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!