Wednesday, August 25, 2010

QOTD: I thought I had more time...

I hear the sound of multiple bins full of stuff being dumped on the floor, coming from Charlotte's room, of course.

"What are you doing in there?!"

"Nothing, Mom! Nothing!"

(testing the browser on Matt's new phone.)

Tuesday, August 24, 2010

QOTD: +5 Goth cred

Charlotte, flipping through National Geographic, "There's a skull.  I love skulls."

Monday, August 23, 2010

Don't Judge.

This might make me the grossest mother in the history of toddler-dom, but I had no idea that the straps on Charlotte's high chair could come off until today.  Which means they've never been washed-washed until today.  I did a lot of spot cleaning, and some weird rigs with plastic bags full of water and baking soda and rubber bands....but I never realized that you can just take them off and throw them in the washing machine.

Well, they're being washed now, at least.

Also?  A few weeks ago Matt found a screw that apparently came from the high chair.  We have no idea from where.  He picked it up and turned it upside down, and can't see any missing.  Hmmmm.

Wednesday, August 18, 2010

I really hope this is a fluke...

Charlotte does this thing where she sleeps great for a month, or maybe 6 weeks, and then she spends a week or two waking up at in the middle of the night or at 5 am, and taking forever to go back to sleep.  I'm grateful that she sleeps so well at night the majority of the time, but her disrupted nights are always timed REALLY badly.

Last night Charlotte woke up at 4:45...or at least, that's when I heard her.  I went in and put her in a dry pull-up, got her a sip of water, and rubbed her back for a few minutes.  At that point, it was pretty clear to me that she was bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, and totally perky for waking up 3 hours early.  I went back to bed in the faint hope that she'd fall asleep easier if I wasn't there to talk to.  HA!

She finally got up at 7:30 this morning, but the time between 4:45 and 7:30 was the same as it usually is - Charlotte was in bed and talking, and I was dozing in my bed and going in there every so often to ask her to PLEASE stop kicking the wall/bouncing on the bed/laughing so loud.  On the one hand, it is awesome that she can amuse herself so thoroughly using just her imagination and her stuffed animals.  On the other hand, OMG, she needs to sleep.  Plus, *I* need to sleep, and I always have these weird dreams when I'm dozing that feel like I've been asleep for hours, when really it's just been 10 minutes.  I think Charlotte finally conked out from 6 to 7, but was up and chattering again by 7:15.  I went to bed late last night, and I think that I really did only get 4 hours of uninterrupted sleep last night, with another 2 1/2 hours of heavily interrupted sleep.

Is it any wonder I measure my coffee consumption in pots, not cups, these days?

Tuesday, August 17, 2010

QOTD: Iguanodon = Goat, Brachiosaurus = Sheep

Charlotte:  Ah, Ah, A.  A is for Iguanodon.

Mama:  Well, that sounds very close.  Actually, Iguanodon starts with I.

Charlotte:  I saw Iguanodon at the zoo.

Mama:  Oh?

Charlotte:  And I fed it corn in my hand and then there was no more corn.  And then I fed a Brachiosaurus and it was too tall.  You held me in your hands and I fed the Brachiosaurus and a T. Rex.  At the zoo.

Saturday, August 7, 2010

Trying not to jinx it...

..Charlotte got another three gummy bears today.  She's a very regular one-a-day pooper, so I'm pretty thrilled that 2 out of the last 3 poops have been on the potty.  Slow and steady, slow and steady.

Tonight we were supposed to be camping, but I had way too much work this weekend.  Tomorrow's plans are to hit Look Park and meet some friends.  Last summer we went to the splash park there, and it was a disaster - Charlotte kept jumping around and running on the concrete, and fell and hit her head like three times in four minutes.  We were a little skeptical about trying it again, but I think she can handle it.  And if she can't, we'll threaten to leave the water and see if that helps.

Lastly, Charlotte is very interested in wearing watches - Matt just started wearing one again recently (his birthday present from me) and Charlotte loves to be like Daddy.  It's hilarious, because I think it makes her look exactly like him.

P1010697

Thursday, August 5, 2010

Big Girl Week

This week has been a really big growing up week for Charlotte.  She went to a birthday party where she didn't know most of the kids, and introduced herself to them.  She helped me babysit her cousin Gavin.

P1010717

And today, she pooped on the potty for the first time.

Big week.  Big Girl.  And yesterday, she called me Big Mama.  I am not really sure that I'm okay with the last one.

Monday, August 2, 2010

Party Central

This weekend we had two major birthday parties to attend - my nephew Gavin turned 1 (!!!) and we went to the birthday party of the aforementioned neighbor boys, who turned 2.  I was a little nervous about the twins' birthday party, for many reasons - I am shy around strangers sometimes, Charlotte is shy around strangers sometimes, most of our other birthday parties have been for family, I was a little unsure of twin gift ettiquette.  (We ended up getting them 2 birthday cards at my extreme insistence....I was very happy about that.)  The plus side to the twin birthday party was that it was literally right in our backyard, so if it got too overwhelming (for anyone) we could just go home, 1 or 2 or all of us.  We ended up having a great time, and stayed 'til the bitter end.  Bitter for Charlotte, that is.  She had such a good time that she cried when we left, and this morning, she wanted to go back outside to the party first thing.  She was temporarily bummed that it wasn't there, but I think also a little bit relieved and ready for some quiet play in her room.

One of the funniest things is that we met another Charlotte at the party.  (reminded me of Oz & Axel meeting the Other Axel a few weeks ago!)  Our Charlotte had a brief encounter with  a much older Charlotte before, but it didn't even register to our little girl.  Last night I talked with the other Charlotte's mother about the whole Charlotte thing.  "Does she have a nickname?" asked the other mom, with a kind of wince face...I could tell she knew what I was going to say.

"We ended up calling her Char, which wasn't the plan beforehand," I replied.  She sighed.

"Yeah, us too."

It was funny, because I could just tell that she was like Matt....not thrilled with the idea of Char as a nickname ahead of time...and he's still not sold on it, except that it really suits her.  And Char-Char (Shar-Shar phonetically, I guess, but that just looks weird) when she was littler.  I had always pushed for Charlie, but it just doesn't flow naturally with the "Sh" in Charlotte.  We do call her "Sharlie" to tease her sometimes, but she always says, "Nooooo!"

The other thing I mentioned to Charlotte's mom was how Charlotte is kind of confused about the fact that her name starts with the letter C, but not the letter C sound.  And it's not even a CH sound, like chair or chocolate, so it's an exception of an exception.  Eventually it will make sense to her, but for right now, it's a little confusing, and totally something I didn't even anticipate.

So, like I said, great parties, and fun with other kids.  I'll add pictures later.