Retroactive Post: 5th Birthday!

Family party, the day before:

More later.

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.

It's my party and...there were no tears at all. Awesome.

The party was great - despite the fact that we were in a tropical air mass and it poured buckets and 20+ people were squished into my living room/dining room area. But we were all family (even our best friends count as family, even if Kelly refuses the honorary "aunt" title), and everyone stayed pretty cheerful. Charlotte was an excellent co-hostess - she mingled with everyone, and also provided entertainment. She danced and clapped whenever she heard anything resembling music, and she was appreciative of all the gifts and attention. I didn't take any video, because my camera only holds 2 min before it maxes out the memory card, but my brother and his fiancee just bought a camcorder to use on their honeymoon, and Chris taped it and copied it for me. I can't believe we finally have an actual family video! We joked about how it will be hilarious in 15 years when Charlotte makes fun of us for having an actual VHS tape, and we will still make fun of my Uncle Scott for raving about Mamma Mia and how he went to see it three times.

One of my favorite pictures actually isn't from the party - it's Charlotte on Sunday morning realizing that her Uncle Chris is still at the apartment with us.



We get to do this again, a smaller, more exclusive party with my sister-in-law, brother-in-law, Charlotte's paternal grandparents, and her cousin. I am actually super-psyched for that, drama-be-damned. I can't wait to have the cousins together partying it up. Hopefully the almost-eight-year-old's patience will continue to hold, and maybe Charlotte being excited about presents will melt her grandmother. My fingers are duly crossed.

Weekend. (Not this one, the last one.)

This is the entry I started about last weekend, before I got sucked into more family drama. This afternoon Matt is over at my sister's house doing laundry and re-arranging the basement so we can store more stuff down there when we move again, which is in just about four weeks. Eep! Charlotte is napping, and I'm simultaneously working, blogging, and making some baby food. Rice and peas, and beets, if you were wondering. Carrots, too, if I have time, and maybe some israeli couscous tabouli (minus tomatoes) for myself if I get to it.

Last weekend we went to a housewarming, and got brunch.



I'm getting blase about letting Charlotte eat bits of people's bread products. At the housewarming party I gave Charlotte a tiny piece of some sweet coffee cake type of bread, and also some hamburger bun.


(picture taken by our friend Jen)

There was another baby at the party, and Charlotte chased him around and tried to take his toys and use him to pull herself up. E is a new walker, so Charlotte chasing him on all fours was actually kind of a close race. E's parents don't have any friends with kids, so we had a pretty intense hour of talking about babies and kids and toys and all that.

Sunday we went out for brunch, well, breakfast, and Charlotte got to have some pancake, which she greatly enjoyed. The rest of the day was kind of a was - we were all three cranky and we went to a friend's house to do laundry but the power went out, and there was such a big storm and so much traffic that we didn't go grocery shopping...but we had a nice brunch.



This past week was Shark Week on the Discovery channel, something I loved forever - I remember watching Shark Week with my grandfather years ago, and him telling me about some sharks he saw on the air craft carrier that he'd been on in the Korean War. Matt and I watch the new episodes when we can, though we are both disappointed that good ol' documentaries have gotten taken over by more reality-style and list-style shows. Top 10 this, When Sharks attack that...I just want some Nova style shark info. Though I did love the Dirty Jobs episode about searching for Greenland sharks up in the Hudson Bay.

Here is Charlotte, ready for Shark Week with her new jammies.

Charlotte's fan club

This past weekend Charlotte and I had two parties - on Saturday my brother and his fiancee had a big "bridal barbeque" (or, you know, a cook-out) and my friend Kelly had her bridal shower on Sunday. Chris and Megan live out in the Syracuse area, and so do Megan's parents, so they had the party in their very large, very nice backyard. Matt, Charlotte and I went out on Friday so we could settle in a little and visit before it got too crazy. Megan's parents, Bruce and Carla, were so psyched to see Charlotte - it's gonna be a while before Chris and Megan make them grandparents, and Megan's brother is even younger, so Charlotte's all the grandbaby they're gonna get for now. They were awesome and Charlotte warmed right up to all the gushy attention.

