Truck

Charlie and Carlos had quality time together last week as I was traveling for work. Unfortunately I chickened out on telling work about baby #2. There was a conference one day and an all day meeting the next day so I didn't have a chance to talk to my boss and given how busy people were I don't think they even noticed. BUT I really need to have the conversation this week. I'm traveling again next week and I think it'll be painfully obvious by then. Here's a shot of the little one - any thoughts on the sex?


Charlie was excited to see aunt Mary who came over just in time for our pizza party on Sunday. She brought a truck for Charlie and he went nuts over it. Unfortunately his pronunciation, like his aim, needs some improvement. He replaces the "tr" in truck with "f". I think it's hysterical, but it definitely raised a few eyebrows. I also raised a few eyebrows when I almost burned my hair off taking out the first pizza. Luckily I'm pregnant so any hair I might have lost seems to already have been replenished....Here he is playing with his "f"ruck:



Finally we can start getting some labor out of Charlie! Here he is helping to put the groceries away. Carlos has been waiting to tap into the cheap child labor to get the house done, but I'm keeping him from heavy machinery for a few more years.

BAD AIM!

I was beginning to regret our attempt to let Charlie go without diapers. It seemed to be giving him anxiety without much of a positive outcome. But we may have come up with an interim solution - not a very sustainable one, but at least he is getting over his anxiety. He stands up on the big toilet and pees. The bad news is that his aim leaves something to be desired! I also realized why diapers are so much easier when we took an outing to the building museum this weekend and Charlie demanded to go to the bathroom. It hadn't dawned on me that we'd have to do public peeing!! I hurried to find a bathroom (although he was wearing a diaper) and manuevered our way into a stall. There we were in the women's restroom in a museum and I was cheering him along. I'm sure our neighbors thought I was nuts. We washed our hands and 10 minutes later walked out the door. He took 3 steps and then turned to me and said "pee-pee." We went through the whole exercise again. We walked out and, clearly enjoying the novelty of the experience, he turned to me again and said "pee-pee." I told him to hold it and we went back to playing.

One of the most fun aspects of this stage is watching his comprehension of everything - words, concepts, images - expand. I am especially surprised by his visual memory - probably because his father and I have the worst memories around. He knows the US Capitol building and when he saw a truck pull up in front of our house with a sketch of the capitol on it he kept saying, "captol, captol." Then again he seems to call any building with similar architecture "captol." He also came up with his first string of three words last week - I can't really call it a sentence, but he said "dada otro mano" which meant: dad, give me your other hand. He hasn't done a repeat performance yet. Here is him saying 'basketball' and 'mas queso.'

Another concept that I can see him working through is the idea of what is/is not a sculpture. Sculpture was one of his first words - I have no idea why - and he loves to point out sculptures. Today we went to the art museum to look at sculptures and he loved the Alexander Calder mobiles, but his favorite sculpture turned out to be the light display on the walkway from the East to the West wing. Oh well - I guess I have a way to go until I have the next Rodin on my hands....

On the house front we finally had the marble installed on the kitchen island and I had to act as if Carlos was my contractor. He called me Ms Taft, but it was hard for me to take him seriously when there were pictures hanging up in on the wall behind him of us on our wedding day!

I'm heading to New Hampshire and Atlanta this week so Charlie and Carlos are on their own. The big question is whether everyone will notice my belly bulge! Yep at 15 weeks I am pretty darn large.

I'm having a hard time taking pictues of Charlie because eveytime he sees the camera he wants to see the pictures of himself. Here he is sayin 'baby, baby, baby...' when I tried filming him.

SNOWMAGEDDON

We had even more snow last week! Wednesday was unbelievable - snowy blizzard craziness. After spending all of Wednesday indoors Charlie and I were both relieved when we could venture out on Thursday. He was happy however that school was cancelled and Sandra's daughter Leslie could come over to play with him.

One of his favorite indoor activities is working in his kitchen. In addition to his wooden eggs and pots and pans he loves to raid our spice cabinet to season his playdough and cheerio meals.

Another favorite indoor activity is skyping. He loves to skype with abuela. But even when skyping Charlie is bossy - he demands that both abuela and abuelo are seated and paying full attention to him. He also demands she play a singing teddy bear over and over and over again. If Duane tries to even stand up Charlie starts yelling "abuelo!!!!!!" and hitting the computer screen.

Being indoors has given us plenty of time to not use his little red toilet! The problem now is that he doesn't want to pee in a diaper either! We have to lure him in to the bathroom with unusual toys (tape measure, drill, drill bits....you get the theme) to get him to sit down and go and only rarely with success. Although he doesn't love his little toilet that hasn't stopped him from enjoying potty humor! Somehow Charlie learned the word "fart" and it quickly became a new favorite. The funniest thing is that he has a boston accent when he says it - so it sounds like "fahhhrt."

Other than that new vocabulary word, it's been fun to listen to him put two words together. Usually it is to boss us around like: "Otra mano" "mas queso" and "hey you" but there is also "bye mama" and "low bridge". I'm not sure he knows that "low bridge" is actually two words - but I love it when he says it. We've been reading/singing Erie Canal and so he calls it the "low bridge" book. I can't get the other videos to work so here is my painful singing...


He loves to say "mano" and then drag you over to play with his toys. Last night Carlos had been painting and so had paint stains on his hands. When Charlie said 'mano' Carlos extended his hand for Charlie to take, but Charlie would have none of it. He said 'eeeww' and looked up confused - 'otro mano' he demanded but the other one was dirty too. Charlie was desperate for his dad's hand so he finally grabbed his wrist instead and dragged him to play with his trains.

