Charlie's 2nd Birthday

I haven't posted anything in a long time! I guess I'll have to catch up at some point.

But for tonight, I am posting about our little guy's 2nd birthday.

I put out the birthday balloons (best find ever at the Dollar Tree!!) before I left for school. Chad got the day off so he could stay home and party with Charlie while I went to work. When I got home, we went to Carl's Jr. because they had a big play place that we had never been to.

When we got home, it was time for cake and presents. Chad made him a little minion cake from Despicable Me. Charlie calls the minions "nanas" because he watches a short video where they fight over a banana. Minions and Elmo are really the only two characters he recognizes immediately and gets excited about.


As I predicted, we bought him way too many gifts, but it is fun to watch him play with them. He desperately needed some toys he could actually play with, not just push buttons on. And he needed some new things. You could tell he was getting bored with the toys that we have. I guess it's time to stash some of them away.

We let him play a bit before it was time for bed. He had to grab all of his Dino cars and hold them under his chin like GusGus and his corn in Cinderella. They had to be tucked into bed with him.

He got lots of gifts.
From Chad's parents:
- ornament
- Nativity set
- picnic table
- books

From my parents:
- Jack in the box
- new coat

From Erin, etc:
- Christmas jammies
- puzzles

From Kari, etc:
- alphabet jell-o mold

From us:
- Elmo backpack
- new Sunday clothes
- Dino car set
- Curious George video
- Magna-doodle

Charlie is such a sweet little boy. He spends his mornings with Chad, goes to daycare around 12:30, I pick him up after work around 4:15. We come home, have dinner, play, get into jammies, read stories, sing a song, say a prayer, and go to bed around 8:00. Once he's in bed, I clean up or do laundry or do work for school, and then Chad gets home around 9:15 (or later depending on the night) and we try to be in bed around 10:30 because I have to be up early for rehearsals (beginning at 7:00am) on Tuesdays and Thursdays. This week, I have two basketball games, so Charlie will be home with a babysitter from about 6:30-9:00. I don't know how couples keep up with everything when both parents work. And we only have one kid! It is pretty much impossible to schedule appointments, etc. when if we're not working, we have a 2 year old to be supervising. Although I am sure that if I ever have the opportunity to stay home with kids, I will be completely crazy within a couple of months. I will have to take classes or volunteer or something just to break up the time.

Charlie had his 2 year check-up today. He weighs 30.6 pounds. He is 90th percentile for weight and 80th for height. The doctor wasn't concerned about his weight gain (or lack thereof). (The PA we saw last time suggested putting powder supplement in his milk.) We will probably keep up on the chocolate until he finishes what we've bought. However, in weaning Charlie off of his bottle, we find that he doesn't drink nearly as much. He will never drink a full cup of milk, chocolate or not. He drinks water but only if he's sitting in it for a bath. That water is extra tasty, I guess. He can drink out of a sippy cup and a regular cup, he just doesn't show much interest in it. It's hard to keep up changes (like dropping the bottles altogether) when he's with a babysitter so often and we're not really sure how he's going to react to that. (Will he go down for a nap at the babysitter's house without a bottle? Will the babysitter here actually sit him down with a cup of milk before he goes to bed instead of just giving him a bottle of milk?) (No, he doesn't go to sleep with a bottle of milk, we just try to get him to drink it before bedtime.)

Anyways, Chad says it's time to move Charlie into his own room. He's probably right. I'm just lazy and don't want to have to move all of our furniture. We finally have a set-up that kind of works for us. And we put up a lot of shelves in the TV room that would have to be moved to accommodate all of the crap we keep in the TV/office room if we turned that room into a nursery/bedroom. Plus, I love sleeping upstairs in our little hide-out. I'm paranoid about having Charlie on a different floor of the house than we are. I don't want to put him downstairs and then we sleep upstairs or vice versa. I guess it's inevitable, but I really don't want to do it. Guess we'll just have to move.

Plus, if he's in his own room, we'll miss moments like these: A couple of nights ago Charlie started whining in the middle of the night. We both woke up and waited to see what he was going to do. Then we hear: "Coo..." whine, whine, whine "kies" whine, whine, whine. "Cookies..... cooooookiiiiieeessss... COOKIES!" And the whining winds down, and he's dead asleep again. C'mon, how cute is that?!

And these pictures are from the last time we had Taco Bell. The kid likes cheese, what can I say?