The Day After Christmas

'Twas the day after Christmas and all through the house
Little Charlotte was puking all over her blouse.
She had eaten her breakfast with the greatest of care
Just before throwing it up on the table and chair.
Later she and her mama were tucked snug in her bed
While visions of popsicles danced in their heads.
Mama in her jammies and Charlotte on her lap
Had just settled in for a mid-afternoon nap.
When all of a sudden Charlotte woke with such a clatter
We sprang to her side to see what was the matter.
Mom put a bowl under her chin in a flash
Thank goodness, just in time to catch the big splash.
"Come play outside" beckoned the fresh fallen snow
But her face was all flushed with that feverish glow.
We were feeling quite sad when who should appear
But Grandpa and Kate with something to cheer.
A box of popsicles with wrappers to tear off real quick
Charlotte felt better with a grape treat to lick.
She smiled at the popsicles as one by one they came
But each time she wanted grape just the same.
Her mama in jammies and uncombed hair was no vixen
But Charlotte didn't care, her tummy needed fixin'.
We felt trapped in the house, we were climbing the wall
The pace of the day had slowed to a crawl.
What could we do to make the time fly?
Think of something quick, Charlotte's starting to cry.
So on to the couch with a movie we flew
With a blankie and toys, and a puke bucket, too.
We watched Mary Poppins lead adventures on the roof
And race carousel horses on painted hoof.
It seemed that with a smile, Charlotte was turning around
But we were sadly fooled when the puke hit the ground.
Poor Grandpa was covered from his head to his foot
You should have seen his face, the horrified look.
Charlotte wished she could take it all back
Here's Grandma to the rescue with baby wipes in a pack.
Nobody was feeling anything near merry
We had an unwelcome guest, the barfing fairy.
He doesn't leave packages with ribbons or a bow
Just fevers and tears as parents think "Oh no!"
At bedtime as Charlotte was brushing her teeth
She made sure she got all the ones underneath.
She looked down at her little round belly
While mama thought to herself, your hair's kind of smelly.
Charlotte, feeling better, was a jolly little elf
As she put her toothbrush back on the shelf.
She snuggled on mama's shoulder and laid down her head
Looking quite ready to soon be in bed.
Mama was wondering, how will this work
To get her to sleep without going berserk.
Charlotte, she sniffled and sniffed her little nose
But when mama laid her down, she started to doze.
Mama hummed because she didn't dare whistle
She leaned in real close and gave her a kissle.
As Charlotte closed her eyes, mama sneaked out of sight
"Sleep well little Charlotte, sweet dreams and goodnight!"

Confessions of a Toddler

So another funny thing she (yes, I mean Charlotte) has said recently: she pranced out of her room wearing a dress and announced "I'm a woman!"

Seriously, where does she get this stuff?!

Things that just don't come out right

This girl cracks me up!

Charlotte has the dreaded Minnesota winter chapped lips. Yesterday I was putting some moisturizer on them, and she said "Poor yips."

Yesterday she was pretending to be a "yitto yost yamb" (little lost lamb).

Daddy taught her how to say "Holy moly!" Except it comes out "Hody mody!"

Kids and telling the truth

This evening Charlotte had just finished brushing her teeth and Daddy was holding her when he passed some gas. A minute later while finishing her bedtime routine, Charlotte was fussing for Mama to hold her. As she was passed over Mama, Charlotte said to Daddy, "You fmell bad."

Almost December already?!

