We had a great time visiting my grandparents in Cleveland this weekend and the trip went pretty well. Of course "pretty well" included me packing for all three of us, putting everything in front of the door and still having Carlos arrive home too late for us to make our flight. I rolled my eyes and paid a change fee to leave later which meant we had 4 extra hours in Baltimore. To take advantage of the time we visited the C&O train museum and ate at our favorite restaurant there. Charlie LOVED the train museum and tolerated the restaurant. The visit to the museum went like this: Charlie running around pointing and screaming "tren, tren, tren! TREN!!! otro tren! tren, tren..." Here he is:






Once we finally made it to Cleveland we had a great time. He called my grandparents "Franny and Popis" instead of Franny and Popsie. He especially liked the fact that they had a ramp in their house. He also got some court time throwing tennis balls everywhere - unfortunately I think it'll be awhile until he perfects his backhand.

Last week Charlie got to play with Isaac and this week with Isaac and Ian. They are so cute together but Charlie can't stand sharing. He doesn't even like sharing with Sandra's daughter Leslie. It's terrible.

We've had a fun and eventful few weeks. Charlie got to visit Grandma in Philly, I logged a lot miles (London, Brussels, Bruges, New York & Philadelphia) and Carlos took up construction on various parts of the house (upstairs deck, door frames, the big staircase wall). AND we found out that we are having another baby boy! There is not a chance that I would have been able to tell the sex from the sonogram -at one point I asked if we were looking at his head and was told that we were looking at his butt....Here is a profile picture after the baby started cooperating and brought his feet down from over his head.


As for Charlie he had a great time with Grandma. She lives near a train station so they took numerous daily trips to watch the trains. She also seems to have more and better toys than we have at home so he had no shortage of activities. One of his favorite was the slide which he would stand at the back door, point to and longingly say "play."

Charlie also had a lot of fun when he got to visit with his friend Salem. They both loved to run up and down the hallway. At 2.5 Salem is super fast and Charlie had a hard time keeping up, but he sure tried. It was great because the next morning he slept until 8:45! He loved following Salem - or Salmon as he called him - around and almost nagged him like a little brother.





In addition to running, Charlie loves to sweep - and for some reason he likes to where this hat while cleaning.


Here are some pictures of Bruges - which is not quite as mystical as the movie portrayed but it is certainly beautiful.

West Virginia

We had our first family getaway last weekend to take in the waters in West Virginia. We started out by meeting my mom and aunt in Farmville, VA to visit the Greenfront wharehouse for rugs. Our floors are getting battered by the baby and construction and our tenants probably don’t appreciate Charlie’s evening exercises (he does the indoor 40 in which he races up and down the hallway at night, usually screaming “ahhhhhhh” as loud as he can). Of course we PLANNED to take off Thursday night at 8pm, but Carlos showed up at 10pm and - need I say - hadn’t packed yet. So we go on the road at 11pm and found our way to Farmville around 2am. I had booked a bed and breakfast which is about the worst idea when traveling with an 19 month old. The house creaked like crazy and the walls were old and thin so any baby noise traveled widely. All of this meant that we ended up not-so-cozy all together in an old queen bed. On Friday we somehow managed to spend 6 HOURS(!) looking through rugs. Poor Charlie was exhausted - here he is on a pile of rugs.



From there we went to the Greenbriar which was hysterical. It is an over the top resort in West Virginia which was converted to an army hospital during WWII and then reverted back to a hotel under the design auspices of Dorothy Draper. Think big floral patterns, bright colors and stripes. But in the end we had a great time - Charlie loved being able to run around the hotel and it's seemingly endless network of hallways and staircases. Everyone was so nice about having a young child (except the casino staff...). His absolute favorite was listening to the live music. While he like the pianist at tea time, he really like the band on Saturday night. He clapped his hands and danced and at the end of each song he would scream "Bravo!" A group of older ladies were dancing to the music and their boring husbands wouldn't join them so they turned to invite Charlie to join. He stared at them and then ran over to put his head in my lap embarassed. His second favorite thing was drinking from the water fountain and then came the carpeted staircase. His least favorite thing was the gun club where Carlos and I shot skeet. It was my first time shooting and wow - I thought I had strong arms but that gun is really heavy. I didn't even get through my 25 shots. Of the 10 or so I took I only hit that target 2 times.

Here are some photos of Charlie enjoying the Greenbriar, our trip to the range and the official family portrait from our stay(!).

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.