I dream of kitties

As you can see below, our lives pretty much revolve around the kitties here at our house. There is always one in her hands, and if there isn't, it probably means she (the kitty) is taking a nap or having a bath or some other important thing. Right now the favorite kitty is Carmel, pictured here. Charlotte and Mama made a tutu for Charlotte the other day, and with the leftovers we made one for Carmel, too. When we went to the fabric store to get tulle for the tutu, Charlotte really wanted it to be red. Mama couldn't find any colors that would look good with red, so she chose some other colors instead. To be fair, Charlotte's approval was obtained before making the purchase. When we got home and made the tutu, Charlotte asked "Where's my red tutu?" Mama feels a little bit bad about stifling Charlotte's desire for a red tutu and not letting her make her own decision. The next tutu will be red if she wants it to be.

When I grow up....

Charlotte has big ambitions for her life. See below for the subtitles if you don't catch what she is saying.




I'm gonna be in the circus.
Play with toys in the circus.
Toys in the circus.
Kitty toys.

She doesn't even know what a circus is...

Some new pictures, as requested

A little bird requested some new pictures, so here they are. In no particular order, the life of Charlotte Neema Florek:

She finally fits into the sweater that Kristi's grandma knit for her 2 years ago--she's a bit of a small kid. It fits perfectly now and is so cozy!

A couple of weeks ago Charlotte melted Mama's heart when she helped fold the laundry. Usually when Charlotte "helps" it means "making things take twice as long." But she actually folded each one of these baby washcloths in quarters and stacked them in a pile. She kept saying "I'm helping you Mama!" Sweet, sweet Charlotte.

Random picture--Kristi made a cake for a friend's birthday. It was a crab cake. Get it? Crabcake? The friend is from Maryland where they actually live near an ocean and eat seafood. This was in his honor. :) And the split in the middle? Yeah, the cake broke because I stacked the layers incorrectly, so I made it look like it was a big crack in the rock. Clever, I am.

Playing tea party with her "ahmals" (animals). She does this a lot. All of the animals are leaning over drinking from their tea cups, if you can't tell. The tea set is from Auntie Olivia and Uncle Charlie.

I taught her to ask "one lump or two" as she is passing out the pretend sugar.

Making pizza crust with Daddy.

Instead of rolling it out and making a little mini pizza, she actually just ate the dough one pinch at a time.

She knows her letters by sight! Her favorite letter is O, but she also likes the letter B, too. We're working on learning all of the letter sounds now.

That's all for now. I had promised a few people I was going to put a video up, but I can't seem to get it to load. Does anyone else have problems loading a video on here that is more than a few seconds long? It takes forever! Maybe I'm doing something wrong? Let me know if you have an answer!

Escape

As some of you know, we escaped the winter doldrums of Minnesota in January and took a little vacation. We had both managed to get scheduled for time off at the SAME TIME!!! Of course, this followed a month where we were on the same rotation (Family Medicine OB--delivering babies and taking care of the babies in the nursery), and the call schedule was every third night. That meant that Matt would be on call overnight at the hospital one night, then me the next night, then we'd have one evening together, then Matt would be on call, then me, then a night off, and so on and so forth. It was interesting. Sometimes in the mornings when I would be coming on call and Matt would be finishing his shift we would get to hang out for a short while at the hospital, but we didn't see much of each other that month. Anyway, all that to say that a vacation was much-needed to spend some time together. And, we went without Charlotte. She stayed with my parents, whom she adores.

Without further ado, some pictures from our tropical retreat.

All aboard the Navigator of the Seas

Our oceanview stateroom--free upgrade from the interior room we booked!

Lunch in the Windjammer Cafe, looking out over Miami before we set "sail."

Kristi's inspiration for her new hobby, fruit carving.

Other cruise ships waiting to leave the Miami port.

The belly flop contest! Watch the progression of pictures as the guy jumps off the platform on the right!

He's going for it...no fear whatsoever!

SPLASH!!!

