Moving and Playing

My friend Leslie is in town with her two little boys Kent and Davi.  It has been such a great visit.  If they lived in town I know Liam and Kent would be great friends.  Its so fun to watch them play together and think about all the fun their mommas have had together over the years.  Here's a picture I took of them all sitting and playing with the baby toys.  So many toys in the house and they all wanted to play with Charlotte's little toys!  This moment of calm didn't last for long and soon the boys were riding in spaceships and finding aliens.

  Charlotte has really started moving now.  I finally bought a new rug for the family room and that little bit of added traction was all she needed to gain confidence and speed.  In the past two weeks she's gone from slow crawling and swimming across the hard floors to speedy crawling, standing and the beginnings of cruising!  

Let's See How Far We've Come

To make up for the fact that I am a very negligent blogger I am going to employ the Hollywood trick of using a montage to catch my blog up to present.

At home with Liam and Dad on day 6.

Charlotte's first bath at home when she was nine days old.

Eight weeks old

9 weeks.  Chillin' in my bouncy seat.

10 weeks.  Sunning at the pool.

11 weeks.  A bath in Grandma's sink.

3 months.  Just jumping around.

13 weeks.  Why does Mom always put these toys so far away?

14 weeks.  Happy as a daisy.

4 months.  Here I am with Opa at my first wedding.  I tried to be happy for Valerie and David but it was past my bedtime.

4.5 months.  My first time in a restaurant high chair.

5 months.  I'm a pumpkin!

5.5 months.  I love food.  Spoons are kinda my favorite thing.

 

 

 

 

6 months.  Ready to meet Santa.

7 months.  What am I doing?!

7 months.  These are my people!

The day after Christmas playing with all my new toys!

Playing with Dad.

I'm so happy all the time now!

7.5 months.  Now I'm getting somewhere!

Here she is now - a talented pianist. She is eating finger foods and starting to crawl with her tummy off of the ground.  This week she is working on pulling herself up on things.  When she starts cruising I may never have time to post again until she is three!

Another Snow Day, Ugh!

I woke up to find that preschool was canceled and the outside world looked like this:

So I decided to start our snow day off right.  I baked some lemon poppy seed muffins and made eggs and bacon.  Liam did drink he cup of hot cocoa (translate to warm ovaltine) but would not eat anything.  He finally settled on a handful of blueberries and some yogurt.  Apparently he can go all day on a solid hundred and fifty calories.

Did I mention that he dressed himself?  Yellow pirate shirt with red pants, check!

Snakes and snails and drywall repairs!

I've said many times that parents of boys need to know how to repair drywall.  Every man I've ever met has confirmed that they have caused a hole in the wall at some point in their lives.  So for those keeping track - this is Liam's second such accident and he is only three.   All I did was let him go to the bathroom by himself and then seconds later I heard a loud crash.  Apparently he was trying to swing from the towel rack:

Drywall chips on the floor

Damaged Towel Rack

Hole in the wall left by anchor

 

 

 

I thought this video was really funny because Liam sat down next to her and they were watching tv together.  It was such a cute image and then she reached over and grabbed his hair and just yanked!  I can see now that Charlotte will hold her own.

Miraculously - second born children survive!

After today I have decided that it is amazing that any of us second (or third) born children have ever survived our older siblings. I don't mean that the first born are on a mission to kill off their younger sisters and brothers. I think that its just coincidence that most of their daily activities happen to create a myriad of death traps in the way of small pieces of toys strewn around the house. Liam almost succeeded today when he pulled these metal hooks out of my wall that are meant for holding back curtain sashes and placed them in the oven of Charlotte's laugh and learn kitchen. Did I mention that the other end of these hooks are pointy like nails and that they are easily small enough to be swallowed? Luckily I happened to hear the metal clink as Charlotte opened the door and reached for them.

Liam is now awaiting parole from his room.

The hidden message in all of that was - Charlotte is now on the move:




Its still an army crawl, but slowly she can get her little hands on anything at floor level.

Christmas!

Liam must have done enough to end up on the Good List, because he was showered with gifts at Christmas. He now owns every Hot Wheels/Matchbox set. Also the elves finished creating his basement toy room where he can swing and bounce to his heart's content.


I love this clip of my chic Grandma holding Charlotte.

Grading on a Curve

Today I was telling Liam that he needed to be good if he wanted to be on Santa's Nice List. He informed me that he was writing his own list for Santa and he put himself on the Nice List. He put his cousins on the Naughty List, and since I made cookies today he moved me from the Naughty list to the Nice one. Only my kid would assume he could cheat the system by making his own rules. He's going to need that kind of grading on a curve because this is how he behaved at his preschool holiday program:




I'm hoping that this happy face is my little girl that will always be perfectly behaved:



She did get her first tooth this month which caused her to have a few sleepless night, but other than that she is my good girl.

Liam had fun playing in the snow this week. It was not good snowman snow, but was great for sledding!