to soothe the raging mob...

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to everyone! Sorry it's been so long since we posted (and glad to know you missed us). Things have been so swamped with all my family out and all of the eating we have to do. Of course, this means I have a lot of pictures accumulated...





We tried to let Charli help us decorate the tree. This involved some broken bulbs, but now we know better.





Charli opened up a gift on Christmas eve by special request. We think she likes it.










Charli on Christmas morning.











Charli's first real step! Also, a quality video from the day after Christmas!












Charli had fun opening a present on Christmas morning, but after that she kind of lost interest.









Once the toys are open, though, she likes them a lot!











Brian receives the present that wins the creative wrapping prize. Creativity courtesy of Brent!









Our favorite present.








Playing with Christmas gifts.







Here's the whole gang. Even though we managed to find beds for everyone, somehow there always seems to be someone sleeping on the couch... (and I do mean ALWAYS. At any given hour you could come in the door, and someone would be sleeping on the couch.)

Signing off - see you next year!

yet another stroller

bye bye, maria and jillian

Today was Maria's last day, and yesterday was our last day of sharecare with Jillian. Waaah!

Maria has decided to move back to Barcelona, and is leaving next Wednesday. Jillian is going to be starting school full time in January and was going to be leaving the share care anyway, so she just ended a little bit earlier than she would have otherwise.

This sharecare was really great and I'm really going to miss both Maria and Jillian. Maria was great to work with and took excellent care of the girls. She took Charli to all kinds of places, made her food and straightened up after her, and was really accomodating to our schedule (which can only loosely be called a "schedule" - usually when Maria arrived, Charli would be eating or just finishing eating, but sometimes Maria would show up and Charli would still be asleep, in which case Maria would have to feed her breakfast and get her dressed). She was easy to talk to, and could dispense advice without being annoying or accusative - a necessary skill in a nanny! I never had any worries about Charli when she was with Maria - I have way more worries when she is with us.

I really liked having an older girl with Charli, to show her how to do things and inspire her and be like a big sister, and Jillian was terrific. She was really affectionate with Charli, and her mom said how spending time with Charli changed her - she was more gentle at home and always thinking of Charli, and she really tried to help take care of Charli when she was here. She was always reminding Maria to take the keys when they went out ("keys, Mina", after the time Maria forgot them), and telling Maria "Charli's hungry. Charli needs a diaper change. Charli wants that." She came up with the nickname "baby Charli", and introduced her to everyone at the parks, and named her dolls that. She recognized where we live, and every time they drove by on the way to somewhere else, she would wave in the car and say hi to baby Charli - and if she missed it because she was distracted or something, she would want her mom to go back so she could try it again. I'm sure she's going to have a great time going to school full time (coincidentally, her school is just a couple of blocks away, at the German preschool that our other nanny, Nina, used to work at until she quit to take care of Bella), and we're really going to miss her and we'll have to plan some playdates together.

We (Jillian's family and us) took Maria out for dinner last night, and it was fun and a little sad... Mostly fun. We wish her the best in Spain, and are happy she's going to be with her family, even if we are a little envious.

p.s. For those of you who are wondering what we're doing for daycare in the meantime, my parents are coming out next Wednesday and staying until next year, so that takes care of any immediate needs. In January, we will be starting with Nina 3 days a week and probably hiring a friend of Maria's, Carolina, for Tuesdays and Thursdays. Carolina already knows Charli, because she brings her current share care kids to meet up with Maria and Charli and Jillian at various parks. So convenient!

economic cuts

Yes indeed, it has happened. Yesterday evening, after Charli's bath, I cut off a bunch of her hair, and now she no longer has the tentacles she has been sporting on the back of her head for the last few months. I did it myself, because who wants to pay someone to cut off that small an amount of hair? Haircuts are expensive! And time consuming!

