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.

July is almost over...

...and we don't yet have a sign of Baby W, my niece/nephew who was due, ahem, yesterday. My sister is getting just a wee bit impatient. The other two summer babies in my extended friends/acquaintances have joined us. Oz over at Knocked Up had her second son, Jonas, and my friend Kevin just welcomed his daughter this evening. I am not telling my sister Nicole about Kevin's happy news, though...she knows that his wife was due 2 weeks from now, and I don't think she could stand to know that S went early.



(my sister and I - she's at 39 weeks and 2 days in this picture, and you can't even tell!)

This summer has been ridiculously busy. I've been meaning to post about some of our excursions, and Charlotte's blossoming vocabulary, and the trials and tribulations of working from home with a busy toddler, but I'm starting to accept that I might never get to all of it.

I'll end with a quick picture of Charlotte from last weekend - we went to the Glasgowlands Highland Games here at Look Park, Florence MA. Matt's parents met us there, and we had a blast. Matt wore his kilt - inspiring my favorite quote of the day from Charlotte: "Daddy have tutu!"



(Charlotte in the stroller at the games)

Frustrated.

I am deciding that I'm tired of all the negativity and scare tactics surrounding parenting media. I love Babble.com more than any other "parenting" site out there, but I am getting frustrated with the tone in the Strollerderby blog section. Everything is kind of tossed off casually and carelessly, with an eye to the most controversial story and thing to say. Luckily people are starting to come down on the bloggers in the comments, but I'm a little irritated. I have more specific things to say on this, but I'll get to it later.

Same thing with the attachment parenting group on LiveJournal. Super-strict definitions about what it means to be AP, with all these weird sub-sets that have nothing to do with actual attachment parenting. Panicky posts on vaccination campaigns and hysterical posts about how to talk to a friend who formula feeds. Here's a hint people - everyone friggin' knows that breast is best. What do you think a mom is going to say if you say to her, "You know, breastfeeding really is the best way to feed your child..." Do you think she's going to say, "Wow, no one has ever told me that before!" I can't believe that there is so little critical thought out there.

I don't know, I'm just tired and lonely.

And why can't I find any more summer shoes for my kid? I just want a pair of sandals in size 4! There's still a full month of summer left, not to mention that September in Massachusetts is really hot.

I just found these baby boots on Old Navy - cute or hooker? I can't decide.