13 posts tagged “charlie”
Coulson's Nanna and Grandpa Bud invited him to visit them for the weekend. Just him, without Charlie. So Coulson was excited to have his very own special weekend with his grandparents. All morning long yesterday he kept asking, "when is Nanna going to get here?" and I kept telling him she would arrive sometime during Charlie's nap. Sure enough, she arrived and picked up Coulson during Charlie's nap. Well, Charlie had been hearing all the talk about Nanna coming throughout the morning and the first thing he said when we woke up, "Is Nanna here?" When I told him that she and Coulson had already left, he burst into tears. It took a while to settle him down and I had the insight to explain the situation as "Charlie's special weekend with Mommy and Daddy." I hadn't thought about it that way before the outburst, but once I did, I thought it was a pretty good idea.
(He finally calmed down after I let him watch some of the NCAA tournament because he loves any and all sports. Speaking of, I started out pretty well in my fantasy bracket for the first day and a half, but last night was pretty ugly for me!)
Since Coulson is older and can express himself better, Charlie usually just has to go with the flow. But yesterday afternoon, Charlie was able to call the shots. He got to enjoy the playground at his own pace and just be his natural, funny, goofy little self without any fighting or fussing with his brother to get in the way. And he is a pretty goofy little kid. I'm looking forward to a fun weekend.
"Charlie, what are you going to do today?"
"I'm gonna get my booger and put it on my finger," (holds up pointer finger) "and put it here" (wipes finger on his shirt)
At least he's not eating it! I can't wait to find out what he plans to do tomorrow.
It is a truth universally acknowledged that a child crying, fussing, pulling at his ears and constantly wanting to be held will succomb to skipping and laughing mere minutes before seeing a healthcare professional/filling prescription medicine.
Thanks Charlie!
As a side note, they wanted $50 for ear numbing drops and I have good insurance. $50! And since he was now skipping and laughing, I certainly wasn't going to shell out $50 (confession: I wouldn't have paid that much even if he were still fussing.) Thankfully, the pharmacist was able to recommend a similar generic for $3.50 so I got my "health care professional" to prescribe that one instead. Who would pay $50 for ear numbing stuff??????
So we went to our church's "Trunk or Treat" the other night. (If you don't know about trunk or treat, click here for some examples, although our church wasn't so elaborate) As I was setting up our stuff, Charlie kept asking for candy and I told him it wasn't time for candy yet.
He replied, "Oh, do we have to sing 'Happy Birthday' first?"
Charlie's verbal skills have expanded into complete sentences, so now I can capture some of his best thoughts on my blog! Sometimes what he says is more of a relection on his parents lifestyle, so it is with some emabarrassment that I share the following with you:
Politics and Race
For the past few months, we've been getting Time, Newsweek and U.S. News and World Report and with the recent conventions and other election news, our coffee table is littered with cover pictures of Obama and McCain. So we used this opportunity to teach the boys about our future leaders.
At the DMV the other day, Charlie pointed to an African-American women on the other side of the room and started saying "Barack Obama - Barack Obama." It took a couple repetitions for me to figure out what he was saying, but the lady sitting next to him picked up on it and laughingly said, "He's saying 'Barack Obama!'"
However, baldness apparently trumps blackness. The hair on my brother's head doesn't quite cover it the way it used to. At the gas station the following week, a bald, black man was filling up his car next to us. Charlie pointed to him and said "Uncle Nay-Nay, Uncle Nay-Nay!"
Potty Talk
I'm amazed at how easily kids pick up on complex grammatic rules. Charlie already knows to to switch the first person/second person pronouns when repeating a phrase. For example after he hits his brother, I say "Tell Coulson you're sorry," and he knows to say "I'm sorry." (I know, you can totally tell I'm a language teacher since I pick up on these small things - and this switch often created some funny conversations when I was teaching English-as-a-second-language.)