Check out the Engine his grandma brought him. He loves to cruise around the house with his feet on the pedals although he is terrible at steering.

This was from back in October when we were in Monterey and Eric and Dorine were babysitting him. I just got a copy. I love it!

On the house front Carlos has been working on our bedroom closet and I have become obsessed with the winter olympics.

Blizzard of 2010

More snow! This was called the Blizzard of 2010. Not only did it cause a panic at the grocery store (which I sent my husband to suffer through), but the media went nuts too - Fox 5 news had a special weather addition and dedicated the entire day's coverage to the snow. I think they interviewed every single person who walked by. Well here is my version of the weather coverage:

7pm Friday

Bedtime Friday:

Saturday Morning (I didn't even know which one was our car until Sunday afternoon)....

We stayed home on Saturday and let the snow pile up in front of the house. I ventured out on Saturday evening to a friend's birthday party in Dupont and it was magical. There were no cars on the road, but lots of people out walking around. Unfortunately getting there and back was a nightmare as the metro was barely running. I caught the last train back and it took an hour to get back to the hill.

Although we stayed indoors on Saturday, Charlie did observe the snow closely from the window...and flashed all the snowploughs that came by....

He also got an insanely bubbly bubble bath

Sunday we took Charlie to the Capitol to partake in the sledding. He reacted to the snow the same way he reacted to sand the first time: skeptical.

Commando

This week we've started letting Charlie run around commando. Yes, we've been freeing him of diapers and got him a little toilet to test out. It's been a pretty funny week as he says "pee-pee" and we all go running to the bathroom only for him to decide that he won't sit down. He repeats this about 15 times before finally peeing in his pants. He's made progress in terms of letting us know when he has to go, but the running back and forth to the bathroom with only 1 successful pee so far isn't a good sign. He got a bit of a reprieve from the bathroom runs though when his friend Ehrin spent two days with him while her day care was closed. They played together (though Charlie made sure she only got the small toys!), took naps at the same time and ate snacks together. I did notice that she is not very interested in his trains or trucks (of which I didn't realize how many we had until I was looking for alternative toys for her). It made me think about the nature vs. nurture. Ehrin's mom says she is already particular about her clothes! Charlie could care less what goes on him (which enables Sandra to somehow put clothes on him that I've packed away as being too small for him. I'll come downstairs and see him wearing high water pants and I just roll my eyes and pack them deeper in the closet).

On Monday Aunt Mary came for a visit and Charlie was beyond ecstatic. He screamed when she came in and did some sort of tribal dance to welcome her. She taught him how to put penne pasta on his fingers which makes eating them so much more enjoyable.

In addition to eating from his fingers, he also likes using spoons. He is indifferent to the size of the spoon or the size of the bite as seen in this video

The Goldbug book is old news now and his new favorite is Green Eggs and Ham. He calls it the "Ham" book. He has started to drag every book we own over to our reading spot so as to delay going to sleep as long as possible. It makes me wonder how long I'll be able to hold onto the 8pm bedtime....

The weather has been cold and lots more snow than I remember in past winters. Here is the sight from our bedroom window this morning.

Grandparents and Abuelos

I think Charlie is getting bored of us and wants to hang out with his grandparents more. He loves to talk to Abuela on the phone and on skype and last weekend Charlie was in heaven as both my mom and my dad stayed with us. Carlos and I were old news. He followed my mom around saying "grandma, grandma, grandma." He was skeptical of my dad at first and scooted carefully by him trying his best not to be noticed by the scary man. But he warmed up and my dad provided lots of entertainment because he and Carlos were employing lots of loud tools. The kitchen island was demolished and only partially rebuilt and the closet is torn up too. Here are some photos of the recent projects.

Charlie got to hang out with his buddies at brunch last weekend too. He was kindof a brut though as he was very territorial about Isaac's car. He didn't even fit in the car very well, but he still didn't want any of the other boys to even touch it. But they did all sit next to each other on the couch for a few photos. Luckily Jamie was taking pictures - I can't find the camera charger so I'm yet again without a camera....

Photos finally

Delinquent! Sorry! We were in California for the holidays and had a great time in (relatively) warm Carmel with Carlos' family. Charlie had a lot of firsts - he got to take his first boat ride - "butt" as he calls it. When we got on the boat he kept yelling "da butt, da butt, da butt!" I thought he was going to offend's Tali's family....The excitement wore off and he was more taken by the toy cars in the cabin - which was not fun for me as I could spend a whole 2 minutes down there before turning green. He also got to take his first hike at Point Lobos which he loved. He did most of the hiking himself although we needed to keep him on the path. It was beautiful and luckily we made it back before sunset. In addition we acted as tourists and rented a surrey for the first time in his and my life. We put him upfront as we pedalled our way along the Monterey bike path. It was so cute and he loved it. While we were tourists Carlos helped Tali build a fence.

He loved taking morning walks on the beach and watching the surfers. Sadly he loved when they fell down: "boom" he'd say happily and then wonder where they went. He loved spending time with this grandmother and learned the words 'abuela' and 'abuelo.' He likes talking to abuela on the phone though she has to do most of the talking at this point. His tia Veronika also took good care of him and gave him wonderful trains for Christmas.

He remains a terrible traveler. He would wake up early every morning and he knew we were sleeping in the bed next to him so he'd reach over and grab me: "mama, mama, mama." I was about to go crazy. I never want to sleep in the same room as him again!!