long time no post

Wow. Charli is always go-go-go now, and work has picked up too, which means I not only have no time to blog, I apparently don't even have time to take pictures! The amount of pictures I take each month has been declining by about 50% each month since December. Horrors!

So what's been happening? Well, we had some more visitors. My family was all here for spring break, and that was great. They cleaned our deck! It looks awesome! Then Sam had a friend out this past weekend, and that was nice too.

During all this visiting, we found all kinds of new foods for Charli to eat: we found Charli-sized bananas (Golden Fingers, they're called) and Charli-sized grapes (champagne grapes - they're delicious!) at the farmer's market, so that's really cute. Charli likes to pick the grapes off the vine, and she's very careful about it. Sometimes the stem stays on the grape, and she's very careful to pick that off, too. Then there are the things that we weren't so sure she would like, but she did, such as... seaweed (keem)! She loved it, and ate several pieces. Of course, she eats a lot of paper, too, and this is just sort of like black, funny tasting paper, I guess. She also liked the grilled portabello mushrooms we had for dinner last night, along with the tremendously successful pesto we had. It's great; we're totally raising an adventurous eater!

Charli is communicating like crazy now. She tries to imitate the things people say to her, and has lots of words she can actually say. She still says babu, and she says hase (ha-zee, german for bunny), duck, baby, boom, bump, cheese (sort of... I think sometimes she means cereal when she says this), push (she says "psh", it's so cute). Whenever she drops anything, she says "uh-oh!" She likes to sit on things now, but she has to kind of line herself up with her little chair or your lap, and then back up until she sits (sometimes she misses, and says "oops!". Brian would go "beep, beep, beep" whenever she did that, like a truck backing up, and it only took her a day to pick that up. Now when she wants to sit on your lap, she points her butt at you and says "beep!" Charli can also sign more, milk, out, cereal, and eat.

Today Charli was able to go up and down some stairs by herself, too. Her motor skills are really coming along. She likes to kick balls around, although she's not so good at throwing them. She's pretty good at stealing them, too, since I never remember to bring any to the playground with us.

feminine wiles

Last Tuesday, we started a new share care with another family that Carolina nannies for. It's just one day a week - Charli only goes to Darian's house on Tuesdays, because I can't quite let her go elsewhere all 5 days a week. I miss her too much.

Darian is about 3 months older than Charli, and just cute as a button - you can see all that curly hair, and his eyelashes are about a foot long. Carolina sent this picture today - it's their second day together, and Charli's already got him wrapped around her finger...

babu

Charli has been using a name for her two bears for the past week or so:



In other news, Charli had her 15 month checkup a couple of Fridays ago, and she weighed 19lbs 6oz. The doctor did not give me a percentile to go with that, but since I am a newly unconcerned mother, I was not too worked up. As a matter of fact, I was so unconcerned, I forgot to ask how tall she was. So, I had to measure her today so I could post about it, and I do believe she is 30" tall! Maybe even a bit more! Such a big girl!

Charli also has a bunch of molars coming in, and has been sick for the past several days (as have I. We got it from Sam). She's really been in a pretty good mood, though, considering all that. I hear her coughing sometimes at night, but she still sleeps all night and wakes up in a fine mood. She's been eating a ton, too - Sam made a giant pot of curry last weekend and we're still eating it. Charli LOVES it.

Also, Sam's friend Loni came out to visit this past weekend, and a great time was had by all. We saw Watchmen on Friday (yay!) and went to the farmer's market on Saturday, and they ran around and had fun during all the times that were not those, I assume.

Charli took a great liking to Loni, and let her read more of One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish than anyone else in history. We NEVER get to the wump of Gump page (unless we start in the middle).

the greatest structure ever!

If you know me, you may have realized that I am most likely to buy something for Charli if I think that Brian and I are going to play with it, too. It's especially likely if I think we might play with it MORE than Charli. That's why Charli has a lot of gear. It is also why Charli has giant inflatable blocks, out of which we can make forts and tunnels and stuff.