I can't believe it's almost December. November seems to have flown by, and I feel like before we know it, it will be March. OK, maybe not that fast (I'll be singing a different tune when it's been 30 degrees below zero for 10 days in a row...). Maybe it's because we are at work so much that I lose track of time. Whatever the reason, time is flying by, and little baby Charlotte is growing up so much. Yesterday she said something in the car, and when I told Matt "she doesn't even know what that means," Charlotte piped up in the back seat "Yes I do!!!" I couldn't stop laughing. Where does she pick up this stuff?
Other funny stuff she is doing these days:
The first thing on her mind every morning is breakfast. On the weekends when we sleep in a little bit, she wanders into our room and climbs in bed with us. After a minute or two of snuggles, she announces "Time to eat 'beckfas!' Get up Mama!" Today we didn't comply right away, so she got herself some breakfast. Lesson in parenting: if your toddler is on the loose, and you hear the fridge door open, you might want to drag yourself out of bed and investigate. She told us it was yummy and good for her. We couldn't quite understand what she said she got out of the fridge, and we were trying to guess, based on what leftovers we knew were within her reach. Finally Matt got up to see what was going on, and all was crystal clear (and very sticky!). She had gotten a sucker out of a bag of leftover Halloween candy in the fridge! She had been calling it a popsicle, but we didn't understand her, nor did we remember the bag of candy. Lesson learned...don't let your toddler find her own breakfast.
Here are some pictures from the last month or so, starting with Halloween.

Our little bumble bee

I made an upside down apple cake, recipe courtesy of my sister-in-law Olivia. It was delicious!

Our friends Casey and Alyssa came to visit with their daughter Melia, who is about 6 months younger than Charlotte. They love to play together, but there are a lot of tears when favorite dollies and puppies are involved.

Holding hands

A few pictures of our house for my sister Laura who keeps requesting them. This is our living room when you first walk in the front door.

This is just another view of the living room

The dining room. Small, but cozy and just the right size for us.

The kitchen (part of it, anyway). Charlotte likes to help wash dishes, but her clothes always get wet. Here is one solution to that problem.

Laura, I'll post some more pictures of the house soon. Today was too gray and cloudy to have good lighting to take pictures of the rest of our house.

Big Girl Bed!

Charlotte has graduated from her crib to a toddler bed! We made the switch on Saturday because she pushed her Lego box over to her crib and flipped herself in. I found her in there a few minutes later and asked her how she got in there. To demonstrate, first she had to show me how she could get out by hoisting a leg over the side. Then she showed me how she flipped upside down to get back in. We decided this was a head or neck injury just waiting to happen, so we took down the crib and put up the big girl bed. She has done really well with it. No getting out of bed, no falling out of bed, no playing when she is supposed to be sleeping. Hopefully it stays that way!

Like how there are two electrical outlets next to her bed? Don't worry, there are outlet covers that even the parents can't pull out.

This was another time where Charlotte wasn't really interested in getting her picture taken.

Reading to her baby in bed. For the first couple nights we had her bookshelf pushed against the bed to make sure she didn't fall out.

Making a cake

Charlotte and I made a cake from scratch a while back. She loves to help bake and cook, but mostly she likes to eat flour, which you will see the evidence of in this video.

As long as I'm blogging...

Some days, Charlotte is very obliging and loves to have her picture taken. Other times she does not. Here is a great set of pictures from our recent trip to the apple orchard/pumpkin patch as an example of the latter. I didn't get a single good picture of her, but she did have fun picking up about 50 different pumpkins. The little tiny ones were her favorite, as those of you who know her could guess.

"Charlotte. Charlotte! CHARLOTTE!!! Come here, mama wants to take your picture."

"Look up at mama for a nice picture."

"Why don't you sit down on the hay bales and you can smile for me."

"Just peek through that little hole at me. Won't it be fun?"

Gardening 2009 (also known as the first time Kristi has not killed all of her plants)

Remember way back when I posted pictures of Charlotte helping me plant seeds for our upcoming bountiful harvest of home-grown vegetables and beautiful flowers? The time is now here for you to all see the "fruits" of our labor of love. (PS--look at the difference in her hair; it is so much longer and thicker now than it was in the spring!)

This is most of the garden, planted on the south side of the house. Our landlady okayed us to dig up "some" of the lawn to plant a garden; it got bigger than we had anticipated. Hopefully she isn't mad when we move out in 3 years and she realizes how big it is and has to re-grass that whole side of the yard!

Here is one of our 5 tomato plants. We had 3 heirlooms (2 pink/red ones and a yellow/red stripey one!), a roma, and a cherry. The heirlooms get big. Really big.

