Camping

Today we had our first camp out! Emily couldn't stop talking about going camping since this morning, "Daddy, this is how you go camping: FIRST you put the tent up, THEN you eat dinner - you know, hot dogs, NEXT you eat marshmallows. THEN you go to sleep!" So I finally had a good excuse to go to REI and buy a tent!

Once the girls and I returned from our tent buying mission, we cooked corndogs and green beans, then we gathered all the requisite equipment for a good campnight - sleeping bag, pillows, stuffed animal, sparkle boots, scarf, and water bottle.

As soon as we got outside with our corndogs and beans around 7:00pm, she wanted to know where we could build the fire. As I thought about lighting up the grill, I explained to her that SF doesn't want people to make fires in their backyards.

While Emily ate her corndog on the steps, I set up the tent. She was amazed at how it transformed from a bag of material to a giant orange and silver tent complete with windows and zippers!

We quickly went inside (much to the chagrin of the mosquitos) and energetically finished the corndogs. She couldn't stop bopping around asking about every zipper, every pocket, and every bit of material. So much fun!

We made it to 8:00pm. She's now sleeping cozily in her bed.

The good news is that it took me only 3 minutes to take down and pack up the tent. Nice work, REI. :)

Around here...

We've gotten into a really good rhythm of doing lots of outdoor activities on the weekends, mostly visiting new parks & hitting old standbys. Along the way we've discovered that each of the girls explores new spaces very differently. (Surprise, surprise.) Emily's usually timid and requests a buddy to walk around with ---> cue Charlie, who has no fear and joins in wherever others are playing. She's the only one who'll brave the tunnel slide, which thoroughly confuses Em. (How can her younger sister be so fearless??!)

Charlotte's bravery has made her very comfortable & confident on her feet, almost more so than Em. But Em's becoming a bit more daring herself. And since we don't want to stifle her new found boldness, we're exercising extreme restraint while watching her, because there's still a 37% chance she'll fall. (Her lack of confidence might be due in part to all our past cautions, which is why we're trying to ease up. Either that, or she's got her mama's genes.) She'll often ask for a "spotter" when more than a couple feet off the ground, which feels like a good compromise :)

These are some park pics and some of our attempts to get a photo of both girls for our Easter cards. The aim was to get them looking at the camera, smiling, standing close together with clean faces... Ambitious, I know. We took these over a couple weeks, so they weren't subjected to constant camera clicking for days upon days. Initially, I was a little bummed we didn't get a *great* one, but now that I'm looking at them for a second time I think they did pretty well!

Grandma G came to visit!

Grandma G came to town and helped us out during Emily's spring break earlier this month. She and Em had a ball taking long walks, playing bunny house, and doing chalk drawings in the driveway.

Some fun facts from her trip:

• We learned that both girls LOVE snacking on cubes of cheddar cheese, just like Grandma.
• Posing for pictures isn't Charlotte's cup of tea these days...
• On the other hand, Em's willing to slap on a smile almost anytime you ask :)
• The girls love being chased around the house, but only when they're together. (Grandma tried doing it with each one while the other was away, and they just weren't into it without their sister :)

Grandma was able to stay longer than Em's spring break and enjoy some free time in SF too, and I got to meet her for lunch downtown one day. That afternoon I wishfully thought how nice it would be to meet for lunch once a week... But I guess I'll take once or twice a year :) Thanks for coming, Mom!

Cr - Cr - Cr

The girls had a fun visitor a few weeks ago - Uncle Chris!

He came for a long weekend (sadly, Aunt Erica couldn't join him) and the girls had a blast showing him around to some of our favorite spots!

We hit the Oakland Zoo (with elephants!), our new favorite donut shop, a Mission mini-park, and a pizza parlor. And the most fun might have been right here at home. The girls had so much to show Uncle Chris. Those 3 spent lots of time with books, balloons, and bubbles!

Charlotte's been a bit sad that Chris is gone, and she still asks for him when heading down to our basement. "Cr - Cr?" she'll wonder aloud :) We try to explain that he's back in NY, but since she doesn't quite grasp the concept of geography yet, it's not sinking in that he's gone. Lucky for her we'll see him again this summer!

Thanks for making the trip, Chris!!

Check these out her pearly whites!

Here's evidence that Charlotte's teeth are arriving. I can't get enough - I think they look so cute! What a random 4 to have on the bottom, right?! Apparently unusual patterns run in our family: here's a post about Em's baby fangs from a few years ago.

 

Charlotte's top molars came in early too, but we couldn't get a pic of those. She just kept saying, "Cheese, cheese, cheeeeeeeeeese" and trying to grab my camera. Silly girl :)

Charlotte May

Since we still can't upload pics in the usual way (grrrr), I've created a temporary work-around to show what we've been up to these past few months.

I'm going to focus on Charlotte today, since she's been growing leaps and bounds it seems. Here's a quick update on our little squirt:

In the past month she's gotten really good at animal noises. She can do a monkey, doggy, kitty cat, sea lion (my favorite), elephant, bee, cow, owl, snake, and lion. She's mastered "Mama" and "Dada" too - which basically gets her anything she wants. The conversations she has with us are often very serious, only we can't quite tell the gibberish apart from her real words. But she's getting there - it's almost as if we need to figure out her language, not the other way around.

