Charlotte's Web

This month we have had a lot of fun. Charlotte has continued progressing with her talking skills and can now combine words (as well as signs) to form complete thoughts and ideas. She also has an amazing memory which now lends itself to nice dinnertime conversations.

Everynight at dinner I ask her (well Rick) about her day, what she did, what she ate, if she napped, who she saw, etc. Usually Rick will answer for her, "Tell mama you had apples and went swimming," to which she would sign apple or swim. Now if I ask her who she played with today she will actually pause for a moment and then answer with the name of the friends she saw today, same with where she went, "Costco" or "Shop-shop" or "park." Crazy!

Click the picture or "READ MORE" to hear more about her month and see some fun pictures

Along the same lines of talking earlier in the month Rick posted a video of her pointing out some of the letters of the alphabet(~7 at the time). Well after our trip to LA and our endless singing and reading the letter books on the drive down and up she now can recognize (written and signed) all the letters of the alphabet (even out of order!). She also has the cutest singing voice for the alphabet song, complete with "Now I know my abc's, next time won't you sing with me." I'm working on getting the video of that posted soon.

During this month Charlotte went to her first Holiday concert with some of her friends to watch a friend from or mom group sing with her chorale ensemble. She did quite well and really enjoyed the music. We also went to the Bay Area Discovery Museum in Sausalito with her friend E and had a blast! It was soo much fun we can't wait to go back. They had a water room with lily pads (think giant water beds) for the kids to jump on and one of them had real fish swimming above, plus an outdoor "hiking" area and a kid-size water stream. We just wish we lived closer to get there more often

Christmas was wonderful. For the first time in a long time we actually stayed local. We did Christmas morning just us (and the grandma and nana on skype)and then we were invited for dinner to the B's. It was such a relaxing day: family, friends, and food. Charlotte definitely got the hang of opening presents and now insists on helping us open anything that looks like it might be a "pre-san."

We got to spend some much needed time together as a family over the Christmas break and for that we are very grateful. We had an unfortunate snafu and lost some of our pictures from 1 week during this month so there aren't as many pictures for you to enjoy (sadly it was christmas week), but I promise the next post will make-up for it.

Enjoy some pictures of Charlotte's 17th month of life!