my helper

laura comes down to visit charlie and save me about once a week when she is in town. i love the break and charlie loves the constant attention. after visiting a few weeks ago, she sent these pictures to me. every time laura took out the camera charlie started goofing around. he would squint for every picture. i was cracking up. here are the pictures.

who does he look like?

so people always ask - who does charlie look like?

laura brought me some pictures of bill at 10 months to compare too. (i just took a picture of the picture - i know pretty ghetto. maybe i will get them scanned one of these days) i think they look a lot alike.

bill and laura (isn't she gorgeous!). charlie definitely has the square cheek smile.

bill doing the finger point with tom. charlie also does the finger point.

wanna slobbery kiss?

charlie loves giving kisses. they are open mouth, slobbery kisses, but are so much fun to receive. my favorite thing is that he also has to kiss lily (yes he gets a lot of dog hair in his mouth!) and any characters in books. he kisses paul and judy from pat the bunny, elmo, the dogs in a puppy book we have, etc. it is so precious.

here is charlie leaning in to kiss lily on the nose. she just closes her eyes and takes it.

one sweaty mommy

charlie is really into giving kisses. when i got back from a workout this saturday he slobbered me with kisses, but what he had never experienced before was a sweaty, salty mommy. his reaction was hysterical and bill and i were on the floor dying. the thing is - he kept coming back for more kisses with the same after effect.

giving me the greatest kisses.

the reaction!

bill and i also took charlie swimming at the rac saturday afternoon. charlie had never been dunked underwater before, but saturday he experienced his first underwater experience. bill was holding him as he was standing on the steps going into the pool. charlie splashed bill in the eyes, bill closed his eyes and then charlie bent in half and went face first into the water! not what was supposed to happen. charlie didn't mind it too much so we did intentionally dunk him a few more times so he could get used to it. charlie is slowly warming up to the pool and it has been a fun mid winter activity for us to go swim in the afternoons.

adorable

this video is just adorable. as i posted before, charlie loves to take the rags out of the drawer. this video is of charlie handing them to bill. he is chatting away having an entire conversation with bill.

the end of an era

i am basically done breastfeeding charlie. for the last 19 months, i have been growing or feeding this child from my body. amazing. besides the initial torture of starting to breastfeed, it has been a wonderful experience. i loved the way he looks up at me, pokes his fingers in my nose or mouth, plays/pulls on my hair and is just happy and content. i am so glad i stuck it out, but am also very ready to be done. he started pulling at my shirt and would even point at my nursing tanks and say "da...da" like come on i would like a snack. so that was my cue, it was time to move on. sadly, we can't go right to cow's milk because his stomach can't handle it yet so i just give him a bottle morning, afternoon and night. i have been nursing him a bit in the mornings still to ease out of it so i don't get mastitis, but it is just a few ounces so he takes the rest via bottle. a part of me is still sad to see this era of living off of me end, but it has been such a wonderful, amazing experience.

ready for your bath?

last night bill and i were playing with charlie and he started getting fussy. it was about his bath time so bill said "charlie, are you ready for your bath?". with that, charlie twisted around and hit the ground in full crawl mode. we both looked at each other and said do you think he is going to head into the bathroom? sure enough, he did. he went straight for the bathroom like he thought we were never going to catch on. he does this with other phrases like "do you want to read books, eat, etc", but it was so cute to see him respond like he was really a part of our conversation.