Coming in to port at Labadee, Haiti. Yes, just days after the earthquake. Nowhere near Port au Prince. It is a peninsula privately owned by Royal Caribbean. The cruise line decided that they were going to continue to stop there because the income from all the tourists is too important to the economy. A lot of locals are employed by the cruise line on the peninsula, and the rich tourists spend a lot of money there. All of the money spent during our day there was donated to relief work, and the ship brought a lot of supplies like bottled water and non-perishable foods. It still didn't make me feel awesome about vacationing there in light of what was happening on the other side of the island. But on we go.

On the far right, at the top you can see a bit of a tower, sort of like a big power or telephone line. This is their "zip line," a long cable that you could pay a lot of money to be hooked on to and zoom down it over the ocean. We didn't, but we watched a lot of people. Looked like fun.

This is all Royal Caribbean kingdom. Look at that nice blue water!

Matt with his "morning juice," aka coffee. Not a bad view for eating breakfast, huh?

Kristi loving the warm sunny day that is dawning upon us.

And this is what we did for most of the week--sat on the beach or on the boat deck on beach on lounge chairs, reading books. This is the life.

One of the beaches on Labadee. This was probably the best beach of our trip. Not too crowded, calm warm water, soft sand, just the right amount of shade to retreat into occasionally.

Another view of the same beach.

Here's looking back on the boat, docked at the pier. Calling us back to the buffet line...

Some of the relief supplies the ship brought, being unloaded.

There was lots to do on the ship. Like hold big plastic butts (Matt's idea) and rock climb (which we never did).

And bring home the bronze medal in a ping pong tournament! Kristi was proud of his skills.

In order to enter the competition, Matt had to start with a partner. Since Kristi was too afraid to enter the stiff competition, Matt asked a guy standing next to him if he would be willing. "Sure," he said, "I was the ping pong champion in Florida." Then he grinned, showing off a whole mouthful of gold teeth. Excellent choice, Matt.

There was also a mini-golf course!

These were our dinner table mates. We had requested a large table for our dinners, and ended up at a table for 10. Only the six of us above came consistently, but we had a lot of fun. The couple on the right are traveling for the last time before their baby is born (we told them having a kid isn't the end of all fun...just most of it...). The two guys in the middle are friends since the 1st grade and who vacation together to pick up chicks. They had more than a few entertaining stories. As a table, we probably ate more than anyone else on the ship. For those who haven't cruised before, you can pretty much get whatever you want off the menu in multiple quantities. We had some big appetites at our table (us included!). Most nights we stayed long past the end of dinner talking and laughing; sometimes dinner was a 4 hour affair.

This is the main dining room. Fancy, no?

Here's Kristi on formal night in the dining room. Unfortunately we didn't get any pictures of the two of us dressed up.

Here is our second port of call, Ocho Rios Jamaica. We spent a few hours relaxing on the beach, but otherwise didn't do much.

We had the opportunity to do lots of stuff in the evenings since we didn't have a little barnacle named Charlotte with us. Here is a "Broadway Tribute" show in the theater (this particular song and dance was Abba). We also went to an ice skating show (yes, the ship has an ice rink!), a comedy show, The Newly Wed Game, Karaoke night, and a magician. There was also time for some late-night relaxing in the hot tub and listening to live music. We didn't try our hand at the casino, but our table-mate Bobby lost a lot of money there. He told us all kinds of stories about it (like the time his friend told him to bet $100 on red in roulette, so he did and he lost it), as well as the girls he met, and the times he jumped into the pool with all his clothes on after having one (or two) too many drinks.

The second to last night there was a late night deck party with food, dancing, and live music.

And more fruit carvings!

On our last night we listened to live jazz music late into the night. A nice way to end our relaxing cruise in the Caribbean. Good bye warm weather, hello cold Minnesota with the jobs that await us!

Blessing

Just talked to my sister....baby girl didn't end up getting admitted to the hospital yesterday. She seemed to turn the corner and they sent her home on antibiotics. Praise God for watching over her...He loves her more than we ever can.

Pneumonia

Please pray for our new niece in Ethiopia. She was taken to the hospital with pneumonia today.

