Signing 4 Baby

In working with Ian's speech delays we are learning sign language to help him communicate. It's working great! Not only can he tell us that he wants more food, but he's learning very useful signs like "hot", "more", "cheese", "want", "fruit", "sister", "milk", "cookie", "juice", "water", "bath", "mad", "shhhh" (everyone knows that one), "car", "keys", and "shoes". He's learning them nearly as fast as we are! About the time he learns the sign he also begins to verbalize the word and it helps him make that connection.

A few of you have recently asked me about what we used to learn sign language. I purchased a DVD set from Signing 4 Baby and it has been great! We can put the DVD's in and learn while while Ian is also learning. Charlotte is getting it too and is picking up the sign for "more." You can learn more by going to www.signing4baby.com. Even Ian's speech therapist likes what she sees and is happy to see that there are tools like this that are affordable and easy to use. If you're looking for a sign language resource for your little neanderthal I liked this one.

Shameless plug over & out!

Our Blossoming Girl

Charlotte is blossoming! Our once quiet & mellow baby has turned into a talkative, constantly moving, gets into everything little menace. She loves to yell, screech, and is saying "dada", "baba", "hi" and has recently started waving.



She's suddenly chalk full of personality and spunk. She's very much into eating paper, pulling hair, and chewing the side rails of her crib. Lately she's learned that she can get some movement by throwing herself back in her high chair. Her brother finds this terribly amusing also. She's also finding great joy in standing up at the leather ottoman in the family room and gumming that while making sounds. Any more she wants nothing to do with her Jumperoo because she'd much rather be climbing up on something and working on getting up the stairs.




She's started on some table foods. If it's something that's not spicy and can be chopped up to oblivion she's eating it. She's into the fruit melt-aways at the moment. Her pincer grasp is developing so she's getting much better at getting those into her mouth on her own. Rice crackers are a favorite because she can hold those in her mouth on her own. She's also taking a sippy cup with her formula or water in it. She might not put up much of a fight getting her off the bottle. The pacifier will be another story.


Charlotte is getting very social. She sticks her arm straight out and waves her hand at people. Ian is also very social and the two of them are a crack up at the grocery store. Her 9 month well-baby visit is this next Friday and I'll be able to post her stats then. She's still fitting into a lot of her 6 month clothes and is mostly wearing 6-9 months. She's about average statistically for size which gives me great hope that she'll be able to buy pants off the rack when she's an adult. I can tell you what a pain it is to find slacks that are long enough or a prom date that's taller than you. Hopefully, issues she won't have to worry with. For now I'm hopeful that her very long fingers have a musical future. ;)


Will post again after her appointment on Friday. Have a good week.

Ian's Soccer Schedule

For any one who is interested, here's Ian's soccer schedule. Of course we'll post pictures since Charlotte and I will be attending as cheerleaders. (I have experience, you know! LOL.) Maybe we'll meet some more kids the same age as Ian outside of daycare for weekend play dates. Unfortunately soccer is scheduled at the same time as the art & music classes I was hoping to take him to, but those can wait until after soccer is done. Nothing wrong with a well-rounded activity schedule.

Ian is on the "Bunny" team which starts at 9:00 AM. Guess good old daddy will have to get his hiney end out of bed for once. He'll find absolutely no sympathy from me.

1. - 9/6/2008 - Sat

2. - 9/13/2008 - Sat

3. - 9/20/2008 - Sat

4. - 9/27/2008 - Sat

5. - 10/4/2008 - Sat

6. - 10/11/2008 - Sat

7. - 10/18/2008 - Sat

8. - 10/25/2008 - Sat

9. - 11/1/2008 - Sat

10. - 11/8/2008 - Sat

11. - 11/15/2008 - Sat

12. - 11/22/2008 - Sat

We're hoping that our friends sign up their little guy for the same time so we can go across the street to Perk & Play for some coffee & a crepe afterwards while the boys play with the trains. Hint, hint if you're reading this Scott & Jen!

