Charlie's First Christmas

We celebrated Christmas four times this last weekend. Charlie really was a lot of fun. She really liked banging her hands on the presents and trying to eat the paper. She also has enjoyed all of her new toys.

On Christmas Eve we went over to my mom's to celebrate with her. We got there early to open presents and then we had a great meal.

We had Christmas morning all to ourselves. We woke up slightly early (when Charlie woke up) to eat breakfast and open gifts. This is the first year that we didn't have to go some where on Christmas morning. I am pretty sure this is how we will continue to do it from now on. I want to start our own family traditions.

That afternoon we went to see Tallon's family at his brother's house. We have two nieces and 3 nephews on his side of the family. So there was a lot going on and lots of gifts to open. We had a great time watching all the kids and Charlie open their presents.

The day after Christ we went over to my dad's to celebrate with him. My dad is one to go all out for Christmas (or really any holiday). He makes it last all day... and I love that. We take turns opening gifts and wraps up every little thing so there are more things to open. We arrived around 10:00am and didn't leave until almost three. The whole time we were either eating a delicious meal or opening gifts.


Charlie received SO much stuff this year. She got a ridiculous amount of new toys. She also got a ton of new clothes. I didn't realize how much clothing she got until I was putting it all away. Her closet is now full. We had to buy a new book shelf and toy box to put in her room for all of her new stuff. Her room went from looking like a little baby's room to a kids room.

Sitting Up and Smiling!

Charlie decided yesterday that she was going to sit independently. She seems pretty happy about it too. It is amazing how babies just decide to start doing things. One day they can't sit up and the next they can.

She is able to keep herself up pretty well. Also, when she starts to fall back she is able to stop herself and get back to sitting.

Some other cute things she has started doing include:

• Making the raspberries sound "phphphph." It is quiet and slobbery, but it is coming along.
• She has started making a "ba...ba...ba..." sound. She sticks out her lip to do it and it looks like she is about to cry.
• When I pick her up from daycare and recognizes me when I enter the room. She watches me as I collect all of her things and smiles really big when I walk towards her.
• She has started to reach out a little when someone else has her and she wants me to hold her. (this might be something that is not really happening, but that's what it looks like.

There are a lot of other things, but these seem to be favorite right now.

Now I will leave you with some more pictures....

Sitting up in the bath tub with dad

Attempting the raspberries sound


"phphphphph"


"ba... ba... ba..."

Foods = No Sleep

Okay... maybe not no sleep... but we have had less sleep over the past month.

Charlie took to eating foods quite well, but her tummy did not. Over the past month her sleeping patterns have changed. I thought it was growth spurt or possibly teething. As we increased the solid foods the night wakings increased. Last weekend we a few bad nights. Saturday she stayed at my mom's and around 6:00pm she started screaming. Charlie rarely cries... so when I called my mom and heard Charlie in the background I got very concerned. We rushed over there, but by that time she had calmed down enough to go to sleep. It was obvious her stomach was hurting.

On Sunday Tallon and I decided not give her any solid foods for the day... mostly to give her tiny tummy a break. That night she slept so much better. I think she only woke up once... I gave her the pacifier and rolled over and went right back to sleep for the rest of the night.

We have not given her solid foods all week... in result we have had no night wakings. She is sleeping from 7:00pm until 6:30am without even a peep. It's amazing. However, I do feel really bad for feeding her so much. She seemed to really like to eat... so I kept feeding her. I feel like I have been torturing her tummy for over a month. We decided to keep her off solid foods for a week or two and then we will start back at the beginning. I will start again with cereal. I will give her smaller portions and fewer servings. Hopefully by 6 months I will get this figured out. I want her to eat solid foods, but I really don't want her stomach to hurt - and the sleeping is good too.

5 Months Old!

It seems that Charlie is another month older again. It is all going by SO fast.

Over the past month we have started giving Charlie some solid foods. We started with rice cereal. She didn't seem to like it all that much. I even tried mashing up bananas with it, but that still didn't help. I am reading a book called Super Baby Foods and it said to try sweet potatoes. Well, she LOVED sweet potatoes. So far we have tried cereal, bananas, apples, sweet potatoes, avocados and peaches. She likes bananas, but them to upset her stomach. Apples also seem to give her a tummy ache. She shook with disgust when she tried avocados. The daycare lady said she loved peaches, but she kept her mouth clinched shut when I tried feeding them to her. So, we are sticking with sweet potatoes for a little while until we can start some other veggies. Maybe she just doesn't like fruit all that much.

