extreme home makeover

the past two weekends we have been working on making our lower level more liveable and doing some maintenance on our house. thankfully, my parents volunteered to come up and help us with the house maintenance stuff. so this weekend we stained our deck and front railing, trimmed a ton of trees, sold stuff on craigslist, installed a cabinet my dad built for the laundry room and charlie got his train table built by my dad (my dad was busy with my projects :)). sadly, we didn’t get any pictures in the painful moments of staining the deck, trimming the trees or dealing with the brush. 

charlie loved having nana and pops around. bill and i could barely get a hi from him. even this morning, when i walked into his room he said “nana? pops?” he continued to mention them throughout the day – probably hoping they would pop up somewhere.

after a long work day saturday and sunday, we went to the rac to enjoy the sunshine and pool. charlie munched on the french fries.

showing us his rollercoastering skills.

charlie was showing off the words he could say or point to in his machine book.

 

the new cabinet in our laundry room that was built by my dad. it is better than our kitchen cabinets! it fills the space perfectly! thanks dad!

 

charlie’s train table that pop’s built. he loves it! i can remove the top and a chalkboard is underneath it. we are going to be spending many hours playing by the train table.

finally, a picture with charlie, nana and pops. thanks mom and dad for all of the help. we could not have done it without you guys! charlie adores you.

for the love of ketchup

charlie discovered his love of ketchup while eating fries at the rac on sunday. try not to gag.

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no mama, no

that is what charlie has been saying lately when i go to pick him up from childcare at our gym (the rac). i loved that he enjoyed his full 2.5 hours of playtime, but i could never figure out what was more fun that coming home to play with me :). until this weekend that is….my parents were in town and we took them to play at the rac. we went to the pool and then up to this toddler play area they have that the childcare also uses. we watched charlie play with the cars and then he started playing with this rollercoaster thing. just watch and see. he obviously has done this many times before. it was crazy for bill and i to watch him do this and realize he is developing a little world of his own where we don’t know his every move.

he got it from his mommy

charlie’s love for baked cheetos that is. i love them. so does he.

august randoms

charlie loves crawling up onto our chairs or couch and reading books by himself. yeah for independent play! sadly, it only lasts about 5 minutes, but it is a step in the right direction.

reading his new toddler Bible.

grandma and pappy visit.

chowing on some grub.

a sweet gift from bill to me on saturday morning after rounds. what a great way to start the weekend. daube’s cinnamon rolls are the best!

our big boy and his daddy with their new haircuts.

summer theme

root beer floats (diet barq’s only). delicious! we have them every night after c little goes to bed :).

little things

time is flying by. charlie is already 16 months old! there are so many little things that he is doing lately and i wanted to record a few:

*he is climbing like crazy. the other night i was cooking at the stove and turned around and he had some how gotten himself into his highchair staring at me! he could have crashed so hard getting into that thing, but thankfully he didn’t.

*he is also climbing onto our chairs and couches and just sits and smiles because he is so proud that made it up. he will grab a book and start reading out loud while sitting in a chair. i love it…maybe this will mean he is going to start playing by himself??? probably not.

*charlie’s vocab is growing every day. the other day i picked up a toddler Bible because the baby Bible we had was not cutting it. i really like this one and he already refers to it as his “Bible” instead of “book”. i would guess he has around 60 words.

*he may not be able to say every word, but he is pretty close to understanding everything. even though sometimes he pretends he doesn’t understand. here is one example: bill and i were talking while driving (charlie was in the back seat) about another friend’s son who is almost 2 and will mimic exactly what you say perfectly. i said to bill, well if you ask charlie to say “da dou” he will say it back so once he starts being able to pronounce everything he will mimic what we say…and that is when we heard it…charlie says “da dou” just as he heard me talking about asking him to say it! i was like – did you just hear him say that? he totally heard all we were talking about and we were definitely not talking that loud.

*every morning when i get charlie up he mentions dada. i always say dada is at work. then charlie says "hopial” (translation – hospital). too cute!

*he has found his outside voice – except he often uses it inside. he will squeal really loud and i will say oh charlie that is your outside voice. let’s use your inside voice (in a whisper). then he will whisper really sweet and then bust out another squeal. it is pretty funny at home. not so funny at target.

*at our grocery store (and home depot), they have carts that look like race carts (the kid faces forward and can drive little wheels). he is obsessed with them! if i mention that we are going to go to the grocery store with the race carts he runs to the gate and gets super excited. then through the entire store he drives with both hands and makes driving noises. super funny, but the cart is a pain in the butt to navigate through the store.

*don’t let the pigeon drive the bus is a book that is about a bus driver who leaves his bus unattended and asks the child to make sure the pigeon doesn’t drive. charlie loves it! he will say “no no no no no” to each request from the pigeon to drive. let’s just hope he doesn’t start saying no no no to me!

the final rose

note: only those who are obsessed with the bachelor/bachelorette will understand this post.

on last friday i received this beautiful invite from my sister-in-law in the mail!

 

i responded immediately…yes!

so monday arrived (the day of the final rose ceremony) and charlie and i drove to hudson. while in hudson, charlie had his first nutella and peanut butter sandwich. let’s just say he loved it. notice the nutella in his eye.

the dinner party started at 6:30 so when grandpappy got home from work he was in charge of c little. they had tons of fun. they went for a boat ride, filled the boat up with gas and fed the carp at the gas dock, took a truck drive up the driveway and read a ton of books.

i, on the other hand, was enjoying a dinner party with mary and her friend trinara.

 

the magazine was for debriefing after the show.  we had personalized name tags, champagne with raspberries, candles, big rings to wear during the show. way to throw a dinner party mary!

what dinner party wouldn’t end with a funfetti!

trinara, me and mary.

ali and roberto. they will probably last about 2 months.