Charlotte at age two and a half

It's been a while since I've posted anything of length about what Charlotte is up to these days. I like to keep track of these things since I have not really gotten into writing in her baby book. This is my documentation of her "babyhood." Hopefully the internet is not a passing fad that will disappear, and take along all my memories. :)

At two and a half, Charlotte is speaking in full, complete sentences. She is almost completely understandable to us, but also is pretty clear to everyone else too. She has trouble with the sounds for L, th, and some S's. She is formulating her own thoughts, not just repeating things we have said before. She is on the cusp of the "Why?" stage--she is starting to understand the concept of reasoning and so asks a lot of questions. Luckily she is pretty satisfied with simple answers so far! One of our favorite things she asks is "Are you talkin' 'bout me?"

Charlotte loves to sing. She sings all of the time. She sings songs we recognize, and songs we don't recognize. She sings recognizable songs with new words. She makes up her own songs. Grandpa Mark and Grandma Cindy teach her lots of songs at their house, and so we are always being surprised with new songs. "Matt, did you know she knew that song?" "Kristi, did you teach her that?" Some of her favorites are predictable for her age--The Wheels on the Bus, Jesus Loves Me, Mary Had a 'Yitto Yam,' Puff the Magic Dragon, Sesame Street theme song. Others are not so popular with the toddler crowd--Smoke on the Water and Human Wheels (John Mellencamp). She plays a mean air guitar on a badmitton raquet when she sings Smoke on the Water... Just yesterday we were on a long car trip to visit Lisa and Travis in Iowa to celebrate the new baby (we didn't make it due to zero visibility from blowing snow, then they closed I-35), and from the backseat we heard "Dah dah dah, dah dah duh-duh, dah dah dah, duh-duh. Foke (smoke) on the waaaater....fire in the sky." I'm not sure, but she might be the only two and a half year old who sings that. She has also been known to shout "Say 'fire in the sky!'" when listening to the song on CD. She gets impatient waiting for her favorite part, I guess. :)

She is really into playing with stuffed animals right now, particularly with her beanie baby kitties. She has a black one named Chocolate Drop, and white one named Snow White or Peppermint (usually the former), two brown ones named Lollipop and Carmel (these names all came from a book about 4 little kittens who lived in a candy shop), and a gray one named Stripe. She divides her allegiance between Chocolate Drop and Snow White. If she asks you which one is your favorite out of a pile of stuffed animals, don't choose one of those two. You won't get to play with it, but instead will receive a different animal in your hands with the reassurance "No, this one is your favorite!" She particularly likes to put the kitties in glass jars and screw the tops on, then carry them around like that. She also has a new game where she puts the kitties in a bag or box, then gives it to someone as a birthday present. Daddy gets her to laugh hysterically when he pretends there is nothing in there, then turns the bag upside down to look in it and dumps the kitty on his head!

One of her other favorite stuffed animals is a soft lamb, which she has now named Fleece As White As Snow. I almost died laughing when I heard her yelling "Fleece As White As Snow! Fleece As White As Snow! Come here Fleece As White As Snow!" And this morning, she named her beanie baby lamb Fleece As White As Snow also. She calls them Fleece As White As Snow Muhver (mother) and Fleece As White As Snow Baby. So creative, this girl is.

She is starting to outgrow naptime...or at least she thinks she is. She skips her nap several times a week, but she plays nicely in her room with the lights off and the curtains closed for a couple hours even if she doesn't sleep. I think Mama and Daddy need the nap as much as she does sometimes! Today she told me she couldn't sleep because she was scared of the eyes, then pointed to two swirls in the wood on the bookshelf next to her bed that looked like eyes to her. Poor girl! She has actually told me before that she couldn't sleep for the same reason, so I believe that it really does bother her. We taped up a picture of our family over it now, and hopefully that's the last of that.

One other thing she really loves to play with these days is a tea set she got from Auntie Olivia in Austria at Christmas. It is just her size, and the kitties have enjoyed more tea than any other kitties in town. I even taught her to ask her guests about sugar "One lump, or two?" Except she says yump instead of lump...