So tonight my husband took him to the restroom and while they were there he tried to teach him "urinal" but Charlie kept repeating "myinal."
Coulson had his first T-ball game today. I was a bit skeptical about how this would work with a bunch of 4 and 5 year olds. A few months ago I tried to explain baseball to Couson while we were at a minor league game. The concept of hitting the ball was pretty easy, but then I tried to explain strikes and outs and it got very complicated. Coulson's eyes glazed over and then he just wanted to go back to climbing over the stadium seats (it was a curiously empty stadium, probably because it was in South Carolina on a Sunday -- no beer).
So thankfully the rules for T-ball are a bit simpler than baseball. For each inning, the teams bat through the whole line-up. For each hit, the runners each advance one base (if the ball goes out real far, there is potential to go more, but that didn't happen today). In the field, once a player gets the ball, he holds it up in the air and yells "time." The coach explained the reasoning this way: "One - they can't throw the ball and two - they can't catch it." The game continues for about an hour, or four innings, whichever is less. No strikes, no outs, everyone scores, but no one keeps count. We made it through 3 innings today. It was mostly the coaches directing the kids what to do and where to go, but by the third inning, the kids were catching on a bit.
Enjoy the video Casey made. It's about 8 minutes long, but it's edited, so it's not boring endless taping. There is also some cute commentary by Charlie (examples of the endearing "oh man"). Coulson is number 4.
Charlie turns 2 today. I think he's going to be a pretty fun two-year-old. He is still as smiley as can be and sometimes he gets a great belly laugh that I just love to hear. We heard that fun laugh last weekend when he and Coulson were teasing my brother-in-laws dogs. He loves dogs, well all animals. Every time we see a dog, he asks to “pet dog” even if it's a mean, growling dog. Yesterday we went to a petting zoo and he loved chasing the goats and sheep around, petting them and trying to give them hugs. The animals were gracious, but I don't think they really appreciated the hugs.
A few months ago, his language skills just exploded. He quickly progressed from single words (ma-ma, da-da) to two and three word phrases (“want cookie NOW!”) and most recently he's been working on some five and six word sentences (“I wanna cookie NOW pease!”) I think he's going to be a pretty good talker, just like his brother. I love listening to him talk. He has such a sweet little voice and he's pretty polite. Sometimes, he'll say “please” and “thank you” without me prompting him first and he automatically says “bless you” when I sneeze. His most common phrase right now is “Oh Man” whenever he's disappointed with something. “Man” has 2 syllables, like me-ann. (No, Charlie, you have to finish your sandwich before you can have a cookie. “Oh Man!”) I can't wait to start some "Conversations with Charlie" blogs!
Charlie's love affair with balls has intensified. Now he is learning that there are different kinds of balls – soccer balls, basketballs, baseballs, golf balls, etc. He likes really small bouncy balls and really big bouncy balls. And he's learning about sports, like putting balls into holes or nets, or hitting the balls with sticks. He will often find some long stick-like object and try to hit a ball with it. It's kind of fun to watch him try to hit a soccer ball with a baseball bat, swinging it as if it were a golf club. Actually he's pretty good at most of the sports he tries and it's hard to keep him away from sports activities. Coulson just started T-ball and I'm sure there will be much consternation when Charlie isn't allowed to go out and play with the team. (“Oh Man!”) Speaking of sports, that was the theme of his birthday party on Saturday. Even after most of the guests had left the party, he was still outside playing ball games with his Pop-Pop. And when he wore out Pop-Pop, Grandpa Bud took over and he continued to play until way past his bedtime. After he wore out both his grandpas, Charlie could have kept going - it reminded me an old research study on toddler energy levels.
Charlie now shares a room with this brother and that has worked out pretty well. They usually go to bed at the same time and I can hear them chatting away (or singing sometimes) with each other after I say goodnght. He wakes up and happily chats in his crib for a while. Sometimes Coulson will climb in with him and "read" him some books or play with some toys together, which gives me about 5-10 minutes to snooze. Those mornings are nice.