Besides starting foods Charlie has started to roll over more and more. She is starting to sit up a little... very little. She talks a lot and smiles all of the time. It's really fun when she starts to laugh... she has kind of a deep voice (for a baby) so her laugh is kind of raspy. It's so cute. She has also started sucking her thumb a little more. I am actually pretty happy about that. She likes to have a pacifier while she sleeps, but when it falls out she can't always get it back in... I am hoping soon she will settle for her thumb.

She is a pretty good sleeper. Although, since Thanksgiving she hasn't been sleeping as well as I would like. She has been waking a few times a night. She is easily soothed back to sleep. She never needs a bottle in the middle of the night and if we put her in the swing she sleeps great. I am trying to avoid the swing for sleeping purposes, but when it is 4:00am and I can't get her back to sleep I put her in the swing. I am sure that will be a very hard habit to break, but some day she won't fit in the swing and we will both be forced to do other things.

Charlie is an incredibly good baby. Tallon and I love her so much! We have had so much fun over the past 5 months.

4 Months Old

Charlie is now 4 months old. I think that is kind of crazy. It has gone by so fast. I remember thing that 4 months seemed so far away when she was first born. Now it is here and I am sure it will fly by.

We started rice cereal yesterday. She did a great job! I think we will have quite the little eater.

My mom watched Charlie on Friday night. So on Saturday morning we tired giving her cereal while we were still at my mom's. We put her in the bumbo chair so she would be sitting up right. She ate a few bites, but she eventually got frustrated. Later when she seemed a little hungry I gave her some more. I put her in the highchair that leans back a little. She ate the whole bowl! She sucked it off the spoon. I have her some more this morning. She ate it, but she was kind of sleepy so she wasn't as excited about it. We will keep doing it every morning and see how it goes. I am excited to introduce new foods to her. I think it will be so much fun!

Here are some 4 Month Month Charlie Stats:

• She weighs 16 pounds 2 ounces (she is a chunk)
• She is 25 1/4 inches long (she has grown 3-4 inches in the last 2 months!)
• She is wearing mostly 6-9 month clothes depending on what it is and where it is from.
• She has started squealing and laughing... a lot.
• She is reaching for things. If I hold a toy over her head she will grab it and put it in her mouth.
• She has started grabbing her feet... this might be my favorite thing right now.
  
• She has learned to take her pacifier out of her mouth, flip it and chew on it... she does this all of the time now.
  
• She sleeps all night. She takes her last bottle around 7:00pm and doesn't have another until 6:00am or later. It is wonderful. She sometimes wakes up in the middle of the night, but it normally just takes putting her pacifier back in her mouth to get her back to sleep.
  
• She is a very happy and calm baby. She is generally in a good mood. The only time she seems upset is if she is hungry or tired.
  

We are so lucky to have such a great baby. We love her so much! It is so fun watching her grow and learn.

WEEEEEE!

We found out last Sunday that Charlie loves to swing. Well, we realized she liked to swing before this, but she has only used her baby swing. I figured she would really like the park swings. She was a little small, but we stuffed some blankets behind her and it all worked out.

Tallon and Charlie
(I love this pircture)

Charlie and Me

Charlie getting Kaylin... Or Kaylin eating Charlie's hand...
Either way... it's kind of funny.

I took her down the slide once. She didn't seem to mind it, but I am pretty sure she didn't realize we were doing something out of the ordinary.

Charlie is now known as the Spit Up Queen. We had to change her while we were at the park due to the massive amount of spit up on her clothing. This is her in her purple outfit. I just really like this picture and needed a way to explain why in the rest of the picture she is in different clothing.
After the park we decided to get something to eat.

So did Charlie.

She was so tired after her park adventure. I gave her a bath and she just passed out with out her bedtime bottle. I decided to wake her up to eat... it worked out fine. She went right back to sleep in her crib.

The First Annual Halloween Cupcake Decorating Extravaganza

This was Charlie's first Halloween. She isn't quite 4 months old so we didn't do much. We decided to decorate cupcakes. We had so much fun that I have decided to make it a new tradition.

On Friday my bestie, Kaylin and I went to shopping for the cupcake decorating items and for some Halloween attire (we like to always dress the part).

