sooo big

just this morning, my mom said "how big is charlie???" and he put his hands over his head and she said "sooo big!". i said - when did he learn that? my mom said - oh a few days ago! so apparently i spent more time skiing in big sky than with charlie. when i get back from green bay i need to post pictures of our big sky and green bay trips. but for now i will put a little video up of charlie showing off his "sooo big" skills.

snow and friends

we had our first big snow storm of the season last week and lucky for bill he was on call :). lucky for me my mother in law - laura - was planning on coming down to babysit charlie while i went to a Christmas party, but it was cancelled and she still came. it saved me! we got about 14 inches of snow, but the worst part was the wind and drifting snow that came with it. when i opened our garage door the morning after the storm the snow was past my knees! with our snowblower tucked in the shelving in our garage i started to shovel us out. it took awhile and i don't know what you do with a baby when you need to shovel for a couple of hours!

snow pictures never show the depth of the snow very well, but here are a few pictures we took a day or too after while playing outside.

this is on the side of our house and normally the ground is slightly sloped from the fence up to the house, but you can see how much snow was drifted next to it.

all rosy after being outside. i can't wait until we can drink hot chocolate with tons of marshmallows together!

a group of our friends are part of a gourmet club where we are supposed to follow a predetermined gourmet menu. we have been straying more and more from the menu and for our december menu we decided to just get a couple papa murphys pizzas and hang out. it was wonderful.

here is charlie and me with nicole and her son, addison. i feel like it was just yesterday when nicole and i were at dunn bros drinking chai, both pregnant and overdue and thinking we were going to be pregnant forever. guess not. now our two boys are 8 months old - crazy.

how cute is this! charlie pushing addison on his truck.

dog wrestling = funny

on saturday, we had our great friends ryan and katie over to visit. they have a yellow lab named bailey and lily and her enjoy wrestling. charlie found it quite funny when the dogs wrestled.

8 months!

here is our adorable 8 month old baby!

grabbing a fist full of lily's hair is charlie's way of petting lily. check out his big belly and cheeks!

at 8 months he is:

*crawling well

*walks while pushing a truck

*babbling like crazy. i think he almost says "dog" when he sees lily, but i am probably hearing things :)

*he still loves to eat. he consumes about 4 big meals and nurses 6 times a day

*loves seeing his daddy

*sleeping better at night, but still gets up around 4 am for a snack

*points at everything with his index finger

*whenever he meets someone he likes to touch their nose before anything else

*loves reading interactive books like "where's spot?" and touch and feel books

*smiling more than ever. he is such a happy boy. i think he is getting to be a more easy going baby...as long as i keep him full he is happy as can be!

improvement...

well i think setting "rules" for myself at night has helped a bit. charlie's waking up stints are getting shorter and he is dealing with it better. last night he went to sleep at 7 and slept soundly until around 3, i fed him and then he was down again until 5:30 when i fed him again and we slept in the chair until 6:30 together. sleeping in a chair might sound pretty rough for a lot of you, but we have this amazing recliner and it is so comfortable (if you are having a baby - you must get one)!

i guess letting him cry it out this past time must have really helped him. we had let him cry it out before, but never saw much of an improvement. maybe he was just ready for it now. either way - i think we are moving towards better sleep habits.

while charlie doesn't sleep perfectly at night, he still is taking at least 2 naps for me - usually between 1-1.5 hours long. not bad. i think i would rather have those nice breaks during the day then have a perfect night and no naps!

sleep - where are you????

charlie is almost 8 months. i thought we would definitely have a baby that would be sleeping like a rock by now. i mean bill and i used to race each other to sleep before we had kids - we both fall asleep in seconds and sleep the whole way through. that does not happen for us (mostly me) anymore.

for awhile charlie was sleeping until around 4, eating and then going back to sleep until around 6:30-7ish (pre-daylight savings!). now - not so much. currently, he goes to sleep around 7ish and then ends up needing a few comfort pats before 11pm. he wakes up/gets restless at 11:30, 2-3, 4-5 and then wants to be up for the day at 5:50am! what?? it used to only takes a pat on the back and he was back to sleep, but lately it is requiring more effort. the issue i have is that i am a zombie at 2-3 am and cannot figure out if he is hungry, etc so i usually feed him because it is my easiest option and means i can go back to sleep earlier. however, last night he did his freak out at 11:30 (an hour after i had finally gotten into bed) and i was still somewhat with it. so i let him cry it out. i knew he wasn't hungry or sick (as the case has been the last few weeks). he cried until 1 am and then was out until 4:30 when he ate and went back to sleep. i think charlie is now dealing with more separation anxiety at night than before so once he wakes up and realizes he would rather have us with him he works himself into a frenzy.

as i was laying in bed trying to sleep through the crys i made some sleeping ground rules for myself so when i am delirious i can follow them. 1. once i hear him up i can go in and give him a "you're ok" back rub and pacifier. if he doesn't fall back asleep - i leave and let him go to town. 2. after i leave i can't go back in. easy to say hard to do.

one thing that happened last night is that he learned how to pull himself to standing in his crib (good thing bill and my dad put it to the lowest setting this past weekend). i had to go in and lay him back down and put the railing up. he really didn't like that, but at least i know he can't flip himself out of the crib!

christmas time

bill was post call on saturday so we went to get our christmas tree! it was great because my parents were able to come with us and get some pictures.

i found the tree :)

us "discussing" the tree choice.

yep - we decided on it :)

king in the castle...

me and my baby

in keeping with tradition - my mom gave charlie an ornament for his first christmas.

putting up sweet baby Jesus in a nutshell - our tree topper.

the schmitt fam all wearing our green patagonia tops.

