What happened instead of naptime

We had a wonderful Christmas filled with great memories. I'll post more about that once I'm home.

Today, Charlotte refused to take an afternoon nap. What happens to babies that don't nap when they have mommies with new cameras? A photo shoot.

Merry Christmas

I'm going to take a little blog break this week while I enjoy the holidays with the fam. I wish everyone a safe and happy holiday.

And because I don't like to post without a picture, here are a couple from bathtime one night this weekend.

Getting Ready to Party

Judd and I are hosting a little get together tonight. We have been hard at work today preparing. Charlotte has been very helpful.

First, she helped her Daddy find a pot to cook the pasta:

Then, she helped me clean the bathroom:

After lunch, she helped me empty the dishwasher: (She actually climbed onto the dishwasher all by herself)

Whew! What a tiring day. Time for a little nap?

Christmas came a little early

On Wednesday, I waited patiently all day. Then around 4 o'clock, I heard it coming down the street. I looked out of my home office window to see a beautiful sight, a big brown truck stopping in front of my house. I ran downstairs, opened the front door, and signed for the package. Judd made me promise to wait until he got home that night to open the box. When he got home, I finally was able to hold my brand new camera!!

My wonderful husband bought me a Nikon D90. I have been swamped with work this week, so I haven't been able to play with it too much. So far the biggest difference I can see is the ISO. I am able to bump it up a lot farther than the D70 and not see too much grain in the pictures. This will help me greatly with indoor pictures. I can't wait to try it out more outside this weekend.

Here are two pictures I took yesterday. The last one was taken of Charlotte in her pitch black room. The door was open just a crack to let a little light in. I think the ISO was at 3200!

Watch out Annie Leibovitz!

What 7 months can do

Remember this post (Charlotte's & Cooper's first meeting), that had these pictures:

Now look:

Kind of amazing what 7 months can do. Allison and Michael graciously invited 3 families with small children over for dinner on Saturday night. Charlotte had a great time playing (ok stealing) Handley & Cooper's toys.

Charlotte's Christmas Program

Last Thursday, the 11th, Charlotte's daycare had a Christmas program. Each class made their way on stage to sing a Christmas song or two. Judd took Charlotte up to sing Jingle Bells with her classmates.

After Charlotte's big number, Judd and I sat back and watched the much more entertaining Parentarazzi taking pictures. There was some serious camera equipment displayed.

Santa

Earlier this evening we took Charlotte to see Santa. It was a little spur of the moment. Judd had the day off today, so we picked Charlotte up from day care and headed over to Perimeter Mall. We figured that Friday at 5 o'clock might be a good time to go. Turns out we were right, there were only about 4 families in front of us. Charlotte really liked Santa and flashed her pearly whites right on cue:

As you can see, she is not in either one of her adorable Christmas dresses. She has two, one from each Grandmother. She looks fabulous in both. I even have matching tights and little mary janes to go with them. But what is she wearing in this picture? A cute, but dirty-from-all-day-at-day-care outfit.

I felt like a horrible mother looking around at the other children in line. Their mothers dressed them in red & green dresses and sweaters. My poor little rag-a-muffin was in pink flowers. Nothing says Christmas like pink flowers. I even considered running over to Hannah Andersen and buying her an adorable dress. But, then I remembered my Working Mother Mantra, "Ok is good enough".

I am learning quickly that "Ok is good enough". I look around my living room at my small, fake tree, barren mantle that has decorations still in bags beneath it, and my Christmas cards waiting to be addressed and sent out, and remember that none of this is what it is about. It is about Charlotte's first Christmas. I just want to soak up every minute of the next two weeks.

10 month picture

Charlotte is harder and harder to take a picture of. She is constantly on the move, and most of the time trying to grab the camera. I think I took over 50 pictures trying to get a decent 10 month picture - and this is the best of the bunch. The lighting is off, color is off, and it is out of focus...oh well. If I have another baby and do a picture of the month, I'm going to do it very differently.

10 months is my favorite age so far. I fall in love with this little girl in a different way everyday. We were in the grocery store yesterday, Charlotte was sitting in the cart with her brown puffy coat and pink hat. I bent down to grab something off of the bottom shelf, when I looked up at her she looked right back at me with those huge blue eyes and smiled. Then, she let out a soft little sigh. My heart actually skipped a beat. The way she was smiling it was almost like she was saying, "I love you, Mom".

