New tricks

I apologize, once again, for my lack of regular blogging.  I will tell you that we had around 75 people at the event at our house on Tuesday and I felt like it went really well.  So many people were so kind and so interested in the hospital group that we were promoting so I felt like it was a success.  However, getting your house ready for that kind of event is nothing if not stressful and consuming so I haven't had much time to think about blogging. 

On top of that we ordered our new mattress on Sunday and knew that it was going to be delivered on Thursday.  We were resigned to sleeping with it on the floor for a little while until our bed arrived.  But we got a call on Wednesday that our bed (frame) was coming on Thursday too!  So as soon as I got up on Wednesday I got to work getting our room ready for my brother to come over Wednesday to help Jason move our old bed upstairs and then have my parents come over last night to put together the bed.  And then our curtain rods came yesterday too so we hung curtains also!  Here's a quick twitpic from last night.  I'm going to post a whole series about our room very soon.

So this week I've been all scattered with house stuff for the party and then our room and have had lots of great blogging ideas but no time for execution.  So today I'm taking a little bit of nap time to try and get caught up.  And I say only a little bit because I have SO MUCH left to do to get ready for Charlotte's birthday party which is in TWO WEEKS!  Ok, someone please tear up with me on that one because I'm in major denial that I'm about to have a ONE YEAR OLD!

Anyway, said one year old is learning so many new tricks recently! She is so cute!

She can answer with the correct animal sound for a duck (quack, quack), a fish (smacks her lips together), and a cow (mooooooo that sounds almost like booooo because she just humms it basically).  The cow is soooooo precious! If you want to here it you can listen to it on this tweet.  Our next sound that we're working on is the lamb but we haven't mastered that one yet.

She is also really good at knowing what her toys are named.  It comes in handy when you're trying to do something and need her out from under you feet.  You can say, "Charlotte, where's your... pig/Sophie/monkey/bunny, etc??" and she'll stop what she's doing, look around until she sees it and when go and get it.  It amazes me each time that she does it!  Yesterday, we pulled out a sock monkey that I won on a blog giveaway right after I found out I was pregnant.  It was the first time that she'd played with it and her first monkey toy.  But this morning when I asked her where her monkey was she went straight to it.  It makes me remember to watch what I say (you know, the S word.... stupid) around her because right now her mind is, obviously, a sponge and she is taking in everything going on around her!

Charlotte is also cracking us up with her walking.  She is starting to let go of things and stand on her own but still only for a few seconds.  But she loves walking and will walk around behind anything that she can get her hands on including the diaper box!  She was just walking around the kitchen pushing this and she was going pretty fast!  Excuse the iPhone picture please!

Another fun (and potentially very scary) new thing that Charlotte is doing is picking out her clothes.  Two days ago I was holding her and standing in front of her closet and I asked what she wanted to wear.  She pointed her to popsicle dress.  So I got it down and asked her if she wanted to where her dress and she looked at it and then said yes!  Here she is in her chosen dress and sweater at the grocery store.  Yet another twitpic.

After I told my Mom that and that I was worried about our preschool years if she was already exerting her opinion she reminded me of a parenting method of offering her choices of outfits to choose from.  That way I'm, ultimately, still deciding on the outfit but she feels like she gets to pick.  So yesterday I held up two outfits while she was standing in her crib and asked her what she wanted to wear.  She looked back and forth and then chose the popsicle outfit.  When I held it in front and asked if that was what she wanted to wear she, again, said yes!  I'm scared, very very scared! :)

And one last new trick.  On Wednesday she was in her popsicle dress.  When I put her down to change her diaper she started whining so I put the skirt over her head and asked where Charlotte was.  She grabbed her skirt and pulled it down for me to do peek-a-boo.  And then she kept doing it!  That was the first time she had actually done the hiding and not just the finding.  Later that day she was sitting on the floor in the playroom and she started, all by herself, doing it again.  It was so cute!

I am really excited about this weekend because tomorrow Jason and I are going to Birmingham for a wedding shower for one of my pledge sisters.  I'm excited to see a lot of pledge sisters that I haven't seen since graduation!  It will also be a fun date night for us!

Don't forget to enter my two giveaways! The Womily giveaway expires tomorrow so get your entry in quickly! And you have until next Wednesday to enter the Chickabug giveaway!  And I've got a great new giveaway starting tomorrow!