Little boy walking

Charlie officially took his first steps on Easter Sunday. Since then he's improved a great deal, but it's a little funny how inconsistent he is. Some days he doesn't seem to want to walk more than 3 or 4 steps, other days he walks across the entire room without hesitating. Friday I took him to his ECFE class, and I think he was showing off - he crawled once the entire time!

Throughout this process, we've been trying to capture his steps on video. Here's a montage of our best efforts over the last month:

Last day of school/the cocoon

Yesterday was Zach's last day of preschool (the first year anyway!). They celebrated with a program on Wednesday night where Zach's class performed The Very Hungry Caterpillar, by Eric Carle. Zach played the cocoon. If you've got two minutes or so, check out this stellar production:





^The cocoon awaiting his cue.


^ The cocoon in action; the cocoon and all the food the caterpillar ate.


^ The preschoolers performing "The 12 Eggs of Easter"

We parents were invited to partake in some activities on his last day, so Charlie and I got to see Zach in action with his buddies:


^ Zach & Mia (his "giggle buddy"); doing the limbo


^ Zach and Landon showing their moves; our little monkey


^A game of chase with Landon; Zach and Amalie


^ Saying good-bye to Mrs. Hulse; potting a flower with Seanna


^ The 3 boys in a class of 18!

And here is our guy on his FIRST day of preschool... what a difference a school year makes!

Dinghy

As I mentioned before, we've been having some challenges with Zach. One of the main issues is his newly-perfected art of name-calling. He'll call anyone and anything a name, whether it's me, Charlie, the dog, a tree, a ball... whatever. And the names aren't even necessarily bad, although we've certainly heard some doozies. Half the time he makes the "name" up.

So needless to say, we've had some conversations about this. He knows, and will tell you, it's not nice to call people names. But in the heat of the moment, he just forgets, I guess. So we were having the conversation once again, while he was a captive audience in the car. After I explained one more time, why we don't call people names, this was his response:

"But mom, if I was talking to a boat, I could call it a dinghy."

What was I supposed to say to that????

13 months

The Charliebug is 13 months today. Already into his second year of life...

Charlie really seems ready to take on the world these days. He gets into everything, and he's darn quick (more on that later). He has taken cans, bottles, granola bars and more off the lower shelves of my pantry, anything he can lift out of cabinets (post-it notes are great fun), and find the smallest speck of lint on any floor. When left alone in the bathroom with an open toilet for approximately 2.3 seconds, he managed to get about 8 squares of toilet paper into the toilet. He's an explorer, that's for sure.

That's cornmeal on his nose and lips in the picture below; after he managed to pry the lid off the canister while I thought he was safely playing in the "baby-proofed" pantry.

Charlie seems very close to walking; he stands on his own for a long time, and can get himself into a standing position with the slightest thing to push himself up on (even a book!). He officially took his first steps on Easter Sunday, and has repeatedly taken 2 or 3 steps at a time to get from the ottoman to the couch, or from me to Scott. But that's about all he wants to do!

Perhaps he doesn't want to walk because he's so darn fast when he crawls. And yes, he is still doing his special crawl, although we're noticing more of a traditional crawl when he's on the carpet. He saves the one-legged crawl for when he can slide the leg on the hardwood floor and really get some speed. Or the driveway... his pants are going to be worn out very oddly. My dad took this video a few weeks ago - I think it's a pretty good illustration of how quickly he can get from point A to point B.



So yes, we still spend a lot of time walking around the house with him holding onto our fingers - not the best for our backs, but he loves it. I truly hope he walks soon though... now that we're finally having some spring-like weather, I'd like to be outside with Charlie without thinking about all the things he's crawling through and on before his fingers inevitably end up in his mouth. Yuck.

Let's see, what else. I mentioned in a different post how much Charlie loved the play/musical Pinkalicious. He tends to have the same reaction every time he hears music - he grins and starts doing his own "Charlie-dance." I've tried to capture it many, many times, especially once when he was doing his moves while Zach was hammering out a beat on my tupperware. But he always stops when he sees the video camera! What you see at the beginning of the video below is his dance; I caught a little bit of it at our ECFE class last week. He was really boogie-ing away that day, completely entertaining all the other moms. :)

Sleep-wise, I have been tempted many, many times to get out some graph paper and see what this boy's waking times look like when charted. I've resisted the urge so far, but I am imagining that the graph would look like a roller coaster. For a while we had those lovely 4:30 AM wakings, then it progressively got a little later until he was sleeping as late as 7 AM. Then it started creeping earlier again, and now we've been in a holding pattern around 5 - 5:30. Good thing I'm a morning person, I guess.

