11 Months!

Sweet Miss C is 11 months old today. I cannot even believe it. Next month we will have a ONE year old!  Not only will Charlotte be a year old, Dan and I have kept a tiny human alive and healthy for a whole year!  Anyway, back to 11 months. 

This month has flown by and I feel like we have a little lady on our hands and not a baby.  She is more independent and vocal with what she wants, and is absorbing things like a sponge. She is repeating things that we have taught her and she is curious about everything around her. Charlotte can crawl super fast and pulls up on everything. She loves for us to "chase" her and she loves to chase Bella. Poor Bella, she still is not sure what think of Charlotte. 

We end up calling Charlotte Smirky a lot because she will look at you and just make a face instead of a smile. It's pretty cute and hard to catch on camera. When she smiles her eyes glow and she smiles with her entire body. Trying to catch it on camera is really hard. I guess she is camera shy.

For Halloween Charlotte was Minnie Mouse.  We practiced for a month wearing the ears and she tolerated them long enough for pictures but that's about it. Owen was dressed as Mickey and Adrienne and I could not get the kids to 1)keep their ears on at the same time and 2)sit next to each other and smile. Another fail. Oh well, there is always next year! 

Charlotte also tried another hand at finger painting. I decided this would be fun for us to do one afternoon when it was just the two of us. I set everything up in our sun room and let her start "painting". She immediately threw herself on top of the canvas, smeared everything around, rolled over and belly flopped on the floor and started crawling into the kitchen. This all took less than 2 minutes. Finger painting done and paint tracked across the floor. It was washable thank goodness! Just trying to make fun memories!

I was dreading daylight savings time because I heard that babies don't do well with the change. I was pleasantly surprised at how well Charlotte did. She was awake early Sunday morning but back to her regular schedule after that. 

Charlotte has 8 teeth, 4 on top and 4 on the bottom. She eats anything we give her and loves fruit and veggies. I am looking forward to no more bottles very soon! This past 11 months has FLOWN by and we are loving every single second with our little girl.

 

I'm never throwing anything away ever again...

Isn't that how Pinterest makes you feel?? Don't get me wrong...I LOVE Pinterest, but every time I look at it I feel like I should save every coffee container, Crystal light container, spaghetti sauce jar and make my own paint and make up. Seriously? Why would I want to make my own nail polish out of old eye shadow??  Maybe I don't have enough time on my hands and I'm sure all of these things work very well, but at the rate of all these pins I would have to keep everything and have a lifetime supply of modge podge.  I love a good DIY project, but some of these are a little much.  Is it just me that finds some of these things ridiculous? Now I'm going to jump off my soap box for today!  

Pumpkin Patch Torture

 Adrienne and I had a great idea...why don't we meet at the pumpkin patch with our husbands and babies so we can take pictures of our families.  We dressed the kids in cute outfits, picked a time that was good with our work schedules, and picked a time that we thought the kids wouldn't be tired or hungry.  The weather wasn't too hot or cold, the sky was blue, sounds like a perfect day for a good family picture, right?

"Oh, hey I guess this is fun."

 

 

 

We all get to the pumpkin patch excited to get the kids in a wagon together. They just stared at us.  No reaction.

 

We sit Charlotte in the "My First Pumpkin Patch" bucket thing and she just stared at us.

Then she cracked a little smile.

"I know this will be in a photo album some day so I guess I will smile."

We then went to a little area with bails of hay and pumpkins where we thought we could get some good pictures.  The kiddos were not amused.  They weren't unhappy, but they didn't feel like taking pictures.

"Takes Daddy to make me smile sometimes."

 Well, we didn't get a great family picture, but we did get a good picture of Charlotte and I together.  I'm normally the one behind the camera so it is rare to get a picture of the two of us that isn't from my phone. 

It was a fun afternoon hanging out with the Lowrance's but hopefully the kiddos will actually enjoy the pumpkin patch next year. 

Charlotte's Peeps

I have been wanting to buy a book to put pictures in for Charlotte to show her all of our family members.  Charlotte is now understanding what we are saying and repeating a lot of what we say.  I want her to recognize the people we see so often.

Every time I would go to the store would forget to look for a book so today I decided to just make one.  Who doesn't like an easy craft on a Sunday afternoon?  I started out with a board book that didn't have a ton of pages.  The one we had was 5x5 and had 16 pages.  Perfect.

 I used Pages on my Mac (which I LOVE and use all the time) and just made a 5x5 box and put in everything I wanted for each page. I wanted it to be clean and simple and easy to read.

I decided to send the files to be printed on card stock because I didn't want to use all of my printer ink.  They were ready in an hour and after I picked them up I cut out each square and taped them to the book. 

The book needed more than just double stick tape to hold the pages because I know that this book is going straight in Charlotte's mouth.  With 4 teeth poking through this weekend everything goes in her mouth!  Anyway, I decided to use packing take to basically wrap the pages to make it more durable.  It doesn't look the greatest, but it got the job done and I didn't have to go anywhere.

