Toddler livin'

So happy! She loves getting into things! Every day it becomes more and more apparent to me that Charlotte is well past the baby phase and living in the toddler phase.  She is so sweet and so much fun to watch develop.  And of course I think she's so smart, but I readily admit I'm a bit biased.  Most days, that's the happy, smiling face I see. 

She often walks around with her "babies," hugging them tight to her chest. (Usually she's dressed in more than just a diaper - we had just come in from playing in the rain.)  Every once in a while, she'll hug them and rock back and forth a bit.

 If you look closely in the second picture, you can see that this one above is just a close up of an example of how you can find things tucked into random spots at our house now. 

She used to lay down and drink her bottle.  Now she walks around and drinks it, which amazes me, because we worked on how to hold the up rather than down for sooo long!

She's very helpful around the house. Here, she's helping Daddy fix a leak in our sink. Most nights, she helps me cook dinner...

Today Koby decided to mow the back yard, so he moved all the stuff up on the deck. Charlotte wandered outside, climbed up in her swing, and sat and watched him mow for about 10 minutes.  I guess watching wasn't enough, because, as the next picture shows, she got out of her swing, walked to the edge of the deck, and started yelling at him.  I guess she was critiquing his mowing style! :)

I don't have any pictures to show for how we spend most of our days, which is reading.  Charlotte will literally hound you with a book until you sit down and read it to her.  Of course, there are favorites, and of course Koby and I have them memorized, but it's really starting to be evident that Charlotte knows them as well.  She'll bring you a book and make noises or hand gestures that we do with that book.  It just tickes me pink watching her "read" these books to herself, making the sounds and motions just for herself.

She's really starting to practice and copy words, and I'm always surprised when I tell her to do something and she actually does it.  I can say, "Where are your boots?" and she'll look around for them!  She knows exactly what "Do you want to go outside?" means and is thrilled - she adores being outside! 

Don't get me wrong, she still does quite a bit of baby talk.  I love her most recent baby talk development - telling jokes.  She will jabber for a few seconds, then look at you and give the fakest fake laugh you have ever heard.  She opens her mouth as wide as she can and wrinkles her nose and "laughs."  I cannot help but laugh right back at her.  Of course, that has encouraged the joke telling, so I definitely fill my laugh quota each day.  I'll see if I can catch one of these joke faces on camera.  No one should miss out on this little stand-up comic phase.  She's hilarious, just ask her!

Chillin' with the dogs

Gigi and D, Sophie and Bullitt came for a visit, which has endlessly entertained Charlotte.  Mostly she bugs Bullitt, who graciously licks her face and lets her do pretty much whatever she wants.  I guess she didn't want to leave Sophie out, because she paid her a visit at nap time:

"Ni-ni!"

Hamming it up for the camera!

Dress up Diva?

Whenever I do laundry, Charlotte is right there next to the basket to pull things out and try them on.  I never thought to much about it, but Koby saw it this last time and commented that Charlotte was really going to like dressing up.  I think he might be right!

  

  

By the way, yes, in the second picture she is "singing."



Ni-ni, Dada!

Charlotte thinks it's the height of humor to lay down in random spots and say, "Ni-ni," which is Charlottese for night-night.  Imagine her delight when Daddy laid down next to her and started copying her!

 She laughed at first, then sat up and started patting his back, just like we do to her sometimes. 

So cute!  Eventually she realized he makes a great jungle gym and started climbing on her.  Just another thing to make us admit the truth: we now have a full-blown toddler on our hands!

First trip to the zoo

This New Year's Eve, we were real party animals: we took Charlotte to the zoo for the first time.  It was so much fun to see her with the animals; mostly, she pointed and said, "Wow."  Yes, she really did say 'wow'. 

Luckily, Koby got to come and enjoy this first with us - it seems like he misses out on alot of firsts, mostly because of work. Although I will say, on the level of firsts, this one was pretty cute.  I don't have a ton of pictures, mostly because it was so darn sweet watching her watch the animals that I forgot to pull the camera out until about half-way through.  I guess the cuteness wears off after a while.

Looking back, I'd say her favorite animals were the meerkats, definately, followed by the elephants and giraffes.  We went again a few days later without Daddy (we have a membership now) and she was FASCINATED by the fish, of all things!  We had skipped them the first time.  I can see now we won't skip them again any time soon.  

Watching a mommy monkey and her baby climb

Feeling adventurous

    





Checking out the chimps

What's that silly lion doing?

Yes, that is a lion laying upside down, like an old hound dog.  Ferocious, isn't he?

She had a good grip on that fence!

Still not ready to leave the flamingos

   






The Houston Zoo also has a Children's Zoo with a petting zoo.  I was really excited to see how she would react, and wasn't very surprised to see she was more interested in the other kids at first.  Once we got across the idea that you don't pet children, you pet goats, she went along quite well!