Buffalo Days and U of M Arboretum Pictures

Over the weekend we celebrated "Buffalo Days" by going to a petting zoo, dog & disc contest, and other festivities in the park, and in the evening watched a parade! Char loved watching the dogs and had a great time, but was scared out of her gourd by the sirens on the fire engine :(





This one is for you Grandpa Randy! Note the empty coffee mug next to her as she reads through the paper on an early morning. She isn't looking quite woken up yet in her bathrobe.


Now on to arboretum pictures! http://www.arboretum.umn.edu/ By the way, for our fellow students you get in for free with your University ID.



Fun with the camera settings...


Charlotte is amazed at the beauty. Clearly irises are her favorite flower, just like her Grandma!

Toothless Wonder no more

Charlotte's first time eating spaghetti by herself. She's got more noodles on her bib than in her tummy!

I was in a hurry to post those pictures last night before bed and I forgot to say a few things that are new around here.

The first is that Charlotte got her very first tooth!!! She'd been working on it for a little while, and it broke through her gums while we were out in New Jersey/Pennsylvania for Charlie and Olivia's wedding. She has been such a good girl all along and was never crabby about it. Although now she seems like maybe she's more irritable than her normal sunny personality, so maybe she's going to get a whole mouthful of teeth at once. It's about time at 11 months! She won't let us look at it much, so it will probably be a while before we get a picture posted with it showing.

We caught Charlotte playing in the toilet water yesterday. She was crawling around in the hall while we ate dinner and the bathroom door was open. I ran after her but she likes to crawl faster when she knows she's being chased. So right as I got to her she pulled herself up on the toilet and stuck her hands in the bowl. Nice one, Char. She got a good hand scrubbing after that!

Charlotte is really into animals. She adores dogs; if we are out on a walk and she sees a dog she will "bark" at it and flap her arms and kick her legs. It's hard to hold on to her because she squirms to get down and run over to it. Her love of animals is not limited to dogs. I (Kristi) taught her "What does a lamb say?" And she'll answer "Ba ba ba" in normal baby babble-style (sounds sort of like the beginning of the Beach Boys song, Barbara Ann). She has lots of books with animals in them, and sometimes when she opens to the lamb page she will say ba ba ba. We've noticed recently that she likes to point out all the animals in books. I don't know if it is the faces she recognizes or what. Grandma Cindy gave her a book about an African family and a goat, and she LOVES to look at it and point out the goats on every page. What a goofy girl!

We are in the process of looking for daycare for Charlotte in Minneapolis. We are moving there in mid-August for our last year of medical school (speaking of which, by the way, we are now officially 4th years!!!! Yay!!!!). This has turned out to be a bigger process than we thought, and we are frustrated with the long waitlists at most places. Apparently you should know where you want your kid to go for daycare before you even get pregnant, as many places have waitlists between 10 months and 2 years!!!! We have a couple of promising options though, one at the home of some friends of friends from Duluth, and the other at a center. However, if anyone has ANY ideas, please let us know!

Just a little reminder of what Charlotte and I were doing 1 year ago (June 8, 2007)

Baby goes to Philly

We went to Philadelphia and New Jersey at the end of May for Matt's brother Charlie's wedding to the newest member of the Florek family, Olivia. It was a wonderful weekend and a beautiful wedding. Welcome to the family Olivia!

The Liberty Bell in Philadelphia on our day of sightseeing

Charlotte with Grandpa Randy taking a tour of historic Philly

Charlotte with her "cousins" Megan and Chelsie (they are actually Matt's cousins)

Charlie and Olivia

Matt had the very important job of holding the book during one part of the ceremony. He said it was heavy and his arm got tired.

Aww...

Matt and his mom. Don't they look nice?!

The wedding party all rode in a limo between the ceremony and reception

Miss Charlotte had a wonderful time eating off of the table. She had all kinds of good things including some steak, chicken, and buttery green beans.

Matt and his mom cutting a rug.
Yum!

Charlotte cuddling with Grandpa Randy...she's getting a little tired of all this partying!

She fell asleep in my arms on the dance floor with the live band playing. Poor little lamb, she must have been exhausted!

Charlotte shares her thoughts with Littlefoot

Thanks to Liz P. from our medical school class, Charlotte has her very first best friend. She shares all of her secrets with Littlefoot, one of the dinosaurs from the old movie "The Land Before Time." She talks to him, and cuddles with him, and pulls little bits of fur out of him. She laughs when she sees him and will toddle as fast as she can across the room to get to him. Here she is talking to him:

Kawishiwi Lake to Polly and Malberg Lake (BWCA)

I've had a few requests for pics from my recent trip to the BWCA, so to please the crowd, here ya go. Sorry, no pics of Charlotte, princess of the blog, on this post!

