Charlotte's Web

This month Charlotte has gotten very verbal. She has perfected some three syllable words and some multi-word phrases (banana, tomato and banana yogurt) and attempts to repeat any words that she hears (yes, ANY word...).

One of her cutest new things is that she sings. She will try to sing her favorite songs but usually only gets a few recognizable sounds out and then expects us to finish with her. Sometimes she will sign parts of a song over and over again until we finally figure it out and sing it to her. Someof her favorite songs to date are: 5 little monkeys jumping on the bed, "jump, jump"; 5 little monkeys swinging from the tree "shhh....snap!"; Little bunny Foo Foo "hop, hop"; manamana; and of course the wheels on the bus complete with people going "up, up" and babies going "wah, wah" or "coo,coo".

Charlotte's collection of teeth has begun to expand this month giving her very painful gums and us some very sleepless nights. She has started getting all of her molars and her bicuspids at the same time and spends a lot of time with her hands in her mouth.

In Charlotte's bedroom we have letters that spell out her name on the wall and she started to show interest in them once she figured that she could reach them by standing on her tiptoes and reaching out of her crib. When we saw that she was interested in them we figured might as well start introducing her to letters. The "o" and "t" are her favorites (coincidentally they were the closest to her crib) and this month she started pointing out t's and o's not only in her books but also while we've been out and about. Some fun places were the t in the 3ft marker at the pool at swim class and the cross on a book at a church.

In swim class she continues to excel and fully amaze us. I had the opportunity to take her to a swim class this month and got to see all of her new skills. She floats on her back for the entire twinkle, twinkle little star song, she can swim (assisted) while taking multiple breaths in counts of 4, she can climb out of the side of the pool and then jump back in and she likes to "dive" under the water to grab rings. I couldn't believe the things the Rick told me she was capable of doing until I saw them with my own eyes, AMAZING!

We had a nice long visit from nana for Thanksgiving which Charlotte thoroughly enjoyed. We were invited to Thanksgiving dinner with a group of friends from work who also have kids and Charlotte had a great time playing. We spent the day up in SF and Charlotte did some hat shopping, got to see the ice rink and giant tree in Union Square, and got to have a nice long playdate with her friend Emma.

We were warned that this may not be such a good year for a picture with Santa but we thought we would try anyway. Well you will see we love to torture Charlotte. The first attempt to see Santa was at a local "Breakfast with Santa" that we went to with our friends Grant, Julie and Callum. Charlotte had a great time eating pancakes, dancing to the music, making the crafts and running around with Callum, but she was definitely NOT into sitting on some strangers lap. After that we tried to condition her to the idea of santa. We showed her her picture from last year, we read stories and talked about him a lot. Surely our second attempt would go better than our first.... Not really :( She was polite, though saying "No, thank you" when we asked her if she wanted to see santa. At least with the second torture attempt we got some classic crying baby with santa pictures. You'd think we would have had enough but we found ourselves at a holiday christmas tree event that had a santa and we decided to try again. This time dada took the reigns and did a proximity training drill, getting her interested in things that were closer and closer to santa and waving to him. Lucky for us this was a realistic santa who was really patient and nice and there weren't too many people waiting to see him. By the end of the night she gave him high fives and kisses and cuddles. Unfortunately I did not take the good camera and my little pocket one was not fast enough to catch clear images of Charlotte, but you get the idea.

Along the lines of Holidays, we were finally able to get our Christmas tree (2 failed attempts) and Charlotte loves it. Last time we were in Buffalo we got a huge lot of beautiful holiday dresses and they all seem to fit Charlotte right now so I have been putting her in dresses for any and every event we go to but before we leave I ask her to stand in front of the tree. She has gotten very good (and patient) at standing there until I get a few snaps. She's just so adorable in them!

Enjoy some pictures from Charlotte's 16th month of life and Happy Holidays from the Turlington's!