Well, we're back at home now, and it sure is nice to be home. Our flight left at 8pm, so ideally Charli would have gone to sleep at some point during the flight, but honestly I knew better than that. She obviously would not go to sleep with a whole planeful of people around. Unfortunately, we didn't check in early enough to get good seats, and the whole plane was completely full, so Charli had no room to run around, and was restless and little fussy, but not horrible. She fell asleep about 5 minutes before we landed, and this picture is of her passed out in her stroller while we were waiting for Brian to pick us up.
So what else happened in Colorado after Brian left? Well, of course, it snowed. I take credit for causing this to happen, because we brought a snowsuit out with us, and I sent it home with Brian, when it was 70 degrees and sunny out. Of course it would snow 3 days later. It was actually really great snow, except that it was only really great while Charli was sleeping. By the time she would wake up, it would be melting and slushy.
We dragged her out into it anyway, and she really wasn't very fond of it at first. She got more interested after while, but it was really cold and wet and not much fun to play in, so after relatively few pictures, we came back inside. Due to the winter storm, though, there were apparently some avalanches in Colorado, and some highway closings, and Southwest allowed anyone who had flight plans on Friday or Saturday (that was us) to reschedule free of charge any time during the following 14 days. So, we decided to come home Monday evening instead of Saturday morning at a time that would require us to leave the house at 4:30am without knowing if our plane would even make it out. This meant a few more days without Brian (*sniff* but at least I had Charli - Brian said he was wandering around at home in the dark and reading Goodnight Moon to himself), but Mom was happy to have another weekend. I think Charli was really missing Brian, though - she started getting very clingy to me as the week went on.
Meanwhile, Sam brought out Marbleworks, one of her very favorite childhood toys, and built Charli a few different masterpieces. Charli did NOT destroy them. She loves Marbleworks! She spent days carrying marbles around in various containers, transferring them back and forth, maybe hiding them in shoes, and dropping them down the chutes.
Charli learned to play hide and seek! We spent a lot of time running around from the kitchen to the living room to the dining room, waiting for Charli to find us and screaming a lot. It was great!
Charli is talking more and more, and learning new words every day. Now she can say 'book', where previously she said 'boo'. She says 'duck' when she sees a duck (or most any bird), 'moo' when she sees a cow, and 'ba' when she sees a sheep. She says 'shoes' a lot, 'mas' (Spanish for 'more'), 'bubbles', 'bus', 'fishie'... She also says 'guck' when she sees a truck. That one took me a while (we thought she was saying 'duck', but she kept saying it when there were no ducks around), but I finally figured it out while we were walking around the neighborhood and she said it at the mail truck. When we got home, Carolina told us that's how Darian says 'truck'! Speaking of which, Charli can say 'Darian' and 'Bella', too. I should be trying to use more signs with her, but I don't know any more. She is learning the hand motions to 'The Wheels on the Bus' song,
though, and she's starting to do the 'tick tock' part of the 'Cuckoo' song, too. Her fork skills are improving, she's running around like crazy, and she tests things out with her shoes before she touches them with her hands - Mom took her out to the green belt, where she very carefully inspected, followed around, and then deliberately stepped on... a bee. No damage (to either the bee or to her, especially since she was wearing shoes), but it was very funny to watch, according to my mom.
So that's a lot of good news. On the bad news side, I had to try a (completely ineffective) disciplinary technique on her. Charli was being deliberately disobedient at the dinner table - she held something out, and I told her NOT to drop it on the floor, and she looked me right in the eye, opened her hand and dropped it on the floor. So I smacked the back of her hand. She looked at her hand, rather curiously, and then she smacked herself on the back of her hand. Then she threw something else on the floor, and smacked herself again on the back of the hand. ROTTEN CHILD! Consider me trained; I won't be doing that again.
In other (non-Charli) news, Kim learned how to make TERRIFIC panna cotta, and we ate it twice. Kim and Brent are making a cello (yes, you heard me right), I gave Brent my cold, and Kim and Sam spent some time volunteering at a farm, where they were compensated with eggs of various colors and sizes, and fresh bread. Also, during this trip, we realized that Sam, Kim, and I all used to really hate French toast, and now we all really liked it, but it took all of us a very long time to realize we liked it because we all hated it so much that we were traumatized and just never ate French toast anywhere for years. Based on this coincidence/revelation, we came to a new conclusion: Mom used to make terrible French toast! Now she makes delicious French toast, and we all like it. Such a possibility never entered our heads before because we never knew Mom could make anything bad to eat.
Mom and Dad came out this weekend for Alina and Tod's wedding up in Sacramento (third time's the charm!). We had a lovely and busy time. We got to the farmers market too late on Saturday to get empanadas (they run out), but the ranier cherries are just coming into season, so that's exciting.
Once we got to Kalei's (the wedding was at Alina's parents' place), we were swept up into the whirlwind of activity. Alina had asked me to take pictures, so I just started clicking away. Brian took care of Charli, Sam helped Alina get ready, and Mom helped everyone else. The wedding was in a little gazebo in the yard, with about 30 friends in attendance, and it was really very nice. Charli got to wear her fancy dress again, although not for very long, since she got tired and fussy right around when the actual wedding took place and Brian changed her before putting her down for a nap (we could hear her wailing all through the ceremony). After that, it was more pictures, followed by lots of delicious food, and a sleepy drive home (for me, anyway. Sam had to take over). A lovely time was had by all.
