The one with the LOOOOONG overdue update!

I know, I know! I swear I didn't intend for Charlotte to turn one and then the blog suddenly stops. Things have just been busy - nothing special, really, but just life.

We had a wonderful Christmas and even though I only had two days off work (four days total since Christmas was on a weekend) we still managed to see both of our families and have our own Christmas time. It was busy and a bit stressful but we made it work. Charlotte was very excited about Christmas morning. She didn't really know what was going on but she danced around and ate cinnamon buns in the living room and got new toys, so she was happy. She was absolutely enamored with snowmen and Christmas trees and I'm a bit sad that the season is over. Granted, she was the same way with pumpkins around Hallowe'en so I'm sure she'll find something new to obsess over ;)
























She turned 15 months yesterday and continues to amaze me. She still doesn't talk much but she understands so much and picks things up so quickly that it's almost scary. She points a lot and she'll point to something if you ask her (i.e. "Charlotte, where's your humidifier?"). She currently signs "more", "all done", "sing", "milk", "I love you", and "toilet". She knows what a horse, cow, sheep, cat, dog, duck, lion, and Santa say. When she asks to sing, she will choose songs herself (for example, she'll smack her lips together if she wants "Pop Goes The Weasel" or will say "E-I-O" if she wants "Old MacDonald"). She recognizes letters (has a fondness for "O" and will walk around, carrying her "O" magnets going "Ooooo") and can recognize some colours. Her comprehension is outstanding and I often forget just how young she actually is.

















She's still teeny and probably always will be. I'm not sure how big she is, but I imagine she's hit 20lbs by now. She just went through a growth spurt and finally fits into the 18month clothing she owns. She has 11 teeth - four front, three bottom, two top molars, and two bottom molars. Her hair is growing longer and her curls are adorable. She's started to change her looks and I get told she looks a lot more like me now. It's nice to hear :) I did birth her, after all...

















She still loves her books and reading is still one of her favourite activities. She got a kitchen for Christmas from Santa and has been enjoying "cooking" there and feeding us her concoctions. She also got a lion from Santa and LOVES it. She runs around the house, hugging it, and saying "roar!" She has a couple of dolls and enjoys feeding them, brushing their hair, and patting their backs. She just loves pointing at things and figuring out what things are. Right now her current obsessions are the ladybugs on her blanket and Maggie's toy mice. I can't quite tell if she likes the mice or hates the mice, but she'll walk around the house with a toy mouse in each hand, following Maggie, attempting to give them to the cat. If she sees a cat toy on the floor, she points at it and kind of yells. Maybe she's mad that Maggie doesn't clean up after herself.

She has little traits that make me chuckle. She likes to put her cup in the cup holder of her high chair tray when she's done taking a drink. If it doesn't fit, she puts it on the table. When she's eating snack, she'll put something (a cracker, a piece of fruit) back in the bowl before taking something else to nibble on. She's developing her little personality more and more every day and she's certainly a character!

























She's still doing great with her eating and sleeping habits. We've finally, FINALLY, rid ourselves of bottles! Hooray! She's doing perfectly fine without them and doesn't seem to miss them one bit. She's eating three meals and two snacks a day and, usually, sleeps 10-11 hours at night. She has one after-lunch nap that is usually 2 hours on average, but can sometimes be as short as an hour and a half or as long as today where she slept for FOUR hours. Nutty. It's usually 2, 2.5 hours though. She doesn't eat as much in one sitting as she used to (which makes sense, because she's not growing as rapidly as she was in her first year) but she still eats well. She still loves all her usual favourites: pasta, meats, potatoes, corn, peas, english muffins, toast, crackers, grapes, bananas, blueberries, waffles, etc. There's not really a whole lot she won't eat as a whole - somedays she'd rather have one thing over another, but as a whole she eats a really well-balanced diet and loves her healthy foods.
























She's just the light of our lives. She has a very sweet, caring, pleasant personality and is so very easy-going. Charlotte, we love you!

I promise to update again before she turns 2 ;)

The one with the one year update!

I know it's coming late, but it's been a busy week(ish)! With birthday parties to throw and attend and then Baby's First Stomach Bug, it's been hard for me to really get a chance to sit down and update the blog.

