Selfies, Officially a Habit

I caught Nathan and Anneliese the other day, lying on my bed with their kiddie camera in outstretched arms, taking pictures of themselves. You know, to text to Daddy at work. (I have no idea where they would have learned such a thing.)

Oh, the things we never ever ever would have done as children. Toddlers of a new millennium.

Stair Stuck

Okay internet, Charlotte would like to teach you how to climb stairs.

Well, how to climb one stair. (It's kinda her thing.)

Step 1 - drag yourself over to the stairs, pushing yourself on your belly using mostly just your left leg. It ain't pretty, but with practice, it's quick enough.

Step 2 - use your leg (only your leg!) to push yourself up onto the bottom step. Remember, arms are only for balance! And to get your thumb into your mouth! Don't actually use them! Something terrible might happen if you use your arms!

Step 3 - Lie on your belly on the bottom step. Since you don't have the leverage to get to the next step unless you want to use your arms (psssssht), just get comfy here. Look around. It will be interesting for at least twenty seconds.

Step 4 - Get bored on the bottom step. Climb up on your knees and contemplate using your arms to get to the next one. HA HA NO. Decide to fuss instead.

Step 5 - Repeat one hundred and eleven times a day.

And that's how you climb a stair.

Smart Chick is Smart (and Not Delayed)

We had Anneliese's three-year-old checkup this morning. Yes, I am fully aware she's not three yet. But she's starting preschool next week and preschools have these pesky little health/physical forms that need to be turned in before school starts, and heck if I am hauling her into the doctor's office for a well-child exam more than once a year. So. She has officially been checkup-ed.

And guess what.

She is the first of all three of my darling failure-to-thrive children who is all caught up with her age group (yes, Nathan is still a stitch behind, and dear little Charlotte is listed as a fifty percent delay) (!) (rant for another day).

I can't remember one time, in three kids and in five years of parenting, that I went in to a well-child check and answered that YES my child sure can do x and y and z and all the other milestoney questions you're asking from your chart. UNTIL TODAY.

Needless to say, it felt huge. Some kind of relief I didn't even know to expect.

Yay Anneliese, who runs and jumps and hops and twirls and dances and splashes and climbs and tumbles and wrestles and skips! Like the normally developing (almost) three-year-old she is!

In related news, she's grown half a foot in the last ten months, is now the height of some five year olds, adorably towering over the other kids in her nursery room (to be fair, because of her October birthday, she's also one of the oldest) and wears about the same size clothes as her big brother.

She was fun and sweet at the doctor this morning. A far cry from the hella hella naughty child we've been dealing with of late. One on one, she is pretty much delightful. (Once again, attention saves the day. Why does this revelation keep surprising me?)

She was all smiles, chatting with everyone we encountered, so far opposite from Nathan a few weeks ago that it's hard not to be startled. Just full of information -- this is a book about horses and my favorite letter is W and I peed in the potty and wiped by myself and my shirt says I'm a smart chicken.

(It actually says Smart Chick. It's my current favorite of her shirts, but I like her chicken version even better.)

After her appointment we had a lollipop and a chocolate milk and she proudly showed off her shot band-aid to Nathan.

And Mark and I smiled little smiles of parents who have a baby who's not delayed. IT IS BRAND NEW TO US AND WEIRD AND WONDERFUL.

Thanks for letting me brag on my strong little smart chick for a sec.

Charlotte Outtakes

Lest y'all start thinking my kids are easy smilers every time I whip a camera out... HA HA NO. For every sweet one I post, there are five not-as-sweet saved somewhere, and ten or twenty that just got straight up deleted.

Sometimes getting the pic requires lots of mommy shenanigans (because someone just had to have a picture of her in that hat *cough*anothernathan*cough*), and those shenanigans accidentally end up in the picture too.

Sometimes right when the baby is nearby and moving towards you instead of away, it's a lost cause because there's a high-five sticker on her forehead. (Of course there is.) 

(Side note: nobody better high-five my baby's forehead.)

Sometimes you do a mommy-duck out of the picture. But not far enough. Like, laughably not enough.

(Also, again with the stickers.)

Sometimes you finally get her to sit up, hold her new toy (she's Hattie's friend! Sunny Puppy), and smile at the camera, but it's a fake smile the likes of an awkward teenager. No, Charlotte. No.

But sometimes you grab the cell phone and unexpectedly capture something adorable, no outtakes required. 

But that's rare.

Happy Weekend, Happy Faces

After two mildly frustrating and super emotional weeks... y'all, I seriously had a great weekend. Sometimes lots of things just go right, yknow?

