ANIMALS!

Charlie had a week full of animals. He came face to face for the first time with a cat and LOVED it! I hadn't heard him shriek like that ever. He gave the poor thing no peace, following it around and shouting at it. He seems to call all small animals with 4 legs his word for dog: "guh." He and his friend Aidan visited with some fishes at the nation's most bizarre aquarium: the national aquarium. Located in the basement of the Herbert Hoover commerce office building, the national aquarium was built in 1932 and feels like it. I don't think we'll be patronizing those fish tanks again. But Aidan was nice enough to share his goldfish snacks with Charlie. And Sunday we went to the zoo. He especially loved the baby gorilla and anything in the small mammal exhibit - especially the tamarins. The pandas didn't impress him at all.

We had brunch with the moms and dads of Ian, Isaac and Aidan this weekend. Unfortunately Carlos wasn't able to join due to his trip to Vegas (poor him). In a rare instance of playing together Charlie is pushing Aidan....and then also crying together....!

It's been fun observing his language skills explode in the last month. He tries to imitate words - usually the last word in the sentence and mainly one syllable words. If I say 'do you want to get up?' he'll say 'up.' If I say 'let's go to the park,' he'll say 'bark' - which I think is his version of park. He is working on a couple of 2 syllable words including his only spanish word - agua - which sounds more like 'awa.' He calls his bottle "bobble" and of course "dada." The latter he is obsessed with recently. There are some unidentified words as well. I think "back" means 'bath' - but I'm not totally sure...

Trucks and Tractors

We managed to break the camera again. Between baby Charlie and me that camera really doesn't stand a chance. Carlos got it fixed again and so here are some recent shots. Unfortunately it needs to go back for more repairs already...

His new favorite things are TRUCKS and TRACTORS. He added 'truck' to his limited repertoire of words which includes car, ball, bye, boo, boom, hi, dog and book. Of course those words sound more like: 'kuck', 'cah', 'bal', 'ba', 'bu', 'bam', 'guh' and 'buk.'

He also likes to fit things together - lids and caps mesmerize him. In this picture he took our starbucks coffee holder and put it on his sippy cup! Another thing he has started to do is be very persistent about where he wants to go. At the park the other day he kept pointing off into the distance and saying "uh-uh-uh." I thought he just wanted me to walk him around, but he had a specific destination in mind - the smelly, dirty, dark skateboard park under the freeway! It wasn't even in sight, but he kept pointing until we got there. Today at the museum he did something similar until we ended up in front of some silly ticker tape thing. Out of the entire Natural History museum, that's what he wanted to see! Here he is at the museum with his friend Salem - who at age 2 speaks some awesome spanish and english.

Fortunately he had great care while I was in Atlanta last week. Carlos' mom came to town and took good care of him. And awhile back we enjoyed Labor Day in Cleveland with the Labor Day Olympics. I'm really hoping that next year he and cousin Wallis will be able to win all the relay events. This year he mainly enjoyed running around the tennis court while his father tried to play and playing with the filter next to the baby pool. Here he is with his future winning team-mates.

Birthday Clothes

Baby Charlie was trying on some of the clothes he got for his birthday and really liked them. He's ready for the fall with his overalls...