brent wins

It's Kim's birthday today - happy birthday, Kim! She and Brent are still in New Mexico, apparently looking at houses (not for themselves) and breaking things in them.

So since we talked to Kim, Sam remembered she hadn't read their blog in a long time, and she brought it up on her computer. Charli looked over her shoulder and saw the picture of Brent and Kim, and completely unprompted, said "Bent!" Wow! Charli recognized him AND knew his name AND said it out loud! As a matter of fact, she said it twice, but the second time Sam and I were asking her. Brent wins!

wedding (no, really!)

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.

Sunday we got up and tried to go to Judy's Cafe for breakfast, but they practically refused to seat us for some reason - we hypothesize it was because of the baby. I got mad and just walked out, and we ended up eating at a Denny's about halfway to Sacramento. Bums!

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.

hot weekend!

Well, thank goodness I can back-date these posts. Otherwise you might think I hadn't posted in over a month. :)

This weekend it was REALLY REALLY hot! And it was predicted and everyone was talking about it, so I went out and got a kiddie pool to put on the deck in anticipation. Man, kiddie pools got fancy since I had a kiddie pool - it was almost another stroller story, but I controlled myself and got one for about $10. It has no slide, or ring toss, or ball toss, or water cannon, or separate wading pool vs. deep pool... Yes, you can get all those things in an inflatable backyard pool. Ours just has a little shade thing and a little sprayer and it's shaped like a hippo. How can you not love it? We spent Saturday afternoon being roasted on our deck with our feet in the cool water. Aaaaaahhhh!

Sunday it was supposed to be even hotter, so we decided to go to Lake Anza over in Berkeley. It turned out to be not as hot as Saturday on our deck, but it was perfect for the lake, and the lake was perfect for us - it's got a beach with shade on it! Unheard of! We spread ourselves out on the sand in the shade, and it was glorious. Of course, one must still apply sunscreen - Charli was very helpful.

This was Charli's first time in water that isn't a bath... I think. I don't think she's gone swimming with her nannies - she's been to the beach for sure, but I don't think they go in the water. The ocean's freezing here, and I'm pretty sure Nina's the only one who would take them in the water, and she wouldn't take 2 kids in the water unless she had another adult with her, so I really don't think Charli's been in water deeper than maybe 6 or 8 inches. She seemed to like it! I was napping when Brian and Sam took her into the water deep enough for her to swim in, but they said she really liked that too - she enjoyed kicking her legs out behind her, and then didn't want to put her feet back down when they came back to the shallow water.

We had a great time! Sam made chicken and we had a delicious chicken sandwich picnic, plus strawberries and watermelon. We also brought along Charli's bubble maker (thanks again, Mom), and let me tell you, when we turned that on, we were the hit of the party! Kids came round from near and far...

best. pasta. ever.

Charli had a tremendously huge dinner tonight. When Nina brought her home, she and Bella stayed for a while, as they often do, and we pulled out the big box of blueberries and Charli and Bella went to town. Then, for dinner, Charli had more than half of a farmer's market empanada - not a huge meal, but about the size of a normal Charli dinner, especially after eating 50 blueberries. But then Brian grilled portabello mushrooms and asparagus and Sam made pasta with butter, cheese, a bit of yogurt, and some garlic salt for their dinner, and Charli wanted to try some of that, too. She was not too keen on the asparagus, and the mushroom was meh, but the Pasta, now that was something else. She stood at Sam's knee and ate about 1/2 of her pasta. Then we thought maybe we should get her her own bowl, and put her in her chair while I went to dish it up. Charli's chair happened to be right next to Brian's plate, so she ate some of his pasta while she was waiting. Then she ate her whole bowl of pasta. Then she took the rest of Brian's pasta off his plate, in fistfuls, and put it into her bowl - every last noodle except the very last one, which she put directly into her face. I have never seen her eat so much EVER.

Naptime for Charli...

On Saturdays we like to go to the farmers market to do the grocery
shopping for the week, then we come home and put Charli down for a
nap. Then we like to get on with all of the important things that we
do on weekend days that we just can't do effectively when Charli is up
and about...

more bubbles!

snow! and marbles

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.