We went night swimming. If there's one thing better than floating in the sunshine, it's laughing and splashing with friends in turquoisey weirdly lit water after nightfall.

I cooked something I've never made before (veggie lasagna), combining recipes and inventing along the way, and it totally worked. I love it when that happens.

Nathan and I picked out a school backpack for kindergarten (and beyond!) and he is adorably excited. (Maybe me too. Maybe.)

In other cooking news, I also tried a new cookie recipe (with browned butter! and pretzels! and sea salt!) and it was a complete and utter failure but NO MATTER because there was lots of laughing. So I will take it.

I took the kids grocery shopping, at dinner time, and no one had a breakdown. In fact, they were giggly and fun the whole time. (I KNOW.)

Also, I managed without Charlotte's bucket seat, so yay progress.

I had a night out on the town with my two best people. Mark and Another Nathan and I had the last-minute idea to go downtown and see Avenue Q which was exactly as irreverent and funny as we had hoped. And then we had Krispy Kreme afterwards.

And even though I'm their bad-idea bear, wanting to go out when they both had early work days on Sunday, we had so much fun and we all totally needed it.

A weekend full of the happy faces of the people I love most? Cut to me going to bed completely and uncomplicatedly happy.

Awkward Sibling Pic, v6.0

It's been too many months since I posted awkward pictures of my children on the internet and made fun of them. Let's remedy that.

I found this little gem in our photo file after Mark spent an afternoon (what I can only assume was a hot and muggy afternoon) playing with the kiddos outside.

Sweet Nathan, you have no idea the craptastic nonsense going on just over your shoulder. Do you.

Anneliese, no shirt, sweaty mullet. (She announced to us the other day that she was a hot mess. Why yes. That you are. #typisch) She cares not for things of fashion, only that she gets to hold her sister.

Only Charlotte looks properly horrified.

Tee Ball: Anneliese is on Board

Mark and the kids still enjoy a good round of tee ball, but our efforts have now moved to the backyard.

Your daily Anneliese: keep your eye on the... bat?

Daddy. Daughter. Sports. These are things that make me smile. Every time.

Seven Things I Did

Dear internetz, here are some of the things I did while I couldn't get it up for blogging in the past week or so.

1.) I went to see John Rutter (the John Rutter!) conduct in a concert at Duke Chapel. It's hella cool that I got the chance to see him in person in real life. He's British and not getting any younger, and he was here. So, yeah. We went.

Another Nathan instagrammed it before I could.

We had an almost-dinner fail that involved several sketchy parking lots in podunk Durham, and an almost-parking fail that involved a mad dash through the student center for cash, but we made it and we laughed a lot, and the music was really really lovely. John Rutter is always a win.

2.) I took care of Charlotte's toes. Because of the way she drags/pushes herself on the floor, her left foot is constantly blistered and sore. We're trying to keep socks and shoes on her, which is helping, but... still.  Poor baby.

You'd think this would be enough to convince her to crawl.
Or at least use her other foot some.
It isn't.

3.) We went to one of our favorite restaurants and had olympic-themed burgers. You know, like you do. #GoWorld right? The "American" was basically a hamburger with a hot dog on it. (And bacon and onion straws and barbecue sauce. Obvs.) It was more delicious than I should admit to the internet.

4.) I took the big kids for back-to-school haircuts. (Anneliese thought all these clips in her hair were bows, and loved every second.) They both look decidedly less unkempt now.

5.) We spent an extremely loud and chaotic weekend at Lake Wateree with Mark and his siblings/spouses/parentals. Eight grownups, four young children and four large dogs makes for not very much sleep. But it was good for us all to be together, because Mark's dad is turning sixty this month. Also because Charlotte hadn't spent much time with all those family members yet, and they had some sweet bonding moments. So happy birthday to Opa and Charlotte!

It's not of either birthday kid, but it's my favorite pic from the weekend.

6.) I tried to learn to deal without the infant bucket carseat, which we are still using for Charlotte. With both Nathan and Anneliese, I had abandoned it by this age. But now with three kids, to manage the older two I sometimes (often) need to be able to set the baby down (in stores, restaurants, etc), and the bucket seat makes that possible. I'm scared that going places with her in my arms instead of the seat will be infinitely more complicated (only one arm? to handle both other kids?) but she's getting ridiculously heavy in that thing. (Yay for a growing baby though!) So, knowing the bucket-seat end is near, I am trying to practice taking her without it occasionally. Moms of many! Help me learn how to do this!

Sitting in the cart like a big girl - for the first time!

