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.