Tidbits

Every day, Charlie says or does something that I can't believe - in a totally cute way.  I wish I had a video camera on him all the time to catch these moments.

He will stop everything and pause when he hears a helicopter or plane - hair-planes, as he says it - and can differentiate between the two sounds. And he can see them in the sky when I can't.

When Charlie goes in to a dark or darker place he will say, "It is very dark in here!"  I wondered where he picked this up, and then I heard Daisy Duck say the phrase on an episode of Mickey Mouse Clubhouse.

After one reading of a book, he knows its title and a lot of the content.  Every night we read books after his bath and Thursday night I was about to read Goodnight Moon to him and he said, "No Mama.  I read it."  And he did.  He can read his name and the names of his classmates.  And the days of the week.  And I am sure other things that we haven't realized yet.  He is just so smart.

We have been working on potty training for a few weeks, and Charlie is mostly successful and getting better every day.  This week, he has started standing when he pees.  We didn't teach him this, so I asked at school if they worked with him.  Turns out, he saw a classmate do it and he wanted to pee that way, too!  It is amazing that he sees something once and picks it up.

When he is feeling frisky, he will follow everything with, "TA-DA!" and outstretch his arms.

One day, as we were driving home from school and watching Mickey, Charlie kept saying, "Close the door, Mama."  I would tell him the door is closed.  We are ok.  It took me 10 minutes (and Charlie saying Close the door many, many times) to realize he was trying to tell me the DVD screen was closed (it folds into the ceiling of the car).

At school, time out is sitting in a blue chair.  This past week, Charlie said he needed the blue chair.  "Time Out Mama.  Blue Chair."  So I told him if he needed time out he could go sit against the wall, but that he was being a good boy.  But Charlie felt he had done something bad, sat against the wall, and then cried because he was in time out.  Both Marc and I told him it was ok and that he could come and sit with us, but he stayed in time out for at least 30 seconds.  He did this 3 times this week.

One of the potty training tools we are using is M&Ms.  He gets one if he uses the potty.  But what excites Charlie even more is giving someone else an M&M.  So when he pee-pees, he eats a bit of yummy chocolate and takes one to Daddy or to one of his grandparents if they are visiting.  It makes him so happy to give them an M&M.  But Friday night, I caught him NOT giving one to Daddy and keeping it for himself - the little booger!

The past two nights, Charlie has gone to his room to lay down well before bed time. So we have actually pushed bath time up 30 minutes because he has been tired.  Thursday night, when I went to check and see what he was up to, since he had not made any noise for a minute or so, he was laying down and patted the bed and said, "Mama lay down."  I had a bunch of dirty dishes and some clothes to fold, but they could wait. When I look back on my life, will I be happy my dishes were clean or that I loved on my little man?

He likes to sing his ABCs.  Loudly.  And in restaurants and stores. Over and over.

I will start to read a part of a book ad Charlie will put out his hand and say, "No Mama."  He will then point out items on the page.  Owls, acorns, caterpillars, worms, ladybugs, crickets, frogs, and many others.  My current favorite is when he points out the sea anemones, or "ena-enamies." Once he is finished, then I can go back to reading.  He will often say No Mama when I sing, too.  But I think that is just my lousy singing voice.

At the Publix Bakery, they have little cookies set aside that they give to kids.  Maybe two months ago, I started getting one for Charlie when he went with me.  At first it was just the sugar cookie, but last week all they had was chocolate chip.  And now Charlie asks to go to the chocolate chip cookies, and I know that means Publix.  He devours the cookie and lately we have then gotten a bag of apple slices and he eats almost all of them while we shop.  Last trip I had to wrench the bag out of his hands so we could ring it up.  He wailed for maybe 3 seconds but wow, that was a looong three second cry. You would think I didn't feed the boy.

Charlie asked to go to the castle.  Over and over,  We had no idea what the castle was and he would get mad that we didn't go.  Finally Grandma Dot came to the rescue again and figured out the castle was the park, where he runs on the playground that is kind of like a castle.  And she asked us to please get that boy to the castle so he would stop breaking her heart with his crying.  But I don't know where he got the concept of the castle.  We've never called it that and we don't really talk about castles around here.  But when we drive past it he hollers about the castle!

And not to leave Miss Rosie out.  We've had to stop feeding her cereal because she has gotten the stinkiest, smelliest, raunchiest, most pungent gas I have ever smelled.  She is pooping just fine and is not having gas pains, but she is cooking up some good ones.  13 year-old boys would be impressed with the stench.  You can open up her diaper and it will burn off your eyebrows.  No poop-just the gas!  I switched from Rice to Oat cereal but that didn't help.  I did some investigating and it may be the soy in the cereal so Friday I bought an all organic rice cereal.  I hope this helps.  Seriously - you do not expect such a horrible smell from such a sweet little face!