(we looked back at our last 3 christmas pictures and i am wearing my same green r1. apparently i wear it a lot. if you don't own one i would definitely recommend it - they are so comfy and last forever)

poor lily - she put up with a lot of abuse.

adorable charlie

i was making our bed and charlie looked too cute so we snapped some pics.

thanksgiving

we have so much to be thankful. here are just a few things we are thankful for -- our Lord and Savior and His presence in our lives, charlie, our families, mayo and bill's job, our marriage, fantastic friends and so much more.

we hosted our first thanksgiving - my parents, siblings (sans tommy) and mary came to rochester to celebrate (and for my dad to do some work around our house :) thanks dad!). charlie loved the attention.

"the core" thinking they are winning the gingerbread house challenge. of course - bill and i won. i will post the winning gingerbread house pic in a bit.

danny, dad and suzanne "watching" charlie. my mom and i were cleaning up in the kitchen (surprise, surprise) and they said they were playing with him. if you look you will see - danny playing with his new PS3, my dad on his mac, suzanne on her mac and charlie "standing" by holding on to danny's foot. thanks guys! to their credit - they did play with charlie a ton i just could not resist posting this picture.

suzanne and danny frosting and decorating christmas cookies.

one thing i am not sure if i should be too thankful for is the new skill charlie picked up. nana and pops gave him a new cat dump truck. the bucket of the truck clicks in the back to make a "pushing" station for charlie. the first time we set him up against it he started to walk! i was like - where did that come from.

here is a video of him showing off his new skill.

loving his new toy.

what a trooper

this video was taken a few weeks ago, but it shows how great he is at eating anything we put in front of him. these are his vitamins and he obviously hates them, but after getting half of the dropper down he opens his mouth for more. too cute!

the pointer finger

charlie has discovered his pointer finger...he points at everything. he finds something really small like a snap to try to hone in on and will just pet it with his pointer finger once he gets it. i like it because when we read books i can point stuff out and he will sometimes copy me. he loves reading "where's spot" because he is able to open the flaps.

pointing at the orange wood block...

feeling the "silky" ear of the puppy.

in other news - charlie has a cold with a runny runny nose. he despises the booger sucker when we use it to clear out his nose. but, he loves it for a toy... i find him with it all the time. i guess it is better than the dog bone he tries to chew on daily - man he is getting fast at getting to things he wants and should not have. how gross!

normal??

charlie likes to eat and eat and eat. he will even eat in large crowds or at restaurants when he is distracted by everything going on around him. he just turns his head to look at things and then opens his mouth and waits for the food to arrive.

yesterday is a perfect example of his bottomless pit. by 12:30 he had nursed 4 times and had a nice sized breakfast and lunch. at 3:30 i nursed him again and by 5:30 he showed his signs that he wanted to eat again (ie: "attacking" me, crying when i leave the room, you name it). charlie usually has a dinner of oatmeal and bananas around 6ish so i nursed him and then prepared his oatmeal and nanners. bill and i had an ENT dinner to go to and bill's aunt amy was babysitting. amy fed him his oatmeal and nanners and was still wanting more so he got some applesauce. she played with him and then did his bath and bedtime routine. around 7:15ish she gave him his bedtime bottle - he took 8 ounces down and said he would have probably eaten more! since i nurse him i rarely see how much in ounces he eats, but i couldn't believe after almost 4 feedings in 4 hours he would have had more than 8 ounces!!! i can't complain though - he is one happy baby with a big belly that hangs over his pants!

7 months

another month down - charlie is now 7 months old! we are so blessed to have charlie in our lives. he is such a joy and i wish i could bottle his giggle.

here are some of charlie's 7 month achievements:
*making forward motion - not crawling, but frog hopping quite well and does get up on his knees like he is going to crawl but then decides that belly flops on the floor are much better.
*able to pull himself up to standing
*adding "dada", "mom", "mama" to his vocabulary
*squeals back and forth with you and has taught his friend addison how to squeal loudly too :)
*still nurses 6 times a day while consuming 3 large meals (lots of fruits and veggies that i make) and 1 snack! how in the world does he put all this down.
*eats cheerios, teething biscuits, saltines, etc
*improving his sleep habits. he "usually" (nothing has ever been that consistent) goes to bed around 7:15 pm and sleeps until 4-5 am - nurses - and then goes back to sleep until 6:30am. he naps about twice per day for roughly 1 and 1/2 hours.

here are charlie and lily's monthly pictures.

and last but not least - he's been begging for a cell phone and we gave in. at least this way he can keep in touch with his grandparents and friends. :)

besides talking on the phone - he loves chewing on it.

go pack go

charlie is obviously a packer fan. while the pack has not played the best football against the vikes - at least charlie was cheering the pack on in uniform.

watching aaron rodgers...

trying to figure out why brett is wearing the wrong jersey!!!

he's moving, moving, moving...

as of today - november 3rd - charlie is moving. he is 6 months and 4 weeks old. he is not fully crawling yet, but making these frog jumps/hops and is able to get to things he wants. it has been incredible to watch him improve his "crawling" techniques each day. check out a few of his "hops" in this video.

meet charlie's newest toy

louis...pete and margit's new basset hound puppy. he is just 8 weeks old and lucky for us they drove him down to rochester on sunday so we could meet him. lily was praying it was not a permanent addition to our family.

charlie - on the other hand - loved him. especially once he got so tired he was a floppy little puppy. he was just trying to sleep and we put him on charlie's lap to have a little photo shoot.

he was so cute and squishy! check out those ears!!!

what a good puppy. lucky for louis charlie never really got a good grip on his ears or eyeballs.

mom - i need one!

my little sweet pea

and what a cute little sweet pea he was...

we didn't really do anything for halloween, but we dressed him in this adorable little costume for a bit in the afternoon.

lily was trying to get into the spirit.