Charlotte - Weeks 44 & 45

Charlie is really starting to amaze me with how smart she's getting. She is understanding so much now and you can really tell she's just taking everything in. She has a doggy book that she loves and we keep it in a basket with her other books, so the other morning I said to her, "Go get your doggy book" and she crawled over to the basket, found the book and brought it back to me! Such a smarty pants! She LOVES dogs and goes crazy, waving her hands and squealing whenever she sees one. She gives her stuffed doggy hugs and kisses and lays her head on him all the time. It's very sweet.


As sweet as Charlie is, she's equally strong-willed and determined. Once she gets her mind on something, there's no stopping her! She will scream and thrash her body until she gets when she wants. She already wants to push the buttons on the elevator like Ruby does. Oh boy, I see a lot of fights in our future! I know I'm biased but I think she's pretty smart for a 1o month old!

Just today, she started walking behind her push toy or whatever will move (chair, hamper). She can stand alone for longer periods of time now and is perfecting the clap while standing alone. She can climb the stairs pretty fast now - we better get moving with putting a gate up!

Watching Ruby and Charlie together is a lot of fun. Now that Charlie's bigger, I can let Ruby take on more of a "hands on" roll. Ruby loves to stand Charlie up, or sit her down or do anything remotely motherly. She's a pro at making Charlie laugh and even better at making her cry. Charlie adores Ruby and it's so awesome to see how her eyes light up when Ruby comes in the room. Just about every day, Ruby says, "I'm so glad we have a baby sister." I picked up Ruby from school today and overheard her bragging to her little friend about how big Charlie is now and what she can do. So cute!

Ruby is a blast. It's almost as if the horns have slowly faded away and our fun-loving, quirky, lovable little girl is back. Boy, 3 was hard, hopefully 4 will be a little easier! She's loving the knock-knock jokes and of course, the poop jokes are still a big hit. She really seems to enjoy being a really good, helpful girl/big sister. Life is good.

Chris, Charlie and Rubes. CUTE!

Giggles galore.

Yes, she was pretending her foot was her baby. She's pretty hilarious.

Getting her hair washed before her hair cut.

Pretty girl!

I think this one might need help in the hair department soon.

Typical.

Bathing beauty.

Eating Daddy's pear.

BFFs.

Deep in breakfast conversation.

Charlie is trying SO HARD to get to Ruby's precious lego giraffes. Notice Ruby guarding them. She's also screaming, "NO CHARLIE!"

She got one.

And here we go again...

No wonder she's so hyper.

Firefighter cuties.

"The Girl Who Had Fire For Hair."

Looking so grown up!

It is impossible to get a diaper on this one now!!

Yes, I'm talking about you!

Charlotte - Weeks 42 & 43

Charlie has been growing and changing and learning in leaps and bounds these past few weeks. She is so confident with pulling herself up and sitting herself back down and standing and is also starting to cruise around furniture. She's fast! She's still doing the army crawl but a lot of the time I look over and she's in the "plank pose" so she really, really wants to be walking instead. Her bottom two teeth are all the way in and RAZOR sharp! The poor thing has had back to back double ear infections since we got back from our Canada visit but is in good spirits.

Charlie is a pretty funny baby. Her personality is really coming out and she loves to laugh as well as get a laugh. She'll play peek-a-boo with pretty much anything and especially loves it when Ruby says peek-a-BOO in her face. Aaah, the giggles! She loves looking at her doggy book. She looks at each page and each doggy intently and then violently turns the page to study the next picture. Every once in a while she'll lean in and give one of the doggies a kiss.

Charlie has an amazing appetite! Pretty much every day, Doug and I look at each other and say "should we just keep feeding her?" It's amazing to me sometimes the amount of food she'll eat in one meal. She eats more than Ruby! Luckily, she's not a picky eater so it's easy to feed her healthy, nutritious meals. This past week was the first time in a long time that I made one meal for everyone! Yay me!!

Ruby has seemed to really turn a corner and is being a great big sister. They actually play together now for short periods of time and Ruby is really great at getting Charlie to laugh or cheering her up if she's fussy in her car seat. When Ruby's in the mood, she's a great help to me too. Her favorite thing right now is playing Go Fish. We have really fun time playing it and she's good at it! Her equally favorite thing to do is play hide-and-seek, she's really good at that too and is now picking good hiding places and staying quiet until I find her. Turns out though, she really gets terrified when I jump out at her when I'm hiding behind the shower curtain. :) What? If I have to play hide-and-seek 5 ka-zillion times a day, I gotta have some fun with it, right? My favorite Ruby quote of the week is, "Mom, when can I grow up and be a mom and know everything?" Gotta love that kid!

Love these blue eyes!

Ruby fed Charlie her whole breakfast, only a couple spoon-gagging instances occurred. :)

Rock star Rubes!

Ruby loves a good puzzle!

They're playing together! They're playing together!!

The smallest book-lover of the family! Although, she likes chucking them over her shoulder better than reading them these days.

Ruby, always trying to get a giggle out of Charlie!

Big girl!!

Pretty in purple.

Hmmm, what are these things?

Canada Day donuts!

It's safe to say she liked them.

Playing Go Fish, holding her cards all by herself!

Goin' Fishin'.

Rubes with her new fishing rod. She's a pro at casting. Just don't be in a 1 mile radius!

Being so patient!

Little munchkin!

Cracking Charlie up.

Hmmmm...should I have more pears or grapes?

First time eating spaghetti! She must have picked up pointers from cousin Mae.

Bath time!

See the teeth?