Here is Charlotte holding our largest heirloom tomato. Yes, that is just one tomato on her lap.

This is that same tomato. It had a bunch of splits/scars on it from getting so big! And we didn't use anything other than a little compost when we first planted the garden in June.

Here is a portion of our tomato harvest. We probably had about 4 times this many.

I had a hard time photographing the tomatoes. With a flash makes them too shiny and bright...without a flash makes it grainy and blurry and doesn't show off their color.

A roma and a couple of the cherry tomatoes. Charlotte was very willing to try the tomatoes, but she usually only took one bite and then was done, as seen in the above picture.

We grew a few bell peppers, supposedly a mix of different colors, though we really only saw green and a little purple. What started out at 30-some plants became 5 after an incident back in May and then 4 after something happened in July. Apparently peppers need to be planted inside WAY ahead of time in Minnesota which we did not do early enough. Our pepper harvest was small this year, but we learned a lot about what not to do! Better luck next year.

Here are the five peppers we ended up with. They were about the size of plum and unfortunately were probably not ripe yet because they were quite bitter. And by bitter I mean I would have preferred not to eat them at all because they were so bitter. But alas, if you plant seeds in April/May and sort through a large amount of dirt to find and replant each individual seed after a toddler disrupts their incubator and tend the plants all summer long and rescue them from the impending frost at night in the dark with a flashlight, then by golly we're going to eat them.

Don't they look delicious? At least you can pretend they are; I still have the aftertaste in my mouth.

Speaking of summertime harvesting of delicious vegetables, here was the view out our front window on Friday. Happy Fall!

Pictures

Here are some much overdue pictures for the blog dating back to early September.

Charlotte helping mama make a cake

Eating some corn on the cob, except she couldn't wait for it to get cooked, so she ate it raw!

Charlotte's great-grandma Rose Ann crocheted this poncho for her. Charlotte likes to wear it over just about anything. Or in this case, just a pair of underwear...

This is the face she made when I asked her to smile for a picture.

She likes to take care of our wooden camel; she carries him around and feeds him, covers him with blankets and puts him down for naps. He is as tall as she is.

Helping daddy bake something.

Grandma Cindy's birthday cake, an artistic rendition of a monarch butterfly.

Charlotte thought it was her birthday.

She likes cake and frosting.

Talking

Just to document some funny things Charlotte says:
"I have a kestion" (question)
"Mmmm, I'll think about it."
"Know dat?" (that)
This morning from her crib she called out "Daddy? Daddy? I can't read." When I went in there, she repeated "I can't read." Turns out the books were out of her reach and she wanted to bring a few into her crib with her. :)

She surprises us every day with the new things she says, and her ability to carry on a conversation is growing by leaps and bounds. She is now telling stories, pretending, and using her imagination all the time. She really likes to pretend she is at the ocean and splashing in the water (can you blame her?). "Baby Dear" (her favorite doll) often has to get washed in the ocean multiple times a day.

I'll post some pictures later this weekend.

Growing up so fast

We are still camera-less right now, so new pictures are still a few days or a week away. Here are some older ones from early summer in order to tide you over a little bit.

The little gardener helping Grandpa and Grandma harvest cauliflower as big as her head.

She ate big bites of the broccoli right out of the garden.

Despite the lack of new pictures, we do have a special treat for you today; a guest post from Charlotte's Grandpa Mark (Kristi's dad). Grandpa Mark is Charlotte's main daycare provider, so he spends more time with her than just about anyone. He hears all of the funny things she says, sees her accomplish new tasks, helps her learn new skills. Below are a few stories he shared with me about the last few days with Charlotte.

Story #1: I hear the typical sound of a "major" problem coming from the bedroom where Charlotte is playing. When I get there I see a smiling face looking back up at me. I figure a false alarm or I mistook a call for me to come play or see something with a call of despair. "Hans suck in air" the smiling face says to me. "What?" I say. She repeats but points to the little school bus and opens the door of the bus: "Hans suck in air" and then I get it. "Hand was stuck in there."

