Fish Lake 2012

We went to the cottage for 10 glorious days.  Some of the days were perfect and some were very hot.  Charlotte took the lake like a fish.  She would wake up and say, "swimming.  Go swimming." She loved her floatie and got really mad when we dragged her back to the shallow area.  I took a nap everyday and Mike read all the books he brought with him.  The slideshow can tell the rest of the story.

Yard Bear

Our lawn is a state of neglect as we are between vacations and I have been spending most of my free time reviving our backyard deck and front porch.  So this morning bright and early I took advantage of the fact that Emily hadn't left for work yet and mowed the front lawn as quickly as I could.

Soon enough Charlotte had to come outside with me so Emily could get ready for work.  As you can see, her love of sweeping generalizes to the great outdoors.  She did a nice job of helping me sweep the cut grass off the sidewalk.  Also take note of all the berets in her hair.  That is her new thing: to ask that we put all of her berets in her hair at once.  You can tell Emily got her ready this morning.  When I do it, all the berets hang off her hair like clothespins and it is so very disorderly.  Also take note of the powerwashed front porch.  I just need to sand the rough spots and put down the new finish.  This project should just take a few days but with a baby to mind it is taking many weeks.

Charlotte has been working on picking up her toys after she plays with them and she presently thinks it's a lot of fun (we'll see how long that lasts).  So she was pretty excited to help me "clean up" all the grass.  I also wanted to get a shot of her butt.  While I was mowing she a) thought it was hysterical when the grass shot up in the air as I mowed and b) loved to crawl the top of the incline in our yard and scoot down it on her butt.  You can see that stain stick was used today.

In fact, when all of our yard work was done, she had to take a bath.  Music class was this morning and she couldn't show up smelling like a barnyard.  As you can see, it was a good morning for her.  You can also see the next chore I have in mind for her: cleaning the shower tile.

Stop Making Sense

Sometime in the past I learned (or at least think I learned) that toddlers' difficulty with abstract thought spills over to their spatial relations.  I remember some comical examples of toddlers trying to put huge dolls in tiny chairs or being satisfied with a tiny doll in a huge chair.

I looked around the internet for awhile but could not find a succinct link or video to share.  Instead my search was cluttered by a lot of website telling parents all sorts of games they can do with their kid to develop spatial relations skills.

Regardless, Charlotte is a poster-child for a toddler's inability to compare the sizes of two things before determining if they should go together.  She daily gives Emily or me some of her clothes (or ours) to put on her baby doll or stuffed animal of choice.

However, today's request was beyond ridiculous.

You may have to look closely, but there is a doll-house sized dollhead peaking out of one of Charlotte's shirt. Clearly her abstract spatial reasoning is a work in progress. Well, either that or she is a huge Talking Heads fan.

Wash the floor Cindarelly

Charlotte is taking after her cousin, Calvin.  Calvin LOVED to sweep and vacuum when he was a little one.  Whenever I get out the broom to sweep (which is often because 2 cats + 1 dog = a lot of fur), she wants to do it too.  Then I get out the swiffer and she wants to do that too.  Here she is simultaneously sweeping and swiffering from a seated position.  Girl's got skillz.

Happy Birthday Us!

Our anniverary celebration could be something out of Gift of the Magi as the money tree is pretty light right now.  Luckily I have no hair and no fancy watch, which means I can't be either charachter in the story, making a literal recreation of the story impossible.  But as spartan as our anniversary will be, it should still be marked.

It used to be that the highlight of my day was seeing Emily when I got home from a long workday.  But things change in nine years and that really isn't true anymore.  Instead it's when Emily and Charlotte come down in the morning together and say good morning to me.

I am both a night owl and a morning person and Emily is neither.  Charlotte is following in her footsteps.  So Emily ends up waking up when Charlotte does.  Sleep is a thief so I have already been up for awhile, probably got my morning run in, and am working on breakfast.  And it's pretty great to see those two ladies come into the kitchen and we are all happy to see one another.

Of course this blog post is nothing more than a time stamp and these casual happy mornings will change as our family evolves, Charlotte grows, and life's demands change.  But moments like these, no matter the shape, form, or context, will be omnipresent and will reinforce to me just how happy I am to be with Emily and that we can work through anything.  I don't need an anniversary to remind of that.  But on days like today I am reminded of the end of a song called "Babe," by a husband and wife band called Blue Mountain out of Oxford, MS, who I think hung up their guitars years ago.

One time, like in 1997, I went to their show at the 400 Bar in Minneapolis and my friends and I got there an hour before the doors opened but the bartender let us in anyway.  My friends and I got to have a beer and watch the band warm up while the husband and wife's black lab ran around the bar.  A marraige almost as awesome as an Epidemiologist married to a Speech Language Pathologist.  It was pretty cool.  But I digress.

"And when your hair turns blue
I wanna rock out on the porch with you
Look at the kids, they're wizzing by
Looking for a thrill
God knows we're not perfect yet
One things for sure I got no regrets,
Let's stay together for ever and ever,
Come on and say you will."