Saturday we got together around noon to start baking. In the middle of baking Charlie decided that she wanted to be held. Luckily I had my handy dandy Ergo Baby Carrier with me.

We wanted it too look professional. So we sat everything out very neatly before we started. We ended up having a lot of left overs.



Our lovely cupcake decorating assistants showed shortly after the cupcakes were ready.


We started decorating as soon as we could...

These are our first completed cupcakes.... 4 down 32 to go.

Once we were done we realized we had WAY too many cupcakes...

We had such a great time and can't wait to do it all over next year. I can't wait for Charlie to participate.

The Not So Awesome Pumpkin Patch

I have always wanted a reason to go to the pumpkin patch. I always see these great pictures of kids at the pumpkin patch and I couldn't wait to get one of Charlie. I thought she was too young to really enjoy or understand the pumpkin patch and that we would have to wait until next year to go. So you can imagine my excitement when my sister-in-law invited me to go to the pumpkin patch. I couldn’t wait.

Originally Tallon was supposed to go out of town that weekend so it was just going to be the mom's and their kids. Tallon had a schedule change at work preventing him from being able to go out of town, which was frustrating for him. However, he was actually pretty excited to go to the pumpkin patch with Charlie and his nephews. My mom wanted to go also... she went out of town on Friday and raced home Saturday morning to get there on time. I am surprised she didn’t get a ticket on her way home. She arrived at my house around 12:30. We loaded up the car with all of Charlie’s things… car seat, over packed diaper bag, stroller, baby carrier and the camera. I also have to have entertainment for Tallon… so I packed a magazine for him. We stopped to get some drinks and snack from Sonic and then we were off.

As we drive up to the pumpkin patch we are unsure if we are in the right place... as there are no pumpkins in sight. All I see is a jumpy house, a hey bale, a small hut where one pays too much for too little and port-a-potties. We pulled in, asked where the pumpkins were located (behind the corn maze) and did a little off roading to find a parking spot. We unloaded the car, strapped Charlie in my baby carrier, Tallon carried the camera, my mom carried the diaper bag and we began our pumpkin patch journey… so we thought.

My mom is paying seven dollars person at the little hut when Tallon gets a phone call... it was his work. They said that he was supposed to work that day and he should have been there at 1:00... It was 1:15 at this point and we are no where near his work place. We are trying to figure out how to get him to work when Charlie starts crying because she is hungry. My mom makes a bottle and we load everything back into the car to take Tallon to work. It takes about 45 minutes to get back to the pumpkin patch. I fed Charlie on the way to Tallon’s work so, of coarse, on the way back she fell asleep. I didn’t think it was a big deal because she normally wakes up when we get her out of the car seat... not this time... she passed out and would not wake up… she went into a food coma. She didn’t even wake up when I strapped her into the baby carrier again.

We were headed back to meet up with everyone. When we find them they look totally exhausted and frustrated. They have pumpkins in their arms and the kids just look mad. They decided to leave. So, it was just me, my mom and a sleeping baby. We wait for a while for the tractor to ride to the pumpkin patch. It arrives and everyone loads up except for us… there was just not enough room. We decided to just walk. It wasn’t far and I thought the movement might wake up Charlie. It did not. We walk around the corn maze to the area that they call a “pumpkin patch.” It really just looked like they bought pumpkins from Wal-Mart and placed them in a field. They did have a little set up where you could pose for pictures… it consist of two concrete blocks with a pumpkin on top.

We decided to try to take some pictures. Fortunately Charlie did wake up for that. After that mom took Charlie for a walk through the “pumpkin patch” to look for a pumpkin with no luck. We decided that we didn’t want to have to pay more for not so great pumpkins.

We did get some pictures of Charlie, not of the family though. I guess that is all I really wanted. We will just have to try again next year.

Let's Start At The Beginning

After 42 weeks of pregnancy, lots of pitocin, several ice chips and a c-section Charlotte Marie Chandler was here. She was born on July 6, 2010 at 4:29pm. She weighed 8 pounds 10 ounces and was 19 3/4 inches long.

No one really tells you about that first week home with a baby. It was a little scary that first week, but by week three things were going much better. At that point she was a pretty happy baby... except from about 6:00 to 11:00pm. She would get fussy during that time for about a month. She eventually got got past it and our lives got even easier. Now she is a very happy baby. We are so lucky to have such a good child. I really hope she keeps it up.

I have started this blog to keep track of all things Charlie. Hopefully I will be able to keep up with it.