I Like Eggs. The Plastic Kind.

We were in Charleston over Easter weekend, and my mom got the great idea of giving Charley a colander full of plastic Easter eggs. That's pretty much all she played with all weekend.


Here are some other images from the weekend.

We fed the geese, ducks, turtles, and fish some cornbread.

Charley and some of her cousins on Easter Sunday.Charley and her Frenchiemama.

Congratulations to Amy and Peter who were married on the 11th! It was a beautiful wedding, and we are so happy for the two of them!

Makin' Cookies

I guess anyone who thinks having their 11-month-old help with making cookies is probably a little crazy or at least ready for a big mess. My Aunt Libbie sent Charley a box of Easter goodies and one of the items was a flower-shaped cookie cutter. We made some of the cookies to send to her (Aunt Libbie) in Connecticut, and so I had Charley help with the decorating. It was a lot of fun, but indeed a mess. Even Sadie ended up with icing on her head!

This particular cookie ended up in the mouth, which I promptly yanked out (daddy finished off that cookie).

She's Crawling!

It's official. Charley's a crawlin' machine. She's been taking a few steps (crawls?) here and there this week, but yesterday she made it across the living room. It's been so fun watching her figure it out, but now the real fun begins!

Our Baby's Almost One!

Charley is 11-months-old now, and I really don't want April to come (tomorrow), because then Charley will be 1 at the "end of the month." For one more day, she will be 1 at the end of next month. Of course I am very excited about her turning one, and all of the new things she will learn and do, etc., it's just that the year has flown by and she will never be an itty baby ever again!
This month she...

• Started crawling backwards...just recently. She really can get from point A to point B in a room now, but just not very conventionally. We think she's really close!
• She started mimicking Sadie and now pants when Sadie pants, or if you say, "What does a doggy say?" she will smile and pant. We probably shouldn't egg this on too much longer, or she won't be able to get into kindergarten b/c she won't be able to say, "woof" or "bow wow."
• Charley can help put her toys away in the toy basket. I will say, "Help mommy clean up" and she will put her toys in the basket one by one. She loves it! (next month - "Help mommy load the dishwasher." ha!)
  
• She can toss a ball back and forth with us. We'll toss her a ball from the ball popper, and she will toss it back (in bounce-pass fashion...doesn't get much air time).
• We are working on getting away from the bottle. She still gets one 2-3 times a day and then a sippy 1-2 times, totaling 4 of either per day. We hope to be bottle-free by 12-13 months. It needs to be ancient history by the time little sisbro comes along.
• She had another bad cold this month. She had very high fevers for two days (103-105), and then a runny nose/stuffed up head for like 12 days. We are finally snot free! (for now). Again, no infections arose from this illness, so we are really grateful!
• Still has just 4 teeth, but the two top outside incisors are about to pop through. Should be here any day now... we think.
• Charley now plays in her crib before each nap. She will play anywhere from 15min to an hour, but usually about 25 min on average. Several times she has fallen asleep sitting up, hunched over her blankets and lap. Fortunately she's a pretty sound sleeper, so I can go in there and lay her down and tuck her in. Anyways, this playing before sleeping is definitely a new thing and good thing for her.
• At the beginning of month 10 she learned (drum roll please)... how to put her paci back in her mouth... YAY!!! I had heard that most babies could do this around seven months, so when seven, eight, nine months went past, phew! I was really ready for it. It's quite possible that she was just delayed/slow in this area, for sure, but I do wonder if some of it had to do with the paci's we were using. They are the kind that only one-way-in-is-the-right-way-in, so I borrowed a friends "doesn't matter which way they put it in" kind, and she mastered it in like a day. Needless to say, I went out and bought some of our own.
  

Here's some pictures of Charley helping mommy.

Happy Birthday, Daddy!

Donald had a birthday about three weeks ago, and yes I'm just now posting the pictures. We had a nice family night, just the three of us, with dinner at Red Robin and then cake, ice cream and presents back at the house. Charley celebrated my birthday with me when she was just a few days old, but she had to wait 11 months to celebrate with her daddy. What a difference 11 months make! My birthday equaled her sleeping (or eating) the whole day. On Donald's birthday she actually got to interact with us, sit at the table at the restaurant, play with a balloon, sing happy birthday (or at least watch mommy sing) and clap her hands (but no cake just yet!).
Charley says, "Happy Birthday, Daddy! I love you, and I love spending time with you. I love when you read to me, and tickle me and make me laugh. I love when you do your silly dances and sing your made-up songs. Thank you for helping Mommy take care of me! Thank you for telling me about Jesus and living your life to honor him (so one day, hopefully I will too!) I hope to celebrate many, many, many more birthdays with you!"

Snow Time!

It snowed last Sunday, March 1st! Charley's first snow! We took her out to see it falling, and the next morning I gave her a handful to play with off of the car.


She tucked her face in D's vest after a few minutes... Our cue to take her back inside.
Sadie loves playing in the "freaky white stuff." I know that's what she calls it.

Bath Time!

You can finally see how long her hair is in some of these pics! If I pull it down straight, it's to her nose! These pictures make me smile.