Yummmmm...

Sometimes when I come home from work this is the yummy-ness that awaits! Broccoli cheese stuffed chicken, lemon pepper carrots and spinach – yummmmy! Thanks Honey!

Charlotte’s Green Thumb….or NOT!

A little while ago Charlotte, my Mom, and I were able to attend Jacquelyn’s 1^st Birthday party. The birthday party was a garden theme and the favors were little pots with kid gardening tools, gloves, seeds, pinwheel, etc. (Thanks Amanda!) I thought this would be a great opportunity to share a gardening experience with Charlotte. As much as she loves to be outside and gather leaves and acorns I really thought she would have fun planting her own plant and helping me with the plants by our front door.

NOT…to say the least! She was SO unimpressed with the whole process – especially getting dirt on her hands – not that she wanted to wear the adorable gloves! The whole episode was a bust especially since she was much more interested in playing with the front door handle.

Luckily Grandma was over for a visit and helped keep Charlotte motivated and me laughing! Thanks Mom!

Charlotte’s First Day Of Preschool

This morning was Charlotte’s first day of school at Winter Part Presbyterian Preschool! She is in Mrs. Kris’s 18-24 month old class one day a week. Nanny (Wayne’s Mom) has been keeping Charlotte on Monday, Wednesdays and Friday so having Charlotte in school on Mondays will give Nanny a bit of a WELL DESERVED break. We are very excited for her to start school and learn new things and play with new friends. Her teachers seem very loving and the activities they plan look like a lot of fun!

Wayne and I were able to arrange our schedules so that we could both take her to her first day. Charlotte seemed really excited to pack her backpack (with Ducky {of course} and her Owl Babies book) and to have her own lunch bag – you know how Charlotte LOVES bags! Once we got into class she was a little cautious as usual but seemed intrigued by the play-dough tools the kids were playing with and quickly got involved. She was pretty good about giving Wayne and I hugs and kisses and saying bye-bye and didn’t even cry. Just as we were closing the doors another little girl in the class told Charlotte “Mommies and Daddies come back”. How sweet (and coincidentally the theme of Charlotte’s favorite book, Owl Babies)! Wayne played it cool but I cried as soon as we got in our car – it’s partly being proud of her growing up and being able to do things on her own and partly sad that she is growing up and doing things on her own…being a mom is so hard sometimes.

Anyway when we picked her up later in the day she seemed happy to see us but not in a hurry to leave. Her teachers said she was a little shy and didn’t eat her lunch but overall she did fine – what a relief! I can just see her being so interested in what the other kids were doing that she spent a lot of time “people watching”. Charlotte had a lot of things to tell us about her first day of school – mostly about playing outside and another classmate, Sophia. It was so fun to piece together her stories about the day and to see how animated she was about her day.


Lucky for us, Charlotte’s teacher keeps a private website for the class and posts pictures of the kid’s adventures though out the day. This is a picture of Charlotte on the playground during her first day of school – looks to me like she is having a great day!

Happy 2nd Birthday Gabriella

This afternoon Charlotte and I helped Gabriella celebrate her 2^nd birthday! We just barely made it to the party as Charlotte really put up a fight with taking her nap. Anyway, once we did finally make it to the party Charlotte had a great time playing with her friends. She painted with watercolors, took a wagon ride with Gabriella and Maya, and even made her own Jell-o and gummy fish ocean. Charlotte and Gabriella (who share the same birthday) have been playing together since they were just a few months old in our Mommy & Me play group. Happy Birthday Gabriella, thanks to letting us celebrate with you!

Happy 2nd Birthday Jack

This morning Charlotte and I were able to help celebrate Jack’s 2nd Birthday at his pirate party in the park, ARRRR! Jack is one of Charlotte’s M&M friends and the kids have been playing in the same playgroup since they were very little. Jack’s parents had a really neat pirate bounce house but Charlotte was a little intimidated by all the big kids. Instead she had a great morning running around the open fields of the park. She and Daisy ran all around the park trying to sneak over to where there was an organized soccer game in progress. They also kicked and threw a ball to each other, chased each other around a tree and sang songs. It was really sweet and I was able to get a quick video of them which is below.

This is one of the first times Charlotte has really played WITH one of her friends – so neat to watch them interact together instead of just doing their own thing around each other. Anyway, we had a great morning - Happy 2nd Birthday Jack!

Our Little Chef - I Mean TORNADO

Tonight Charlotte made her own dinner – almost – all by herself. She really is a good eater (we are just waiting for the hammer to drop, when all she will eat are red foods) but one of the few foods she asks for is pizza. So, I thought why not let her make her own! Tonight Wayne had to work late so this experiment was a perfect addition to our “Girls Night In”. I gathered what I consider the most stress free ingredients – aka all store bought, nothing I’d slaved over – and as you can see from the pictures, Charlotte was a pro at making her own spinach and ham pizza. She even held the corner of the pan while she spread the tomato sauce. I confess, there was a demonstration of each step before Charlotte tried to do it her own way, then there was a teensy bit of “clean up” after she was done. But really she did most of the work and had a lot of fun.

So where is a picture of the final product, you might be asking? This is where the evening took a turn for the dark side… Once we were done making the pizza I was holding Charlotte in my lap and telling her what a good job she had done– when disaster hit in the form of Tornado Charlotte. She reached over my shoulder to “hug” me and grabbed my camera off the table, swung it around (can’t believe she didn’t smack me in the head) and THREW MY CAMERA AGAINST THE WALL. Yep, our six month old, rather expensive camera is TOAST. No final picture of Charlotte’s pizza masterpiece or any other pictures until we can figure out how to finance another one!!!

Back to the pizza – When it came out of the oven, Charlotte was all “ooh, ahh” but did she want to eat it? NO WAY! Once on the table she was all “yucky Mommy” and “no want it”. She DID want the pineapple I’d also put on her plate, to the tune of seconds and then thirds…kids! The best part though was reminding her that SHE had made the YUCKY pizza! She immediately patted my arm and said “Mommy did (sounds like DUDE) it”.