Charlie's (believe it or not) First Haircut

This is actually Charlie's very first whole-head authentic haircut -- age 21 months. I've trimmed it around his ears a couple of times, but this is the first time we got out the clippers and strapped him in for the real deal. The sucker worked like a charm. Hey, some people might think hairy suckers are gross, but Charlie is not that picky.

The Big Boy Bed Follies

Ok, so here's a brief summary of the events that transpired when we decided to turn Charlie's crib into a "Big Boy Bed." It was kind of a spur-of-the-moment idea on the part of us parents. We had moved the changing table from Charlie's room into Amelia's room, since Charlie's feet are hanging off the end at this point (and once, while Mom wasn't around, Dad sheepishly admitted that Charlie had climbed down from the changing table while he "ran" to get some more diapers from the closet). Of course, we played the whole Big Boy Bed thing up to Charlie and he was pretty excited about it, especially helping Dad with the construction.

Doesn't he look cozy? He painstakingly placed all of his ten ca-zillion stuffed animals into his bed, along with his blankie --oh and his power drill. We thought this just might work out fine. Bob was worried about Charlie getting up in the night, sneaking out of his room and getting into mischief that involved something gross in the bathroom or something dangerous elsewhere, so he set up the safety gate in Charlie's doorway. As he was doing so, the bedroom door slowly opened a crack and Charlie's head cautiously poked through. Seeing his dad, he quickly slammed the door shut and jumped back in bed. Miraculously he stayed in bed after that and slept through the night fine. This is where the story takes a turn. The next day, Grandma and Grandpa Bannister came to visit and babysat that night so that Bob and I could go out with some friends. Mom said Charlie didn't go to bed very well and all night he was popping out of his bed and, at some point, he even pulled his rocking chair up the changing table and was grabbing various items. When I went in at one point, he was deceptively in his bed, but had a tube of Desitin clutched in one fist. Sneaky toddler. The same routine took place at naptime.... Parents sternly tell Charlie to stay in his bed, Parents leave room, Parents hear pitter-pattering feet across the wooden floor...you get the picture. The result was a very cranky boy and two cranky parents on a Sunday afternoon. Needless to say, another construction project was at hand for Sunday night--putting the crib rail back into place. Apparently Charlie is not a Big Boy yet.

Two bugs on a rug

One of the most wonderful things about having Amelia in our lives is watching the relationship develop between her and her brother. Charlie has always been very gentle with her (for the most part) and seems to have a strong attachment to his sis that began the first day they met. It was so sweet yesterday to see him plop down next to her as she was enjoying her requisite "tummy time." In the second photo, he had just spontaneously blurted out, "I love you Mia," and was giving her this peck on the cheek. Almost made me forget that he had broken my brand spankin' new food processor (that I had just gotten from my mom for Christmas) just an hour earlier...

Amelia is making new discoveries everyday. The most recent....her hands. It's cute to see how intensely surprised she looks every time they happen to catch her eye as they're floating in front of her line of vision. Then she stares hard at them and slowly, slowly brings them together and even more slowly brings them to her mouth. And...I'm happy to say, she has also finally decided to adopt an earlier bedtime. As much as we love her big brown eyes, we were getting pretty literally tired of seeing them dart about as she showed absolutely no signs of sleepiness around say 11:30pm. She's been going to bed pretty regularly at 9pm now and I hardly know what to do with myself. I even painted my nails the other night, woo hoo.

The Jumper Chronicles

Photo Sharing - Video Sharing - Photo Printing - Photo Books

(Above) First, Charlie offers a few tips (with his usual vigor)

Photo Sharing - Video Sharing - Photo Printing - Photo Books

Amelia's Solo Debut

Photo Sharing - Video Sharing - Photo Printing - Photo Books

The Green Monster Returns

Photo Sharing - Video Sharing - Photo Printing - Photo Books

Fun's over, eh Charlie?

Ringing in 2008 with a good pal

We got to spend New Year's Day with the Downie's. Charlie and Violet were swapping philosophies about the year ahead. The conversation went something like this, "Hey, Violet how about passin' me some of those Cheerios?" The reply--"Not on your life blondie."

Christmas Highlights Part II

At Bannister Christmas this year, Charlie was eating it up--literally. He couldn't get enough of (Great) Grandpa's homemade pineapple sherbet. He kept making rounds of the room and stopping at each person to say "bite," pretty much everyone obliged him so he had quite a bit of ice cream!

Charlie's cousin Lincoln is just a few months younger than Charlie. It was so neat to see the two of them actually playing together and yelling "no" gleefully in unison:)

Great Grandma B took some time to catch up with Amelia. Mia got passed around all night and loved it!

