Happy Easter!

It's been a while since we wrote much on the blog. Charlotte is growing up so much every day, so there is lots to say! Several weeks ago we made the big step moving Charlotte into her own room. Everyone is liking the new arrangement, especially because we are sleeping better now that we don't hear her making little noises in her sleep at 4:30am!

Charlotte is getting better at moving--she is sometimes crawling on her hands and knees, but usually she scoots/army crawls everywhere. She is getting fast! We have started working on the word "no." She likes to scoot towards the collection of computer and speaker cords or towards daddy's important papers. It seems that her favorite things to play with are the things she can't have! I suppose that the easier solution would be to put those things where she can't reach them!

She has really perfected the skill of standing while holding on to the furniture. She loves to stand! We can also get her to balance on her own without support for a few seconds, but she will inevitably fall (we haven't dropped her yet!). A couple of times she has been able to pull herself up from sitting to standing. I'm sure it won't be long before she is doing it consistently. We had to move her from the top bassinett part of her pack & play to the bottom because she is so much more mobile now. She still sleeps swaddled (really really tightly!), but she sometimes works her arms out of it and then can move around. She seems to like being swaddled; it's one of her cues that it is time to sleep. We aren't sure how long we'll keep swaddling her...hopefully she grows out of it before middle school!

A few weeks ago (almost a month!) we were in Duluth for four days. We had a retreat for school with workshops and lectures at the residency program that we want to go to in a couple of years. For two evenings we had the "business" part of our retreat, and then the rest of the time we spent visiting with friends. It was so great to see everyone!!! Below is a picture of a group of our friends from that visit.


For Easter we drove down to Roland, Iowa to visit Kristi's sister and brother-in-law Lisa and Travis. It was so fun to see them and to spend some good quality time with them. Charlotte absolutely loved it--she was glad to see her aunt and uncle, but she also adored all of their animals. Lisa and Travis have 3 "big" pet birds (a cockatiel, a conure, and a parakeet), 3 "little" birds (finches), a rabbit, a gecko, and several fish. Charlotte was enthralled with all of the animals. Unfortunately she mostly wanted to poke them in the eyes or grab their feathers, so she mostly just looked at them! Here is our little bunny on Easter.

Here she is hoping to poke Thumper in the eye or nose. We had to bribe him to sit there by putting some oatmeal on the couch!

Aunt Lisa and Charlotte.

Isn't she sweet?!

Yesterday we went out for Birthday dinner at Applebees with Matt's parents. It is Matt's birthday tomorrow (26 on the 26th, his golden birthday!!!), and it is Kristi's birthday on April 2nd. Charlotte enjoyed people watching, licking a french fry, drinking water from a straw, and eating Cheerios.

Charlottte with Grandma Carol Ann.

Charlotte got a little messy as she ate lunch today. Those are prunes smeared all over her face!


Thanks for checking in with us! We hope these pictures of our cute baby brighten your day!