Sunday, October 31, 2010

Saturday, October 30, 2010

QOTD: Spooner said what?

"It's the Great Charlie, Pumpkin Brown!"  repeated three times...heh. Matt couldn't tell what was wrong the first two times.

(Okay, so not quite a spoonerism, but still cute.)

Go Ask Alice.





Despite the evidence to the contrary, Charlotte is not going to be Alice in Wonderland for Halloween.  She still wants to be a witch.  Though last night she said she was going to be Cinderella.  But we're right back at witch this morning.  Thank goodness, because we already have a witch costume.  And an awesome broom.  I figure if she starts to waver towards Cinderella, we can pull the broom out and remind her of how cool it is and that Cinderella doesn't carry a broom (actually, that's patently untrue, but I'm not sure that she'd remember that in time to make a convincing argument).

In other news, Charlotte is recovering from a cold and being a huge pain in the neck.  Here are some facebook status updates from yesterday:

11:48 am -

You know your kid is three when you specifically tell them that you are happy that the crayons didn't roll into the baseboard, because the heater is on and that would make a mess.....and five minutes later, she's put all the crayons in the baseboard. Groan.


2:15 ish pm - 

In the ongoing saga of I-need-a-vacation, Charlotte just came out of her room during "nap" with a mouthful of toy food saying, "I need to throw up," and spitting out her fake food. I did not laugh, but it is pretty freaking funny. This is my punishment for laughing at a puke joke 2 weeks ago.


10:55 pm - 

I know today has been rather Charlotte-heavy, but I'd like you all to know that the hilarious child is STILL AWAKE. Luckily, I'm still up and working and just monitoring from the living room, but seriously? Really?


11:16 pm - 

...and she's finally asleep. Phew.

Thursday, October 28, 2010

QOTD: I think the word you are looking for is "damn."

Allow me to set the scene - Charlotte has been sick since Monday...running a fever, runny nose, no appetite.  She's definitely feeling better, but she's eating so little that it's making us nuts.  It's hard to recover from a cold when you don't fuel your body!  One of the things we have done before is once she starts to perk up a little, we order some chicken and fries and try to bribe her into eating more calories.  3 out of 4 times, this works.  Tonight it did not.  

So, we're at dinner, and Matt realizes that Charlotte is not going to eat her chicken, no matter what he asks.  (The fries and roasted broccoli & cauliflower, she did eat.) 

Matt:  Well, that's a crying shame.

Charlotte:  Aw, no, Daddy.  That's a happy shame!

Tuesday, October 19, 2010

A Mother's Curse

It's a cliche, but it's happened to me.  You know how at least one point in your teenage existence you are screaming at your mother and she comes back with, "When you grow up, I hope you have a daughter just like you!"?  Well, that is, apparently, the story of my life.

I am talking, again, as usual, about sleep.  Or lack of sleep.  Ever since we instituted a bedtime routine at 11 months, going to bed has not been Charlotte's problem.  It's been falling asleep at bedtime, or waking frequently, or staying up once she wakes in the middle of the night.  I am continually grateful that we can put her to bed at bedtime and she stays in bed, and (usually) falls asleep quickly and without fuss.  (Dudes, I am knocking wood SO HARD right now.)  Every now and then she'll have trouble falling asleep at bedtime, and we recently took all the books out of her room and moved them to a bookshelf in the hall, which helped immensely with that.  She was staying up to read, rather than going straight to bed. (*cough*justlikehermother*cough*)

Once we took the books out, we thought we were golden.  Every so often Charlotte will go through a cycle where she wakes frequently in the night.  But this past week it's been BRUTAL.  She will wake up and then be up for HOURS playing, bouncing, making lots of noise.  If we didn't live in an apartment complex (luckily her room shares a wall with a laundry room and we're in the basement, meaning we have just the neighbors above us) I would probably just be able to ignore it, but as it is, she really can't be shouting at 3 am.  Even if she's kind of hilariously shouting, "I'm late! I'm late! For a very important date!"


I think the next step, as much as I'm dreading it, is to take the extraneous toys out of her room, so if she wakes up in the middle of the night, she falls back asleep out of sheer boredom.  Charlotte is not going to like this plan, but she needs to sleep!  If she won't take a nap, then she needs a solid 12 hours at night.  A kid her age really needs to get that much sleep.  I told my friend Morgan last week that Charlotte has bags under her eyes like a college freshman during mid-terms week.  And I wasn't exaggerating.

Monday, October 18, 2010

Hawaii

Charlotte loves Hawaii.  I almost have no idea how this happened.  She saw an episode of Imagination Movers that involved Nina returning to Hawaii for a family party.  The show covered all the basic Hawaii themes - hula, surfing, island....and Charlotte ate it up.  She especially loved the little hula primer (Nina demonstrates the hand movements for house & ocean) and tried to teach everyone she met how to do it for the next month.

yes, this is Charlotte's hula outfit. Tutu, slippers, and  too-small winter hat. I added the halter top for modesty's sake.


