Charlie is Such a Good Helper

Here Charlie is playing with toys for Mommy since she is busy cooking. 

Charlie is helping to clean up the toys (when going from sitting to crawling position he often will get one of his feet caught under him).

Charlie is helping Daddy shave.

Now Daddy is helping Charlie shave.

 Charlie is helping Mommy puddle the curtains.

 Charlie is helping Mommy eat the avocado ...

 ... and kiwi

 

 Charlie computer-sitting for Mommy while she gets ready for the day.

Charlie is such a good helper and always helps Mommy and Daddy get so many things done.

Charlie's Cuteness and Great Achievements

Today we were able to get a good video of Charlie doing a hilarious belly laugh.  It is so funny!

Another cute thing that Charlie does is shake his head at you.  If you do it back, he will shake his head again.  That is how Charlie has "conversations" with people.  He loves it and thinks that it is great fun.

Charlie has always HATED bottles and anything of the sort.  Well, Charlie was a bit sick and was taking an antibiotic which was really yummy and so he learned to take it from a syringe.  So the other day I thought I would be tricky and give him water in a syringe and he took it.  Yea!  I felt so tricky.  Tonight I was giving him some water from the syringe to wash down his food.  I kept refilling it from a cup and after a while I thought, "I wonder if now that he likes water and has seen it come from the cup into the syringe if he would take it from the cup?"  He has always flatly refused a cup before, even earlier today, but I tried it to let him drink from a cup and he loved it!  I am so impressed with him.  Little moments like this when I can see him learning and putting two and two together make me so happy and make parenting all worth it!  This is a prior picture of him pushing back when Charles was trying to help him drink from a cup.  It was NOT bath water in the cup!

Since we are talking about Charlie's accomplishments, let's move on over to the topic of crawling.  No, Charlie is not crawling yet (I am TOTALLY fine with this since I don't have to worry about him being mobile yet, mostly since we have stairs) but he will be soon.  It is so fun to watch him struggle for something.  He REALLY wants it but is just barely too far away.  He will eventually get there though after a while.  One thing that he has learned is scooting while sitting.  When on a hard, smooth surface he puts his hands down in front of him and will push himself backwards.  He hasn't gotten the hang of going forward, but he can pivot well.  Also, as of today, he tried to pull himself up to stand.  He almost did it but then we decided we shouldn't let him try any more since we figured he would probably let go and clunk his head and we didn't want a screaming baby in the middle of church.  Maybe later.

Charlie has become a bit better at eating now that we know what foods he likes.  All puree baby foods are out.  No more of that.  He wants REAL food.  Cheese chunks, cheerios, pasta, mashed potatoes, graham crackers, oranges, and stuff like that.  The doctor told us to try to fatten him up since he is SUPER small (about 3rd percentile) and keeps dropping percentiles.  So we get to add butter to everything.  I thought about dipping his cheerios in butter when feeding them to him :)

Well I think that is all the most recent cuteness of Charlie.

“Mirror Mirror in my Hand, Who Is the Fairest of Them All?”

While I get ready in the morning Charlie enjoys sitting on the counter and playing with anything within his reach.  He finds the handheld mirror fascinating.

We were going through my purse and reorganizing all of Charlie's stuff and Charlie thought that it was great fun that I let him play with my camera that I keep in there.  It is my old camera with a broken screen but still works.  I decided to take a few pictures of him with it since he was just loving it. Here he is just looking as adorable as ever.

Charlie isn't giving a great smile in this picture, but that is what is great about this picture.  Not only are his eyes tripping me out but you can see his cute bottom two teeth.  It has been pretty hard to get a picture of them since when he smiles you can't see his bottom teeth just like both Charles and I.

The Faces of Eating

Here are some pictures of Charlie eating from the last month or so.

Spaghetti

Glop

Blueberries 

Graham Cracker 

Cheese

Mashed Potatoes

Pizza

(this was the first time that he wanted my food and about cried when I took it away to get a bite)

Not Wanting to Eat

Up Too Late

I don't care to stay up this late but when Charlie is crying in the next room it is a little hard to sleep.