7.) I got stung by a wasp (a bee? or something, I don't know, I hate all bugs equally. Well maybe not equally but I do hate them all and the point is I don't know exactly what it was, something smallish that hurt  like a mutha) for the first time the other night. Yep, 31 years old and never been stung.

And then several hours later, I was covered in hives. HIVES, PEOPLE.

Do you remember 2008? Those damn hives (and the hand/face swelling that followed) made my life miserable for the better part of that year. Since it finally cleared up (with birth control pills? by my pregnancy with Anneliese? who knows) I have been hesitant to even think the word HIVE for fear that the twitchy skin-crawly feeling will turn into actual hives. You think I'm kidding but I'm dead serious.

Anyway all that to say, being up in the middle of the night covered in hives was a horrible scary trip down memory lane. Made further frustrating by the fact that, for months-old complicated reasons, all our meds were hidden in the guest house (where Nick and Barbara were peacefully sleeping) so I had to drive all over town looking for a place to buy benadryl at 2am. (Not inside the beltline. In case you were curious. Raleigh fail. Fail so hard.) It was a crappy night and a crappy aftermath. But prednisone the next day, once I got to our meds bin, seems to have cleared it up.

It's too much of a coincidence to not be related to the sting, right? I want and need to believe it was just the sting. But since it was the first time I've ever been stung, I don't know. Can that happen on the first sting? Oh please please, this cannot be hormone related because that makes it much harder to figure out (and stop! and prevent!) so I am putting all my eggs in the sting basket and hoping that's all it was.

And that is what I did when y'all were missing me terribly because I wasn't blogging.

Kisses and rainbows and hiveless hugs,
Erin

Charlotte is One!

We had a sweet easy birthday at home with Charlotte.

A few friends came over and we swam and ate pizza and had cake. Yes, her first solid food in months... was birthday cake.

(Oh calm down, she's fine. Most of the (little bit) she ate did get spit back up, but like Another Nathan said, "it's not your birthday unless you throw up a little right?" Yeah.)

Per tradition we made her a giant cupcake. Anneliese picked pink (strawberry) for the cake and Nathan picked purple for the icing. I had a bit of a frosting fiasco when I tried to pipe it onto the cake with the tip outside the bag instead of in (I know, I kind of can't believe how dumb I am either; it's not like I've never seen foodtv) and then Anneliese grabbed a chunk off the side when she thought no one was looking... so, you know, just your average birthday in our house.

But she ate a few bites (directly from the table, because we're classy like that?) and got adorably covered in frosting, and that's all anyone really wanted anyway.

Happy birthday, dear Charlotte!

Happy Birthday, Charlotte!

Our sweet Charlotte is one year old!

We've been through a lot over the last year. I knew I would love her, but I never knew I would love her this hard. She is exactly what we wanted, and more.

Happy birthday, little one.



(If you can't see the embedded video, click here to watch it on YouTube.)

Three Slivers of Silver Lining

I have had an awful nerve-shooting day. But in the interest of finding the silver lining, there are three not-terrible things worth noting right now:

1.) Twelve years ago today, Mark asked me to marry him and I said yes. And I would say yes again, a hundred times out of a hundred.

2.) At Charlotte's one-year checkup this morning, I got asked (for the first time!) if these two are twins. My mom got asked all the time about Ashley and Brad, but they were less than eighteen months apart. Nathan and Anneliese are FIVE and TWO, over two years apart. I mean, Anneliese is pretty tall. And I guess they do look awfully alike?

3.) Another Nathan took this picture of Charlotte last night and even though it's been a crappy day and I'm dreading her birthday (the end of an era! I'm not ready!) more than I want to really admit, I'm trying to relish the last few days of her first year. And this sweet face is basically the best thing to happen to me all day.

Know what the end of this long hard day deserves? A giant diet coke and some gymnastics and diving. Olympics ftw.

Found! Playground Pics

When Mark dumped the pictures from his phone onto our computer today I found a wealth of shots of the kids playing on the playground! Look how much fun Daddy has with the kids without me!

#jealous

(Just kidding, whenever these pics were taken I was probably off doing something blissfully alone and I AM NOT COMPLAINING ONE BIT.)

Is this even a race?

When did they both get old enough for the big swings?

Charlotte has to sweat it out in the baby carrier I guess...

Things mommy never splurges on. (Yay Daddy?)

This terrifies me as much as it is adorable. I'm glad I didn't see it in real life.

In related news, it seems that Pullen Park is renovated now and re-open for playtime. Good to know.