After that episode I decided to try her out again on Lilo & Stitch (Disney movie set in Hawaii).  There is some shooting of lasers in it, which sorta bugs me for a 3 yr old, but she'd seen lasers on Wall-E (Matt's choice), so I decided to give it a try.  Disney is very good at not showing person on person shooting.  ANYHOO, she loved Lilo & Stitch and we started listening to the Lilo & Stitch soundtrack constantly.  As a result, Charlotte now also loves Elvis.

Charlotte said, "I'm Elvis!"

After that, Charlotte moved on to books.  When I told her one day that we were going to the library tomorrow, she said, "Want a Hawaii book!"  I had to look online...hard to find a children's picture book about Hawaii on short notice, but we found Dear Katie, The Volcano IS a Girl.  It's written by Jean Craighead George (who wrote my favorite all time book, My Side of the Mountain ) and illustrated by Daniel Powers.  It is, as you might expect, about Pele.  

Charlotte also looked at pictures of my sister-in-law, brother-in-law and nephew in Hawaii, as their vacation started up about the same time as her obsession.  In fact, at the site of the first picture, Charlotte even said, "Is that Hawaii?"  Oceans & palm trees will do that.

She's gotten some Hawaii-themed gifts for her birthday.  A grass skirt and some leis from her Grammy, a book and shirt brought back from Hawaii from her aunt & uncle.

I'm clearly excited about the white rabbit.

The whole thing is adorable.  I love these kicks she gets on.  Now to start saving for airfare...

Friday, October 15, 2010

Not the best way to start a Friday.

Charlotte was up from 2 am to 6:30 am.  Some of it was cheerful, "Mom! Mom! Mom! Can you wrap Tigger*?" and some of it was tearful.  I got up the first 4 times (it was a trade-off long ago that I'd get up with Charlotte at night if Matt would be 100% in charge of the litterbox), but I started kind of falling apart around 5 am.  I couldn't separate my dreams from my awake time.  At one point, I thought Charlotte was shouting through the baby monitor, "Mom! I need more Tim Gunn!"  When I begged Matt to go in and help her, I finally realized that she was saving, "I need more Velveteen Rabbit!"  I guess I was feeling guilty for DVRing Project Runway and then deleting it before Charlotte watched it.

Now it's 8:46, and Charlotte's still asleep, and Matt's leaving for work.  Usually, no matter how little sleep she got, we wake her when Matt leaves.  We have found that Charlotte flips her lid if she wakes up and Daddy is already gone.  It totally messes with her head for HOURS.  Today though, she's only been asleep for about 2 hours.  There's gonna be hell to pay when I finally DO get her up, but I'm not going to wake her intentionally until at least 10:30.  If Charlotte wakes up before then, so be it, but I can't really look forward to a day of no television and that little sleep.

* Sometimes her best buddy Tigger likes to be swaddled. He's still a very young Tigger, you see, and he finds it comforting.  I guess.

Wednesday, October 13, 2010

Tuesday, October 12, 2010

Tuesday is just Monday 2.0.

Mondays after busy/good weekends are always a little rough.  Charlotte misses her daddy when he goes to work, and after having a long weekend away with family, she was particularly sad to see him go this morning.  I had also decided that Charlotte was gonna be TV-free this week.  She's been asking to watch TV pretty much constantly lately, and when it's on, she just spaces out.  It was starting to freak me out.  So I declared this week a TV vacation.  And in the interest of fairness, I declared it a Facebook-free week for myself as well.  Facebook is my space out vice...and while I can't really swear off the internet as a whole, I can definitely take out the biggest time-waster.

Charlotte did a great job with no TV today, which was fab.  She had some trouble early in the day, but I set her down with some of her new toys (and new-to-her hand me downs).  She rocks.

I made Charlotte some octo-dogs for lunch, and she refused to eat them - citing both that they were "too silly" and "too funny."  I totally suspect that I may have a vegetarian on my hands.  Once she figures out that her bacon is cute pigs and her "chicken and fries!" is silly chickens, we may shift this family into 2 out of 3 vegetarians.

Monday, October 11, 2010

Whew!

It has been crazier and crazier, and wilder and wilder over here.  But awesome, also.  In the last few weeks, we've:

* had a lovely family birthday party in our apartment back yard, with Charlotte's grandparents, aunts & uncles

* gone to the Boston Childrens' Museum

* took the T to the Childrens' Museum (that really does get its own entry)

* had a birthday party for Charlotte with her friends, again in our back yard

* had ANOTHER birthday celebration on vacation with Matt's family in the Berkshires


Next up is Halloween.  Charlotte has lots of plans, involving her dressing as a witch, me dressing as a pumpkin, Matt dressing as a bat, and lots of trick or treating and decorations.  Can't wait!