Charlotte's Web

We have a one and a half year old! How did that happen? It's hard to believe our little girl is now closer to 2 than 1 and that measuring in months may start to sound silly. This month we had quite a few happenings along with quite a bit of travel. We started her 18th month of life in southern California visiting family, traversing Disneyland in a torrential downpour and taking in a Sabres v. Ducks hockey game and ended it with a nice long week in Lake Tahoe, just the three of us. Charlotte was a champ through it all adjusting to each of her new environments in stride.

Lake Tahoe was great. We needed some family time up in the mountains, surrounded by fresh air and beautiful snow.
On the days leading up to the trip Charlotte started practicing her "Lake Ta-HO" word and was a pro before we got there. She told everyone she met where she was going. Once we got there she was enamored by the giant gondola that climbs up the face of the mountain and she was content to spend the day running around waving at the people going up and down the mountain in the gondolas. Our hotel room had an outside balcony that served as a perfect contained outdoor snow playspace for Charlotte.















On the first morning there we got some fresh powder and Charlotte made her first mini-snowman followed by her first ever snow angel! She loved the snow: catching snowflakes in her mouth, climbing in the snow, laying in the snow, dancing in the snow, sledding in the snow, and throwing snowballs.

Mama and Charlotte got spend a lot of time together during the day and dada got to spend a few days on the mountain snowboarding: everyone got just what they needed. At the Timber Lodge in Heavenly they have a nice activity center where Charlotte and I were able to hangout and play, do crafts, make play-do, play Foosball (she seriously could do it!), and drive everyone crazy with the Tikki-Room song on infinite repeat! It was a nice place to warm up in between our outdoor walks down to the lake and around the ice skating rink. Charlotte experienced her first face painting; she chose a butterfly, which was cute but refused to come off of her face so she had a faded outline for the next few days.

Charlotte also made her first batch of oatmeal raisin cookies and I even let her eat one! She loved stirring and mixing, and pouring and patting the balls, and watching them bake in the oven. Oh, it was so much fun!

We continue to be amazed at how her vocabulary continues to grow everyday. She is becoming much better at stringing words together to get her thoughts across to us and we have found that no word is too ambitious for Charlotte (astronaut, alligator, Charlotte Turlington and my favorite: Delicious). She has been known to leave the BEST messages on voicemail proclaiming "I love you!" and to repeat words that you wish she had not heard you say (oops!).

Her personality has really begun to shine through in our daily interactions with her and it is clear that we have a joker! Recently she started calling Rick daddy instead of dada, which he is fine with, but somehow it seeped over into her experimenting with calling me mommy (which I'm not ready for yet!) and she noticed that I made a big deal about her not calling me "mommy." Now she will purposely call me "mommy!" over and over again laughing the whole time. I play along and resist saying "mama" and it becomes a fun game. The other day we were skyping with Nana and she was saying "nana, nana...I love you, nana" and then all of a sudden she said "nanny!" (in a very high pitched-squealy voice) and started cracking up. Apparently the joke is universal.

Another example of her humor comes through at night while we read Goodnight Moon. We've read this same book every night at bedtime since she was really little, so she knows it word for word (and sign for sign - thank you daddy). Occasionally daddy will throw in an incorrect sign just to see if she notices (for example the hippo jumping over the moon, instead of the cow). Every-time she catches him she smiles slyly and says/signs "no, daddy" and laughs. When it's just Charlotte and I reading I will typically read the sentence and leave the last few words for her to fill in and she typically is spot on. A few nights ago we were doing just this and on the page "good night comb, good night brush, good night nobody and good night .... (mush)" she chimed in with "YOGURT!" followed by laughter and then "no, Char-Char." Crazy!

Please enjoy some pictures from Charlotte's 18th month of life!