Fun in Michigan

Charlotte and I just got back from a few days with friends in Michigan. We had a wonderful time. The real purpose was not to visit IKEA, Trader Joe's and H&M. The real purpose to our visit was to spend time with dear friend Annette and her family. So Charlotte & I packed up our stuff & headed east for a nice long weekend of friends, wine, kids, and hair clips. Charlotte was a real champ and was every one's friend on the airplane. Not a single problem there. Whew! There was a kid on the flight out that cried (wailed more like it!) for an hour and a half of the flight. When the flight attendant asked the mom to take the child to the back of the plane the mom told her that "he didn't want to go back there." Huh? The kid was maybe a month older than Ian. It didn't look like the real problem was the kid, but the mom. I asked her if she needed some Children's Tylenol or Children's Benadryl and she said that she had some. I should have asked her if she used it!

So I'm taking the day off of work to get caught up on some laundry, get unpacked and go grocery shopping. Ian's speech therapy is tonight and I want him fed before the therapist arrives. It makes it much easier to get the session done correctly when he's happy & fed. Or I should say fed & happy, in that order.

I was able to find some fantastic buys on some things we'd been looking for here at the casa. Picked up more towels (can't have too many with little neanderthals running amok!), a new kitchen knife, two bedside lamps (we haven't had any luck finding ones we like here in town), and my usual list from Trader Joe's that normally consists of chocolate covered ginger, chocolate covered blueberries (I completely blame my mother-in-law for this addiction - I'm sure she's not losing any sleep over it), ginger granola, jasmine tea buds, and any thing else that struck my fancy that day. I had to be good on this trip though, because we're trying to be fiscally responsible with several birthdays and Christmas looming in the next six months. Had I not been traveling with an infant I would have surely picked up a case of two-buck-chuck. Trader Joe's has the best wines for the most affordable prices known to man. And it doesn't taste like cheap wine either. Let's not get started on the fact that Denver doesn't have an IKEA or Trader Joe's. I might start crying. Let's move on to clothes. I had not purchased any new clothes for a very long time as I had been hoping we'd be pregnant, and then I was pregnant and then my body completely changed and I've had to revamp a lot of my wardrobe. So while we were out in Michigan we went to an H&M hoping to find some good wardrobe basics for fall/winter. I think I did pretty darn good finding a cute sweater dress, adorable cable knit a-line skirt, and a couple tops. I'm sure my personal fashion critic will have some words about the fact that they're mostly gray. I'll simply remind him as I always do that he's welcome to not wear them. ;)

Poor Charlotte. Annette taught me how to make the cutest little hair clips for Charlotte's hair. She's got a trick that holds even the scantiest of little skiffs of hair into a clip. God bless Velcro. We made several. They turned out so cute! Here's my handy work.

Here's what the creative process looked like. Pathetic, isn't it?

Now I have cute little hair clips to put in my sweetie's hair. When Robert picked us up from the airport yesterday I had the aqua clip with the 'c' in her hair (see above, middle row, 3rd one down). He says, "What did you do to my daughter's hair?" Of course it was said complete with a look of utter disgust. Really! How can anyone think this is not completely adorable?

We had such a wonderful time with Annette, Rod, Owen & Alden. They were wonderful hosts and Owen did a fantastic job of being a big brother for Charlotte. She thought he was pretty funny. Here's the two of them playing while we're getting the car loaded up to head over to Plymouth to see more friends.

While in Plymouth we visited friends Jess, Noli, Sophie and Jacob. Jacob is their new arrival from Ethiopia. Talk about a little snuggler! He's a cute little guy for sure. We lined up all the kids and joked that it looked like a Benetton ad. Pictured are Alden (15mos), Jacob (almost 8 mos), Charlotte (almost 9 mos), and Sophie (3 yrs).

And here are the babies, Jacob & Charlotte.

Charlotte was a real trooper on the trip. We messed up her nap, bedtime and feeding schedule. The entire time she was content to be strolled around, played with and enjoying the company of Owen & Alden. Our little baby is now crawling everywhere and pulling herself up on everything she can. She's at that stage where she wants to get up on everything and her little noggin gets bumped every five seconds. I remember this stage for Ian and we were sure he'd need a helmet.

We made it back yesterday night. Charlotte did great just going back to her usual schedule, but we threw Ian off completely. He spent the night in our bed with us and I have a sneaky suspicion that we'll need to do a little sleep training again later this week after things settle back down to normal.

