Charlotte’s mind and personality have been blowing me away recently. I’m so obsessed with her!
{Not in the mood to take her monthly photo.}
**The other night, after dinner, we were playing in the living room. As it started to get closer to bath time, I took your shoes off. I set them to the side of the couch to put away later. A couple minutes went by and you noticed the shoes. You picked them up and walked off to your room. I peered around the corner and could see you at your closet door trying to open it. After a couple attempts you managed to slide the door open and then tried your hardest to put your shoes on your shoe shelf. Unfortunately the shelf is a little too high for your reach, but it was still the cutest thing.
**You’ve really started to hug us around the neck when we’re holding you. I love the feeling of your tight little grasp.
**Our kitchen (and bathroom) drawers aren’t able to be baby proofed properly because of their depth which turns out to be a-okay with you. This allows you to rifle through the kitchen drawers constantly so we keep them empty except for some kitchen towels and oven mitts. She takes the towels out and put the oven mitts on her hands (they go all the way up to her shoulders). I’ve never put them on her before, she’s just seen me do it and knows that’s where they go.
**You still wake up very perturbed about 80% of the time (from naps and just waking up in the morning). We haven’t been able to figure out why. Teething? Pain? Bad dream? Hot/cold? You don’t really want to be awake? You were startled awake?
**You LOVE to make a mess of things. You’ll dump all my bobby pins on the floor, then put them away (usually just 2-3, not all 100+ of them). For every one you put away, you clap while keeping the straightest face and looking at me expectantly for applause.
**When you wake around 6/630am, I usually bring you into bed with us. You’ll lie there for about 5 minutes until you’re bored, then you demand that you be let off the bed so you can start rifling through my nightstand. As I’m laying in bed, sleepily watching, you hand me e.v.e.r.y. single item in the drawer. I have to accept the item though. If I just lay there and watch you, you move the item closer and closer to my face. I then take the item and lay it down 2 inches from where your hand was holding it out to me and this seems to satisfy you. (I’ve since put all contents of my nightstand in a box on my dresser. I’m hoping we can wait it out for 1-2 months and you’ll get tired of opening the empty nightstand drawers so I can eventually put my items back where they belong. I’m sure this won’t work and you’ll rediscover everything once I put the items back.)
**Speaking of your wake-up time, no matter how early I go to bed I never feel like I got enough sleep by the time you’re ready to get up. I’m always clinging to those last few moments of rest/sleep.
**When we say “Do you hear (the doggy)?” or “What do you hear?” you always point to your ear.
**Whenever you get a hold of one of our phones, you put it up to your ear and start talking.
**You still get startled when you hear the key in the door lock when daddy gets home. Once you’ve climbed into my lap and have your eyes on the door, you start smiling before you even see him because you know it’s him. As soon as you spot him, you look for a toy to give him all while telling him about your day.
** You’ve recently started taking paper towels out of my hand and wiping the floor (something you see done at least 3 times a day under your high chair after you’re done eating).
**Sesame Street is the bomb.com. You LOVE it and insist that we put it on by grabbing the remote and pointing to the TV. We try not to make it a habit and we try to put parameters on your watching it (i.e. you can’t watch Sesame Street while you’re eating in your high chair), but at the same time we need to get things done.
**You HATE getting water in your eyes. During bath time, if any water makes it to your eyes, you let your frustration be known. So, you still get a bath in your own little tub so you can lean back in order for us to rinse your hair. Luckily this tub is supposed to be good for you until you’re 2. We’ll see what happens at that point. We tried this, but as you do with EVERYTHING that is on your head, you ripped it right off.
**We got you a potty in the hopes that potty training is around the corner. You peed in it once. You prefer to stand in it, climb on it and move around it. We’ll visit that milestone later.
**You are slowly getting the hang of riding on our shoulders. You still lean back and want off shortly after we put you up, but we’re getting longer stretches of you riding so maybe we’re turning the corner on this.
**You have no awareness of the danger of the pool/water which kinda sorta TOTALLY freaks us out. When we’re at our community pool, and one of us is in the water waiting for you, you will literally walk off the edge with no hesitancy. On one hand I guess it’s good because you’re not afraid of the water, so we don’t have to deal with that. On the other hand, it’s not good because you really don’t understand the danger of the water since you don’t know how to swim yet.
**You don’t sleep with any hair barrettes or rubber bands, so when you wake in the morning, you’re hair is going every which way, typically into your eyes. You are so cute with pushing it back, away from your face. Soon it will be long enough for you to tuck behind your ears.
**You point at everything. Sometimes it’s nothing, sometimes it’s something.
**You have SO much to say!! You will have conversations with us, with hand gestures and voice inflections. We’ll ask you questions and you’ll tell us more. It’s soooooo cute, but I just wish we knew what you were saying.
**Speaking of more, you love to sign “more.” It only took 6 months of Grandma consistently doing it with you for you to finally pick it up :)
**You like to make sounds with your mouth open then put the palm of your hand to your mouth over and over so you can hear the different sounds you make. It’s kind of like you’re having your own pow-wow.