He is starting to assert his independence and wants to do a lot of tasks all by himself. He likes to carry his own diaper bag (it's a kid-sized backpack in the shape of a turtle) and he tries to put on his own shorts and shoes. He also tries to put on his own diaper sometimes, but he's doesn't have a lot of success.
At the end of our bedtime routine, I sing a song to each of the boys before I tuck them in and leave the room. They are now sharing a room (yeah, we have enough bedrooms, so we did this on purpose, crazy, I know), so I'll sing to Coulson while we all cuddle in his bed and then I'll sing to Charlie right before putting him in his crib. Lately a favorite request is "Snuggle Puppy" a song from Sandra Boynton. (Sandra Boynton writes children's board books, but they are all very clever and funny, so it's not a drag to read the same book over and over and over again. She has also written some songs which are also very amusing and "Snuggle Puppy" is from the the book/music CD Philadelphia Chickens.)
The lyrics go like this:
Ooooooo, Snuggle Puppy of mine,
Everything about you is especially fine.
I love what you are. I love what you do.
Fuzzy little Snuggle Puppy, I love you.
After I leave the room, I go across the hall to the office to check email and do internet stuff. Sometimes Charlie wants me to keep singing, but I don't want to get stuck in a routine of endlessly singing to him till he falls asleep, so I have to say no more singing. But after I leave the room, sometimes Coulson will take over and start singing to him. So as I have been writing this, Coulson is singing Snuggle Puppy to Charlie and it's just the sweetest thing in the world, so I thought I would share it with you. Little moments like this are the reason we wanted them to share a room!
This video has been pretty popular on You Tube with over 37 million views. It's just a simple video of 2 little brothers doing brotherly things, you know, the stuff my life is filled with.
Coulson saw this video and, since he had a baby brother named Charlie, he wanted to make his own "Charlie bit me" video. We did this way back in February, but I am just now posting it to YouTube (unpacking procrastination?). Enjoy!
February has been an ugly month for us as my family has tried to acquire as many illnesses as possible. Let me list the ways:
- bad, gunky, snotty colds - all four of us, Casey is still getting over his
- chronic cough - all of us, but Coulson had this nasty hacking sound last weekend that had Casey and I cracking up!
- pink eye - Coulson, me, Charlie (who so generously shared it with my dad)
- severe headaches - Casey
- a stomach bug - me, Chester (oh, that was nasty!)
- skin infections - Charlie
- iritis (maybe)- me, I couldn't drive for a few days (well, I had to drive, but it wasn't a good idea)
- eczema - Coulson
But Charlie takes the cake with this:
Yes, he has the chicken pox! Although I remember it as a childhood rite of passage, today in the medical community it's kinda rare since there's a vaccine for it - a vaccine that my dr's office didn't have in stock at his one year check-up, so they said, "Oh well, we'll just give it to him at his 18 month check up." Ha! That's one less shot he'll need now. Conveniently these strange chicken-pox-like bumps started to appear a couple days before his 18 month check-up. So when the Dr saw him and confirmed the pox diagnosis, she invited all the nurses to come in and see this strange disease for themselves, since many had never seen it before. Then as we left, one of the nurses put a sign on the door that says not to use the room for 3 days. And she asked me not to let him walk in the halls. I felt like an untouchable. I've had to keep him away from the public for the past 6 days and it's been driving me crazy! I should add cabin fever to the list of illnesses above.
Thankfully, the pox doesn't seem to bother him. He never itched or scratched at the spots. He was just a bit extra clingy to me - almost like how Coulson was at this age - on a good day. But now he's getting better. The spots are scabbing and he's not contagious anymore, so we're going to the grocery store tomorrow (oh, my life is so exciting!)
I decided that February is the month for us to be sick, and all that sickness will end once March begins. So we welcome March with open arms!
