've been busting our butts since we started with our new speech therapist up here in September, and I think it's finally paying off. (Below is Charlotte and her very nice therapists. One is her real therapist and one is a student, soon to be her new therapist.)As usual, Charlotte does not do what you want when you want it. I warned her therapist that this is just how she is and not to expect her to like/play the games or make slow and steady progress. I've noticed that Charlotte is the type of person who won't do something until she can do it well. She observes for a loooong time without a lot of practice and then just starts doing whatever it is she's supposed to be doing. She's done this with crawling, her first babbling, walking, etc. It's just the way she rolls. Still, I can tell that her therapists have been a little disappointed that she wasn't really making any progress. (I must admit that even I was starting to get a little worried.) Well, I'm not worried anymore:)

Charlotte has started signing way more than before. She started with a few signs this summer (milk, more, eat), but she didn't use them very often and I think she really was just copying the signs that we were doing. Now, she's using 7 signs all the time--milk, more, eat, drink, bath, all done, and duck. She also waves bye and blows kisses whenever we're getting ready to leave, and even though those technically aren't signs, I think they count because she's communicating. And, she's gone from just signing when I say the word to using the signs to get what she wants. She signs "all done" at the end of dinner and then bath since that's when it's bath time. She doesn't always come up to me and do the sign when she wants something. I often find her wandering around and playing doing the sign for eat or drink, so I just give her what she's asking for. (An unrelated side story on Charlotte's nonverbal communication: The other day Charlotte was having a pretty rough morning. I found her at 10:30 yelling in her room holding on to her crib. I put her in and she went right to sleep. (She normally naps at 11:00.) Apparently Charlotte is starting to know what she wants:)
Charlotte's verbal language has also been exploding. We've been working on up and down to practice short and long sounds (up being short--up, up, up and then saying doooown really long). Apparently long and short babbling is a precursor to real talking. Now if I make something go up, up, up, she says "ooooowwwww". We've also been working on stop and go so that she learns that when you speak, you get what you want. I'll spin her in our office chair or push her in the cart at the store and then say stop. When I do that, she smiles and says "ga!" We've also been practicing the same concept with sleep and wake-up. I pretend like I'm sleeping and then wait for her to yell "waa oo." It's really kind of fun and cute.
I can also tell that Charlotte is understanding more words. She can pick out some animals (duck, cow, pig) when I make their sounds, and I think she's starting to follow simple commands (like give it to me, sit down, brush your teeth etc.). I'm not sure if she actually understands them or just recognizes the gestures and routines though. Charlotte's started trying to imitate words now too. When we kick the ball and I say "kick", I can tell that she's trying to say it back. The same is true for tickle and a few other words. She's also saying "dada" all the time now to (when she sees Ken or is looking for him). It has definitely overtaken "mama" as her favorite word. I don't know why since I'm the one who is home all day and meets her every desire, but whatever:) Apparently I'm just the mean mommy and daddy is fabulous:) Even so, I'm so excited about all the progress she's making. We've been working really hard to trying to make up for her speech delay because of all the time she couldn't hear, and I think we are slowly getting there. Yea!

In unrelated news, Charlotte loves mac and cheese now. I haven't let Charlotte have mac and cheese up to this point because I really do try to feed her as little processed food as possible, but I found a great preservative and chemically free whole wheat mac and cheese that is actually quite yummy. Charlotte loves it! Now I can stop feeling like I'm depriving my child of one of the great American foods:) I don't think it's overtaken her very favorite food though--she will eat as many strawberries as I give her every day. At least she picked something healthy to like:) Also, as you may have noticed in some of the above pictures, Charlotte's cute curly hair often ends up messy and unruly, so I've started putting her hair in a little ponytail. On more than one occasion, I've had people that we see (mostly strangers) comment that she looks like a "who" from the Horton Hears a Who. I've never seen the movie or read the book, so I'm not sure, but I think a "who" must be pretty darn cute!

A Birthday Song For Grandma

Charlotte's not quite up to singing "Happy Birthday" yet, so I thought we'd sing Charlotte's favorite song for Grandma instead.

We've been working on our "learning to listen" sounds (sounds things make--like quack, moo, beep--instead of the names of objects because they're easier for her to say) in speech therapy for a while, and it's finally starting to pay off! So far we're just quacking, but I've bought Charlotte enough stuffed animals to populate a virtual animal farm. Surely we'll me making more progress soon!