Charlie has been refusing to eat and sleep lately and has decided to do a lot of crying as pictured below.  I am pretty sure it is because he is hungry but will only eat a few bites of food and wants to nurse for the rest of his meal.  But "man shall not live by [milk] alone" (Matthew 4:4).  Now to quote from a less religious source, Ratatouille.  Anton Ego (the food critic) says, "I don't LIKE food.  I LOVE it.  If I don't love it, I don't SWALLOW."  I think that this fits Charlie's new found pickiness.

This is a TMI comment that you can skip: once babies eat solids their poop, lets say, "matures."  When this happened for Charlie, the thought crossed my mind, "I wonder if it could revert back if he was on more of a milk diet again?"  Bad question.  But I now know the answer.  Yes.  Unfortunately since he got used to pushing with mature poops he did the same with the milk poops which created quite a mess.

Here is Charlie in a happier mood than now.  We finally bought Charlie clothes.  This is one of them.   We got it at DI for $2 (I think).  There were a lot of really cute things.  Oh how I love the prices at thrift stores.  The only thing that I couldn't find was socks.  I had to go to Walmart for those and they were expensive!  A dollar a pair.  Maybe I haven't bought socks for a while but seriously there isn't THAT much fabric to warrant an entire dollar.   Oh well.

Charlie can't pull himself up like this yet, but does enjoy looking out the windows.  I am sure he will love being outside once it gets warmer and we have a little bit more of a yard for him to plan in.  I am sure that since he is a boy that he won't mind having tons of fun dirt to play in and to eat.

We had a visit from Grandpa & Grandma Thomas and Karl.  It was fun to have them out to our home.  I LOVE this shot of Charlie with his great grandma.

(Our walls really aren't this dark yellow, it just looks funny in the photo.)

Story Time -

Staring:

Isaac Hall

Charlie Martin

Declan Coombs

Story 1:  Mr. Newspaper

Charlie:  What are you eating?

Isaac:  I bet you can't guess.

Charlie:  Something yummy?

 

Charlie:  Don't crawl away from me when I am talking to you!

Isaac:  See here, your mom gave me this Valentine's decoration to play with.

Charlie:  Mommy!  Look what Isaac stole!

Isaac:  No!  She gave it to me to play with. ... Right?

Charlie:  Mom, I can't believe that you gave Isaac some of your Valentine's decorations that I like to play with.

Isaac:  Ha!  Eye gouge, that is for ratting me out.  I think I'll call you Mr. Newspaper

Charlie:  But we didn't get in trouble.  I don't like that name

Isaac:  Doesn't matter.

Story 2:  Aren't I adorable!

Declan:  Look how sweet I am.  I am holding my hands so cutely.

Declan:  Ha!  Our moms aren't watching.  Eye gouge!

Declan:  Hey Mom, what's up? ... No, I don't know why Isaac left us.

Charlie:  Don't look at me, I am just an innocent bystander. 

Story 3:  The Middle

Declan:  They put me in the middle since I am the only one smiling.

Charlie:  Whatever, I bet I can get my head in the middle too.

Declan: Didn't work.

 

Declan:  Still in the middle!

Isaac:  I am going to karate chop you then Declan! ... Or...

Isaac:  Declan sandwich!  Ha!  Now you aren't smiling, you can't be in the middle

Charlie:  Dude, Declan, you are squishing my arm.

Isaac:  Fine, whatever.  I am going to look at the toy that is stuck on the wall then.

Declan:  Now we can sit here peacefully.

Charlie:  But I want to be in the middle.

- The End -

Fun Things

When Charlie is on his tummy this is the normal look that I get from him.

And here is Charlie's normal reaction when I put him on his tummy... 

"I am going over!"

"HAHAHA!  You can't keep me on my tummy long."

So besides having fun, dirty faces lately from eating real food Charlie has started doing this with his jaw/lips.  It is so darn cute!

Why choose one finger when you can have more than one?

Post bath cuteness.

During meal time today Charlie thought it was funny to rest his head on the table while he ate.

Charlie does not want to drink from a cup or anything for that matter.   He tried so hard to keep Daddy's hand away.

I thought that it was time that Charles and I showed our faces on the blog.

So here we are.  We still do exist even though most of our blog is Charlie.  Oh, I made this skirt with pockets.