Can you even believe it's been a whole year? A whole year! It feels like just yesterday, I was sitting at my mother's kitchen table, updating about how I was going to have to be induced. And here we are - a whole year later and I have a sweet, loving, hilarious, brilliant little toddler girl.
























First, we'll start with some stats. She had her one year check up and vaccinations and she is now 19lbs 9.5oz and 29 inches long. Tiny little pixie! (To put that into perspective, my 4 month old nephew is 15lbs and 27 inches long, LOL!). She didn't triple her birth weight but hey - she's still growing and gaining and that's all that matters to me. Someone has to be on the lower end of the growth chart, right? Right. She's fitting into 12-18 month clothing a bit better now - they're not as baggy on her as they were last month.

She continues to amaze me every day with the things she learns and the things she knows. Every so often, she will do something that shocks me. Yesterday, for example, her pants were falling down a bit (stomach flu = disposable diapers = her pants don't fit anymore) and I said "Charlotte, come here and let me fix your pants". She tugged at the waistband of her pants, snapped it a couple of times, and giggled. Now when I ask her "where are your pants?" she grabs at the waistband. I had no idea she knew what pants were! She will also stick out her tongue if you ask "where's your tongue" and will point to eyes and hair if you ask where those are. Today I asked her if she wanted some water and told her to go to the fridge and I would get her some. Up she went and walked right over to the fridge. Smarty pants.

















She's been learning a bit of turn-taking as well. If she has something in her hand and you ask "can I see?" she will gently give it to you. We've been encouraging this and will go back and forth with the same item doing the whole "my turn/your turn" thing. She's still too young, I think, to really get it but there's no reason we can't expose her to it now! She's gotten back into signing "all done" consistently after having a bit of a signing stand-off recently. She still won't sign "more" for us, even though she knows how. She'll just point at whatever she wants. Silly goose. Lately, she'll sign "all done" in the bath tub when I drain the water - last night she even signed "all done" before I drained it and started to pull the plug herself!

She's moving from the "baby" toys to more "toddler" toys now. She still adores her books, of course. Her current favourite items right now are her books, her Peek-a-Block train, her wooden xylophone, balls, her Sock Monkey, and balloons (left over from her birthday party!). And, of course, walking around, playing peek-a-boo, and pointing at things saying "da". I'm pretty sure she's asking "what's that" when she does it. In fact, we had a pretty funny "conversation" last night:

Charlotte: *thrusts a shape at me from her shape sorter* "Da!"
Me: "You found a shape!"
Charlotte: *gently places it in my hand* "Da."
Me: "Mommy's turn? Thank you."
Charlotte: *points at it repeatedly* "Da!"
Me: "It's a shape!"
Charlotte: *continues pointing* "Da!"
Me: *counts the sides* Uh, it's a hexagon!"
Charlotte: *removes it from my hand and walks away*

Apparently, "shape" wasn't a good enough answer for her!









































She has recently upgraded from eating food off her highchair tray to eating food out of dishes. She was starting to protest at mealtimes and kept pointing to our plates/bowls. It only took two nights of gentle reminders, but she no longer attempts to lift her plate or bowl up or throw it or anything like that. We have a couple of "baby" dishes for her, but otherwise she just eats off of one of our smaller plates. We're still attempting to transition her onto whole milk but she's not overly enthusiastic about it. At this point, we're just trying to get her to drink ANYTHING that isn't water out of her cup. If it's not water, she looks at the cup with a puzzled look on her face and just lets the milk dribble out of her mouth. We're working on it. I'm really looking forward to getting rid of bottles. Right now, she's down to one - maybe two - bottles a day. She has one when she wakes up from her nap and one at bedtime, depending on how much dinner she ate and when she ate. Most times she hardly drinks any from her bedtime bottle anyway.
























She is also, on normal days, down to one after-lunch nap a day and sleeps for a good few hours (right now, for example, she's been asleep for almost 2.5 hours - she should be up soon!). She goes to bed a bit later now that I'm back at work but also sleeps in a touch later as well. She goes to bed around 7:30 and usually sleeps until 7-7:30.