Story #2: I was streaming music while cooking, cleaning kitchen etc. Charlotte is playing in the living room and I didn't think she was really listening to the music. But then all of a sudden she repeats some words from the current song. This happened with "They said Hallelujah!" and "Hear dat? Talking!" (when at the end of a song there was some whispering).

Story #3: Grandma, Grandpa, and Charlotte were walking down the road waiting for mama to come home from work. A white car was approaching in the distance. As it got closer Char said 'truck' so we knew it wasn't mama. When it drove past Charlotte said "man." Grandpa was impressed that she catches all this and he said to Charlotte: "You don't miss a thing, do you?" Charlotte responds in a sad little voice: "I miss Daddy."

Things Charlotte says at 2 years, 2 months old
1. Wanna sit in your "yap" (lap)
2. Gama YoYis (Lois)
3. Char: "Zit hard?" (when observing the someone trying to complete a task)
Grandpa: "oh it's not too hard"
Char: "Just a yittle-bitta hard?" (just a little bit hard?)
4. Fwing (swing)
5. Fruff (scruff, the elderly poodle)
6. Baby feeping (sleeping)
7. Ice freem (ice cream)
8. If someone sneezes she asks "ajees?" (allergies) She sneezed the other day while Grandpa was feeding her breakfast. She says; "Sha-Shoe ajees."
9. Sop it (stop it)

A few additions from Mama:
-She is working on the concept of waiting. When asking for chocolate milk, we told her she had to finish her white milk first. She waited a second or two, then asked "How 'bout now?"
-The other day Charlotte had a time out for being naughty, and when it was over she asked me "Happy now?" (she hates it when people are mad at her). When I said "No" she asked me "Mad, Mama?" I said "No." Then she asked "Kind of mad?"
-Grandma Cindy sings lots of songs to Charlotte, and yesterday my little listener impressed me with singing several lines of a song with all of the words when she woke up from her nap. "When the sun hits the sky you will wake feeling spry. Start the day with a smile, life is really worthwhile." Such a sunny little thing to sing right after a nap.
-Yesterday we went to an apple orchard to get a pumpkin. Charlotte LOVED running through the rows of pumpkins (wish I had some pictures!) and sitting on all of them. She insisted that we sing Happy Birthday to the pumpkins.
-Charlotte and I walked Daddy to work this morning. On our way home we walked through a patch of sunshine and she exclaimed "I yike sunshine!" Then as we sat on the front steps drinking hot chocolate and talking about fall I asked her what other things she likes. Included on the list were chocolate milk and oatmeal. Simple pleasures.

I get the hint

Here are a couple of pictures just to tide "anonymous" over (Laura....). They are a little older from earlier this summer, but they haven't been on the blog before. We sent our camera up north with Kristi's sister Kate this weekend, and so can't put any new pictures up until we have our camera back. These will have to do until then.

Rochesterfest parade. See Charlotte's head right next to the PA speaker? We're good parents.

Here we are dancing to a live band in downtown Rochester one evening before our lives were consumed by work.

On another note...I have been busy cooking up a storm in the kitchen today. My parents took Charlotte up north with them for the weekend, so it is quiet here. And, I can actually move around in the kitchen without stepping on a little someone and I can finish a task without any tantrums. I am trying to stock up some things in the freezer for the nights when nobody has time to cook dinner. I felt a little like a busy squirrel storing up food for the winter.... I made roasted tomato sauce (with tomatoes from our garden!!! stay tuned for an amazing picture of our largest tomato) and potato corn chowder. Yum yum! Next cooking spree will involve egg rolls as I have a humongous cabbage in the fridge that is begging to be used before it melts into a puddle. I would also be open to suggestions if anyone has any good recipes that involve fresh tomatoes, cilantro, and/or plain yogurt, all of which we have in abundance at this time.
Time to go clean up the kitchen before work. Have a nice weekend!

