Holidays

We chose this picture for our holiday card because we love Charlotte's huge, joy-filled smile. She is actually swinging on a swing back to back with Carrie Ella. (Photo credits go to Michelle.)

Charlotte enjoyed her 2nd Chanukkah and Christmas, especially ripping the paper off of her presents. We held our 6th annual vodkas and latkes party on December 15th. Grandma and Pops were in Hong Kong, so we just put Charlotte to bed in our room, closed all the doors, turned on some white noise and crossed our fingers. She slept happily through the entire party and we had lots of fun with all of our friends.

We were a little worried about putting up a Christmas tree because of all the tempting items at Charlotte's level. So we put only soft, nonbreakable things on the bottom half of the tree and tied it to the wall so she couldn't pull it over. Of course, Charlotte barely showed any interest in it all. Better safe than sorry I suppose.

Talk to me

Charlotte is a big babbler, and Matt and I sometimes like to pretend that she is really talking. Charlotte, what is your preferred airport when flying into Paris? DeGaul DeGaul DeGaul.

But  over the last couple months, she has definitely started pointing at things and saying some real words. We think dog was her first official word, inspired by her cousin Barkley. Her list currently includes: cheese, banana, bye bye, hand, eye, button, duck, up, hat, and mine. Lots of Dada, but still no consistent usage of Mama :)

For art's sake

It's never too soon to introduce arts and crafts, or is it? Mama and Charlotte had some fun with double-sided tape and some pieces of tissue paper. In between eating our art supplies, we made this:

Then I made some paste from flour and water and let Charlotte have at it. Of course, her first impulse was to dip her entire hand in the paste and put it on her face. But she eventually got the idea and made this:

 Lots of fun. Hopefully she will inherit her father's artistic abilities instead of mine :)

Charlotte turns one!

Charlotte celebrated her first birthday on November 9th. It's so hard to believe she is already a year old, and at the same time, we can hardly remember life without our sweet girl.

We had a birthday party for her with Grandma, Pops, Aunt Liz, Uncle E, Michelle (our nanny), the Maloneys (our nanny share family) and our friends across the street Heather & Paul and their son Zander. Matt and I had a lot of fun with the farm theme!

Matt's artistic abilities apparently extend to icing cakes, sculpting marzipan, and crafting animal hats. 

No surprise, Charlotte loved cake. The video is priceless. Faceplant @ 1:20!

Charlotte had a lot of fun ripping open the wrapping paper and especially loved her new shoes from Aunt Liz & Uncle E and her xylophone from Grandma & Pops.

First Halloween

Charlotte's official due date was October 28th, so naturally her costume-loving parents had hoped she would be a Halloween baby. No such luck- she came a week and a half late, which means that this year was her first Halloween. We dressed up as Charlotte's Web: Charlotte was the spider, I was Wilbur the pig, and Matt was Templeton the rat. We went to a party at the Gray's house to show off our cute costumes :)

Mermaid in distress

Grandma and Pops brought some of my old bath toys up to Seattle from storage in Monterey on their last trip down, and they were an immediate hit. Aunt Liz was visiting one evening at bath time and was playing a new game with Charlotte- mermaid in distress. The game consisted of Liz throwing the mermaid over the side of the tub, begging for rescue, climbing up the tub wall, and jumping happily back into the water, with Charlotte laughing all the while. The next night in the tub, Charlotte picked up the mermaid, threw her over the edge, grabbed her by the hair and lifted her up the tub wall, plopped her back in the water, and squealed with delight. We're not quite sure exactly what lesson this game is teaching, but the mermaid is now very busy at bath time.

Aspen, CO

We couldn't miss the chance for Charlotte to meet Matt's entire Michigan family at his cousin Erin's wedding in Aspen, Colorado. We flew into Denver, met up with Grandma Mary and Riley, and drove together to Aspen. The town was beautiful and the wedding was just lovely. Charlotte had lots of QT with Riley and Grandma and charmed all her cousins, aunts, and uncles.

On the plane home, Charlotte was practicing her new skill- quacking. She went on quite a quacking jag that had Matt and I hysterical laughing, until we realized that it probably wasn't so funny to the other passengers! "It's better than crying," said the lady in front of us after we apologized. True enough.