to soothe the raging mob...

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to everyone! Sorry it's been so long since we posted (and glad to know you missed us). Things have been so swamped with all my family out and all of the eating we have to do. Of course, this means I have a lot of pictures accumulated...





We tried to let Charli help us decorate the tree. This involved some broken bulbs, but now we know better.





Charli opened up a gift on Christmas eve by special request. We think she likes it.










Charli on Christmas morning.











Charli's first real step! Also, a quality video from the day after Christmas!












Charli had fun opening a present on Christmas morning, but after that she kind of lost interest.









Once the toys are open, though, she likes them a lot!











Brian receives the present that wins the creative wrapping prize. Creativity courtesy of Brent!









Our favorite present.








Playing with Christmas gifts.







Here's the whole gang. Even though we managed to find beds for everyone, somehow there always seems to be someone sleeping on the couch... (and I do mean ALWAYS. At any given hour you could come in the door, and someone would be sleeping on the couch.)

Signing off - see you next year!

yet another stroller

bye bye, maria and jillian

Today was Maria's last day, and yesterday was our last day of sharecare with Jillian. Waaah!

Maria has decided to move back to Barcelona, and is leaving next Wednesday. Jillian is going to be starting school full time in January and was going to be leaving the share care anyway, so she just ended a little bit earlier than she would have otherwise.

This sharecare was really great and I'm really going to miss both Maria and Jillian. Maria was great to work with and took excellent care of the girls. She took Charli to all kinds of places, made her food and straightened up after her, and was really accomodating to our schedule (which can only loosely be called a "schedule" - usually when Maria arrived, Charli would be eating or just finishing eating, but sometimes Maria would show up and Charli would still be asleep, in which case Maria would have to feed her breakfast and get her dressed). She was easy to talk to, and could dispense advice without being annoying or accusative - a necessary skill in a nanny! I never had any worries about Charli when she was with Maria - I have way more worries when she is with us.

I really liked having an older girl with Charli, to show her how to do things and inspire her and be like a big sister, and Jillian was terrific. She was really affectionate with Charli, and her mom said how spending time with Charli changed her - she was more gentle at home and always thinking of Charli, and she really tried to help take care of Charli when she was here. She was always reminding Maria to take the keys when they went out ("keys, Mina", after the time Maria forgot them), and telling Maria "Charli's hungry. Charli needs a diaper change. Charli wants that." She came up with the nickname "baby Charli", and introduced her to everyone at the parks, and named her dolls that. She recognized where we live, and every time they drove by on the way to somewhere else, she would wave in the car and say hi to baby Charli - and if she missed it because she was distracted or something, she would want her mom to go back so she could try it again. I'm sure she's going to have a great time going to school full time (coincidentally, her school is just a couple of blocks away, at the German preschool that our other nanny, Nina, used to work at until she quit to take care of Bella), and we're really going to miss her and we'll have to plan some playdates together.

We (Jillian's family and us) took Maria out for dinner last night, and it was fun and a little sad... Mostly fun. We wish her the best in Spain, and are happy she's going to be with her family, even if we are a little envious.

p.s. For those of you who are wondering what we're doing for daycare in the meantime, my parents are coming out next Wednesday and staying until next year, so that takes care of any immediate needs. In January, we will be starting with Nina 3 days a week and probably hiring a friend of Maria's, Carolina, for Tuesdays and Thursdays. Carolina already knows Charli, because she brings her current share care kids to meet up with Maria and Charli and Jillian at various parks. So convenient!

economic cuts

Yes indeed, it has happened. Yesterday evening, after Charli's bath, I cut off a bunch of her hair, and now she no longer has the tentacles she has been sporting on the back of her head for the last few months. I did it myself, because who wants to pay someone to cut off that small an amount of hair? Haircuts are expensive! And time consuming!

