dancing queen

Charli still loves dancing to that noisy plastic piano, but now that she stands up so well, she dances differently. Check it out!



and this one:



For 5 minutes after this, Charli kept picking up her piano and moving it around, then playing it for a little bit, then picking it up and moving it around. She can barely carry it, but she moved it over and over again. Sam explained to me: Charli was practicing keeping her piano away from Bella. Apparently while Bella was over today, she wanted to play with the piano, or maybe just look at it, but Charli wasn't having any of it. Every time Bella wanted to touch the piano, Charli would move the piano to her other side, so she was between Bella and the piano. She hadn't figured out how to get a good grip on the piano yet, so she couldn't just carry it off (she's figured it out now). Bella isn't quite walking yet, so Charli was able to keep her stuff out of reach - but she is going to be in a real pickle when Bella figures out her feet!

Charli completely understands the word "bunny", and it makes her happy.



Charli also understands milk, book, upstairs, come here, eat (in German also!), and probably a host of other things that I don't give her credit for. She doesn't show any comprehension of the word "no", yet somehow I feel certain she actually DOES understand. She occasionally signs "milk" and "more", but this morning she was signing "more" and not apparently meaning "more", which is not so helpful. She very emphatically shakes her head when she doesn't want you to feed her something, but 2 seconds later she might be fine with eating it, so that's not very helpful either. As a matter of fact, it's distinctly unhelpful, since whatever you're trying to feed her at the time might go flying.

charli understood me!

Tonight as I was putting Charli to bed, she listened to me and completely understood. She was carrying her bunny and went to sit down and play with the doorstop. I said, "Are you ready for your milk?" and she got up and started walking over to me. I said, "Do you want your bunny?" and she stopped, turned around and looked for her bunny, and then walked back, picked it up, and turned to look at me again. I said, "Bring it with you," and she came over and followed me to the chair and we had milk. It was awesome!

Other Charli developments:
Charli really loves her bunny from Kelly and her Northwestern bear (I think that was from... Diltch?). She carries them around (usually one at a time, but occasionally together), wants to take them places, and sleeps with them.

Charli likes putting things on her head and around her neck. She has a favorite hat that she always tries to put on her head, but it's a little small so it just sits on top of her head, and then she tilts it off, laughs, and tries to put it on again. Unfortunately, this hat is not it, but it's bigger and stays on when she puts it on - which she does, so I don't mind. Here we're getting ready to go to the farmer's market, and she's put the carrier around her neck...

She's also very into putting her shoes on her hands and clapping them together.

Charli says "daddee" very clearly, but I'm not sure if she's really talking about Brian when she does it. However, she does run to him and bury her head in his chest and say "dadadadada" very sadly whenever I take something away from her, and she runs to me and says "mamamamama" very pathetically whenever Brian doesn't do what she wants.

I've been trying very halfheartedly to sign with Charli, and in response she's kind of halfheartedly gotten "more" and "milk". However, I just read another mom's blog, and her son is a couple of months older than Charli and can sign like 30 words, so I'm really going to try to step this up. I would love to feel like Charli is trying to communicate with us in some way other than visible frustration.

Charli only likes books with pictures. This is apparent based on these pictures, in which you can see Charli snuggling down to read with Sam, and then realizing she's been completely gypped.

Lastly, and maybe most importantly to me, Charli has gotten totally affectionate. When I come to pick her up at the sharecare, or I come downstairs after she hasn't seen me for a while, I kneel down on the floor and say "Charli! Come give mommy a hug!" and Charli runs up to me and gives me a big snuggle! It's awesome! And when I put her to bed, I used to give her her bottle and rock her a little bit, and she always used to struggle and try to get down until I'd take her over to her crib, and then she'd reach for her crib until I put her down (at which point she'd go to bed very well, so I can't really complain). Now, she loves to snuggle with me. We have the bottle, rock in the chair for a little bit, brush her teeth, rock in the chair a little more, maybe sing a lullaby or read a book or not, and she snuggles me the whole time. A few times we've even fallen asleep together, which she NEVER does anymore. Then I stand up to put her in the crib, she gives me a last squeeze, I put her down and she doesn't make a peep when I leave. This has been going on for a few weeks now. I could stay down there all night. It's only duty that makes me leave - the doctor and all the sleep books and articles say that your child needs to be able to put herself to sleep without you ("and believe me, you'll be happy later!"), and I can see the reasoning behind that and agree with it. If I didn't think Charli actually sleeps better in her own room, though, I would throw all caution to the wind, and go to sleep with Charli every night in our bed.

