Charlie Grace took her first steps this afternoon. The miracle: Chris and I were both there to watch it!
Disclaimer: shaky video, trying to wrangle a cell phone and a baby results in video of the carpet, “no biting please” thrown in there, and loud barking dog at the end. I don’t know how to edit a video yet, so we’ll just have to suffer through to enjoy the adorableness.
Other than breaking the “World’s cutest toddling baby” award we have been planning our girl’s first birthday party, finalizing our foster parenting paperwork, and I have been picking up a few extra days of patients for some spending money {we have an Ikea trip planned for next week!!!}. I will post her 11 month update in a few days.
We had a wonderful week/weekend celebrating our country’s independence and my sister’s birthday. There are so many photos I love, it was hard to pare them down… just a warning – this post is long!
We kicked Thursday off with a big pool and ‘Big Family’ {‘Big Family’ is our awesome group of family members who aren’t quite blood relation but may as well be}.
Charlotte preferred to watch and enjoy a snack poolside with aunt Sheila before getting in.
The nephews enjoyed cooling off in the pool.
Charlotte eventually made her way to he water but wasn’t too thrilled.
Cousin giving her an encouraging word.
She eventually enjoyed a few cruises around the pool…
but definitely preferred to hang out on dry land.
The celebration continued on to Chick’s beach later in the evening to prepare for the fireworks with some family friends. Cathy is the amazing woman who gave my mom a kidney and we love her and her family.
Charlotte took a while to warm up to the sand and waves. Other than the brief birthday bash at the beach for me in May {in which she barely touched the sand} Charlotte has never been to the beach.
She preferred to watch her cousins play from the safety of Honey’s lap.
but Papa was eventually able to coax her to play in the sand and she LOVED it and loved playing with her cousins.
Glowsticks!
Charlotte really loved the fireworks, which surprised me.
Here she is playing in the sand. I’m not sure what the faces are about, that’s the first time she’s ever made those, haha.
Happy Independence day and a happy birthday to my sister!!
Technically, as of today, 10 months – 3 weeks.. Meh, it is what it is. Fortunately, I jotted down notes on what Charlotte was doing at 10 months to make things easier for to type up once I had the chance to sit down {now 3 weeks later}.
I see a trend forming with her monthly photos now. Lots of defiance being shown here.
oh, so dramatic.
pink puppy helps.
Eventually she got what she wanted… which was to play with her toys and books.
At 10 months, Charlotte:
Has started to clap and loves to fill in her part of “If You’re Happy and You Know It” {unless she has an audience… she definitely doesn’t like to perform if mommy wants her to show off}.
She has begun signing ‘more’ while eating. Success! Unfortunately, she started signing ‘more’ the day she had a terrible stomach virus {the speech pathologist inside died a little each time she signed ‘more’ and I wasn’t able to give her more to eat}!
Is not saying any new words this month, but continues to be spontaneous with her regulars: “uh-oh”, “dada”, “ball”, “bubbles”, “bye bye”, and “ba” for Baxter
Has been to two birthday parties for friends {kiddos other than her cousins}
Is not really loving the pool like I thought she would, but I hope she will warm up to it. She absolutely loves bath time so I think she’ll come around. Until then, she’d prefer to stay by the snack table 🙂
Loves spending time with her grandparents. Here she is reading with Lola and at Papa and Honey’s yard sale.
Keeps me on my toes as far as baby proofing goes. She is definitely a daredevil. Note to self: no more big toys in the baby cage. She loves pulling up and cruising around our coffee table which is nice and round with no sharp edges.
Is now occasionally standing unassisted. Here is the video of her first time standing again for your viewing pleasure in case you missed the earlier post:
Battled her first case of hives from a virus and had her first visit to Urgent Care {just to make sure she wasn’t battling something else}. Keeping her entertained at urgent care was the hardest part though.
Has begun throwing tantrums when toys {and non toy items she has become attached to} are taken away from her. The photo below was her reaction to the ‘clean up’ song for the foam noodles at her friend Hunter’s party at The Little Gym. Oh boy.
Dances and sways any time she hears music or singing. The fun part about this one is that it is not something we taught her, she’s just got moves!
Is a master at isolating her index finger to point and will point to anything that catches her attention or that she wants.
Will occasionally grind her teeth, which really scared us when we first heard it; after researching it though, it seems that many young kiddos grind their teeth as a way of exploring the new chicklets in their mouth, and Charlie has 8 which means she has a lot of exploring to do!
Is starting to fit into size 9 month clothing, is almost in a size 3 shoe {long, narrow feet}, refuses to keep a hat or sunglasses on, and has discovered that she has bows in her hair and now yanks them out any chance she gets.
Stay tuned {next week, lol} for her 11 month update!
When Chris and I first got married and bought our house I made the ‘new homeowner’ mistake of beginning about 50 projects simultaneously. Some projects were a necessity to us actually being able to live and function in the house {like fixing up a table so we didn’t have to eat on the floor and painting over the blood red walls in the kitchen – if you saw the walls, you’d realize it was a necessity}, other projects were just my creative genius getting away from me. The chair in our office was one of the latter. I had taken it apart before really knowing what I wanted to do with it. It sat in a dilapidated state in our garage for almost 3 years until this past week as I was getting our house ready for our resource parenting home study.
I wish I had a ‘before’ photo of the chair because it’s always very satisfying to compare with the ‘after’ photos. This chair is one that my mother re-covered to match my room when I was younger, and I’m sure she salvaged it from the thrift store. It took quite a bit of muscle to peel away the 5 layers of fabric/pleather stapled to the seat over the years.
My apologies for the blurry photos, but here are some of the previous coverings.
The fabric I chose is some of my favorite. I actually purchased it before Chris and I even closed on the house. I came across it at the fabric store, fell in love, and bought every yard and scrap they had. I am very selective with which projects I use it on. It’s currently on our kitchen chairs as well. I also added additional padding to the chair – a necessity since the previous padding was practically nonexistent {or so old it had been squashed into nothingness from the weight of 10 previous owners}.
The chair itself was originally white but was very easy to spray paint a pretty teal color {it looks blue in the photos because of the poor quality of the pics but really has more of a teal/green tone to it}. I honestly don’t remember the name … ‘sea’ something and I don’t care enough to go digging in my trash to recover the canister, but if you want to know I’m sure I can find it online!
I am loving the finished product and am so glad this space is starting to come together.
