Favorite words

I know a lot of posts have been about language recently, but she seems to just be picking up words left and right and they are so darn cute! Here are some of my favorites.
noo noo = noodle
ah-pane = airplane
howp = help
Peep = Pete, a friend who visited recently
mommy = melon
cuddle = cuddle (tricky, I know)
sheet = sit (sometimes it actually comes out sounding like a naughty word)
shouler (like shoulder, without the d) = stroller
pah-no = piano
me = mirror

She has also recently taken to talking about who goes to the bathroom. So be forewarned, if you use the bathroom and she sees you go in there, she will have to talk about it for a while afterward. "Momma pee...blah blah blah....momma....blah blah blah....pee." And so on.
She is big into stories right now, talking about things that happened. She has an amazing memory for past events. For example, she was re-enacting her puking illness last week by making weird throw-up noises and pointed to the floor where she did most of her puking. That happened over a month ago! And she talks about her favorite dog "Pabo" (real name: Cabo) who came to visit quite a while ago.

We are trying to get her ready to go to Hawaii in May by shifting her sleeping schedule. Hawaii is 4 hours behind MN time (so when it is noon in MN it is 8am in Hawaii), and we really don't want to be getting up at 2:30am when she thinks it is 6:30am. So we are keeping her up later at night, letting her sleep until 8:30 in the morning, and putting her down for her nap at 3pm instead of 1pm. We'll probably keep gradually shifting later and later until we leave, but do we really want to end up keeping her up until midnight?! Probably not. Anyone have good ideas for traveling long distances with a toddler?

Milestone!

Charlotte put two words together today. She said "Hi Daddy!"

It's a beautiful day to play outside!

"cheeeese!"

Charlotte, like her father, has excellent fashion sense.

Charlotte's first batch of guacamole. Her mom helped just a little.

A few more

I forgot that she also says tunnel (she loves going through the I-94 tunnel in Minneapolis) and tynol (tylenol). She would take tylenol many times a day if we let her. Yesterday after I had to wipe her poor little butt and she was screaming, tylenol was the only thing that cheered her up.
And "heady" means heavy.

Words

Just wanted to record a few cute things Charlotte is saying before I forget them. Her vocabulary is growing fast!

pummy=tummy
puma=spoon
picy=spicy
geena=green
pofu=tofu
lo=hello
haha=aloha
pot=teapot (as in 'I'm a little teapot')
wee=swing
'side=inside or outside (opposite of wherever she is)
Pabo=Cabo, the big dog in the video posted earlier
didi=nippy (pacifier)
pepful=pretzel
chicka=chicken
coke=coat
pup=cup
shadow=stroller
eyes=glasses or sunglasses

And a word of warning to current or future parents. Don't let your kid eat too many oranges or citrus fruit too many days in a row. We have a little girl with one sore behind.

This post feels empty without a picture, so here is one from a few weeks ago. Charlotte is helping make cookies. Yes, she is standing on the counter. Yes, we were careful to make sure she did not fall off. Yes, she was completely naked for a while during the cookie making. No, we did not serve any of those cookies to anyone else.

A few noteworthy things...

We are going to Hawaii!!! My sister Laura is getting married to her main squeeze Justin on the island of Oahu in May, and our immediate family is going to celebrate with them. We were going to go on vacation, just the two of us without babycakes, in between med school and residency. But since we HAVE to go to Hawaii for this wedding, it will count as our vacation. (insert teeny tiny violin playing sad music for us) We will have to dump her off with her grandparents a time or two in order for us to truly live it up. :) We rented a little apartment near the beach with a kitchen and not one but two decks! We'll certainly have pictures to share when we get back! Anybody been to Oahu before who has suggestions of "must-do" activities? Charlotte is busy getting ready for our trip, as you will see below. You'll see a short video demostrating the ease with which babies can learn Hawaiian words. We'll post more of those in the coming weeks as we expand her vocabulary.

Mama couldn't resist buying this dress with whales on it from the second-hand store. Laura used to love whales, and wouldn't it be fun for Charlotte to wear this to her wedding on the beach? What do you think Laura? Otherwise, the other choice is a pink dress in a picture further on below.

Watching for puppies out the window.

Swimsuit from last year still fits!

Isn't she a cutie?

Also new with us--we rented a house in Rochester for next year! It is a small 2 bedroom one bath home very near the hospitals we will be working at in Rochester. It is also only a couple blocks from a GIANT new playground and swimming pool. The neighborhood is quiet with lots of dogs out on walks with their owners, which Charlotte will love enormously. We don't have any pictures of it yet, but we'll put some up when we move in mid-May.

Here are a few pictures from Easter at Kristi's grandparents' house in Rochester (actually just a few blocks from our new house!). Charlotte loved playing outside and ate lots of ham. She also had a little egg hunt with crackers inside of plastic Easter eggs. Laura, do you like this dress or the whale one better for the wedding?

This is from Easter also. Charlotte and her dad reading the funnies.

Since the weather has been nice, we have been spending a lot of time outside. I think Charlotte would stay out all day if we let her. Even food might not tempt her inside... She LOVES slides and swings (which she calls a 'wee'). She even "helped" mama plant some seeds for starting a garden in Rochester. This will be our first attempt at gardening, but hopefully we will get to experience the satisfaction of growing and eating our own food, however small it might be.

Our kid is so WEIRD!!!

Last night was eye opening; we have created a strange child. Here she is at dinner fussing because she wants more tofu.

Charlotte and Cabo

This is Charlotte with our friend Chelsea's dog, Cabo. He is a Golden Doodle, a cross between a golden lab and a poodle. He's huge! But Charlotte loves him and wasn't afraid of him at all. She really really REALLY loves dogs.

1970

Well, sad news everyone. We are not moving in to the house across the street from my parents. The lady who sort of lives there decided that she is not ready to move all of her stuff out of the house. Boo hoo. We were really set on that working out, so we are pretty bummed.
However, we do have to tell you what an amazing relic the house was. It was like a time machine transported us back to the 1970s. The house was perfectly maintained as a true period piece--the carpet is Winnie-the-Pooh gold, as my mom describes it. The linoleum is orange and yellow and brown and loud. The light fixtures are hmmm, how shall I describe them...unique. The microwave is the largest one that ever walked this earth, and it actually has the controls for the stove/oven on it. The furniture is floral, striped, and/or velvety. Well-distributed throughout the house are small reminders of the 1970s--a dark colored glass collection, a brass statue of a cat, and my personal favorite- a green shag wall hanging of a mushroom, flower, and butterfly. Unfortunately one of the deal breakers was that she wanted the house to remain fully furnished when we moved in... thanks, but no thanks. Charlotte would certainly have some sort of identity crisis or at least a terrible sense of fashion for the rest of her life.
So now we begin the frantic search for housing in the area. It had seemed that everything was going to work out with this house, so we hadn't looked at anything else. Too bad our Everybody Loves Raymond scenario isn't going to come true.

Skills

Charlotte can now walk on her tiptoes and say "tofu." And she got a new potty chair yesterday that she LOVES (up until now we were making her sit on the grown up potty). We are having trouble getting her off of the potty...she will sit and pee, stand up and clap for herself, say "none" which translates as "done." Then she will say "poo poo" (which translates as "poo poo") and sit down again. The cycle repeats itself with many small amounts of pee but no poop and no end in sight to the vicious cycle. It ends 10 minutes later with screaming and crying and a naked child running around the house. Hopefully the potty chair will become less exciting as the days go on...her first words when we woke her up this morning were "poo poo?"