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. :)