New in February

Since Charlotte turned 16 months on February 9th, she's become a big girl in so many ways. It's as if some switch clicked in her brain. She's down to a single nap. She no longer wants to be held. She only wants to "walk, walk" and hold hands. Usually it's the three of us holding hands, although Nicholas has a tough time walking slowly enough for her! One frustrating thing is that she has started wanting to stand up to go up and down the stairs, both of which require that I be holding her hand. I'm so used to her just crawling up and down that to watch her whine at the top of the two (yes, two) stairs down into our family room is a bit much. Usually she gives up, sits down, turns around and goes down on her tummy on her own. But she has also learned to throw some serious big-girl tantrums over just about anything.


Charlotte all of the sudden has learned to sign "please", "eat", "all done" and "milk" (although she uses the sign for "more" to mean "milk"...I decided since we're not exactly communicating with official ASL, that it was good enough and we'd just go with that!) When her "ma-ma" can currently mean: more, milk, Mama...or anything else that starts with 'M', having the milk sign is really cool! Some of her (and my!) favorite spoken words are cookie, backpack and ra-ra (for "frog"). She talks more every day.


After we turn the lights off and are rocking in her room before bedtime, we sing a little prayer song. Charlotte now contributes to the Thank You, God song. She usually asks to sing for our family members, but mostly is thankful for cookies and frogs.


And not to leave Nicholas out of this post... He has learned how "I'm sure" is used. This may seem minor, but try having this conversation:


Do you want more milk?
No.
Are you sure?
No, I'm not sure.
So you might want some more?
No, I said!


Now it goes:

Do you want more milk?
No.
Are you sure?
Yes, I'm sure.


Not sure how this finally righted itself in his mind, but we're happy it has happened! He's also obsessed with drawing pictures of caves and volcanoes and telling us all about them.


It's so fun to watch the kids change and grow. The time is sure flying...