Pumpkins and Apples

Despite the fact that I dressed as Annie for 3 consecutive years and haven't had an impressive custome in the last decade I still LOVE Halloween. And even though we will be missing trick or treating this year, I didn't want to miss our 3rd annual pumpkin carving festivities. So we journeyed out to Maryland with the Ralles' to help Charlie find the perfect pumpkins. Clearly picking pumpkins and apples and seeing animals seems like a quaint idea to a few other people too...luckily we got there early, but by mid-day it was chaos causing Mike Ralles to assert that he was never having children!

But it was totally worth it as Charlie loved the animals, the 'trucks' (hayrides), the pumpkins and the apples. In fact he loved the apples so much that he learned how to say the word - it still sounds more like 'appum' rather than 'apple.' In fact yesterday he woke up saying 'appum.'

We walked out of there with 18 lbs of apples and about 100 lbs of pumpkins. As for carving, the pumpkins may not have been quite as inspired as last year's Obama and Palin, but they still turned out great.

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...

Fun in the Sun

Baby Charlie spent a week at the beach! We were in Emerald Isle - or SOBX as we learned - with Jamie, Bill and Baby Isaac and it was really beautiful with ocean views and ocean breezes. With gorgeous weather I couldn't have been happier, but of course the bugs some how found Carlos - and Carlos only. His legs are still recovering. ..Charlie seemed to like being beachfront although he was kindof grumpy and didn't eat much (two more teeth appeared today, but no molars). I don't think he remembers much about his last beach vacation to Hawaii as he was pretty scared of the sand for the first few days. He recently learned the word "No" and when we'd try to put him on the sand he would lift his legs up and say "no-no-no-no-no-no!!!" It was pretty funny. But by day 2 or 3 he was hunting for sea shells and digging in the sand. The soft sand was still pretty treachorous terrain and so he would take careful, calculated steps until he hit safer ground. He didn't get to go in the water beyond his legs as the waves were a little too rough and my safety officer decided it was best not to go in. Unfortunately his father failed to ever make him a sand castle. I guess a real house will have to do for now....

While the boys were hard at work with the pots and pans and throwing toys off the deck, the bigger boys decided to go on a fishing trip so that they could provide food for their families. Unfortunately, despite risking their lives in the open ocean, being subjected to the grueling sun and hours of continuous hard work fishing, the only thing they were able to bring back was a pretty decent southern accent imitation of the captain that took them out on their failed mission. (Editor's note: this paragraph was written by Carlos).

Despite the long drive home, I am still relaxed from the trip and definitely still a bit crispy from the sun. Other than the baby who fasted for all of us, we probably put on some pounds from all the amazing food and wine consumed. We ate seafood everyday which Bill the chef cooked up some pretty tasty ways including a to die for shrimp cake which I am still craving. YUM!

Party Part Deux

Baby Charlie celebrated his birthday once again by inaugurating our backyard BBQ. It was a hectic week beforehand as we were getting house 1 ready for new tenants and the backyard was not really BBQ ready as of monday...this is what the backyard looked like at the begining of the week....And then a shot from this friday.

Despite all that he had a great time at his birthday. He loved seeing all his friends, playing in the pool and grabbing bubbles. Actually the bubbles were a little frustrating as they disappeared everytime he tried to grab them. His favorite, of course, were all the fun presents. In the 24 hours after the birthday we bounced from one fun toy to another. The house is definitely a lot more fun for him and for me too...I'm determined to BBQ as much as possible in the remaining summer days.