I Miss My Mommy!

My mom has been half a world away in Tahiti for a while now, and it's really starting to take a toll on me. Today I especially miss her because it is her BIRTHDAY! Now, it's not anything new for my mom to be in Tahiti for her birthday. In fact, since 2006 she has spent every birthday there. The first year she spent it there because it was a big birthday (one that rhymes with mixty:) and it was her way of avoiding any surprise parties that we might have been planning. The year after, I think she was afraid that we were still going to try to throw her a party. I've promised her that we will never throw her a party, but she obviously doesn't believe me because she's still spending her birthdays in Tahiti. In honor of this special day, I thought I would list the top 5 reasons why I miss my mommy:

1. Talk isn't cheap. When my mom isn't out of the country, I talk to her on the phone almost every day. When she's in Tahiti, I only talk to her once or twice a week but I think I manage to talk for almost the same amount of time. At 32 cents a minute, that starts to add up. I don't think my pocket book can afford for her to be gone much longer!
2. Babysitters aren't cheap. Oh, how I under appreciated the value and convenience of the Grandmasitter! Someone who loves my baby almost as much as I do and loves to watch them for free so I can do fun things. Who could ask for more! Don't worry--I'm already planning lots of overnight trips to make up for her lost time with Charlotte for when she returns:)
3. Holiday dinners aren't cheap. For the last three years I have been very spoiled and have been able to enjoy Crazy J's wonderfully fabulous holiday meals. It's kind of like being a kid again...just show up at the table, eat, maybe do a few dishes, and relax around the house for the rest of the day without a care in the world. I'm still trying to figure out which restaurant around here has the best Thanksgiving dinner take-out for us to try:) (I'm totally kidding. I'm of the opinion that no restaurant could possibly top Crazy J's homemade recipes--even if I have to go through the effort of making them myself:)
4. Kid's clothing isn't cheap. Ken has made me swear by a very, very small clothing budget for the munchkin. Like a trooper, I've been sticking to it. Normally, this wouldn't be a problem because it would be suplemented by Grandma's clothing allowance. There are a pair of white fuzzy boots at Old Navy with Charlotte's name on them. Sadly, she will never know how cute they would have been on her.
5. Companionship isn't cheap. In fact, I would say that quality mommy-daughter bonding time is invaluable! Even though it sometimes comes along with gentle corrections of my mothering skills, I miss just hanging out with my favorite Crazy J. I'll listen to all the better ways to do things any day just to see my mommy again:)
So, Happy Birthday, Mommy! Now you know just how much we miss you! Charlotte and I are counting the days until you come home:)

Sidenote: Lest you think that I am a spoiled child from the above mentioned list, you should know that this is totally a symbiotic relationship. I think the slave labor from her luau invitations, Christmas cards, and gift card sets equals out any monetary gain on my end. And I'm often cleaning when I visit because she knows that nobody cleans a bathroom like I do (except maybe her, when she was younger and had way more energy:)

In Which Cynthia Promotes Another Blog

Although this blog almost entirely revolves around the life of Charlotte (and sometimes Ken and I:), I thought I would give a little shout out to one of the funniest blogs that I've been following lately. I've added it to my list on the side, but you can also click here to get to it.

Miss Jill and I went to church together when we were growing up, and I can't remember a time when I didn't know her family. In fact, her dad was at one point both my bishop (religious leader) and my high school dean. And his office was right across the hall from my locker. This meant that I always felt guilty when wearing my immodestly short shorts to school. (Although I sure he probably neither noticed nor cared:)

In any case, this blog is hilarious--especially if you have ever (1) been a teacher or (2) been young, single, and LDS. Even if you've never been either of these, it's still probably some of the funniest stuff I've read in a very long time. You should check it out!

Family Fun Day

Since we had yet to take Charlotte to experience the wonders of the zoo, we decided that we would pack up the roo and go for the zoo's Family Fun Day. (Family Fun Day=free admission for everyone=not feeling like it was a waste of money when Charlotte looked at the animals for 5 minutes before screaming about having to sit in her stroller:).
All of Milwaukee must have shared our thinking because I've never seen so many people in a zoo before. We could barely even see Milwaukee's famous bonobo chimps! Charlotte was much happier riding on Ken's head than in her stroller, and she did get excited when she noticed the animals. However, I don't think that she was interested enough for me to justify paying for the zoo. We may have to save our next trip to the zoo for the summer.