In addition, we are officially off formula, so that's another expense GONE. Charli had her last bottle of formula/milk mix 2 nights ago, and now it's 100% milk from now on - lots cheaper than formula! I guess now we can get her some Christmas presents. She doesn't seem to have suffered any ill effects so far...

p.s. There are a bunch of new Charli pics up on the website, and I should be posting pics from our Thanksgiving trip soon.

development

It seems that during this visit to St. Louis, Charli has learned to do a thousand new things. She does things every day that she has never done before - it's crazy! In addition, she has been so good that I can barely believe it. She has hardly cried at all the entire weekend, even though faced with many people that she really doesn't know that well, and even though her sleep schedule has been erratic at best, and completely missing at worst. She has been so tolerant, easy going, and happy that all I can think is that Brian's and my temperaments really are genetic. :)

As you saw from the previous day's video, Charli is standing up more and more, and she really tries it on her own. She really wants to walk around, too - you can practically hear what's going through her head: "No, I don't want you to pick me up, just give me your finger. And now give me your other finger, and hold still while I stand up. Now walk me this way. Come on! (pause, look around) OK, now over this way! (pause, look around again) There's nothing over here. Let's go over to the stairs!" Etc. etc.

Previously Charli loved when someone else played peekaboo with her. Now, she likes to play peekaboo with you!



I don't have pictures or video for anything else. :( You'll just have to settle for text.

Charli has gotten a lot more verbal in the past few days, using more consonants and vowels in a string than she used to. She sounds a lot more conversational than she used to. Now she can make baby sounds, like 'goo goo ga ga'! She can also say 'uh oh' very clearly, althought she still has no idea what it means.

Charli has really been working on her containment. Now she knocks down the towers we build, and then starts to put away the blocks we used to build them! She really likes to put things away. She also figured out that the white disk thing on the floor was the lid for the block canister, and proceeded to try to close it. Along those lines, Charli is just getting better at imitating and figuring things out. She figured out how to make the annoying bunny dance by pressing its hand, and then proceeded to try to press another toy's hand to see if it did anything. She also understood how to make the, uh, jack-in-the-truck pop up after Brian showed her a couple of times.

Charli's manual dexterity overall is definitely improving. She tries to put things on her head. She tries to use a spoon. She waves a lot, and means it.

This is all I have time for now, I really have to go to bed. Good night!

christmas tree day!

Yay! Today was Charli's first Christmas Tree Day!

For those of you who don't know, every year the day after Thanksgiving we head out to the Heritage Valley Tree Farm with everyone we can gather together and cut down Christmas trees. Then we go back home and eat tremendous amounts of Christmas tree soup. This year we are having a longer visit, so we had Christmas Tree Day the day AFTER the day after Thanksgiving. So we bundled Charli up and went hunting the wily Christmas tree. The trees actually were not that wily this year, despite the fact that there were more people at the tree farm than we had ever seen at one time. We had a relatively quick yet successful hunt, and brought back a couple of lovely specimens.

After we get the trees, Christmas Tree Day is not over, though! Usually there is some tossing around of the football, but this year the football was flat, so instead Charli practiced her new trick, which is giving her mother a kiss (no one else!). She started blowing some kisses, though, and she is much less discriminating about that.

Then we go get the trees shooken (technical term) and bagged and paid for, and the tree farm sells us hot chocolate and hot apple cider and lots of homemade cookies. Charli likes cookies! And then we take lots of family and friend pictures, and we feel very convivial and holiday spirited and sure that the Christmas season has truly started. Happy holidays, everyone!


After pictures, it actually is time to leave the farm, so that we can go back to the house and eat Christmas tree soup! Christmas tree soup does not have Christmas trees in it, like how stone soup has a stone in it. It has ground beef and lots of vegetables, and it cooks all day long while we're out getting the trees and is totally awesome. Charli loved it and ate a ton. That's my girl!

After dinner Charli practiced another important trick, several times and very noisily:

happy turkey day!

