Talking up a storm!

This week I'm really noticing a change in Charms language skills. She's been stringing words together for several months now, but for every one sentence she has been saying 20 single words. That seems to be turning around this week, more like 50/50.

Last night she even said, "Daddy no work! Daddy HOME!" i hear a lot of, "Ohhhhhh noooooo! i broke it!"s and "Help please pants" when she wants to go potty. i am so excited for this phase!

Birthday party planning

i was thinking it was super early to plan, but now i realize it's only a few months away. OK, that's not real soon, but it's time to start planning.

Char is so very into swimming right now that we decided to book this pool:
It's a 2' deep toddler pool with a little playground and water slide, fountains and waterfalls and sheer awesomeness!

So, i'm going to do an aquatic theme, specifically fish. For food, i was thinking of little sandwiches on this bread:

That's right! Goldfish bread!

i will also get regular bread and big angelfish-shaped cookie cutter and make more sandwiches. And cookies. Of course there must be cookies!

And, of course, we must have:

And

And, just for fun:

YES!!! That IS candy sushi!

As for cake, well, i was thinking of cupcakes with white chocolate fish suckers sticking through them, but i'm not sure now if i won't just use the sushi above (the top ones are cupcakes with dried fruit and candy inside to look like maki). But probably i'll do both.

And, um, if i'm going just a wee bit overboard, why not go WAY overboard?

2 Cutenesses i MUST share

i had to work late tonight (month end close) and couldn't go swimming, and Char didn't nap today and was fussy/clingy, so i decided we should watch Sesame Street together. Plus she asked for it ("Melmo?"). Toward the end, i told her when Elmo is over, it will be time for her bath. She climbed the tv stand and turned the tv off and ran upstairs. i guess she was tired!

After her bath, when she was all dressed in her jammies, we read her 2 favorite books, which are "Please, Baby, Please" and "Llama Llama Red Pajama". We read these 2 almost every night.

About halfway through "Please, Baby, Please" (which has the words "please" and "baby" repeat periodically), Char asked what certain objects on the page were. She asked what the word "baby" was, so i said, "It's the word 'baby'." She pointed at other versions of the word and said "baby" on every page to the end. Then the last page it replaces "baby" with "mama" and she asked what it was, so i told her.

Then we read "Llama Llama Red Pajama", and she pointed out (and said) the words "baby" and "mama" all the way through the book. Now, i'm sure she'll forget those words tomorrow, but i'm really pretty amazed (and a little scared) by how smart she is!

i haven't posted in a while

i had a long rant about how can i possibly raise my girl to be confident and have self-esteem when i have none myself, but i can't copy and paste it so never mind... for now.

Lately Char and i have been swimming. A LOT. Her teeth (canines) are obviously killing her as her hands are in her mouth 24 hours a day, she's super attached to her pacifier more than ever (bedtime only), she's the biggest fuss-bucket of all time, etc etc. And i'd much rather have fun with her after work in the evenings than hear her pathetic whine (poor girl), so most nights we eat dinner, get dressed in our "shoo-shoots" (swimsuits) and go "a-wing" (swimming).

She's really quite amazing. She has ZERO fear, actually swims with her arms and kicks with her legs, jumps in off the wall repeatedly, uses noodles and kickboards and loves to go underwater. At 20 months, she swims better than my 35-year-old husband :). i can't wait to go somewhere beachy with her this summer! Meanwhile i'm going to sign her up for formal lessons. They have them at the Y for $300 for 6 weeks, so i've not made the plunge, but i did find a place that offers 6 weeks of lessons for $60, but they're only 30 minute lessons. Still, we can do 3 series of lessons in a row and be better off. Right now the only real "issue" is that Char doesn't like to go on her back. It was identified as an issue for her in the occupational therapy, and it shows here. i'm just working with her on relaxing and having fun on her back. Until then i know it will be hard to learn to float.

What else? Well, not a lot. She's really into puzzles right now, which suits me fine, but she's really a little too good. She can even do this one without much help:

i'm working on her birthday wish list. Right now it's mostly wooden puzzles, a few books, a Spanish Sesame Street DVD lol, a sand and water table, and the biggy is a balance bike and helmet. i have a feeling we'll be scared crapless by her trying to go in the street in the balance bike all summer long lol.

This weekend Char and i are heading to Knoxville to visit my sister and my in-laws, and to meet my very good friend who will be driving through on the way home to Chicago from NC. i got a hotel with an indoor pool :). i have a feeling my in-laws will be amazed if they see her swim.

Trilingual

English, Russian, German. Heck, she can even say "no" in Spanish lol. She's amazing!

SUCH an independent girl!

i took Charlotte swimming again on Monday. i'd like to say i take her weekly, but it's been since they closed the outdoor pool. FWIW i LOVE swimming with her. It's not the swimming, it's the 20 minute ordeal in the locker room afterward that i avoid. ("Charlotte, we don't look under the stall doors." "Char, please be careful, the floor is wet.... awww, poor baby, did you slip on the wet floor?" "Charlotte, that's not our bag." "Charlie, come back in here, i'm not dressed yet!"... get the picture?)

Anyway, we both had a blast. Char discovered jumping in. Which was totally awesome the first few times, but she soon grew weary of mommy catching her and desperately wanted to run away and jump in ALL by herself. Um, no! She doesn't have any sort of flotation device... more on that later.

Even when i was holding her in the water, she wanted to be on her own. She seems to be a natural, kicking her legs and paddling her arms. She even put her face in on her own and thought it was funny when we went under together for just a fraction of a second. At one point, i had one hand under her chest just supporting her a little and she was paddling and kicking so hard that she actually swam faster than i was able to walk along the bottom! The cutest part is she kept saying "excuse me" (or "me me"... too stinking cute!) and trying to remove my hands from her body! Like that's going to happen lol!

About those flotation devices... i tend to avoid them because my sister was an INCREDIBLE swimmer who very nearly made the Olympics in 1984 (she was 3rd in her event and they take the first 2 athletes, so she was THIS close - ::holds fingers really close together::), and my sister always said "swimmies" are bad because they don't teach proper swimming form, etc. i wonder if she still feels that way about them; i'll have to ask her.

Next time i'm going to insist that DH go with us with the camera, just to get some cute pics of her swimming and/or jumping in.

OK, i admit it

i have baby fever. i'm fighting it off so it's not tooooooo bad, but it's still kinda bad.

Yesterday we had a couple of e-friends over who are both expecting, and both plan to babywear and cloth diaper, so they wanted to see my stashes. It was a lot of fun, but it made me feel a little sad that i don't have a new baby coming (that i know of lol) to plan for.

A cute moment though: One of them has a 3 year old son, and when Char went to the potty and DH and i were singing "Charlotte went pee pee on the potty, Charlotte went pee pee on the potty, Charlotte went pee pee on the potty, yeah yeah yeah!" and the little boy shouted "YEAH!" and raised his arms in a V. Too cute!