While we were visiting St. Louis over Thanksgiving, we came to a new appreciation of blocks. We like to build structures, and Charli likes to knock them down. So, after we came home, I got Charli some blocks. Unfortunately, they sucked. They didn't balance very well, so we couldn't build anything - all Charli could do was throw them around and chew on them. At least they were colorful. And then, I discovered Kapla. Kapla are "precision engineered" blocks, all of which are exactly the same size. They are awesome! Now, we can truly build the greatest structures ever!

Brian hard at work on the greatest structure ever

Brian's second masterpiece

Korin's opus

And, oh yes, let's not forget about Charli's part...

i'm sorry, could you repeat that?

Charli has a new... word? phrase? noise?



O ya, she's also getting much better with her fork...

from the vein

Today I finally got Charli's bloodtest done. After her one year checkup, we were supposed to get a bloodtest to check lead levels and some other stuff, so we went right over to the lab to get it done. Unfortunately, they said we couldn't do it then, because it was too close to Thanksgiving and they wouldn't be able to get the blood to the place that does the analysis before the holiday, and after that the blood would be too old for the test. I knew that meant we were never going to get around to it, but what can you do? So we went home.

As expected, we never could quite make it back to the lab until recently, when it was almost time for Charli's 15 month checkup. Once I had relocated the lab test request form, I realized we actually could take Charli to the office close to us, which has a lab too, rather than going all the way across town to the one we were at before. Also, the lab was open on the weekend! How convenient! So we went last Saturday, after I called to make sure the lab was open and there was no line or anything. We got there, and were basically told that they don't do the lead test on Saturdays either, fresh blood required for test not good on weekend takes too long to submit come back on monday. Rargh. I had even mentioned the tests Charli was supposed to have to the person I spoke to on the phone, but she was just an answering service and couldn't really be expected to know the intracacies of all the tests. So we went home again.

Third time's the charm. Carolina had to come with me since Brian was at work, to hang out with Charli while I signed forms and got insurance cards xeroxed. They actually take the blood out of the vein, so I had to hold Charli in my lap (with pacifier and stuffed animal, too) while they dug around in her arm a bit. She was really great - she cried, but it was more of a low cry of pain than the terrified screaming she does at the doctor's office. I wonder if she would be better with the shots if they let me hold her for that, too, rather than stretching her out on the table?

Today is also the day of Charli's first "run up to Sam and hug her" incident. Sam was thrilled. :)

portland wrap

Well, we've made it back home. The drive back was a thousand times better than the drive out, but not at all what we had planned. Here comes a super long post...

On Sunday, we met for breakfast with my cousin Tanya, her husband Scott, and their daughter Maddy, who is 4 months older than Charli, at the Original Pancake House. Sam, Kim, and Brent have all been to the Original Pancake House before, and it was practically all they could talk about once we had scheduled the breakfast: "I can't WAIT to have a Yang family breakfast at the Original Pancake House! It's going to be AWESOME!" and stuff like that. We had to wait an hour for a large table like we had, but once we were seated, it was indeed quite awesome. The apple pancake was delicious (Charli loved it), and the omelettes were amazing - very different from the standard omelettes you get everywhere else. They are super fluffy and as big as your head (in addition to being delicious); I guess they bake them for part of the time, too. The wait staff were super friendly also, and really nice about getting us extra stuff for the kids. Even so, Charli was still fussy and not very keen on being at a restaurant, but what can you do.

After breakfast we came back to the hotel, and Kim and Brent left for their flight. Mom and Dad weren't leaving for a few more hours, so we hung around the hotel rooms for a while, hoping in vain that Charli would take a nap. She didn't, but she was super cute, so it was OK. She dressed up in my hat and Mom's belt, and learned to put chapstick on.

Once we'd given up on Charli's nap, we decided we might as well get outside, so we hunted up a playground and took Charli there. It was cute, and Charli had fun. It was right downtown by Powell's Bookstore, which was one of the places that Sam and I particularly wanted to go, but we didn't make it there. From the playground, we had to go straight to the airport to drop off Mom and Dad, and after that, Charli was finally ready for a nap.

While Charli napped, we tried to figure out what we were going to do on Monday. First we thought we would go to the Original Pancake House for breakfast again, but they are closed on Mondays. So Kim and Brent suggested another restaurant, Screen Door, for brunch, but they are closed on Mondays too. I also looked into the kids' museum in Portland - we could get in free with our membership to the one down here, but it's closed on Mondays. Don't go to Portland on a Monday - it's closed.