I still can't believe she's a year old. What a whirlwind of a year it has been! I am so lucky to have my beautiful little baby girl. She is the light of my life, my everything. My best little friend. I can't wait to see what the future brings for us. I love watching her grow and learn. She is my entire world. I love you, Charlotte!!
(...and she's awake, I just heard her turn her music on! Ha! My kid!)

The one with the seven month update

My apologies for the lateness of this post. Charlotte turned seven months on Saturday but I was away visiting at my mom's house so I chose to wait until I got home (and had access to all my pictures) before updating the blog.

You know how people always say that children grow up so fast? Well, I finally understand. It took a while, but times seems to be passing much more quickly now that Charlotte is getting older. I think because our days are much more structured and she and I can interact a lot more, the hours don't tick by as slowly as they once did. I can't believe she's already on the other side of six months! We'll be celebrating her first birthday in no time...

















So what is seven-month-old Charlotte like? Hilarious, that's what.
Her little personality comes out more and more every day. She's such a silly little goose. She's been doing this thing lately where she wants to get a better view of something so she lunges forward and tilts her body. She's such a nosy little thing - loves to see what's going on all the time. She's showing preferences for certain toys. Her favourites right now are Vincent her Lamaze horse (she loves to chew on his nose)...
































...anything with a tag that she can pull on/chew on, anything that lights up, and anything that she can spin (like the beads on her abacus). She's using her fingers a lot more and she's showing beginning signs of developing her pincer grasp. When she is playing with tags or ribbons on her horse, she pulls on them between her thumb and forefinger. I bought her some Cheerios for practice during breakfast. She almost got one in her mouth this morning! She also loves when I sing with her and I've been bringing back some old daycare favourites that I had almost forgotten about. I'm going to be making her some discovery/sensory bottles this week and I'm going to start stocking up on art supplies so we can start doing art together. She's such a fun age now!

She continues to do well with her eating. She eats (or at least tastes) pretty much everything we put in front of her. Some recent favourites are lasagna, pierogies, and yogurt. I pre-load the spoon for her and she's been really good at guiding it into her mouth. Sometimes she likes to shake her hands around and the yogurt ends up in her hair ... naturally. We've also introduced a sippy cup. She knows how to get the water out but she doesn't quite get that the cup needs to tip in order to do so. She'll figure it out eventually!



















My little Oompa Loompa after a particularly delicious lasagna supper!

Our days and nights have finally become predictable. Charlotte is sleeping straight through the night, every night. She has her bath at 7pm, gets all dried/lotioned/jammied up, has her last bottle of the day, and is usually out for the count by 7:30/7:45. She wakes up anywhere between 6:30 and 7:30 the next morning. When I sleep in the same room as her (when I'm at my mom's), I do notice that she sort of wakes and stirs a bit around 4am, but she always goes back to sleep. I keep the sound on the monitor down at home so I only hear her when she starts talking and yelling out in the morning. Her stirring and little sleep-sighs don't wake me anymore.
She's taking four bottles a day (7-8oz each) and is eating two, sometimes three, meals a day. We always have breakfast and supper together and I'm just trying to come up with some good lunch ideas so we can have lunch together too. She goes down for her first nap of the day between 9-9:30 and usually sleeps for a good 1.5-2 hours. Her second nap has been tricky lately - it sometimes takes her just as long to fall asleep as she stays sleeping. I'm trying to figure out if I'm putting her down too early and she's just not tired yet or too late and she's too tired. Hmm. Lately she's only been sleeping about 30-45 minutes in the afternoon, if she winds up sleeping at all. I usually put her down between 1:30-2pm. Trial and error, I suppose!
















Sleeping love and her new BFF, Polly.
It's an all natural "bonding" doll, stuffed with 100% sheep's wool so it absorbs the scents around it. I think I might love it just as much as Charlotte does.