Bacon

Yesterday we went to an apple orchard with Charlotte. We unfortunately forgot to bring our camera, so we have no adorable pictures to share with you. However, I do have to share with you one of the funniest things we've heard her say in a long time. We ate a picnic lunch under an apple tree, including some strips of bacon. Charlotte, with her mouth full of bacon, said "I yike bacon, a YOT." (Translation, "I like bacon, a LOT.")

Happy Birthday Olivia!

Today is a special day! It is Aunt Olivia's birthday!!! Charlotte wanted to send some birthday wishes to her favorite East Coast Auntie. Happy Birthday Olivia! We hope your day is great and that you enjoy doing something special with Charlie.

All dressed up and nowhere to go

This morning Charlotte put on a hoodie sweatshirt, her sunglasses (upside down, I might add), threw two purses over her shoulder and gathered up an armful of books. Then she told me "Go bye-bye now. See you later, crocodile." We've been working on "See ya later alligator. After a while crocodile." I guess she hasn't quite gotten the hang of it yet.

Just some funny things Charlotte says and does

A few random things from the past few weeks:

She was putting on a zippered sweatshirt the other day and said to me, "Papa (grandpa) made this." I think she said that because we always talk about the blankets and sweaters that Grandma Carol Ann made for her. I replied, "No, grandpa did not make that sweatshirt. Mama got it for you at a garage sale." She looks up at me with her big blue eyes and says, "Oh, thank you Mama!"

She also really likes to share right now (we'll see how long that lasts). She and I have had a lot of breakfasts and lunches together recently, and inevitably she asks me if I want to share something, which actually means she wants my food, not that she wants to offer me some. But once I share with her, she is more than happy to extend her slobbery little portions with the sweetest "Want to share, Mama?" After that, the entire conversation revolves around saying "Oh, thank you!" for each bite or sip exchanged. Except she can't really say thank you. It is pronounced "Deet doo." It is so sweet, it is one of my favorite things she says.

A couple of days ago she took an apple slice from her plate at lunch and started driving it around the table like a car. She made little car noises and then made siren noises and said "Help 'body" She means "help somebody," which is what we talk about when we hear ambulances/fire trucks near our house. She is beginning to play pretend and develop a little imagination. It is neat to see that develop in her, as we sort of take that for granted as adults. But kids are concrete thinkers for the first couple of years of life, and then around 2 years of age begin to have more abstract thought. She is beginning to use objects for abstract uses (apple slice=car). She also will now pretend things are there that aren't really, such as feeding her doll imaginary food. She also pretends she is a puppy every now and then.

She is into expressing feelings right now. She got shots at her two year check up today, and when we were driving home this evening she told me she was "so sad, Mama." I asked her why, and she told me she was sick from the shots today. I told her she could have some Tylenol when we got home if she needed it (she LOVES Tylenol, but rarely gets it). A few minutes later she piped up from the back seat "Happy now, Mama!"

She has a new outfit I can barely get off of her because she is so in love with it. This week I pulled out a new long sleeve shirt and pants set from a garage sale that I had put in the closet earlier this summer to save for fall. Around here it has been unseasonably chilly (a perfect temperature, if you ask me, but I love fall), and we had to break out some warmer clothes. This particular outfit has little birds on it, and she will not take it off. She calls it her "buhd" shirt (she can't pronouce the "r" in bird). So I think out of the past week, she has probably worn it for at least part of the last 6 days.


She recently learned how to hum the song "Lullaby and Goodnight" or whatever its real name is. She hums it so tenderly to all her babies and her stuffed kitty when she tucks them in to go to sleep. Then she looks up at whoever is nearby and says, "Grandma sings that."

That's about all for now. Maybe some pictures tomorrow.

Out of the mouths of babes

Today Charlotte and I were walking through the grocery store parking lot when we saw a big yellow bus. Charlotte yells out "Wook (look)! Fool bus!"