In addition, we are officially off formula, so that's another expense GONE. Charli had her last bottle of formula/milk mix 2 nights ago, and now it's 100% milk from now on - lots cheaper than formula! I guess now we can get her some Christmas presents. She doesn't seem to have suffered any ill effects so far...

p.s. There are a bunch of new Charli pics up on the website, and I should be posting pics from our Thanksgiving trip soon.

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!

christmas tree day!

Yay! Today was Charli's first Christmas Tree Day!

For those of you who don't know, every year the day after Thanksgiving we head out to the Heritage Valley Tree Farm with everyone we can gather together and cut down Christmas trees. Then we go back home and eat tremendous amounts of Christmas tree soup. This year we are having a longer visit, so we had Christmas Tree Day the day AFTER the day after Thanksgiving. So we bundled Charli up and went hunting the wily Christmas tree. The trees actually were not that wily this year, despite the fact that there were more people at the tree farm than we had ever seen at one time. We had a relatively quick yet successful hunt, and brought back a couple of lovely specimens.

After we get the trees, Christmas Tree Day is not over, though! Usually there is some tossing around of the football, but this year the football was flat, so instead Charli practiced her new trick, which is giving her mother a kiss (no one else!). She started blowing some kisses, though, and she is much less discriminating about that.

Then we go get the trees shooken (technical term) and bagged and paid for, and the tree farm sells us hot chocolate and hot apple cider and lots of homemade cookies. Charli likes cookies! And then we take lots of family and friend pictures, and we feel very convivial and holiday spirited and sure that the Christmas season has truly started. Happy holidays, everyone!


After pictures, it actually is time to leave the farm, so that we can go back to the house and eat Christmas tree soup! Christmas tree soup does not have Christmas trees in it, like how stone soup has a stone in it. It has ground beef and lots of vegetables, and it cooks all day long while we're out getting the trees and is totally awesome. Charli loved it and ate a ton. That's my girl!

After dinner Charli practiced another important trick, several times and very noisily:

happy turkey day!

Well, here it is, Charli's first Thanksgiving dinner (look, there's the back of her head)! Of course, Charli has been through one Thanksgiving already, but I'm not sure if that one actually counted - it definitely didn't involve any dinner, or even any turkey. This time it counts, there is no doubt!

We had a delicious deep fried turkey, as is customary and proper. It turned out beautifully (customary and proper), and we also had a delicious smoked turkey breast that chef-in-training Pete made. We also had some other food, too. Not too much, of course, we don't want to get fat or anything. Just a pile of mashed potatoes, yummy stuffing, boatloads of gravy, cranberry marshmallow goodness, corn souffle, sweet potatoes and green beans, etc., etc...

We basically hung out all afternoon with the family, watching Charli play with a thousand toys she's never seen before. Everyone built block towers and waited for her to come knock them down, which she did with fervor. The Schweisses have a hip hop Easter bunny dealio that sings and hops and is tremendously annoying, but Charli likes to dance to it, so it must be ok. She also liked the train, the shape ball, the turtle thing, the spinny bell ringy thing, the noisy car... she wasn't very fond of the weeble wobble chicken, though. Peter and Katy and John were all great with Charli, although Katy did try to steal Charli's bib.

After dinner we had much celebration - today is Katy's 17th birthday! Happy birthday, Katy! It's also my dad's birthday, which I'm sure is being celebrated back in Colorado even as I write this blog post. Happy birthday, Dad! And we had some more Charli birthday celebration, too. Charli was fascinated by the candles once again, and tried to grab them. Fortunately, Katy's got fast reflexes. Charli enjoyed the frosting and overall it was another great day.

And oh ya - Charli gave me 2 kisses! People saw it! And later she gave me another! It's so rewarding. That makes the day REALLY great. Of course after that, she would only give Daddy kisses - I would say "give me a kiss!" and she would pucker up and lean way over to give Brian a kiss. After a couple of those I had to send Brian away and put Charli to bed.

We are so fortunate and grateful to be able to spend this time with our wonderful family and friends. Can we say "thanks", Charli? Thanks!