Can you believe this kid STILL has no teeth? She's been teething forever! Her two bottom teeth have been right under the gum line for a while now. Yesterday I thought I saw a bit more white, so I ran my finger along her gum and I felt a small bump. She clamped her gums tight together when I did that, though, so they must be feeling pretty tender. I'm assuming that tooth will pop through by the end of the week. Really, I'm anxious for her to cut a tooth mainly because I want to see if her amber teething necklace works! So far she hasn't seemed to be in much pain and she hardly drools for a teething baby. But, I want to see how she reacts when the tooth actually pushes through. I do realize, though, that it's not a magic necklace. Nothing will necessarily take ALL the pain away, but so far it does seem to be taking the edge off the discomforts of teething.

















As far as skills go, she's doing everything on the 4-7 month developmental checklist:

- pushes up on extended arms
- pulls to sitting with no head lag
- sits with support of hands
- sits unsupported for short periods (*she sits unsupported for LONG periods - I can sit her down and go off and do something else now without worrying too much about her falling over)
- supports whole weight on legs
- grasps feet
- transfers objects from hand to hand
- uses raking grasp
- looks for toy beyond tracking range
- tracks moving objects with ease
- grasps objects dangling in front of her
- looks for fallen toys
- distinguishes emotions by tone of voice
- responds to sounds by making sounds (*this one is adorable, I love it!)
- uses voice to express joy and displeasure (*ugh, this is where the whining has now come into play)
- syllable repetition begins
- finds partially hidden objects
- explores with hands and mouth
- struggles to get objects that are out of reach
- enjoys social play (*LOVES to have someone down with her, playing)
- interested in mirror images (*watching her try to catch her hands in the mirror is precious)
- responds to other people's expression of emotions

and is doing a few things on the 8-12 month checklist:

- assumes hand and knee position (* but will only do it on carpet - she still loathes being on her belly on the hard floors)
- pokes with index finger
- explores objects in many different ways
- shows preference for certain people and toys (*and foods!)
- finger feeds herself

She hasn't really started babbling yet but she does make sounds, giggles, and squeals a lot. Whenever I ask her if she can say "mama" or "mum", she just grins at me. I think she's got something up her sleeve, haha.

She's still trying SO hard to crawl but she seems to get uncomfortable and frustrated on our hard floors. I've noticed that she will get up on her hands and knees when she's on carpet, so I think we'll be spending some time playing in the hall downstairs (the only carpeted area of our house). She's really good at moving backwards and can move her body around in a circle - she just hasn't figured out how to pull herself forward.
She LOVES to stand and will stand up while supporting herself on things like our hands, the back of the couch, the coffee table, etc. She takes steps while we hold her hands. I wonder if she might skip crawling altogether.

Phew, that was a long update! I think I've covered it all. I guess it's been a pretty busy month when it comes to growing!

Charlotte, my mom, and I are heading down to the States this weekend to visit family for a week. I'm so excited! It'll be Charlotte's first airplane trip (shockingly enough) and her first time really away from home for an extended period of time. I'm hoping she does well. We're going to be visiting family in NH and taking a day trip into Boston, weather-permitting, to go see the sights and visit the aquarium. I'll be sure to post when we get back!

















Happy seven months, lovey! <3

The one with the very merry unbirthday!

Charlotte turned six months old yesterday - half a year, wow! Happy half-birthday, baby girl!
















































Laughing at the ceiling fan - one of her favourite things these days...

Charlotte had her 6 month check up this morning. She is now 14lbs 10oz (yay doubled her birth weight!), and 26 inches long. She's still petite, but hey - so am I! She got two more needles (boo) but now no more needles until she turns one! Yay!

She has just been getting more and more fun over the last little while. She's learning so much and I love watching her discover new things. Now that the weather is getting warmer, we've been going to the park more. She enjoys the swings and the playground equipment, but what she LOVES the most is watching other children. She's fascinated by them! Last weekend, she busted up laughing while watching a group of school-aged girls playing on the swings. It was absolutely precious.



