Matt and I had been looking forward to this party for a number of reasons: pig roast, hanging out with Bruce and Carla, seeing my family, playing outside, firepit, booze, etc...but one of the other things we were looking forward to was hanging out with other babies. I think I've mentioned it before, but Matt and I don't have any close friends with babies - we know some people who have just started having babies, but no one in our immediate circle of friends has kids. Chris and Megan's friends are on a completely different timetable, so there were two kids there who were pretty close to Charlotte's age. Conner, who is 13 months, and Lucas, who is two weeks younger than Charlotte. Matt and I were looking forward to seeing her play with them and just to talk to other people who are (hopefully) as obsessed with their kids as we are with ours.

All the parents were really cool, but since Conner's mom was the matron of honor and had other duties to attend to, we mostly hung out with Lucas's parents. Lucas and Charlotte were kind of fascinated with each other. Mostly Charlotte, I will admit. Lucas's Mom, MK, watches her sister's kids, so Lucas is used to other kids. Charlotte kept pointing at him and looking at me, like, "Holy shit, look at the baby!" She also would pat his arm, and he would smile at her and me. It was truly cute. However, when it came to toys, Charlotte was much more ambitious. She went after the older baby's toys. She particularly loved his little push n' sit whatever mickey mouse thing - Conner liked to push it around, and maybe ride it. Charlotte was obsessed with all the buttons, particularly the silly little shifter. Her uncle Josh is happy with this - he thinks she might be into performance automotives. I think he's already preparing to teach her to drive standard and help her find a rally car.



We got lots of compliments on how cute Charlotte is, which is always sweet, but does leave me feeling a little weird sometimes. She was also complimented for being "good" and friendly, which sits a little better. I don't know - I know that she's just a little baby, and there isn't a whole lot to comment on, but I really wish we could avoid the whole thing where girls always get complimented on their looks. I just worry about body image and things like that so much - yeah, she's only 10 months old now, but where is the line, and when do we cross it? I'll save that worry for another day, I guess.

The other fun thing about hanging out with other babies was the whole sharing of stuff - Charlotte played with Conner's toys, MK borrowed our umbrella stroller to wheel Lucas around to convince him to sleep, we all shared high chairs. I'm such a dork, but it made me happy.


(Charlotte and Matt playing with MK and Lucas)

Sunday my sister and I headed out from Syracuse with Charlotte to go to Kelly's bridal shower. It was hot and weird and altogether a little harder to get excited about that party - we were tired and partied out, though it was nice to see Kelly's future-sisters-in-law. They and her future mother-in-law are awesome people, and Charlotte did enjoy sitting with T and D, and also watching Kelly's "niece" Sadie, who is either 3 or 4, I forget. T had actually given us Sadie's old car seat, which we just installed last week, and we love it. Somehow, even though it looks much bigger, it takes up less room in the car. And it has armrests and Charlotte looks so silly and grown-up in it, just casually draping her arm over the armrest.

The party was lovely and kind of elegant, but there were a lot of people I didn't know and Charlotte got hot and cranky and refused to drink anything even though she was pouring sweat. She then took a sip of my lemonade and spilled it all over herself, so it was time to go. We wrapped up the trip with a wardrobe change, and we took off for home.

We have four more parties this summer - holy crap.

Oh, and we did finally find a sunblock. JASON umbrella mineral sunblock, SPF 30. It smells fruity, but she wore it all weekend without a rash, through about 5 different applications. My one complaint is that if it gets supersaturated and stops rubbing in, it gets all over clothes, and doesn't actually absorb into them, but I guess that is kind of the whole point, right? And it's not JASON's fault that all my clothes are black.


(Here's Charlotte in the pool that Carla got for her and the other babies. Charlotte was the only one who actually went swimming, and she would have stayed there forever, even though she was covered in goosebumps!)