You Decide if It's Worthy

So we went on Saturday to get Charlotte's picture taken with Santa.  I got this deal on Groupon for three pictures for $10, so I thought why not?  Chris and I quasi-dressed up, in case Charlotte got scared and needed us within grabbing distance. We dressed Charlotte in her pretty red dress, put white butterfly clips in her hair, and we hit the road.

The mall was busy, but not exceedingly so.  I guess it's not quite the official start of Christmas shopping.  In fact, only a few families were ahead of us in line.  Charlotte was enthralled by the beautiful lime and turquoise colored ornaments and the huge dragonflies placed in the three story Christmas tree. 

When it was finally time for our picture, we approached Santa.  He told us to "back her in," suggesting that throwing her at him would not endear him to her.  Chris and I tried to get out of the picture, but she immediately started crying, so we jumped in.  Still, she was visibly shaking the entire time.  This is the only "good" picture we got.

She looks absolutely terrified.

So...

Christmas Card-worthy? Or blackmail-worthy for when she's a teenager and brings a boy over (despite her dad's threats of no boys until she's 30)?

(Still, I'm pretty impressed by how her dress is the exact same shade of red as Santa's suit.)

Hugging Goats

I'm working from home today, as I do most Fridays.  I am seriously considering dragging the laptop upstairs to my bedroom because it's so cold downstairs.  I need one of those gloves with the fingers cut off because my fingers are freezing!

But anyway, Charlotte is 17 months old today.  I can't believe she's almost a year-and-a-half old already.  She is just so much fun.  She enjoys books so much more now, although there is only one book that she consistently without fail will crawl into my lap to have me read to her.  It's called Mon Livre des Transports avec Mimi (My Book of Transportation with Mimi) by Lucy Cousins.  Charlotte insists I read it to her everyday -- it's a sort of pop-up book, and she loves it.  (Although I just found out that it's an English author, the book was translated into French, and the Mimi la souris is really called Maisy the mouse -- I think I prefer Mimi).

Anyway, it's just her favorite book. She knows just which one it is in the bookcase based on the spine, and will always go to it first.  The problem is that she's a little too young to know the force she has with the things she can pull and push, so we have to put the book higher up in the bookcase so she won't pull off all the tabs. We'll probably need to get more Lift-the-Flap books with Maisy Mimi as the lead character.
Last weekend, Charlotte and I went down to San Diego last weekend to visit with Charlotte's own Mimi and Papi.  I had Veteran's Day off and decided to take Friday off as well.  We had a great time. The weather was warm and sunny, so warm in fact that I was completely unprepared with my Sacramento winter clothes.  On Friday, we went to the San Diego Zoo.  Let's just see how much has changed in 10 months:



The little spider at 7 Months Old

The little caterpillar at 17 months old

Charlotte still wasn't super in to all the animals, but she did love the petting zoo.

Tomorrow we're going to the mall to get Charlotte's picture taken with Santa.  Here is a preview of the dress she'll be wearing, along with Binky, my parents' cat.

Contemplating Life with Twins

(I promise the meaning of this title will be evident soon).

Last weekend, our friends stayed with us for the weekend.  Keith and Maggie moved to Ohio three years ago, and I can emphatically say that we all miss them a lot.  They have a son, Colin, who is a couple months younger than Charlotte, so both families were excited to see them play together. I think Maggie said something like "I had these grand visions of the two of playing so well together."

Instead, what happened was this:

You can see that these two could be boy-girl twins - same color hair, same color eyes

Whatever toy the one had, the other one wanted. A lot of crying and whining ensued.  And it wasn't just because these were Charlotte's toys.  The same thing happened when we went over to our other friends' house. Maybe it's just that the two are about the same age.

Here's Charlotte trying to stake claim to what's "mine, miiiinnee":

I mean really, she walked all over the place with the walker she hasn't touched in months and the little popcorn ball thingy, all because Colin was interested in them.

We actually had a really fun weekend, despite the sibling fighting.  At one point, we had seven children aged three and under in our house. Talk about chaos!  Let me amend that. We had one three year old, and Charlotte was the next oldest at 16 months.  Okay, now that's chaos!

And Charlotte and Colin actually played well together in the bathtub and during meals. I think Maggie took some cute pictures of the two of them in the big tub. During meals, they were seated next to each other and would give each other high fives. 

It was really interesting to see the difference in personality between the two. I don't know what can be chalked up to gender differences or just personality differences.  For example, Colin is crazy fast.  He's still a newish walker, but that boy can move.  Anytime he saw Tandy, he took off.  He's also much more adventurous.  At the playground, he would climb up anything and didn't mind going face first down the slide. Charlotte is much more cautious, although I think she tried some things she normally wouldn't have because of the peer pressure.

It was a great weekend, if exhausting.  I don't know parents of multiples do it! I only wish Keith, Maggie and Colin lived closer by.  Next time, maybe the little twinsies will play together better.