Lego Head

Charlotte's new favorite game is having us balance a lego on her head, and then gifting us with a belly laugh when it inevitably falls off her head.

Your daily Charlotte

So we've basically been constantly sticking legos on her head. You know, like you do. We're all suckers for a good baby giggle. Who isn't? (Although Another Nathan who stumbled into this game has the best luck.) (Hmm don't tell but actually, maybe she's just laughing at him.) (Nope, it's the legos. Let hilarity ensue.)

Williamsburg

For people who used to fly off for weekends away multiple times a year, Mark and I have sure slowed down our travel habit since we became parents. (Well, actually, it's mostly been since I left my job. dang I miss those travel perks!) It makes me kind of sad, this thing that used to be part of our relationship rhythm -- getting away together -- it's just so much harder (constantly breastfeeding one kid after another makes it hard to leave them) and more expensive (still mourning the loss of my industry discounts) than it once was.

But the good news is, when we do get time away, just the two of us, we treasure it. We spent most of this week in Williamsburg, the first time since our Asheville weekend last summer that we've had just to ourselves, and it was absolutely wonderful.

Before you start picturing a classy little romantic getaway, don't get too excited. We did nothing cultural. No shopping, no wandering the colonial village, no appreciating of anything historic or lovely.

Um, we rode roller coasters.

And went on water slides.

And ordered pizza to our condo (a condo that we weren't even pretending to keep neat).

And then chased the pizza with boxed wine.

You will not judge us. And if you do, we don't care, because IT. WAS. AWESOME.

Look! I'm riding in the front! Brave Erin!

If you think you're too good for water slides...
well, you're just not. That's all.

What's cute about this is he doesn't realize  he's
about to go down that little dip and be dumped into the pool.

I made Mark take this pic but then yelled at him
because I thought he was about to drop the camera.
You know. Marriage.

He loves me anyway.

Busch Gardens and Water Country USA are fun, y'all. Yes, we were the only people there our age (surrounded by kids, teens, and other adults who were chaperoning said kids and teens) and yes we're probably too old for such nonsense. So thank goodness we have each other to do things we're too old to do, together.

Because we both love this crap.


And yay to Grandma, Marmie, Grandpa, Cathy and Ashley who juggled all three kids so we could get away. Thank you!!

Charlotte at Almost One

{Mark and I have been spent most of the week in Williamsburg. Grownup time! But still totally thinking about Charlotte on August 1st, what will forever be her due date.}

It's been a big year of ups and downs for little Charlotte. But I think it's safe to say we're about to end on a high note, with a happy gappy grin.

She's still kind of tiny, but growing like crazy on this all-milk diet. Her sweet little cheeks have filled out, and she'll be eating real food again very soon, we're planning. And in the meantime, don't worry, there will be cake on her birthday. I have shed way too many tears over this for there not to be cake.

She's not quite ready to walk or crawl yet, but make no mistake: the girl gets where she wants to go. Her elbow-belly scoot is surprisingly fast, and she has blisters turning into callouses on her left foot, where she pushes herself around. She's trying oh so hard to pull herself up with her arms, and she's worked up a pretty hilarious backbend too.

She's turned into a constant babbler, finally. Lots of imitating sounds, and intonation. Her only clear words are really hi, dada, nay nay, once in a while mama, and new this week -- whoa! Um adorable. She also says something that sounds dangerously like again and more when she's in a giggle fit and can't get enough. Oh and she sighs and squeals and sings along with us. If that's not real music I don't want to know what is.

Basically Charlotte is a dream baby. She's easy and flexible and sleeps when I want her to (and for the most part, only when I want her to -- thank you, baby girl, for so happily adapting to the big kid nap schedule even before you were ready, and for keeping it together even when our schedule needs result in your sleep deprivation).

At almost one, she's really old enough to play games with us, and laugh with us, and do cutsey things for attention. She's charming and loving and I really can't say enough good things about her at this age. (No one remind me that in two years she'll be markering up my house, mmmkay? I need to bask in this.)

It's been a whirlwind year -- she and I have both had more ups and downs than we could ever write down even if we were dying to make them internet-public (and we're not), but I think I feel closer to her because of it all.

Hey Charlotte, look! I almost got all the way through this blog post without mentioning you were supposed to be born on August 1st, but instead came a week late. A week late. Later than all  my other late babies! Let the record show I'm cool with it. Not only for the scheduling reasons we needed last summer, but because it doesn't break my heart that my last pregnancy got to last a little longer. Now let's do the same thing with your babyhood, okay? My last baby. Let me hang onto this a bit. Don't rush me, baby Charlotte.

Stay my baby forever.