Every day I am watching her learn new things. You can actually see her learn, it is like a little miracle every time. With each new thing she does, I am torn between the little toddler she is becoming and the little baby I once had.

New Fashion Trend

I usually have an idea of how the day went based on what Charlotte is wearing when I pick her up. A good portion of the time it isn't what I sent her to day care in. This was how I found her today:

That is a pink and navy blue lady bug shirt, matching pick and navy blue socks, but purple, red, and turquoise striped pants. On Tuesday I sent two outfits for her cubby. This outfit is comprised of the pants from one outfit and the shirt from another. Now when she comes home in the outfit that is left over, that's going to be even better - a turquoise shirt and pink and navy blue striped pants.

Her teachers are so wonderful, I can't blame them. I'm sure that she messed up her outfit and they had to pick something out for her while chasing after 6 or 7 other infants all messing up their outfits. I think I'd go with what my hand grabbed first too!

10 months

Charlotte turned 10 months yesterday. I am unable to post a picture because I left my camera at my parent's house Saturday. (Don't worry, Mom shipped it yesterday!) I have been feeling a bit naked without it. I'll post a 10 month picure as soon as I get the camera fired up! Here are some things that Charlotte was up to this past month:

• She had her first Thanksgiving! She ate turkey, stuffing, potatoes, and applesauce.
• She is standing up solo more and more.
• She is cruising like a champ. She walks along the length of coffee tables, couches, anything she can pull up on.
• She is able to mimic a lot of our expressions or gestures. She will "cough" after you cough, shake her head no, click her tongue against the roof of her mouth, even has started to blow kisses.
• She is eating a lot more table foods, she loves chicken from Chick-fil-A!
• She seems to want to say words. After we say "Bye-Bye" or "Dog" she seems to try to say those words after us. Still no "MaMa" :( - but we do hear "DadDa" a lot.
• She still LOVES her bath. The past 2 nights she has cried when we put her in the bath seat, so I think she'll soon be swimming free in the tub.
• She now has 4 teeth!
• Has slept through the night the past 7 nights!!!
  
  

New York or Bust

Bust.

I had hoped that today I would be able to share beautiful pictures of NYC decorated for Christmas. However, my stomach had other plans. The Friday after Thanksgiving, Judd and I had planned to take the train up to NYC for the weekend leaving Charlotte with my parents. Around 2:30 am I woke up with a horrible stomach bug that lasted the entire day. So, after much begging we got our Hilton Honors points back and Amtrak fare refunded. We were bummed to say the least. But, it did give us more time with my family and Judd got to head up to Deer Camp with our brother-in-law, Andrew.

We were going to fly out of PA on Sunday originally, but with the new change of plans, we decided it might be a good idea to fly out on Saturday instead in order to beat the crowds. We got to the Harrisburg airport around 3:15 pm on Saturday hoping to get on the 4:05 pm flight. When we got there we saw that it was delayed until 5. When we checked our bags, the Delta rep. said that we would be lucky if we got on the plane. The weather was bad in Atlanta and the planes had weight restrictions. This was not good news. This meant that they would leave some seats empty because they had to load more fuel. So, after much debate and frantic flight research, we decided to hop in the car and drive to Baltimore where there would be better flight options. Now, Charlotte had not taken any sort of afternoon nap, so I was starting to get really worried about how this 1.5 hour drive to Baltimore was going to go.

We made it to BWI around 6:00 pm, said goodbye to my parents, and headed inside to check-in. The flight had been delayed until 8 pm, but there was a good chance we would get on. We got a sandwich and fed Charlotte her dinner. She ended up sleeping about an hour of the drive to BWI and was in a pretty good mood. We got our boarding passes and noticed that they were first class! We boarded the plane around 8 pm, but didn't actually take off until 8:30. I gave Charlotte her bottle then, she went to sleep, and Judd and I kicked back and "enjoyed" the 2 hour extremely turbulent flight. We landed, got the bags & cars, fought traffic, and ended up home around 12:15 am.

Charlotte was a dream the entire time. She had been in the car, stroller, or on the plane for 10 hours. I don't think she cried once. Judd and I are excited to think that we may have a new travel buddy :)

We are grateful to my parents who took an entire evening to drive us to BWI to catch the plane. Non-rev traveling is wonderful at times, but the weekend after Thanksgiving we are learning can be stressful. We have already booked actual tickets to fly home after Christmas.