-Blue Mountain

Stand Up Artist

Happy Birthday USA!

Despite the recent oppressive heat wave, Mike was brave enough to turn on the oven to make meat loaf and bake a cake.  I don't know who loves Mike's schedule more - me or him.  Having a house husband for the summer is pretty kick ass.  I am one lucky lady.  But, I digress - back to the birthday cake.  My favorite kind of cake is class yellow cake with chocolate frosting.  Mike has been looking for a good recipe.  For the Fourth of July he made the best birthday cake from Smitten Kitchen.

Smitten Kitchen cake

Mike's cake is below.  It looks just like the one on the cooking blog!   I frosted the cake, it is one of my surprising talents.  The cake was really good.  The frosting was a chocolate sour cream frosting, which I really liked because it wasn't overly sweet.

Mike's cake

Charlotte staying cool

After a day in the hot sun, who wants to go home and cook?  So, we went to Galactic Pizza with the Garvins, and Nance and Brian.  Six adults and 5 kids crowded around a four-top.  It was busy at Galactic Pizza, apparently the rest of Minneapolis didn't want to go home to their hot kitchens either.

Cozy

Procrastination

We have a deck that needs to be refinished.  I have a power washer to get what's left of the old finish off before applying the new finish.  But before I can attach the hose to the power washer there is this trigger nozzle of the end of the hose that might be rusted on.  Either way I can't get it off, so I can't power wash.  I will persevere but not at my present level of annoyance.  I chose to "take a break" so as to keep myself from getting so frustrated at the situation that I would end up thinking that taking an axe to the hose, the deck, and then the world would be an appropriate solution.

So I thought I'd work on editing some Youtube videos I have of Charlotte instead.  Only problem being I can't get the video editor to work on Youtube on this old laptop, even though Emily says it can be done.  I'd use my work laptop but the mousepad is not working right now.  I am beginning to think taking an axe to these laptops, Youtube's home office, and then the world is an appropriate solution. 

Sorry but for now I can't edit this video (and another that one that goes with it that I won't post).  Below is a video of Charlotte looking at the London Bridges Falling Down nursery rhyme in her Richard Scarry Mother Goose book.  She now requests Mother Goose books by name.  If she wants a specific book, she'll just say "book?" over and over until she finds the one she wants, unless she is looking for a Mother Goose book.  Then she'll "Goose?" over and over and really seems quite satisfied once she finds one of the four Mother Goose books she has available to her.

This video is from a few days ago, right after breakfast (hence the "just out of bed" look she is sporting).  Charlotte was leafing through the pages and ended up here and I swear she is singing (or at least trying to sing) "London Bridges Falling Down" complete with a dance number.  That is like the first 50 seconds.  I would have edited out the rest.  But if you want to watch her crawl up to me and well, that's about it, feel free to watch the rest of the video.

Why Charlotte Doesn't Walk

Even if you put wheels on her, mobility doesn't interest her.  Why see what's down the road when everything around is so awesome?

I was worried the last video I posted was too long and boring but my mom said it wasn't long enough.  So if you are stuck in a different state and 22 seconds of Charlotte doing nothing is too short for you, below is another minute of the same, only with more... well.... I don't know... more sips from her straw?  Smiles?  Regardless, these 85 seconds of footage represent the six minutes (yes I timed her) Charlotte stayed in this one spot just chilling.  Then she'd scoot about 20 yards and do some more homesteading.

Quick update on the walking front: I got our family an annual membership to the Children's Museum as I mentioned.  Charlotte and I have been a few times and she loves to explore and climb and she feels safe taking motor risks there.  However, her attempts to walk have come to a stand still (again, pun fully intended).  She will stand up and look and me (or Emily) and we'll encourage her to take a few steps.  You can really see the wheels turning in her head.  She thinks about taking a step but decides not to and drops down to a crawl.  Something is keeping her from trying steps.  Comfort level or convenience, or both, or something else, I don't know.  But I do know she has the ability to do more but is going at her own pace.

Gato Gordo

Seriously Nacho, have some pride.

Soaking Up the Nothing

Charlotte is always in the moment.  Always.  Make it through this video, and watch it over and over until two hours pass and that is a typical morning for us.  I'm sure that will change with age, but for now, om y'all.

Still Scooting

Today Charlotte and I went to the Children's Museum and spent all our time in the Habitot which basically just a giant Occupational Therapy gym which is exactly what Charlotte needs.

Charlotte quickly found a ramp to scoot up and down on as she has been doing for some time.  I shot some footage shown below.

Kind of fun to compare to the video Emily shot when we were at the Kansas City Children's Museum in March: http://parkernawrocki.blogspot.com/2012/06/fancy-scooting.html

Since March, Charlotte has a haircut, can scoot up and down on her own, move a lot more quickly, but is still having a lot of fun.

She also did some new things today, like using the railing to walk up and down the ramp and some steps.  Like I said, it's like informal Occupational Therapy.  You have to look at it that way for the Children's Museum to seem like a good financial deal.