December 7, 2008

'Tis the season to be busy

We’ve been busy doing end of the year things like frantically using up our flexible spending account money, so we don’t lose it. In the past two weeks, both Dave and I have been to the dentist (I got to go twice!) and the eye doctor. So we’ve been shuffling Charlie back and forth as needed. Luckily, Dave’s office environment is very relaxed, so Charlie can hang out with Dad when I can’t watch him.

Yesterday, we had a marathon of errand running to do, so we made it a family outing. We left around 10:30 a.m. and returned home around 6:30 p.m. Charlie did great. There were a couple of times when he was whiny and didn’t want to go back in his car seat, but he shopped like a champ. One of our errands was a warehouse sale at Scholastic Books where almost everything was 50% off. OHMIGOSH… Let me just say that I demonstrated great restraint and came away with only a partially-filled box of books. I want Charlie to always have books around, but I don’t want to recreate a library in our house, even though part of me thinks that would be way cool!

After returning home and watching part of the Big 12 Championship game, I put up all of the Christmas decorations. The tree is in the dining room this year, in front of a window that faces the street. Don’t worry, no presents can be seen from outside. I decided not to put it in the living room since I do leave Charlie unattended in there briefly and occasionally (it’s child-proofed and inescapable), and I didn’t want to worry about him getting into the tree when I didn’t have my eyes on him. Surprisingly, he really hasn’t bothered the tree when he’s been in the dining room. I had assumed that he’d be like a moth to a flame with all of the lights and sparkly ornaments, but so far, he hasn’t paid it much attention.

Charlie continues to show us new tricks. Every day he takes a few steps on his own. He’s such a teaser because he’ll stand there and raise his arms, and as you wait on the edge of your seat to see him take off for the first time, he suddenly drops to the floor and crawls over to you. Charlie’s also big into taking things out of a container and putting them back in. He does this especially with his snap beads and his plastic fruit. He had a great time with the Scholastic book box last night. It had a hinged lid, and he spent an hour opening the lid, putting an item in, closing the lid, opening the lid again, taking an object out, closing the lid….rinse and repeat. Then he figured out how to climb on top of it.

He also has little language spurts where he’ll have extended "conversations" with me. Sometimes he babbles all day long, and other days he’s quieter. He did the funniest thing the other day. I was lying on the couch with a sequined pillow under my head. He pretended to eat the sequins from the pillow. Then I started doing it too and pretended to feed them to him. He played along for a little bit and then chuckled and crawled off, probably mumbling under his breath "That crazy woman..."

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