Two Months!

I can't believe how different life is with just another month under our belt. Charlie is a completely different kid - he's looking less and less like a newborn and so much like a little person. Not to worry, he's still crazy cute! And with all this growing has come some pretty cool new tricks. He smiles so much now, and while he still has a pretty serious face most the time, his gummy smile will absolutely melt your heart. He looks around and focuses on fans, trees, people's faces, Stanley, etc., and perhaps my favorite new trick is that he absolutely recognizes and is calmed by John and me. And I've got to say, not much feels better than when someone hands you your crying child and he immediately sighs and is quietly content. Oh it's real love.

Charlie had his two month appointment today, and since we had to do all his shots at six weeks before we left for MN, we just got to have a regular, relaxed check-up. Not surprisingly, Charlie is still a big boy. He's weighing in at 14.4 lbs and continues to be off the charts for height. Ooohhh that makes for one proud papa!

He's still the coolest little cucumber and sleeps a lot. But when he's awake, he's smiling, cooing and trying to put together new and different sounds. In the last week or so, he's started talking so much in the evenings almost like he's trying to relay all the joys of his day to his sweet dad. He's sleeping extremely well (he slept from 8:30 - 6:15 the night of the Fourth...dreamy!), and I think it's his new and improved sleep habits that are helping to make our lives so good. He still loves to play on his mat and relishes our time outdoors, but now he enjoys relaxing in his crib looking at his lamb mobile hanging overhead, and his newest interest, and I mean new like yesterday, is books. We'd tried reading early on, and John was convinced that Charlie was taking after him and his anti-reading habits. Actually, I was convinced too; Charlie would literally SCREAM every time we tried to read to him, but oh what a difference a few weeks can make. Yesterday, before we headed to story time at the library, I tried again. We laid down on the rug in his room and read Brown Bear, Brown Bear, and he focused right in and talked the entire way through the book. We went to Charlie's first story time at the library with friends later that morning, and while he slept through the entire presentation, I couldn't have been more impressed - gosh, I forgot just how cool the library is. We checked out some books before leaving and read under the shade of the peach tree when we got home. What a blissful summer morning!

We couldn't be more in love with this little guy and feel in awe of how much our hearts continue to swell. There's a whole lotta love flying around, and man, two months feels good.

Shoot...it's still so hard to sit up!