Boston Visit - 48 hours of things going wrong

In the span of 48 hours I managed to almost miss my plane, rent a car that smelled like vomit, lose my car keys, sit through a football game in the pouring rain with the baby in a poncho and get harassed by Southwest Airlines to prove that Charlie was my child and that he was under 2 years. Oh and Charlie officially doesn't sleep outside of his crib. He flopped around and around causing both of us to get no sleep. Luckily seeing my brother Charlie play football made it all worthwhile. He did great. He played the whole game and Middlebury beat Tufts 26-7. He had an interception and tackled some one so hard I could hear it in the bleachers. ouch. Baby Charlie also did surprisingly well given that it was in the middle of his nap time and he was sitting in a poncho. He finally passed out in the 4th quarter, but not before he ate a whole hot dog! It was the best $1 hot dog investment ever....

We did get to fit in a few good things too - including seeing his cousin Toby and visiting Ellie Hong (and her parents). Charlie loved Mandy and Leti's "gatos" and loved visiting Ellie and her igloo. He gave her a kiss and played footsie with her. I think he was wooed by how she said his name "chah-lee" (at least I was....). Cousin Toby was super cute, but Charlie still had a hard time sharing. I even think I heard him say "mine." I really hope not....

Speaking of words yoga mama Liz was asking about many words he can say so I thought I should count them. I think he has a 27 word vocabulary. Our current favorites are "Gato" (cat in spanish) , "zapato" (I liked it better when it was 'zapatato') and "Appum" (he won't/can't say apple). I also love how his voice cracks when I ask him what a gato says - it's the highest pitched meow ever. That must be weird trying to express himself in 27 words. I figure I'll try to keep track until he hits 100.

1. zapato
2. sqrl = squirrel
3. gato/meow
4. agua
5. mano
6. truck
7. car
8. up
9. ball
10. bottle
11. pacha (bottle)
12. book
13. ma = mas
14. vaca
15. dos
16. quatro
17. dog/ruff
18. duck/quack
19. bear
20. bye
21. pan (bread)
22. bath
23. mama
24. dada
25. park
26. nana = banana
27. appum = apple

On another note, the green machine is officially retired and the car I use broke down which meant we were left with THE MUSTANG. ugh. I've tried my hardest to avoid that thing out of pride, but we had to get a ride last Friday. All I could think was: "wow - it's been a year and I feel like I get car parts delivered every day and it still looks like as much as a piece of sh*t as when he first got it!" no seat belts, DEFINITELY NO SHOCKS, it barely started, rattling noises, no A/C, no radio...I mean it's amazing it took us the 5 blocks we needed to go.

Little Monster in a Bowtie

I forgot to post this one, but I love it

5 Cities, 4 Weeks

It’s been an eventful few weeks. The three of us flew to San Francisco after which Carlos and the baby continued on the Reno while I stayed for work. They joined me at the end of the week so that we could all go to Monterey for Veronika’s wedding. It was so nice to be in California. The weather was amazing, the food was as good as I remember and we got to see friends/family. We stayed with our friends Robert and Monika who have a beautifully renovated house, two adorable kids and the most amazing play room. Charlie had a great time following them around and playing with all their toys.

Monterey was great too. Veronika and Tali had rented a beautiful house where we all stayed. I got to connect with an old friend of mine from Czech Republic after almost 15 years!! She has 3 darling boys, a trampoline in her backyard and lives 5 minutes from the beach. What a life! We used to have so many fun adventures in Czech including sneaking away from our host families to Budapest and sleeping on the Charles Bridge (not that comfortable). Veronika and Tali’s wedding was beautiful. It was at Holman Ranch and it was a gorgeous California day. Baby Charlie walked me half way down the aisle before realizing that everyone was looking at him and starting saying "up, up, up" and grabbing my dress. Seth and Carolyn did a fantastic job helping to take care of him. They had gotten him a bow-tie to go with his dress shirt and it was SO cute! He left it on the whole night! That bow-tie got a lot of miles as Seth wore it for his birthday too. You can decide who looks cuter.

The Halloween party before the wedding was great. Carlos was a cockroach, I was a flapper girl (though it was kindof a ghetto get-up), Veronika was a killer bee, Tali was Count Chocula and Seth and Carolyn were Princess Leia and Hans Solo. The best was the next day trying to recognize people - either I had no idea who they were or I was shocked that their costume wasn't really a costume - they really looked that way!!
After that I was back on the road to Istanbul and Brussels for work. I was only in Istanbul for 2 days and didn’t have time for sightseeing though I did manage to fit in a visit to the Blue Mosque, a ferry ride across the Bosphorus and walking around Taksin square. We had wonderful hosts there via the local Unilever staff who took us to dinners on both the Asian and European sides and who suffered through my litany of cultural questions. I did get to try a fish from the Bosphorus and was surprised by how tasty it was. From there I was off to Brussels where it was cold and rainy, but quite nice. After the meetings a few of us did a tour of the chocolate shops and loaded up - I spent 97 Euros on chocolate!! For the weekend I flew to Switzerland to see a friend and meet her new baby, Prahlad. I loaded up on smelly cheese which stunk up my whole bag, but I was glad that customs didn't sniff it out.

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...