We're hearing a constant stream of babble now too. Lots of interesting sounds, and occasionally we think we've heard a certain word ("all done"!), but I'm not ready to say Charlie has uttered his first official word. Soon, though I suspect.

Charlie definitely wants to play with the big kids too - he loves it when the neighbors come over. If he's inside, he'll go to the screen door and stand and watch them, squealing and laughing and babbling at them. If he's outside - he gets right in the middle of the game, laughing and talking to his friends. We keep telling him you have to walk before you can play kickball, but that doesn't seem to stop him.

Charlie "celebrated" his 13th month of life with a nice injury to his face this morning. Sigh. I have learned my lesson - the wooden "percussion instruments" (basically thick sticks you bang together or rub against each other to make various noises) have been hidden for a while. Charlie gave Zach quite the whack on the top of his foot - the bony part... ouch! Zach hesitated for a second, while crying, but before I could get there he'd delivered the retaliatory smack to the face with the spine of the book he was reading. Fortunately it was a paperback...

I know there's lots more of this coming, so I guess I should be happy it took 13 months.

I'll close by asking - has anyone ever seen a baby do this:

A lot? In addition to standing on his head, which I mentioned earlier, he often stops mid-crawl to put his head down, a lot of times with his hands on his head like this. Isn't he a little young for migraines???

Comparently,

A few Zach tidbits...

There are times when I have to look away and take a deep breath in order to not crack up at something Zach says. I had this experience the other day when Zach came to tell me that the audio book he was listening to wasn't working. With this incredibly serious face, he said: "Mom, comparently, this cd doesn't work." We got distracted by something, so he had to repeat it, again with a really serious, strong emphasis on the word "comparently." I couldn't bear to tell him he probably meant "apparently."

As I've mentioned before, we're quite proud of Zach's reading ability. So it was a good moment when the teacher's aide at Zach's school told me that when the teacher is about to read a book, she shows it to the kids and asks them what they think it's about. But first she has to say "not you Zach;" he has to wait until the other kids get a chance to guess before he reads the title! :)

Zach's math skills are also coming along. This fascinates me, since I do whatever I can to avoid numbers and math (it's a cliche and I wish it wasn't true). But Scott and I were both quite impressed, and frankly surprised, when he used some logic for addition that we didn't know he was capable of. He was doing the activities on a restaurant placemat, and had to add 5 + 6. He quickly came up with 11, and said he knew that because 6 is one bigger than 5, and 5 + 5 is 10.

As impressive as we thought that was, about 2 minutes later he claimed that 1+3 was 3. He does that a lot - handles big questions easily, then seems to forget that 1+1=2, something we know he knows! I suspect it's all about attention span.

I took the boys to a children's play last week, one called Pinkalicious. It's a book that we have read and Zach really likes, so I was pretty excited that a local children's theater was putting it on. Well, excited and nervous - I really had no idea how Charlie would do. So I packed a bag full of snacks (against the rules, but you gotta do what you gotta do!), books, and quiet toys. I was thrilled when 10 minutes into the show, Zach turned to me and said "Mom, this is really great!" And I didn't need anything to entertain Charlie - he was bouncing on my lap, swaying and clapping to the music, looking around in astonishment every time the audience applauded. Yes, it helped that it was a 55 minute show, but I was ridiculously happy with the experience!

Zach has been playing alot with some of the neighbor kids, 4 in particular. They are all older than him; 2 sisters and 2 brothers. It has been... interesting to watch how this has impacted him. He has learned all sorts of new words, phrases, and even tones of voice. As perhaps is always the case, the things he is picking up on and adopting aren't necessarily the best parts of these very nice neighbor kids... sigh. I just keep hoping much of this is a stage: the poop/butt humor (including one of the new words he learned - butthole), the shockingly snarky tone, the back-talk. Whew. And I hope the weather gets better; we have one restless kid when he can't go outside and play kickball with his friends!

The picture (only one, haven't taken many lately) is of a phenomenon that makes me laugh - how much Zach loves any toy that belongs to Charlie. In that picture he's playing with the tub toys that Charlie got in the mail for his birthday. I guess it's proof he can race anything!

Our family

When we had Charlie's first birthday pictures taken, we tried to get some of the of the whole family. I know there's a lot to see here, but there were so many good ones! My absolute favorites are the big ones at the top.

I know I'm biased, how do you not LOVE this face:






These pictures were taken by Missy of Melissa Rose Photography. You may remember some of the beautiful pictures Missy took of the boys last fall. Well, I finally did what I've been wanting to do - had one of my favorites turned into a canvas. And I LOVE it - check out how great it looks!!! A fantastic piece of art on our walls!