Well, here it is, Charli's first Thanksgiving dinner (look, there's the back of her head)! Of course, Charli has been through one Thanksgiving already, but I'm not sure if that one actually counted - it definitely didn't involve any dinner, or even any turkey. This time it counts, there is no doubt!

We had a delicious deep fried turkey, as is customary and proper. It turned out beautifully (customary and proper), and we also had a delicious smoked turkey breast that chef-in-training Pete made. We also had some other food, too. Not too much, of course, we don't want to get fat or anything. Just a pile of mashed potatoes, yummy stuffing, boatloads of gravy, cranberry marshmallow goodness, corn souffle, sweet potatoes and green beans, etc., etc...

We basically hung out all afternoon with the family, watching Charli play with a thousand toys she's never seen before. Everyone built block towers and waited for her to come knock them down, which she did with fervor. The Schweisses have a hip hop Easter bunny dealio that sings and hops and is tremendously annoying, but Charli likes to dance to it, so it must be ok. She also liked the train, the shape ball, the turtle thing, the spinny bell ringy thing, the noisy car... she wasn't very fond of the weeble wobble chicken, though. Peter and Katy and John were all great with Charli, although Katy did try to steal Charli's bib.

After dinner we had much celebration - today is Katy's 17th birthday! Happy birthday, Katy! It's also my dad's birthday, which I'm sure is being celebrated back in Colorado even as I write this blog post. Happy birthday, Dad! And we had some more Charli birthday celebration, too. Charli was fascinated by the candles once again, and tried to grab them. Fortunately, Katy's got fast reflexes. Charli enjoyed the frosting and overall it was another great day.

And oh ya - Charli gave me 2 kisses! People saw it! And later she gave me another! It's so rewarding. That makes the day REALLY great. Of course after that, she would only give Daddy kisses - I would say "give me a kiss!" and she would pucker up and lean way over to give Brian a kiss. After a couple of those I had to send Brian away and put Charli to bed.

We are so fortunate and grateful to be able to spend this time with our wonderful family and friends. Can we say "thanks", Charli? Thanks!

Finally flying home for Thanksgiving

We were supposed to leave on Tuesday, but American Airlines had other
plans. We took Charli to the doctor for her one year checkup on
Tuesday though, and despite having 4(!) shots, she came out pretty
good with a clean bill of health.

But I checked the flight status for our flight scheduled for later on
the afternoon only to find out that the flight had been cancelled
completely! Ack! But don't worry they said, we can get you on a
flight to Orange County and then put you through Dallas to get into
St. Louis tonight. Thanks a lot. I had a direct flight scheduled for
the three of us and we had actually packed for this flight and were
sufficiently prepared. But at least we weren't at the airport already..

So we went home and had a leisurely afternoon building structures with
Charli's new inflatable blocks. Today was Charli's first real lesson
in OCD. Korin and I were totally just sitting there in the living
room very focused on our task and not really paying attention to
anything going I'm around us. Charli did her part and focused on
making a big mess while we weren't looking. The end result though was
this cool ramp thing that went up our coffee table and crossed over to
the couch. Charli enjoyed that one quite a lot, even if it did
dominate the room a little bit.

So today we got up bright and early (again) and managed to get on a
plane this time! And Charli has this far been unbelievably good!
Here is a picture of her sleeping on the plane. When she's awake, she
is flirting with the guy behind us...

doctor doctor

Well, we were supposed to leave for St. Louis today for Thanksgiving, right after Charli's 1 year doctor's appointment. I was hoping Charli would sleep on the plane, since I knew she was going to have to get a few shots and I was going to give her some Tylenol. Unfortunately, our flight was cancelled and we're not leaving until tomorrow, so here we still are. Perhaps you are wondering what this picture has to do with the doctor's office? Well, if you look carefully, you can see a bandaid where she got some shots.