What a good cousin...Robert took a turn.

Charlie has been into his harmonica lately. He found it in the piano bench one day and after a few days figured out how to blow into it. This became a bit annoying for Mom, so the harp was sitting on top of the fridge until we went to Bannister Christmas. I remembered that Gramps plays the harmonica really well and thought it would be cute to see the two of them play together. It was!!

We draw names for a gift exchange and Jayne had Charlie. For those of you who don't know Jayne, she is a cowgirl through and through. Charlie was totally into unwrapping his gift and was marching up and down with glee when he saw what it was...

...A hobby-horse bull that makes a bull noise. For a few days after, Charlie would drag it round the house and occasionally ask mom , "Cow? Cow?" which meant he wanted me to press the horn to make the noise.

Here's the great group of kiddies we had over for a Christmas Cookie Craft Party. It was so much fun and such a mess, luckily Uncle Jon Jon has turned our basement into a playroom so the mess was manageable. First the kids painted salt dough cookie ornaments to keep and then, after lunch, frosted sugar cookies to eat. Needless to say, Charlie had a ball but made the crafting and frosting a little difficult for others--spreading a little too much Christmas cheer so to speak, with his paintbrush and frosting utensils.

Here he is with the one cookie he snacked on all afternoon. Now, before you think this seems fairly reasonable, consider that this same cookie had been frosted and, at Charlie's request, re-frosted by Aunt Beth. Charlie would lick off the delectable goodness and trip back to his Auntie for a refill! I caught on to this eventually...much to my boy's dismay.

Dance like a butterfly...

Sting like a bee.

Some yuletide highlights

We had a wonderful Christmas this year. It was so fun to experience all the sights and sounds of the season through Charlie's eyes and ears. Here are some of my favorites...

This year, Charlie really got into selecting and sawing down our tree. When dad got down on the ground, he got down, when dad sawed, he sawed, when dad groaned, Charlie groaned too. Mom and Amelia just stood by and laughed!



Ah...this (below) is life as a family of four should live it during the holidays! Amelia and Charlie were totally chilled out or, more accurately warmed up, in front of a cozy fire while we watched the Grinch. This was Charlie's first traditional night of "movies and popcorn" and he took to it pretty quickly--all except for the keeping popcorn in the bowl or in the mouth concept. There was popcorn everywhere, but luckily Charlie knows just where we keep the dustbuster and is happy to get it upon request. [I hope the fact that 'dustbuster' was one of his first colloquialisms doesn't reflect badly on me as a homemaker...]

The boys had to do some hearty shoveling after that big storm. I loved sneaking peeks out the window at 'my boys'--Charlie shuffling along in his hugely padded snowsuit and scraping his neon plastic shovel in the path of his Dad's. And yes (ha ha) that is a sippy cup hanging from his mitten! Speaking of sippy cups...when Charlie and Bob came inside after being out in the cold, I made up some hot chocolate. I let it cool a bit and put it in Charlie's cup. He took a big gulp (assuming it was milk) and got a shocked look on his face. Then he spit it all right out in shock! Once he regained his composure, he proceeded to gulp down the rest with gusto.

Charlie got a cute Little People nativity from his grandparents. When cousin Aaron was over, I tried to be the pious parent/Aunt and give my little boys a crash course on the creche. The boys sat listening for about a minute as I explained that Mary and Joseph rode a donkey to the manger to have the baby. Just as I pointed to Baby Jesus, my darling boy picked up the baby's figurine and flung it across the dining room. So much for the true meaning of Christmas...

We went out to the Strong Museum for their night of caroling and visit with Santa, the jolly good fellow as they call him. As we might have predicted, Charlie wasn't so keen at sitting on Santa's lap, but he enjoy the Christmas cookies. I brought a few cookies over for the three of us to share and Charlie grabbed the biggest cookie (a fist-sized gingerbread man that I was thinking we could all split). Before I knew it, he had chomped off the head and part of the body and was chewing away, his teeth green with icing.

Charlie helped us decorate and was fairly good about leaving the ornaments alone. Fairly good..a small pile of injured ornaments still lies on our kitchen counter waiting to be repaired. His two favorites were a mini replica Dunkin Donuts cup I had gotten for Bob (a dunkaholic) one Christmas and a small plastic stepladder ornament that had a tiny can of paint and roller lying on it. It was funny, when I pulled the Dunkin cup ornament out of the box, Charlie grabbed it, ran over and put it up to Bob's mouth. He's pretty familiar with how that works!