18 Months Old

Happy Birthday to Grammy Jarvis tomorrow!!!

Miss Charlotte turned 18 months old on the 24th!

I think the above picture pretty much sums up her personality--she's our little diva! At times her love for the dramatic is irresistably cute; other times not so much. It's especially awesome to try and make dinner when she's screaming her head off, ripping at my clothes, and pounding on the cabinets because I'm not preparing her food fast enough.

Who, me?

Charlotte is a very busy one and a half-year old. She's moving around incredibly well--she was walking by 13 months and running by about 15. We've all been really impressed at her dexterity; especially with kicking. Charlotte can run and kick a ball at the same time--we're wondering if her early dribbling skills indicate a future soccer star :) She's also an excellent climber and is amazingly strong. Tonight she pushed over our small lockbox that weighs about 50 pounds.

Charlotte has no fear and will try anything! Some of her very first words were: "uh-oh", "boom", and "whoa"--if that tells you anything about her personality. She's a tough cookie. It takes a lot to make her really cry; I'm often shocked at seeing her fall or run into something and then bounce right back up with barely a whimper.

Charlotte still LOVES to eat. I think Jack could almost skip a meal or two a day and not really notice, but that would never happen with Charlotte (what can I say, she's like her mother). One sure-fire way to get her to stop playing is to show Charlotte the food tray from her booster seat. She'll throw down everything and scurry over to her chair.

Here's an adorable picture of Sarah and Charlotte, when they checked out the forest preserve one day while Jack was in school.

The past couple months have been a lot fun with Charlotte as her vocabulary has really increased. I'll have to post a video of her talking soon. These are some of her words: mama, dada, daddy, Lou ("oo"), hi, hello, bye, ball, down, book. She seems to understand most everything we say (though getting her to obey is another issue). Charlotte is an impressively intelligent little girl!

She is a such little ham too. When we Skype, Charlotte will keep turning the laptop to focus on herself. She giggles and flirts and loves to interact with people. She's also a cuddler and still likes to snuggle and be held. She steals everyone's hearts! And she is absolutely the cutest little girl there ever was.

And so Jack isn't left out of this post entirely--here's him and the Easter Bunny from an event last weekend. This year was a total reversal of last Easter when Jack was freaked out by the Easter Bunny, while Charlotte was okay with it. Not so this year; Charlotte was having no part of it. I felt bad for the Easter Bunny because Charlotte would whimper and cry every time we were anywhere close to him (her?).

Charlotte adores her big brother, and while she gets on his nerves quite a bit (and tries to beat up on him), at least lately they've seemed to do a better job at playing together. Hopefully that will continue :)