Better Late than Never....7 Months

Well....this post is about a week late in happening, but I'm finally getting around to it. :)

Here we are now on the downhill slide to Charlotte's one year birthday! I can't believe how quickly she's become her own little person and with each change I just love her even more!

Sweet Charlotte, you just light up my world! You always, always have a smile on your face. And you have one of those smiles that reaches all the way up to your eyes, which I love. You smile at anyone that talks to you, from the grocery store checkout lady to the teachers at Madeleine's school. And it seems that everyone that meets you falls in love with you just as we have.

You have continued to develop such an easy-going personality. You prefer to sleep in your bed and will only sleep about 30 minutes in your carseat or our arms....and those time you'll just close your eyes and fall asleep; rarely do you fuss. However, in your bed you'll nap for anywhere from 1 1/2 to 2 hours. And you're still a champion sleeper at night, for which I am so grateful! You usually go to bed around 7:30 and sleep until 7:30 the next morning. This past weekend you slept until 9:30am when I finally woke you up!

We had your 6 month doctor appt this past week and you weighed in at 19lbs 5 oz (90%) and were 25 inches long (25%). So you're quite the little chubby one! I love it!

You have learned to sit on your own this month, although I still put a pillow behind you. You get so excited sometimes that you start bouncing and immediately fall backwards! I love watching you get excited. You will bounce up and down and squeal and flail your little arms and it makes me laugh every time! You love to babble and squeal and talk to us, but your favorite audience is still Madeleine. I love watching that bond between the two of you grow with each passing day.

You have gotten much more active this month. You can get up on all 4s and rock back and forth. And, you've learned to turn around in a circle, although none of us have seen you do this. We'll leave the room and come back moments later to find you facing an entirely different direction -- we call it your "trick." You can maneuver your way to pretty much anything you want to reach!

Bathtime has become one of the best times of your day. You've always loved your bath, but this month you've discovered that your arms can make some MAJOR splashes! You grip your hands together and just bang them in the water. You can soak our bathroom in no time and on more than one occasion you've soaked your momma too! I love this time with you each day and I love how sweet you smell when you're all nice and clean.

This month you've started putting everything in your mouth and I'm having to start thinking about babyproofing the house. You're current favorite toy is your bath turtle that travels with us most places since it must feel good against your gums. I think we might even be seeing a tooth before long. I knew your bottom ones were close to coming in, but the doctor remarked this week that your top ones looked like they could pop through at any time as well. Since you haven't been fussy, I'm curious to see if there will be any change in your disposition when they finally do come through.

You have such a sunny disposition that is one of my favorite things about you. I hope you'll always have such happy spirit. You get excited easily and love for us to read to you and get so excited when we do. I've had to stop reading before naps and start reading after because you get so excited and worked up and it's harder for you to go to sleep. :) You still babble all the time and absolutely love to blow raspberries. You can soak your shirt doing this!
I sometimes find it hard to believe that this time last year we had no idea that there was a sweet little girl waiting to become part of our family. You came into this world and made us smile and we haven't stopped smiling yet.

Sisters

I love how much Madeleine loves Charlotte, and I love that Charlotte just lights up whenever she sees her sister. Madeleine is so gentle and patient with her; she never gets tired of "entertaining" Charlotte. And what a great little helper! Madeleine is the first to run and find a paci or burper. She helps feed Charlotte babyfood and picks out her clothes. I thought that with their difference in ages, her interest in Charlotte might wear off after awhile, but her love for her has just grown stronger each and every day. I've really tried to encourage her helpfulness and make time to show her how to take care of Charlotte in was that she safely can. And they have grown such a strong bond. I hope and pray that they are always so close and love each other so much.

I took these pictures the other day when they were just being silly. I love those girls!
And, one of Miss Charlotte showing off her new trick....up on all 4s rocking back and forth. Look out -- soon she'll be crawling!

This is my favorite picture. It might look staged, but it's totally candid! It's my new background on my computer. :)

First Grader!

This past week was a crazy one for our family! With both Matt and Madeleine starting back to school and us being in charge of a two big events at Madeleine's school our last week of summer was, unfortunately, not too relaxing....but we still managed to have a lot of fun (that will be blogged about in another post).

Thursday was Madeleine's first day of first grade! It's amazing how different this year is from last year. This year we knew much more of what to expect and how exciting it was going to be! This year Madeleine seems so much more grown up. She knew right where her classroom was and we knew her teacher from last year. She even had the fun of looking forward to seeing friends from last year on her first day! Fun stuff!

While we were at the school on Wednesday setting some stuff up for Thursday morning, I snapped this picture of M and H in front of the first grade bulletin board. Madeleine was able to find her name right away! (to the right of her head)

The first day of school came bright and early. It was hard getting her up out of bed, but once she got going the excitement started to build. Poor Charlotte, I think it was the earliest she's been up ever. :) She had some big ol' yawns during breakfast and did end up taking a little nap at school.....and then a BIG nap later that morning.

We knew from last year that we needed to get there early if we wanted to park anywhere close to the school. All the kids waited in the cafeteria parking lot for the teacher to come and take them to their classes. Madeleine was at the head of her line and got to lead her class inside which was a fun start to the day!

This is Madeleine with her teacher, Miss Austin. Her teacher is so full of energy! Madeleine going to have such fun in her class. I know that Madeleine will be in her reading class as well since she's in the accelerated reading group (yep, I'm bragging.....my child got a perfect score on her end of the year kindergarten standardized test.....can you tell I'm a proud parent??)

