Thursday, July 08, 2010


Here is Charlie, proudly displaying his lunch--made entirely by himself! The lunch contained a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, pretzel stix, and applesauce garnished with one blueberry on top. I was just overcome with pride at his accomplishment until I discovered a piece of bread, peanut butter side down on the floor. Charlie saw me looking at it and said matter-of-factly, "I messed up that one." Work in progress. He can toast his own bagel and spread it with cream cheese too (very helpful for a non-morning-person mom like me) and is constantly making me giggle when he uses words like "actually" and phrases like "that's impressive!" --not to mention that he seems to grow an inch each day!

Speaking of Charlie's helpfulness...
I'm constantly perplexed by the strange phenomenon that not one of our children have enjoyed car rides as an infant. Most parents I talk to say that a trip in the car is a the quickest route to dreamland for their baby, but not ours. Even if deeply asleep when they enter the car seat, the click of the buckle seems to wake them up abruptly and ready us all for a hair-pulling trip to Screamville. We've even wondered if our infant car seat could be the culprit--although we're way too cheap to buy a new one to see if it would bring about a change in said crying. Anyway, all this to say, we are sooo thankful that Charlie is a super wonderful seatmate since the only thing that will soothe our wailing Wesley while in the car is a snack. (Maybe this is how he got to be so chubby?) I know, I know, you're probably thinking, "Ever heard of a pacifier, root word being 'pacify'"--yeah, I forgot to mention that none of our kids have liked the pacifier either! So, anyway...each time we travel, Charlie buckles into his booster next to Wes and then dutifully places the bottle in his seat side cupholder. Then, once the crying inevitably begins, he methodically uncaps the bottle and gives it to his bro while crooning a lullaby or saying sweet things in a soothing voice like--"It's ok honey." If it were not for Charlie's bottle service, I think I may have just resorted to staying home forever--or at least until Wesley graduates out of the infant seat. Big brothers certainly do come in handy.

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4 comments:

Tracey said...

Aww, what a great big brother!

erilyn said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
erin said...

Yay, Charlie! Big brother bottle-feeding as scream-prevention is awesome! My two have been screamers in the car, but Liam won't even take bottles -- thankfully he is [mostly] grown out of that phase. Miss you guys!

Dan and Alenna said...

I love the sandwich accomplishment! Good work, Charlie! And I'm glad for you that he's been such a good big brother in the car. What a help that's been, I'm sure!