Happy Birthday Charlie!

Charlie turned 2 today! We started celebrating last night with a trip to Toys R Us to pick out a toy as a present. It was so fun because Charlie has never been to a big toy store and he had no idea that the toys could come out of the box or come home with us. He was content just playing with the toys in their box or picking them up for a bit and then would dutifully say "put away" and put the toy back. He did however have to touch just about everything in the store and when we finally settled on a train set he was devastated not to be able to open it until we got home. He was so excited about the trains that we were able to bribe him to eat all his broccoli by opening one piece at a time after each bite. He demanded to sleep with his trains in his crib with him.

Today we started the day with a candle in his pancake and singing happy birthday and then Sandra and Leslie arrived with more toys. He sang his version of happy birthday to himself over and over. It seems to be something like: "happy pupa, happy pupa, happy pupa"

We dined out for the special occasion at Mr. Henry's where kids eat free! He and his friend Brett love kids night and the deliciously unhealthy macaroni and cheese served. The adult food is equally unappetizing, but somehow the experience is always worth it. I guess the fact that it was tequila tuesday helped....

Nesting

Carlos and I have different versions of nesting....I've been sorting and washing Charlie's old clothes, getting the stroller and car seat ready and ordering new born diapers. Carlos' version of nesting and baby preparation includes dismantling the house. I'm just hoping that it is back in one piece by the time the baby comes.

Last weekend we took the train up to Grandma's house this weekend to give me a mental health break and give Carlos time to work on staining the stairs. Somehow my mom has amassed a treasure trove of toys including a wheelbarrow full of trains, a lawn mower that blows bubbles, two slides, two cars he can sit in, a mini-piano, two cash registers...and the list goes on. So Charlie was loved being there and I loved getting lots of rest. Here he is playing with the lawn mower. He spent most of the weekend running around naked because of the heat so this is one of the only ones in which he is decent.

Charlie loved the train and luckily we scared off any potential neighbors so we had two seats there and back. Here he is sitting on the arm rest on the way up and the two of us saying cheese on the ride back down.

My favorite part of the weekend was all his singing. He uses anything and everything has a microphone and sings loudly despite his limited repetoire ("Hello Everybody" from Music Together class, Old MacDonald and The Wheels on the Bus). Here he is freestyling on the way down to the train station. He sang the "Hello" song about everything that passed by us...while wearing my mom's sun glasses... If the video below doesn't work I also uploaded it to a web album: http://picasaweb.google.com/sgtaft/Baby23Months#

On the BB2 front - I went for another sonogram because my belly isn't big enough. I was measuring 6 cm under what I was supposed to but the baby seems to be growing in there and is estimated to already weigh 6 lbs. 3+ weeks to go...

Martha's Vineyard

We returned home yesterday from a Taft family reunion in Martha's Vineyard. It was our first trip to Martha's Vineyard and all 25+ family members stayed in a compound with cabins, a barnhouse and a cook. Charlie had a great time playing with his cousins and learned the names of almost everyone. He hasn't figured out the word "who" so instead he would ask "What's this?" when he wasn't sure of some one's name.

It was also especially nice to having wide open space so I didn't have to worry about him getting into much trouble. His all time favorite thing was the 'tractor' (lawn mower), his 2nd favorite was the ping pong table followed closely by the playroom which featured lots of crayons and a ladder to a loft. Despite being in a new place he quickly learned which was our cabin and would take off across the field past 'the casa de cousin wallis' towards ours.

It was a great location as we could easily walk to a nice beach but as I suspected having Charlie along didn't make for much of a vacation. He was up around 5am everyday! There was also a heat wave and no A/C to be found so by the end of the week I was exhausted and felt like I was hard boiling this poor baby. On Friday I was so crampy that I thought I might be giving birth on the island! Luckily we made it back with only one baby on our laps for the flight home.

Charlie definitely warmed up to the beach and the water though we didn't do a lot of actual swimming. He loved throwing rocks in the water and making uncle seth get him buckets of water for his sand castle (more like sand castles I would make and he would destroy).

It seems like his comprehension of language is really exploding. He is using more complete sentences, answering and asking questions and listening to what we ask him to do. Of course his favorite answer is "no" and usually he doesn't obey us! But I can tell that he is processing the requests at least. This evening I asked if he wanted to go pee before I put a diaper on him for sleeping and as I got his pajamas out he went into the bathroom and peed in his little toilet without me. On the other hand he is more demanding - he uses "I want" a lot and last week he started using "I need!" "I need the phone mom", "I need the banana"....! Unfortunately I am noticing that he seems to be speaking more english than spanish. He uses spanish words, but the majority of the sentence is english.

Better Late than Never

I meant to write this BEFORE going on vacation, but not surprisingly I failed to do so. I was in Atlanta for my last pre-maternity leave trip and then we left for Martha's Vineyard. But here are a few shots from the California State Society picnic we went to with the Nicolettis. Unfortunately I did not get to take advantage of the all you can drink wine selection and given the 100 degree heat, most people seemed to be drinking beer. However Charlie did get to take advantage of the face painting and the games. He was sweating so much that the paint ended up all over everything! After that we watched the heartbreaking US/Ghana world cup game.

Charlie also enjoyed the folklife festival on the mall where he got on stage with some India Bhangra dancers. I'm not sure he is going to take up the punjabi tradition just yet, but there is still hope...

And finally here I am at 33 weeks.