Here she is in her classroom. She's sitting by two kids in her class from last year, but there are quite a few new faces in there too. Her seat at her table faces out the door, so anytime I'm at the school and walk by I can see her.....and since I'm there quite a big, I love being able to peek in at her. :)

After dropping Madeleine off, the rest of us headed to the library for the kindergarten breakfast sponsored by the PTO. We did some heavy recruiting and met a lot of new faces. Matt left to head to his school and the kids and I stayed around to clean up before heading home. Sweet Charlotte used this time to chill and take a little nap after her early morning. She's such an amazing little baby, just goes with the flow. I left her in the office while I pulled my car around and she woke up. The ladies in there said she looked around, and just started smiling and talking to all of them. :)

The rest of the day actually went by quite fast for me. Harrison, Charlotte & I made a very overdue Sam's run. On the way home from Sam's, Harrison fell asleep and slept three hours! I think the early morning was tougher on him than I'd imagined it would be. :) When we got home, I put him in bed, fed Charlotte and eventually put her in bed and ended up with two whole hours all to myself. That never happens and I made the most of it! I got so much accomplished -- I think I spent most of the two hours just picking up the house & putting things where they belong after a summer full of playing. And, I did so much laundry that I actually saw the bottom of the hamper! That's enough to make me feel giddy!

Before I knew it, we were heading to pick up Madeleine. Madeleine's school dismissed only kindergarten at 2:30 the first 2 days (to help carpool run quicker) and then everyone else at 3:00. If you didn't have a kindergartener you were supposed to wait till 2:45 to get in the carpool line. Well, we pulled in right at 2:45 and were the 3rd car in line! Yippee! I could see her leaving the building & heading to the car -- and she was so excited to see us! I loved the ride home -- all of us talking at one. I was trying to ask M about her day, and she was trying to tell me about it. Harrison was trying to tell Madeleine about his day and Charlotte was jabbering to Madeleine on top of it all! I think we all missed her!

When we got home, she wanted to go out and play in her pool. I think she needed to run off some energy from sitting so much of the day! :) They stayed out there a couple of hours and had such fun. Sometimes I think the kids need a break from each other so they have a chance to miss each other.

Before I knew it we'd had dinner, baths and it was time for bed so we could do it all again the next day. Oh, I miss summer already!

Bubbles

For the longest time now, the kids have been begging me to put Charlotte in the tub with them, especially Madeleine. Last night after I finished bathing Charlotte, Madeleine and Harrison jumped in there with her and the three of them had a big time! Charlotte thought she was such big stuff in there with them and Madeleine and Harrison were so cute trying to entertain her. :)

I love how much my kids love each other. The big kids look out for Charlotte and she, in turn, just adores them. Charlotte is going to really miss Madeleine when school starts....she's the biggest entertainment around here!

While the older ones finished playing, Charlotte got some bare booty time! Love that cubby wubby girl!

I thought this was interesting

I enjoyed reading this journalists description of a stay at home mom. Interesting....althought I think she left out some of the best parts. :)

Caught Reading

I snapped these pictures of Matt reading to the kids at bedtime one night last week. He's been doing a lot of bedtime duty lately since they had a huge dose of mommy this past spring. :)

Our bedtime reading is one of my favorite parts of the day!

Anniversary Date

This post is a bit late in coming, but better late than never! Last weekend Matt and I got to go out and celebrate our anniversary! Matt told me a couple of weeks before that he'd found a great idea/deal for us....we spent the night at the Embassy and had dinner at Ruth's Chris! Wow! It was the perfect thought since it allowed us a wonderful, much needed night out (we haven't had a dinner just the 2 of us since before Charlotte was born!) but still allowed us to be close to home. With 3 little ones, I was actually able to really relax knowing they were in good hands (thanks mimi & grandad) and we were just a quick drive away. You know, just in case.

I could probably write an entire paragraph about the dinner. Yum, yum, yum!! We got to have a 3 course meal and eat slowly and enjoy talking without being interrupted! Of course, I love the chatter of our little ones, but now and again it's nice to enjoy some "us" time.

After dinner we headed to Borders and just browsed the books. We came away with books for the kids. I guess you never can escape parenthood. :) Then headed back to our room for some much needed rest! I think we both slept 11 hours straight!

The next morning, mimi and grandad brought the kids up to the hotel to swim. We'd brought them some new floaties and they were excited to try them out. Harrison looooved being able to swim alone with his floatie. He was all over the pool!

Madeleine is most definitely our cautious child. She stays along the edge, but she did get brave for awhile and let matt take her out and around the pool.

Then we headed back to the room for a bath. They love hotel baths because they get to play with all the little cups, soaps and shampoos. Fun stuff! Charlotte just relaxed on the bed while the kids played. Madeleine had "packed" her bag for the hotel --full of pjs, dress up shoes and and hats. That silly girl.

It was such a fun, relaxing weekend and I'm so thankful to my parents for helping us out!

Popsicle Playdate

I snapped these pictures after the kindergarten popsicle playdate last week. It was such a hot, hot day -- 100 degrees! The kids at so many popsicles that I stopped counting after Harrison had reached 9! :) But, since it was so hot, I think a lot of them just melted. I stripped their pants & shoes off in the car since they were such a sticky mess.

But, oh what a fun time! This school event was my idea & so we had to be there since it was PTO sponsored. The kids had fun & we had a great turnout for it being the first time to try this. Maybe it won't be as hot next year!