injury prone weekend

Charli's been having a tough weekend.

Yesterday morning, after sleeping REALLY late (til 9:30! that's 2 hours later than usual!), she got up in a terrific mood. We were hanging out in her room, and Brian went upstairs to start getting her breakfast ready, and I was picking out her clothes for the day, and Charli was wandering around, as she is wont to do. Well, she wandered up the stairs a little ways, I guess, and remember what I said about her wanting to come down stairs facing forwards? I can't say exactly what happened, but I'm assuming she went up a couple of stairs, and turned around and tried to come down. I can't see the stairs from inside Charli's room, but they end right next to her door. All I saw was Charli upside down on her head and rolling onto her back. It was totally quiet, as if she'd just executed a very smooth forward roll, which is why I think she was only two steps up - no bumps or thumps. A moment later it got noisy... It was so smooth I don't think she could have hurt herself, but it definitely scared her. Maybe she'll stop doing it. Is that too much to hope?

After that, she had a terrific day. 2 extra hours of sleep in the morning make Charli an angel all day long, even with only a very short nap. We went to the farmer's market in the morning, then we looked at some houses on sale just for the fun of it, stopped at the Bernal Heights playground because it was right there... Charli was great, even though we hadn't brought her a snack or anything to drink (yes, we suck, we didn't think we were going to make all those stops). Then we came home and gave her some lunch and she took a VERY short nap but was still in a great mood, so we tried to go out to early dinner at Zuni, but we weren't early enough, so we tried somewhere else, and we weren't early enough for there either, so we ended up getting takeout gyros at Hayes & Kebab, and stopping for comic books on the way home! It was a beautiful evening. (Aside: You know, I've never met a gyro I didn't like... until last night. I always thought gyros were sort of like hummus, hot chocolate, cookies, etc. Even the bad ones are pretty good. But my gyro last night was dry, hard, tasteless, and gristly. I TRIED to eat it, but only made it through about half. It was terrible. The greek salad was fine, though, and the bread they give out is pretty tasty.)



This morning Charli got up at her normal time, and was very fussy. We were sitting in front of her mirror, and she stood up, tripped over my leg, fell down and bashed her head on the mirror. Wow, did she not like that. It was probably her most traumatic moment (other than shots) since I let her fall off the bed back in July (by my judgement of trauma, anyway. There have certainly been other times when she's cried as loud and/or as long, but since I don't know why she's doing it, or think it's trivial, it doesn't rate high on my trauma meter. Maybe all those things are equally traumatic at this point, and that's why babies cry so much).

After Charli ate her breakfast not well at all, we went to Mission Beach Cafe where she ate not well at all again. But she had great fun walking home, and is starting to enjoy playing chase.



Now she's in the middle of a really long nap, which affords me a lot of time to make blog posts. :)

charli said

"doggie" today. At a doggie. With encouragement, of course, but still.

yerba buena park

Yesterday Nina took Charli and Bella to the Yerba Buena playground downtown, and came back raving about how awesome it was, especially on a weekday when there's no one around, and how much space they had to run around, and how awesome it was some more (she's been there before, but yesterday she was particulary excited, I guess). Well, she made it sound so good that we felt left out, and decided to take Charli there again today. We thought we'd make a little trip out of it by getting some hot chocolate, and some wall anchors, and maybe even a new crock pot. Amazing how these things go together.