Highlights include no 515 rod portages like last time (thanks a lot Joshua), catching and eating a couple dozen beautiful smallmouth bass and some northern pike too, meeting a friendly black bear on the portage, and lots of deep blue sky and cold, open water. Enjoy!

Busy bees

We have been busy little bees in the kitchen here in Buffalo.

Yesterday Matt went on a little cooking spree and made homemade yogurt that he learned about from our friend Luke, beef jerky for his upcoming boundary waters trip, and homemade granola (also learned from Luke, from a terrific Mennonite cookbook called "More with Less"). Kristi made some yummy guacamole (she also made dinner, but that is not so exciting). Then today she made dhal, which is an indian lentil-like stew. It is delicious! Today Matt is drying apples and bananas in our dehydrator for his trip. We are not usually so crafty in the kitchen, but we do like to cook when we have the time! Recently we have been on a slippery slope of making things from scratch--hence the yogurt. Matt has always said he would never stoop that low to make his own yogurt because it's just incubating bacteria in milk, and that is gross. But when Luke told him about it, he just couldn't resist, and now we have a very wonderful dish of homemade yogurt in our fridge. If you want the recipe for breeding your own little family of lactobacillus acidophilus in your kitchen, let us know!

We recently signed up for something called "Freecycle." It is like an online classified service (sort of like Craigslist, for those of you who are familiar with that), but everything is totally FREE! Once you join the Freecycle group online in your area (either your city or county), then you can browse all the offers of free stuff people don't want or you can post wanted ads for things you want (though you are supposed to not go crazy with this--they say it is not a wish list). The stuff ranges from broken appliances (maybe someone wants a working part out of it?) to strawberry plants to baby stuff to anything and everything! We placed a "wanted" ad for a breadmaker because ours is on its last legs. And this morning we picked up our very own, only used one time, FREE breadmaker! What a great idea someone had. How many people (including yourselves!) do you think have perfectly good stuff lying around that they don't know what to do with? Somebody else wants it! Check out your very own area Freecycle group at http://www.freecycle.org/ and see what you can get rid of or find!

I suppose you are all looking for a picture or an update on Charlotte. I thought I would sneak in a little bit about the rest of our family and force you to read it before you got to the part you really wanted to read. :)

Charlotte is still our little toothless wonder. 10 and a half months old and still no teeth. Hopefully she gets some before middle school. Although I suppose it will save us money if we don't have to get her braces. She seems to do just fine eating whatever she wants without teeth. However, she does love toothbrushes, so we got her one last week. She is always intrigued with what we're doing when we brush, and she'll open her mouth if we pretend to brush her "teeth." Maybe she won't end up thinking brushing her teeth is torture when she's a toddler??? See below for a picture of her with her beloved gum brush (as daddy calls it).




Recently she rediscovered her bouncy seat. Remember that little jungle-themed chair she used to sit in as a tiny baby? Well now she likes to stand next to it and shake it vigorously to make it light up and play music. It's a fun game. No pictures of that today, sorry.

She's making lots and lots of noise these days. When she figures out how to say words she will probably never stop talking. She does a lot of making funny noises by sticking her tongue in and out while she is babbling. Often she will sit on the floor with a book and talk to herself--she looks like she is reading out loud (in some strange babbly tribal language we can't understand). Check out the video. The best part is right at the beginning.

Charlotte painted pictures for her grandmas for Mother's Day. Here is the artist at work.

Charlotte and her mama on Mother's Day

little miss sunshine

Charlotte discovers the tupperware cupboard

Practicing walking

After a bath

She's a very talented xylephonist

She's sucking on a little plastic turtle that she likes to carry around with its head in her mouth

Charlotte continues to improve her walking skills. She doesn't fall down nearly as much as she used to, and she has learned how to gracefully land on her very padded cloth-diapered butt. She gets really excited when she walks. She loves to flap her arms and gasp in delight as she is walking toward something.

Her newest thing is playing peek-a-boo. She has started hiding behind things and then popping out and laughing hysterically. She will hide behind a diaper (clean, of course), a book, her mama, the laundry basket, or anything else she can find. She'll even put her hands over her eyes and then pull them down to peek out! She thinks she is so funny.

For a while now she has been learning the art of mimicry. She has learned how to shake her head, pant like a puppy, stick out her tongue, and clap. She has also learned a little shaky dance that she will do when she is in a good mood.