My little hoodlum chillin out in the swing

She's getting steadier and steadier with her sitting. She's always had a very strong core and she can sit up unsupported now for minutes at a time. She can even right herself when she starts to tip over backwards and has moved herself in a complete circle while sitting. She's getting really close to creeping and moved herself a TEENY bit forward last night. She's been staring at her fingers more these days - it reminds me of Christmas time when all she ever did was stare at her hands. Now she's discovered that she has fingers attached! This makes manipulative toys a lot more appealing to her. Watching her spin the beads on her abacus is so funny :)

She's still doing well on a basic schedule/routine. We took her soothers away on Monday in hopes that she would sleep a bit better. She was always either waking up looking for it or it would end up under her face and wake her up because it was uncomfortable. She was waking up almost hourly, the poor kid. So Monday we took the soothers away and Tuesday we started putting her to bed awake and letting her settle herself to sleep. She's had wonderful nights' sleeps this week and very very minimal crying about it. I think she's pretty much forgotten that she ever even had a soother. We're keeping one for when we travel on the airplane, but other than that, we're soother-free!

As far as her feeding goes, we've pretty much ditched the purees and are headed full-force into Baby Led Weaning territory. She seems to really love it and has tried so many things! So far she's had banana, toast, roasted sweet potato, green beans, wax beans, broccoli, pork tenderloin, pancake, cheese, pear, apple, and noodles. We offered some chicken the other night but I think she thought it was pork - she picked it up, looked at it, and put it back down as if to say "yeah, I remember you..." (she didn't like the pork, haha). It's great watching her explore the food and learn how to eat. Sharing our meals is such a nice experience and it making me eat a lot healthier - I've actually been eating fruit.






























Toast and banana - yum!

Still can't really believe she's 6 months old. I never thought it would come, haha. Those first few months were so long, tiring, and overwhelming ... but here we are! I love watching her grow and learn. Can't wait to see what the next few months bring!

The one with the journey through solid foods

Our journey began about a month ago with mashed carrots. Charlotte was showing signs of solid food readiness and I really just wanted to see if she still had the tongue thrust. We had carrots in the house, so I steamed the heck out of one, added some water, smashed it up real good, and gave it a shot.
























"Um, what is this all about guys?"

The verdict? Tongue thrust was gone but food was not a go. Or, if you believe Charlotte, food was a horrible torture device:

















I was hoping to start her on something besides cereals since they aren't necessary as a first food and I wanted her to experience flavours. But, her reaction told me that perhaps bland would be a good way to go. So, a few weeks later, we tried oat cereal.

















"Oooh, I want this!"

































"You guys are jerks."

So oat cereal was a no-go as well. She seemed to want the food because she would grab the spoon and bring it to her mouth, but as soon as the cereal touched her tongue she wanted nothing to do with it. So we let it go for another couple of weeks.

During that time, it was becoming more and more apparent that she was ready for food. She is sitting up unsupported, she is drinking more and more at a time (and wanting more even after polishing off 8oz), and the poor kid will literally stop everything she is doing and stare at you while you're eating (all while making chewing motions with her mouth). We got a sample of just-add-water rice cereal in the mail, so I mixed it up for her and offered it to her on my fingers. She sucked a bit off my fingers and seemed happy with that, so I wondered if maybe the spoon was tripping her up. So, I decided to go a different route - lay off the purees/cereals and offer her some finger foods a la Baby-Led-Weaning. I cut up some banana and let her have at it:















































"Hey you banana, get back here!"

This was the most successful food experience we had had thus far. She didn't get much into her mouth (because, dude, bananas are slippery!) but she did pick them up, lick them, squish them a bit, and suck the banana guts off her fingers. I even ate a couple of piece of banana with her (barf - I hate bananas) and she seemed pretty amused that we were eating together.

Later that evening, we picked up some add-breastmilk-or-formula rice cereal to see if that would make a difference. And did it ever! She lapped it right up, even opening her mouth in anticipation of the next bite:




































"I'll just eat the whole bowl, thanks."

After devouring the cereal, I offered her an Arrowroot.
The kid was in heaven.






































































So it is safe to say, I think, that we are officially on solids now. My mom bought us the Baby Bullet (omg) so we'll likely be doing a mixture of purees and finger/table foods with Charlotte. She seems happy with both ways of feeding. Right now we're only doing cereal at supper time, but I think I'll increase it to cereal at breakfast and something else at supper within the next few days. Next up: sweet potatoes! Can't wait...