Well, I need to run so I can do laundry. The weather apparently turned a little chilly this past weekend here and I need to get the kids fall clothes out so they have some long pants for the cooler days that are going to come more frequently soon. Hoping everyone is having a good week!

We have a crawler!

Annette made it known that I had not yet announced that we have a crawler on our hands. Little miss Charlotte is crawling. Yup. Look out world! She's been officially crawling for a week. She finds it particularly fun to find all the door stoppers in the house and attempt to gnaw off the white tips. When Ian was at this stage we had to unscrew all the door stoppers. Guess how many door stoppers we unscrewed last night? :)


Here's a video:

And another - because I can. This is a day in the life video showing Ian's little temper and the normal sibling stuff we deal with every day. You know, stuff like Ian being sweet as pie and then putting a shoe in Charlotte's face and making her cry. See? It's not all rainbows and sunshine all the time at our house. Didn't want you to think that I was somehow in denial about my children behaving like little neanderthals. Oh, they most certainly do!

Guess I'm feeling photo happy. Here is Ian with buddy Travis after swimming this past Sunday.

Grumpy Girl, Potty Training and Soccer

Boy oh boy, is Charlotte a grumpy girl. She might be teething although we don't see anything coming in. She just might also be grumpy like the rest of us with the triple-digit days lately. She's been waking up several time during the night and doesn't settle in until you pop her pacifier back into her mouth. It's not like there aren't five of those things scattered all around her crib and readily available for her to just stick back into her mouth. I think she's just cranky and wants someone to do it for her. Yeah, that would be mommy. Once daddy is sacked out for the night there's very little that will wake him up. At one point, I brought Charlotte to bed with us thinking that would help calm her down, but she was so wiggly that I had to put her back in her crib. She's a flopper when it comes to sleeping. She also had a fever off & on over the weekend - again pointing to teething - but it was intermittent and Tylenol always brought it down.

Ian is showing signs that he's on his way to potty training. He's starting to notice when his diaper is wet or when he's poopy. If he gets that concentrated look on his face and we ask him if he's poopy he'll say "yeah" and then grab his rear end. He's also very interested in when we use the toilet. This weekend I had to drag my little munchkin in the ladies room with me. Being the ever helpful toddler that he is (mom code for my kid is into everything) he pulled off some TP and handed it to me to use. He then pulled off some for himself and pretended to wipe his own bum. We're going to jump all over that interest and set a few trainer toilets in the bathroom upstairs and downstairs for him to get used to. Daycare also works on potty training so the peer pressure must be on. We're surprised that he's showing interest this early as we'd heard that boys are always slow to want to potty train. We figured we'd be training both kids around the same time. Well, we still might be doing that. There's no telling how long the interest will last and if he'll even do anything about it.

Looks like I'm headed toward "Soccer Mom" status. We are always looking for ways to involve our kids in activities outside the house for at least one weekend day. Something more stimulating than our monthly pilgrimage to Costco to buy diapers & wipes. This summer it was swimming. Looks like this fall, Ian will start soccer. Yeah, soccer at 18 months. Nuts huh? Actually, it's more a developmental program for little guys that teaches them balance, coordination and team cooperation. (http://www.lilkickers.com/program) It's very much like the swimming class where they sing songs, and play games with parachutes and bubbles while learning a new skill. This program is perfect for Ian while he continues to work on how his body moves. He will be on the Bunny team (18-24 months). When he's 24 months he'll be on the Cottontail team (2-3 years). How cute is that? Charlotte can start on the Bunny team next summer. Don't worry, when the time comes I'll be posting pictures.

We had a good weekend. Ian got to play in his pool both days. He wasn't too thrilled with having to get a haircut, but he needed a trim. However, he thought playing with the hose was fun. I took him out on the front porch with me while I hosed off the front of the house and porch in anticipation of visitors yesterday afternoon. Good friends Scott & Travis came over for a little play date. The boys got to play in the pool and everyone got wet. They had a great time together and we'll work on getting together with them again soon.

Hope everyone is geared up to have a great week!