Charli is 29 1/4 inches long (50th percentile) and 18 lbs. 9 oz. (15th percentile). That's 5 percentile points higher than last time! She's catching up! Yay! Although, as I have been telling anyone, I have actually come to terms with Charli's weight. I no longer think she's starving at all. I have finally internalized what everyone has been telling me, and I think Charli is perfectly healthy and happy eating however much she feels like eating. It's very liberating.

We are supposed to stop with the formula and start with the whole milk now, so we'll be mixing our formula with milk until it's gone. This could be very liberating, too. We are also supposed to be weaning Charli off the bottle, so we're going to stop with the morning bottle and no bottles during the day - only the sippy cups and straws and whatever else we can get her to drink from. I think we'll wait a bit to get rid of the bedtime bottle. It's just so convenient for helping her get to bed... We are also supposed to stop feeding her if she wakes up in the middle of the night. Charli can have honey now, having passed a year. Dr. Rostek said she can pretty much have anything now, except maybe we could hold off on peanut products - but we've already given her peanut butter, so I'm not too worried about that.

Charli had to get 4 shots today, and we brought the pacifier, which she has just started really liking. I forgot to give her the tylenol before the shots, so she had it right after which was a nice distraction. The pacifier worked really well - she had two shots before she quite figured out that she had to stop sucking on it in order to cry. It's so sad when she gets all those shots. They really just stick the needles in her, which I guess is how they do it to adults too, but it just looks so much more brutal when the needle looks half as big as your limb. She got her first half of a flu vaccination and has to go back for the other half in a month, because the first flu shot they give in 2 doses. She also has to have a blood test, which they apparently take out of a vein, so I imagine that will be very traumatic. We tried to go get it over and done with, but they couldn't do it before the holiday because the processing wouldn't get done in time, so we're going to have to go back for that, too.

Dr. Rostek said Charli was very social, which to Brian meant she got an A. I was able to say she did everything else he asked about, so I also think she got an A. Plus, her weight percentile went up. So, in spite of the fact that she could only get 1/2 a flu shot, we couldn't get her blood test at all, and our flight to St. Louis was cancelled, it was still a pretty successful day. :)

finally

OK, I finally got that other video I wanted. I thought it might remind Brian's family of someone...

12/12 = 1 year (yay!)

Yay! Charli is 1! Yay! Yay!

We had a lovely birthday party. Nina made us the most incredible cake, as you can see here. The layers represented the various parts of the world - there is an ocean layer with fish and jellyfish and seaweed, a land layer with a spider and a caterpillar and ladybugs, and an air layer with bees and butterflies. Never in a million years would I even attempt something like this. I made the cake layers (chocolate kahlua cake with chocolate chips), though, and then Nina filled them with chocolate mousse (I forgot she was going to do that when I put the chocolate chips in, and she was going to strangle me when she found them) and designed and decorated the whole thing.

Charli was so great all day, through all the hullabaloo and strangers and everything. Someone commented that Charli was the first baby they'd seen who didn't cry at her first birthday party. She was smiling and happy the whole time! We put her down for a good long nap before everyone arrived, and she took another short nap after everyone left, and in between she was just fabulous. Everyone loved her (especially us)!

Mom and Dad and Sam came in for the party, and Uncle Hal and Uncle Kalei and Grandma and Kainoa, and about 40 of our other closest friends. Lots of celebrants, and we had a great time! The cake was a big hit, with Charli and everyone else, too. We missed Mambaw and Grandpa Jerry and awesome aunt Kelly and family, but we will have another (smaller) party with them in a couple of days. :)

Well, there's not much else to say about the party, so I guess we'll move on to talking about other great Charli milestones. She is standing up better and better without support, although I still haven't managed to get a picture of it. She rarely actually gets to her feet by herself, but she will pull herself up and then let go of her support and hang out happily for several seconds. Today she let go of her support and then stood there and pulled crayons out of the box as I was putting them in - leaning over and then standing back up several times in the process. We were very impressed!

Charli has been pushing things and walking around for a while - this video is a week old, and she's way better than this now. It's amazing to realize how fast she is improving!