Charlotte, the movie

A few more things about Charlotte recently. She is getting pretty close to being potty trained. At home she usually wears underwear except at night when she wears a diaper. When we are out and about she wears a diaper because I prefer not to change wet pants and the whole deal when we are not at home. She does really like using toilets in public bathrooms however (why?!?!?!) and refuses to go in her diaper if I am too lazy to rush her to the potty quickly. At home she uses the toilet about 75% of the time and wakes up dry after naps and in the morning about 50% of the time. She is sometimes a bit stubborn about actually using the potty, and that is when most of our accidents occur. Yesterday she was having too much fun playing with the baby across the street and peed all over their sidewalk. Whoops...
We are full-force into being independent. "Felf" (self) is a common word around here, as in "I can do it myself." This usually applies to getting dressing or brushing teeth, but can be used in variety of other situations as well. She is actually pretty good at getting herself dressed, although her fashion sense is, in a sense, interesting. She can sometimes tell when she has something on backwards, and she gets frustrated if she can't get her arms into the armholes or both her legs go in the same pant leg. Here you can see an outfit she has chosen herself.



Here is a little video of Charlotte being a robot. Daddy taught her how to do a robot voice and robot arms. Charming, isn't it? :)



This girl likes to draw.


Here's the video I took when I snuck up on her while she was singing. I'm trying to get one of her singing the ABCs, but she always stops when she sees the camera.

Tired but alive

It's been a long, long time since we posted anything on the blog. We've been a little busy, to say the least. We started our new "jobs" a while back, which actually seems more like an all-encompassing new life where we just occasionally come home and see each other. Just to warn you, this post may seem a little down, but since this blog is about our life, this is what you will have to endure for now. :)

I (Kristi) have just finished a three week hospital cardiology rotation. I learned a lot, but the hours were incredibly long, more than I imagined they would be. I usually got to work around 6:15am and depending on the day, finished between 6:30 and 7:30pm. Most days I only got to see Charlotte for an hour after work before she went to bed, which got pretty old after a while. Every fourth night both of us are "on call" which means we stay overnight at the hospital to admit new patients to the hospital and take care of our team's patients throughout the night. When we are on call we work 30 hours straight, with usually 1-2 hours of sleep sometime during the night. After your 30 hours are up, you get to go home at noon or 1pm and sleep the rest of the day. It's hard to catch up on sleep, so we are feeling pretty sleep deprived most of the time.

Matt is on a four week rotation on the Family Medicine hospital service. He takes care of patients with pretty much anything from cardiology problems to pneumonia to liver problems to whatever else you can think of. He is learning a lot also. On this rotation when you are on call overnight you are the only resident responsible for the patients on the service and for admitting new patients. This means you have to make your own decisions regarding their care which is sometimes very overwhelming because we just don't have the experience to help us know the right thing to do. But I think Matt is becoming more comfortable in this role as the month progresses.

Next I have one glorious week of vacation to hang out at home with Charlotte and catch up on all kinds of things I have been meaning to do (like sleep!). Then I do two months in the emergency department. Matt does not have vacation next week unfortunately, but we should be able to spend some time together as a family. Next month he does a pediatrics rotation in the hospital.

Now for Charlotte news. She is practically talking in full sentences. She uses three and sometimes four word phrases, and she soaks up stuff we say like a sponge. "What are you doing?" is the most clear improvement right now. She used to ask "deen?" which was the abbreviated form of "doing?" She is such a sweetheart most of the time. Today when she came home from Grandma and Grandpa's house I was just waking up from my post-call nap and my mom said "Are you still sleepy?" Charlotte of course had to ask me this a million times and then tuck me in with a blanket and a baby doll when I laid down on the couch. She tilts her head to the side and gets this very concerned and empathetic look on her face, "you sleepy?"

The other big thing she can do now is sing songs with words. Just the other day I caught her playing her xylophone and singing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star to herself. She sings the right tune and a fairly impressive translation of the words. She can do this with the ABCs and Happy Birthday as well. I have a video of her singing I will try to get up on here tomorrow. For now it is getting late and I am very sleepy, so it's time to say goodnight. Here are a few pictures of the little munchkin to tide you over until I can put more up.

She sat still long enough for me to put braids in her hair. The trick was the bag of crackers she is holding. :)