 

I'm going to lay it under something heavy tonight so it will lay flat.  I hope that Charlotte enjoys it!  I'm sure she will read it from cover to cover when she wakes up tomorrow morning. 

A little update on the two lovebirds...we were the ones that started this blog to begin with right?

I know I give monthly updates on Charlotte but I thought maybe I should write some about what's going on with the adults in this house. Fall has quickly arrived and I cannot believe that we are already halfway through October.  This is my absolute favorite time of year.  The weather feels great (supposed to be cooler right?), the leaves change colors (well in some states they do), and best of all...Fall decorations!  It has been a lot of fun decorating our new house this year.  Last weekend we went to the pumpkin patch and bought pumpkins (duh) and then Dan picked up some mums at the store for our front porch.  I love having a porch full of pumpkins even though I cringe every year when November passes and I end up just throwing them away.  It seems like such a waste but I don't know what to do with them.

Our front porch

I'm officially addicted to running and I'm really enjoying training for the half marathon.  I found an awesome group to run with and it has made it so much easier!  Two months ago when I started training I could barely run a minute without feeling winded and now I can breeze through 3 miles with it feeling like a warm up.  I still have 6 weeks until the half marathon and I am no where near running 13.1 miles yet, but I'm determined to do this!  I actually really look forward to my runs each week and I get excited about adding mileage to my long runs.  

Last weekend I made a trip out to California to visit Kade and his girlfriend Maren.  For the first time I went by myself and it was so fun. I told them that I just wanted to relax and that I didn't want them to think I needed to be entertained.  I took a nap, I read a book, we went to Trader Joe's (amazing!), we rode bikes everywhere (including a bar) and just took it easy.  It was an amazing, relaxing weekend and I can't wait to go back to visit.  I missed Dan and Charlotte a ton but they had fun without me I'm sure.  We did a lot of Facetime and picture texts to keep me in the loop.

Kade, Maren and I at Kade's birthday dinner

Bike Riding!

Dan is super busy as usual with work and spending time with us.  He is in a new position at work and for the first time is managing a team of people.  He really enjoys it and I always tease him when he's working late at night that he's probably so excited to be working at that moment because he loves his job so much.  I think for all parents it is a struggle to maintain a healthy work/life balance but that is something that Dan and I work really hard at doing.  We also try to spend time with each other and just slow down.  Between our parents and an awesome babysitter that lives down the street we are still able to have monthly date night.  

My mom got married a couple of weeks ago and we did a dinner at our house last weekend to celebrate their marriage.  After the dinner we lit our fire pit for the first time and roasted s'mores.  As I sat outside by the fire with a s'more and a glass of wine I was reminded why Dan and I love this house so much.  We can host a lot of people of all ages and we have things for everyone to do and enjoy.  I can't wait for it to get cooler so we can light the fire again!

John and Darlene with Charlotte

Thanksgiving we are taking our first long road trip with Charlotte and driving up to Colorado to visit Dan's parents.  Charlotte is always really great in the car so hopefully she will be for 12 hours...I'm nervous about this drive but it will be worth it.

Happy Fall everyone!   I'm off to light my spice candles and make pumpkin bread and pretend it's cool outside. 

10 Months!

Our little C is now 10 months old!  Month 10 has brought on so many changes!  Charlotte is now mobile and ALL over the place!  She had been trying to crawl for a couple of months and finally got it down!  This girl is on the move all the time!  If I moved constantly like that I would need 12 hours of sleep every night too!  Charlotte has been pulling herself up on everything and is becoming interested in taking steps while holding onto things.  Yesterday she was standing at her toy basket and let go to put both hands on her toy and stood there!  I got excited and she looked at me and then sat down.

A couple of weeks ago we looked on the monitor and Charlotte was standing leaning over the crib.  Needless to say, the crib was dropped that night.  Dan and I kept having thoughts of Charlotte tumbling over the side.  She hasn't seem to notice that we dropped her mattress and still gives us big smiles when we go to get her.

Sleepy head

Charlotte says "Mama", "Dada", "Baba" (Bella maybe?) and "gaga". Not sure what that one is either.  She waves bye and will say "bye" sometimes too.  She is giving kisses and loves to clap.  We celebrate a lot in our house to get her excited. 

 Over the weekend we made our first trip to the pumpkin patch.  We plan on going a couple more times but it was fun to pull Charlotte around in the wagon and take pictures.  Dan's parents were in town for the week visiting so they got to tag along to our photo shoot pick out pumpkins.  It seems as though everywhere we go now the camera goes along!  We have to document every family outing right?

Charlotte still has her two top and bottom teeth but she has to be getting more in with the amount of chewing she's been doing on everything.  This baby (or not so baby anymore) is the light of our lives and makes us smile constantly.  Her giggles are contagious and she melts our hearts everyday.
I question often how we got so lucky to have this little girl.