Well, Yerba Buena playground is indeed quite cool, and we imagine it must indeed be a lot better on a weekday when no one else is around. On a beautiful Saturday, though, it's packed, and most of the equipment is better suited to kids older than Charli, who are running pell mell through all the open space. They had very cool slides and climbing structures, and it's in the middle of a kid oriented complex where the walkway just becomes part of one of the climbing structures. The railings along the walkways are talking tubes, which are fun - of course we tried them out. Unfortunately, I forgot my camera, so you get no pictures of the playground. :( However, we do have this lovely picture of Charli in the grassy area nearby, which is where we spent all our time drinking hot chocolate and letting Charli run around without getting run over by 3 year olds. As I have said many times before, Charli likes hot chocolate.

We did get our wall anchors, which will be used to put the gates back up on our stairs - we seem to constantly rip them out of the walls. The gates are only necessary in stages, it seems. We didn't need them for a long time, obviously, until Charli started crawling and trying to go down the stairs before she really knew how. Then we kept them closed for a while. But then she actually became quite good at going down the stairs, and would reliably turn herself around and go backwards, and liked to go down to the landing and then come back up, so we would leave them open unless we really didn't want her to get away. Now she's walking, and she's to the point where she's interested in going up and down the stairs facing forward. She hasn't attempted it by herself, but she's right on the verge, so we need to make sure the gates are up good and strong. :)

We also got a new crock pot, for a zillion dollars. How can a crockpot cost a zillion dollars, you ask? When it has a cast aluminum insert, that's how. Our previous crockpot handle broke off like the first time we used it, so we returned it for a replacement - which had the knob on the lid broken off and glued back on (we opened up the box while we were in the store. Unfortunately, it was the last one left, so we took it). Well, the knob on the lid never fell off again - that glue must have been pretty good. However, the lid did eventually crack in half. Some kind member of my family glued it back together, but our glue was not as good, and it came apart again. Also, I could feel cracks inside the pot when I was cleaning it, so we decided the time had come for a new crockpot. And I was determined not to get another stoneware or ceramic inner. And the only crockpot I could find that didn't have a ceramic or stoneware inner was from Williams-Sonoma. And everything at Williams-Sonoma costs a zillion dollars. And that's how a crockpot costs a zillion dollars.

The inner part is very nice, just on its own. We made a lovely curry in it, and it cleans up very well. In addition, this crockpot is bigger than our last one, but it weighs a lot less, which is nice. It better last forever. It cost even more than our trash can, which we've already said better last until we have grandkids.

headshots

Here are just some random shots of Charli that haven't fit in any blog posts lately, but which everyone should still see, because, of course, they are adorable.


See? Wasn't that cute?

A couple of weekends ago we were out for breakfast and we did a little shopping. Charli REALLY wanted to carry the bag, and then she walked around with it for about 1/2 a block. So cute! Our little shopper! Brian's in such trouble. She tried to go into another store on her own, carrying her little bag. She is also really into shoes - she'll go through her shoe drawer looking at everything, and then she'll sit down and try to put the ones she likes on her feet. She also really liked Shannon's shoes (Jillian's mom). When she came by to drop Jillian off in the mornings, Charli would always go and admire her shoes.

And lastly, here's Charli's favorite toy at Tiny Tots in the Eureka Valley Rec Center. Apparently it's gone now, but maybe they'll replace it with something even better.

new duds

Yesterday Sam and I went through more hand-me-downs for Charli, and once again, she has a whole new wardrobe. I took an entire box of stuff out of her drawers and closet, and we easily put that much back in, too.

I've been thinking for months now that I didn't have a warm enough coat for Charli, so I've been layering her up every time I send her out. Turns out there were TWO coats in the bins that are perfect, and we even have a super warm ski coat (and pants) should we ever have a blizzard and Charli wants to play in the snow.

In addition, we found these SUPER-CUTE pjs! They have a kitty on the butt!