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!