Oh sweet Charlie boy. Where do I even begin. He's sweet, smart, kind and oh-so funny. He's beautiful, inquisitive and repetitious. He's feisty, spirited and confident. Every day he makes me proud, and it's my very favorite thing to tell him. Because I am. I'm so proud to be this little person's mom. I'm grateful every day that I get to teach him what this world around him has to offer, and his brain is such a sponge.
Charlie's talking more and more and more everyday. He says mama, dada, dan (Stan, duh), whatstha (what's that?), momomo (more), woo woo (woof, woof), uh-oh, up, down, dog, bye-bye (it weirdly sounds a lot like dead dog, if you can imagine it), and the list grows constantly. His frustration level has grown this month - tantrum-style...oof, but the acquisition of words has helped calm him a bit. I mean how frustrating not to be able to properly communicate, but he's learning and growing and verbalizing, and I love love love to hear his sweet little voice.
He's moving around at rapid speeds this past month. The crawl has been turbo-ed, and his walking is on the brink, but I think we've been on the brink for a couple weeks now. Two weeks into the month he was walking from the front door to me in the middle of the living room - a good 15 steps or so - so I called John inside, and we watched him walk and walk and walk. And since then, we've had a few spurts of walking on his own, but almost exclusively, he wants to walk - completely steady - holding your hand. And if you try to take your hand away, he melts down to the ground cry-ing. Oh life is so hard. Last week he walked all around Jiffy Lube, and today he had another solid spurt of walking around the house and the yard, but I'm not sure that classifies him as a "walker". When do I officially pen the date in the baby book?! I think he just wants to make sure he can run before he's ready to go out on his own.
Eating has undoubtedly always been one of Charlie's strong suits, and he hasn't slowed down. He loves raspberries, eggs, any kind of meat, tuna, oranges, yogurt, cheese, blackberries, strawberries, blueberries (seeing a trend?), applesauce, and any kind of bread product. He is totally weird about veggies. If they're in a baby food jar, he loves them. If I cook them and therefore he's forced to chew them, he spits them directly out of his mouth...well, that's if he'll even open is mouth in the first place. Not really sure what that's about, but we'll just keep trying and hopefully he'll catch on. I've officially started weaning in the last week. It started about half-way through the month because Charlie got so sick, and since my supply was low and Chuck wasn't eating much, his doctor said to try milk so we could get some calories into him and make sure he was hydrated. He took right to it, and I stopped nursing during the day. And since he was at my mom's this past week, she went with the milk routine too. We've kept on it with him back home, and for all intensive purposes, it seems to moving along seamlessly. He doesn't seem to mind the switch, and I'm proud we made it to a year.
Charlie's still at two naps a day - 9:00 and 1:00. I think our days might be numbered on these, but I tried to stretch him through his first nap one day last week, and he just couldn't do it, so I'm enjoying his daytime slumbers for now and letting him make the move when he's ready. He still goes down around 7:00 and wakes up around 7:00. He lays down without protest at home. We sit and rock, and then he just goes into his bed. Sometimes I hear him messing around in there for a bit, but he always drifts off to sleep and lets me know he's awake by banging on his crib or saying "uh-oh".
We partied this weekend and celebrated the heck out of this kiddo. I'm grateful that just like the day he was born he was once again surrounded by all the love that so fiercely embraces him. This kid. This life. It just keeps getting better. Happy birthday, Chuckster.
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