She loves to pretend jump, which is adorable. Crouching down then stretching up really-really fast, arms flapping over and over. I'm pretty sure she thinks she's really doing it.

She's in love with her baby dolls. She likes to cover them with blankies (head to toe) then instruct everyone around her to "shhhhhhhh" so baby can sleep. She's meticulous about getting the blanket placement just so, and it often takes her more than a few tries to arrange it perfectly. She also gives the babies a bottle or spoons them some food. Once they wake up, naturally.

Our amazing eater has become a little pickier about what she's in the mood for, at the ripe old age of 18 months. She might turn her nose up at veggies one night, then clamor for more broccoli the next. She also seems to now hit a point during mealtime when she *finally* feels full and asks to be done. (This has been a welcome change since it used to be up to us to cut her off, otherwise she would have kept on eating and eating and eating.)

 

With all the warm weather we've been blessed with this winter, we're spending lots of afternoons at the park. Playing on the slide mostly, since it's her favorite. She also seems to enjoy getting friendly with the other kids by sidling up (so close she's only a couple inches away from their faces) then just staring into their uncertain eyes. And it's funny (well, not really) to see how the other kids handle what is clearly an invasion of their personal space. Some cry and call for their mom or dad, some sit there frozen and completely uncomfortable, and some take a swat at her. Doesn't seem to deter our little observer.

Obviously we spend a lot of time reminding her to be gentle and not crowd the other kids. But who wouldn't want to be super close to this cute face?! ;)

Video Only

Bad news: we still aren't able to upload pictures to the blog. Womp womp. I had to bring Matt in for consultation last night and even he couldn't figure out the problem, which is bad news since he's fairly good with computers (a HUGE understatement).

This has put me wwwaaaaaayyyyyy behind in posting. But instead of focusing on that frustration today, I'll turn to a sweet girl who always takes my troubles away. This time using a more reliable medium: video!

Just some ordinary dinner-time fun. Actually this is a pretty mellow dinner. I'll work on getting a rowdier video of the girls up soon. Shouldn't be tough to find. Those two can get GIGGLY :)

Charlotte's Candles

Charlotte turned 18 months on January 30th. (A fact that would probably have gone unnoticed if my sister hadn't emailed that day asking me to pass along a hug to the b-day girl. Thank goodness for aunts!)

She also celebrated her baptism this past Sunday, which means she got to enjoy two cakes last week. The first was a strawberry cupcake, for her birthday, which we stuck a candle in, of course. It was a boxed cake mix, and couldn't compare to the one we had after her baptism. Becky made an amazingly fancy-shmacy layered cake (easily boutique bakery quality). The restaurant we celebrated at kindly popped a candle in that one too. And you know, this baby girl of ours surprises us every single day and these candle encounters were no exception. Now I'm not an expert on 18 month olds, but we all thought this was pretty incredible. And the same thing happened with the one on her cupcake too!

(I'm having trouble loading pics to the blog this week, luckily I have a video to accompany this post. Hopefully I'll be able to add a few pics later, once Google's got things back up and running...)

Conferences

We recently had our first parent teacher conference at Emily's preschool. Cue the suspense: dum, dum, dum. Not really. We figured there wouldn't be any terribly shocking news, since anything significant would have come up sooner.

Turns out we were right: she's doing great! She's proficient in nearly everything on the 3yr old chart. She's a "loving, confident, happy, friendly, empathetic girl" - which, when it comes down to it, are some of the most  important qualities, in our minds.

Her best buds are the 4 year olds, and apparently she recently jumped up to their learning group. (She was invited to be a guest before the switch became official, and we heard bits & pieces about this when she'd say in her all-knowing tone: "When someone invites you over, you are their guest." So learning about the switch finally explained where those seemingly random factoids were coming from.)


One of the two "challenges" her teacher pointed out is always seeking permission before doing something new. But is that really a challenge?? I love that she asks before starting a new task or taking out a new toy. Although, I can see where she might be overly cautious at times, so they're going to try and encourage her to start new activities during "free play" without asking first. And seeking approval also comes up when negotiating social situations with her friends. Evidently, she tends to ask the teachers to intervene instead of working out conflicts on her own, but we think she'll learn how to handle that herself over time. She is hanging with the older kids, after all, who were playing together an entire year before Em joined their group.

Her other "challenge" is trying new things, including food. Ha! We know new foods are tough for her, so that wasn't much of a surprise. But what we didn't realize is that she also has her own daily routine over there, which she evidently doesn't really branch out from. Wow. Anyone who knows us well, knows that my favorite thing in life is a routine. And it looks like I've passed that on to her. So flexibility is something we're both working on this new year ;)

Charlotte's Alternatives to Talking

Charlotte can snap. She puts her little thumb and middle finger together, and snaps just happen. This is not a freak one time thing like when Emily rolled over at 8 months. She saw Amy and I do it once or twice and probably thought she'd pick it up just to prolong having to talk to us.

Fortunately, she's not holding back with the singing. Charlotte quietly sings the tune of Wheels on the Bus. That's expected, considering how much she loves that show on Netflix.

There has been a little progress with the words. We think she's associating Amy to "ma ma ma" and me to "da da da da da da."

We don't know who "GUP" is however.


-Matt

Christmas Day 2014, a little bit blurry but so much fun!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Complete with beef tenderloin and lots of tasty sides. Thanks, Santa!!