Charlie Update

OK, time for an update on our precious little {22-month old} baby boy.  Where to start with this guy??  Charlie has developed quite the little personality these days.  He is Mr. Silly and loves to entertain us.  He will perform the same "trick" over and over again demanding that you "wath" each and every time.  He has the best little giggle and loves to use it!  His favorite is when Daddy tickles him or Jack acts silly.

Char Char is really talking up a storm these days.  He knows a TON of words and is stringing multiple words together ("I see bus" and "Cereal in the bowl," for example).  He seems to talk with a lisp when a word ends with the "s" sound.  Our favorite new phrase is used when he sees an airplane...he says "plane (which sounds like 'me') in the sky" and then almost always follows it up with "aaaaaalllllll the way over there" complete with a dramatic sweeping hand gesture.  Love it!!  I'd say we can understand most of what he says, but when we can't understand him, boy does he get frustrated!!  He repeats himself until you guess correctly, getting madder and louder each time.  Speaking of loud, Charlie seems to somehow have inherited his Uncle Todd's vocal cords - the Child. Is. Loud!

Charlie knows most of his animals, but still refers to many of them by the sound they make rather than their names.  For example, he refers to cows as "moos," horses as "neighs" and sheep as "baaas."  We've started working on colors, but so far I've only heard him correctly identify blue.  Could have something to do with his big brother's obsession with that color...  This video doesn't quite show off his animal-naming skills, but you can see his little personality and his stellar dance moves...

Mr. Man is still a great sleeper!  He takes about a 2 hour nap in the afternoon, and usually if we're out and about on the weekend mornings, he'll take a little cat nap in the car too.  He goes down with no problem - we just walk into his room, give him his pacifier (his "boppy") and his loveys and turn on his music and he instantly puts his head on our shoulder.  I generally snuggle him for about 10-15 seconds and then lay him down and we're done.  Doesn't get easier than that!  I'm not looking forward to the day when we ditch the boppy, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it (probably pretty soon).

He still pretty regularly insists that he needs to "boop."  When we oblige and put him on the potty, he usually demands to use the big boy potty (monkey see, monkey do).  In the last couple weeks, he's actually gone pee pee two times on the potty!!  Both were still sort of flukes we think, but both were after bath time, so it seems like a good place to start when we get into serious potty training: put the child on the potty after his bath.

Charlie loves his Papa Lang!

Our little guy isn't much of an eater.  He usually chows his breakfast, but for other meals, we have to remind him over and over to eat his food.  Quite often the bulk of his food goes uneaten.  I wouldn't say he's picky - he generally will at least try what we put in front of him, but he's just not interested in eating at all.  And one day he will finish his entire plate, but then we serve him the same meal a few days later and he'll barely touch it.  He's clearly not starving, so while it's frustrating to waste food sometimes, we know he'll eat when he's hungry.

Another little video - just having fun with Daddy.  This captures one of our favorite things Charlie does.  When he's playing on our bed, he'll get really still and then say "oooooohhhhhhh" and then dramatically fall down.  Too cute:

So that's our little guy - growing up way too fast, but entertaining us every day along the way!