Just within the past couple of days, Charli has become really insistent on walking by pulling herself up on your fingers and making you walk her around. It used to be that we had to hold her hands and sort of drag her around, but no more. She has also just started trying to use utensils with her food (or at any rate, she has started hitting her food with the right end of a spoon).

Charli has also started to throw herself around and kick her legs when she doesn't get her way; it's tough to be a kid. It's a good thing we're heading out to MO so we can ask Mambaw and Grandpa how to discipline her.

bittersweet

Well, it's 2am and tomorrow (well, today, I guess) is Charli's first birthday. Kim and I just finished cleaning up the kitchen after frosting the last of our cupcakes, and now we're ready for bed. Mom and Dad and Sam arrived just a couple of hours ago. Our cupcakes look awesome! I will have to post some pictures tomorrow.

But... Charli is 1! It's very exciting and all, but... How can it be? A whole year? So fast? How? *sniffle* Where did it go?

I am so grateful for this blog. Not only does it keep us in touch with distant family and friends (and thank you all for your support and advice - we really appreciate it, even if we don't say so every time), but it allows me to go back and see pictures and remember things that happened and things we did and the things you all said about it. It's absolutely priceless and if Google weren't already making about a billion dollars a day, I would feel like I should send them some money.

Now I should really go to bed. I'm sure it will be a long day tomorrow. I hope I don't end up looking at Charli's baby pictures all night, from back when she was just a little bundle in our arms, and she used to sleep with us, and it was so cuddly, and she had no eyelashes or eyebrows, and all her hair stuck straight out... Can you tell? I'm looking at pictures already...

timeout

Well, Charli had her first timeout last night. I was trying to get her to not spit at dinner, and it really didn't go so well. I tried smacking her on the hand, but I didn't have the guts to do it hard enough to even surprise her. So she kept doing it, and I turned her chair to face away from us and Kim and I cleaned up the kitchen. She continued to spit for like 5 more minutes. It was unbelievable.

Today Dad sent me an article on parents who expect too much of their children, especially psychologically. I say, if she's old enough to be testing me, she's old enough to find out what happens as a result of the test!

nobody weds in LA

A couple of weekends ago we were supposed to drive down to LA for my cousin's wedding. Unfortunately, the wedding was postponed the day we were going to leave. We decided to go anyway, since Mom and Sam and Grandma were all still going to be there, and even more family besides. It turned out to be a great weekend, and we got to spend a lot more time hanging out with my cousin and her family and her fiance than we would have otherwise. For instance, we had a lovely IHOP breakfast on Saturday morning...

The weekend before we went down to LA, we got a membership to a children's museum in Marin. It gets you into a pile of other children's museums as well, so we looked up what was available to us in LA, and we ended up checking out a place called Noah's Ark, at the Skirball Cultural Center. Noah's Ark is the coolest children's museum I have ever been to. It's obviously based on the Noah's Ark story, which they've broken up into 3 parts: the storm/flood, the ark itself, and the return to land at the end. Of course there are animals all over, and they are all made out of recycled materials. I wish I'd taken more pictures (they had the cutest kiwis made out of boxing gloves), but this alligator is an excellent example. The snout is a violin case, the teeth are eyedroppers, the tongue is the neck of a violin, the eyes are made out of gloves, and the body is made out of a tire.

This is the storm room. Brian is making lightning, and there are some displays where you can make rain and see a boat go up and down on the flood, or you can make sounds that sound like storm winds, etc. You can also make the coyotes howl, and make the giraffe's head turn.



After the storm room is the ark. In addition to a ton of stuffed and plastic animals, there are the recycled animals still, and there is a big tunnel/climbing structure going up to the second floor that anyone can run around in, including adults. Sam and Brian checked it out for us - it looked pretty cool.

Last is the happy ending room, which is basically just a big room where you can do some arts and crafts. Charli loved the blocks there, but they weren't anything special, just regular blocks! As you can see, she especially loves Brian's blocks...