Instead we decided to try Screen Door for dinner. It was very highly rated on Yelp, so we left as soon as Charli woke up from her nap, so we could try to get there before they opened. We didn't make it - we got there about 15 minutes after they opened, and it was full and the line was about 12 people deep, so we decided to go to our backup, The Observatory. It was a good thing we did, too. The Observatory was empty and spacious, and Charli was a complete disaster. She wouldn't eat with us, wouldn't sit in her chair, wouldn't sit in our laps... She just wanted to walk around holding some possession of hers and crying. Brian and I took turns eating dinner while the other tried to keep her from ruining everyone else's dinner (fortunately only 2 or 3 other tables). Sam said even so, she heard all the other tables talking about how they don't want kids... Once we'd finished our dinner (including the most delicious tomato soup ever) and gone back to the hotel, Charli was in a great mood again. I guess she just really wanted to run around.

Then we had a new experience. Since everyone else was gone, we only had the one hotel room, with Charli's crib in it. The previous night, we had adjoining rooms with my parents, and we put Charli to bed in one room and hung out in the adjoining room. This time, we had to put Charli down in the room while we stayed in it. We have never had to do this before - we have always been able to leave the room when we put Charli down, even if we have to go back in when we go to sleep. Putting Charli to bed and not leaving the room DOES NOT WORK. We tried blocking her from seeing anyone and only doing quiet things, like reading and typing and iPhone surfing, but that didn't work. Then I tried walking with her a little and putting her down again, and that didn't work. Then we let her run around a little bit more, hoping she would get tired, but she didn't. Then we tried putting her back in the crib and turning out most of the lights and putting the coat rack in between us and the crib, and that also didn't work. Sam gave up on reading and went to take a shower, so we decided we might as well go to bed (Charli drove us to sleep), turned out all the lights and hoped Charli would go to sleep. She didn't. So we tried the ultimate experiment and brought Charli to bed with us, for the first time since I don't even know when, like I always want to do. Well, I don't want to anymore. Charli bounced in bed and climbed on us and flopped around and turned upside down and kicked us in the face and turned right side up and kicked us in the ribs and hit us with her bear and her elbows and tickled us and stuck her fingers in our ears for about an hour. I considered many options: 1) try to smother her just until she passed out, not until she was dead; 2) put her crib in the bathroom; 3) go down to the front desk and ask if the room next to us was taken, and if not, beg to put the crib in there and swear that we won't use anything else in that room... I finally decided that we would put Charli up for adoption, and having made that decision, was able to get up, walk Charli around a little bit more, and put her in the crib, where she finally went to sleep around 1am.

Monday morning, we decided we would just leave. We packed up, had some hotel bagels, and left around 11. Charli fell asleep shortly, and we decided we would just drive until she woke up. We completely forgot to go to Powell's Bookstore. While we were driving, Brian actually thought to look ahead at the weather conditions, which was smart, because along I-5 there was an area where chains were required on all vehicles, which we would be hitting sometime very late at night. We decided to detour to 101 and come down the coast instead. No snow there!

We stopped in North Bend at 2pm for breakfast/lunch at the Pancake Mill, which turned out to be very much like the Original Pancake House, except open on Mondays. They had apple pancakes, and Dutch babies, and really nice wait staff... Charli really liked my creamed chicken crepes, and was better than she had been all weekend. I considered keeping her. Then we took her to a park in Coos Bay and let her run around until she was tired, which took til about 5pm, and then we took off again. She slept/napped for another 5 hours, we stopped at a McDonalds with an outdoor playground that was wet and cold and closed and let Charli run around the restaurant for an hour, and then we drove another 4 hours home, arriving around 4:30am. Our detour made it another 12 hour drive (excluding stops), but at least there was no difficult weather. And no barf.

This morning, Brian got up to let Carolina in and explain to her that it had been a very late night, and she could just hang out until Charli got up. Charli slept til 10, woke up happy, and has been good ever since. We're totally keeping her.