The world according to Charlotte

Charlotte has definitely grown into her skin recently and has, for the most part, left her timid nature behind her.  She is still a little slow to warm up to brand new situations but her ability to go with the flow and bounce back from change in astounding!  She is also talking up a storm and pretending constantly these days and I don't want to forget some of the outlandish things that she's doing!

Charlotte is loving football season.  Her favorite day of the week is GAME DAY! and she loves supporting her team with her game day shoes, bow, or outfit pretty much any day of the week.  She still says "whoops!" a lot when someone gets tackled in a game and she loves tackling her Daddy complete with bending down almost as if she's on the line before tackling him.  She chooses the team that she's rooting for based on colors (thank goodness we have downplayed orange from the beginning and LSU wears white uniforms), but she knows that she loves the red teams so unless there's a purple team on the field she'll usually choose the red team over the other color.  She loves the mascots and especially loves watching College Gameday so that she can see those teams mascots a lot.

She knows who Coach Saban is and when she sees one of his commercials even if it's not in the context of one of our games she points him out and says, "There's Coach Saban!"  She is learning the fight song and loves shaking her shaker (on beat!) to the fight song and asks us to sing it frequently.  She is starting to finish phrases in the song and sings it to herself some.  Any time someone mentions the Rose Bowl she looks at them and says, "You know that song??" since there is a section in the fight song that says, "Remember the Rose Bowl we'll win".  Because of this she has also started taking frequent trips in her Cozy Coupe to the "Rosa Bowl".

Charlotte loves being a big sister.  And by that I mean that mostly she loves the title (although she does love her little brother too).  Any time someone refers to her by some nickname or attribute she corrects them.  For instance, if you say, "Charlotte, you are sweet" she'll immediately retort, "No! I'm not sweet! I'm a BIG SISTER!"  It's adorable and to the point that some times someone says something like that to her just to hear her correct them.

Charlotte is a typical two year old and speaks her mind.  One day while we were in the hospital Mom and Dad had taken Charlotte down to look at the babies in the nursery.  There were some other people looking at a baby and the lady was covered in tattoo's.  Charlotte looked at the babies but then started looking around and noticed the lady.  Mom had to hurry her quickly back to our room when Charlotte pointed and said, "Memma, she is a MESSY MESS!"  She is also not afraid to let you know if she doesn't like something.  We had a cool snap the week James was born and so Mom had to find a long sleeve outfit for her to put on to come to the hospital.  When they got there I told Charlotte that I liked her pink outfit and she solemnly looked at me and shook her head and said, "I not really like it."  Mom also says that she keeps telling her that she doesn't like her car seat in Mom's car but that she thinks Mom's car is really pretty.  You definitely know where you stand with her these days!

Charlotte loves singing.  Songs are one of Charlotte's favorite things right now.  She's not picky about the song choice, "The Itsy Bitsy Spider" and "Twinkle Twinkle" are selections just as often as U2's "Zooropa" is requested, but she loves singing and goes around the house singing almost all the time.  One day James was asleep in our room in his swing and I noticed Charlotte walking back there so I followed her.  She walked up to the front of the swing and started singing to him while he slept.  Charlotte has taken advantage of people other than me putting her down for bed since James was born and has started requesting as many songs as the person will let her have before they leave to let her sleep.  I only sing one verse of "Jesus loves Charlotte" but apparently she has gotten Memma and Daddy to sing song after song with her insisting "Not MY song yet!" if they start to sing "Jesus loves Charlotte" before she's ready!

Charlotte is very affectionate these days.  During the last month of my pregnancy into the time after James' birth Charlotte became very affectionate.  She started repeating (yelling) part of the "Snuggle Puppy" book to us: "Fuzzy little snuggle puppy, I love you Mommy!".  It is a very good feeling to hear words of affection reiterated by your child but this new spontaneous display of affection was especially nice since we knew what was coming.  After James was born Jason took on the job of singing to Charlotte at bedtime and at first that was hard for Charlotte.  But once I was able to come up and at least help with the routine it helped and she started yelling "I LOVE YOU MOMMY!" as I would walk down the stairs.  She is so precious and her hugs and kisses can make everything better!