Saturday night we had dinner at Tod's (Alina's fiance) nightclub, which was quite delicious (and extremely large). His club is GIGANTIC, and right in the heart of downtown Hollywood. Unfortunately, Charli had a meltdown on the way to dinner (which ended up being really late), and we ended up having to take her back to the hotel room and have Brian stay home with her, while I went back to dinner. Have I mentioned recently how great Brian is? Well, he is. Really a lot. Tod's chef fixed up a plate for us to take back to Brian, but we lost it amidst all the leftovers we also ended up taking home. I mean seriously, it was 3 1/2 shopping bag sized bags of food, not including Brian's. I think some food got put on top of his plate, and then we couldn't remember what bag it was in. We took home two bags of food, though, so no worries about starving...

Sunday we thought Skirball was so cool, we went again, this time with a much larger entourage, including Avery (Alina's 3 yr old daughter). Unfortunately, we couldn't get into Noah's Ark until sort of late, and most everyone had to leave before we went in. Avery and cousin Noa stayed with us, and we hung out until we had to leave for Tod's house for dinner. As expected, we had a pretty awesome time.

Sunday night we had a lovely dinner at Tod's house, where we met a bunch of his family and his roommates, and then on Monday we drove home. We had a great time!

charli bit me!

and it REALLY hurt! I mean it! It really hurt! I guess she was biting my sweater, and she bit me too, and now I have teeth marks on my shoulder! Man was I ticked.

Charli has learned a new thing - shrieking. I am trying to unlearn it from her by turning away every time she does it. I have just started this behavior modification attempt, and so far it isn't working, but I'm sticking to it anyway. At least that means I don't have to look at her while she's doing it. Argh! It makes me want to shriek too!

Charli has also learned another new thing - this one good - but I'm not going to tell you what it is until I have some video of it (especially Donna and Jerry and Kelly)! Ha! How's that for blogging? I'm just stringing you all along... In the meantime, you can watch this video instead:



Today Brian and I made brunch for Jason and Tracey (and ourselves, of course), and it was highly successful. Even Charli liked it! Kim and Brent will be pleased to know that their Saveur breakfast issue has at least one good recipe in it. We had zucchini custard with greens, grain and nut pancakes and bacon, and orange/mango mimosas. It was yummy! And we made it all! If only all of you could have been there, too - I'm sure you would have been very proud of us (and impressed).

bella turns 1!

I can't believe it! Today was Bella's - our nanny's daughter - first birthday! She is a whole year old! And that means Charli is almost a whole year old! And that means... *sniff* she's growing up! Waaaah!

Well, we were supposed to meet Bella and her family (including visiting aunt and grandmother) at the zoo, to hang out with the goats and whatever. Unfortunately, Charli napped late, and then traffic was terrible, and it was raining. This all conspired to make us pretty late to the zoo, so that when we got there, the ticket lady actually discouraged us from buying tickets (she was practically refusing to sell them to us). It was about an hour til closing time, and since it was raining, she thought they might have put a lot of the animals away, and she really didn't want us to spend all the entry fee money and then maybe not see any animals. However, although she warned us quite strongly that any money we spent would be generally wasted, she was not willing to let us in for free. We dithered around for a bit and then tried to get someone else to let us in free which also didn't work, but she did tell us that at 4:30 you can get in free every day. Of course, that didn't really do us any good, since the petting zoo closes at 4:30, and that's all we came to see, but then it would have been even more stupid for us to have bought tickets. We ended up spending the intervening 15 minutes very well - hanging out in the pumpkin patch and taking lots of pictures until we could go in for free. We met up with Bella and family on the way out. *sigh*

After that we went over to Bella's house for party and cake! Charli likes cake! We had a lovely dinner and hung out and met a bunch of Bella's (and Nina and Dex's) other friends. Dex's family is really nice, and everything went really well.

Here's Charli hanging with her homie. BFF!