9 months

And our girl is 9 months! A good friend of mine has been telling me since the moment I met her that a 9 month old baby is a baby at the most magical and fun stage...ever.  Now that we have our own 9 month old baby I am starting to believe her!  Charlee has become more and more interesting during the last two months and I feel like we are on the brink of a neuron explosion when it comes to her learning and our amazement.  Joel comes home from work more often than not mentioning that Charlee "looks different" or bigger or...what they say is true, babies really do change overnight.

In the last few weeks Charlee has started making multiple syllable sounds in her own language.  We, of course, respond.  This is how the conversation goes:

C: Bla da da da MA!

Us: Mrah mrah bla?

C: Da da da da da da

Us: Da da Ma ma Pa pa Na na  (obviously trying to get those more meaningful sounds in there - ha!)

C: La la na na na na

Us: MEOW!

C: (laughs...because cat sounds are the best)

It is a sweet and simple life people, but these are the things that fill my days.  I LOVE chattering away with Charlee...sometimes I even initiate the conversation just to get her going because it is sooo darn cute.

In addition to her new sounds, Charlee also has taken her motor skills to a new level.  She's not crawling yet, but it seems that every day she gets closer and closer.  She can go go from sitting to getting on her hands and knees, where she rocks back and forth screaming until she falls on her belly.  I can literally see the wheels turning in her head as she tries to figure out what to do with her hands and knees once she is up on them.  I don't think I've ever said, "You can do it!" so much in my life. 

Last week Charlee's problem solving skills blew me away and made me laugh so hard.  I piled her puzzle pieces far enough away from her so she would have to get on her hands and knees and really reach for them in order to get them.  She sat there looking at me, looking at her puzzle pieces sooo far away, and then pulled on the quilt until it bunched up enough to bring the pieces to her.  I sat there like, "Are you kidding me child!? Did you actually just figure that out on your own?!"  I didn't even care that she didn't try to crawl because her method was 100% more genius.  Guys, we have a baby genius.

Ha ha.

Some other interesting things going on for Charlee right now:

-It is a rare occurrence for her to finish a bottle when I feed her, but when Joel feeds her she finishes it every. single. time.  This is not annoying at all. 

-Shall we just say pureed prunes for the win!?

-She loves cats.  LOVES them.  Granted, we pretty much do anything we can to help her love cats.  I buy her any piece of clothing that has a real looking cat on it, same with books, etc.  It helps that we have two cats and when they walk into the room she lights up with joy. We are starting to teach her how to pet the cats nicely (with our extreme guidance and supervision, poor Franklin has suffered two massive tail pulls now).  We also meow a lot to her...is this weird? Ha.

-I have no idea how she gets into some of the positions we find her sleeping in, but I tell you, this girl is one crafty sleeper.

-She loves outside (still).  If she is ever having a fussy moment we bring her outside and she is instantly calmed.  I love this about her.

-We do art together now! So far we have done four paintings.  We are working on Picasso status up in here.

-One of her favourite toys is a weird looking cat toy (see!?!) that we got for free from the hospital when she decided to roll off the change table dresser and had to do a trip to emerg.  She's hated having her bum changed on that table ever since, but I think the plastic cat toy is a good trade off, don't you?  Another more recent favourite toy of hers is a used juice bottle that Joel filled with water.  She bangs on it like a drum.  We do provide our child with toys, guys, but I don't know if buying them is worth it since she likes the free and recycled versions more.

-One of her favourite foods continues to be zucchini.  I still don't get it.  This kid eats one large zucchini over four meals.  It's insane.

-Still no teeth.  Not even a single hint of a tooth.  This means no crunchy, weird baby cracker foods for her yet since all those packages state your child needs to be crawling and have teeth before they can eat the cracker-y things.  I am 100% okay with this.

And now photos!

This is what we like to call "The Charles Face".

I don't think we have many side profile shots, so I like this one.  You can see her hemangioma (clustered blood vessels on her head) is starting to shrink quite a bit.

Eyes!

Learning her pirate face early on.

Her incredible eyes.  Strangers comment on her eyes almost every time we are out.  I think she has similar eyes to my sister.

Preparing to jig on the rocking chair.

This photo is a bit misleading...she isn't actually standing on her own yet, but she can apparently balance on one foot!?

xxk&j&charlee rae

A Child's Pace

I came across a phrase on one of my newest-most-fav blogs today: "Childhood is not a race".  (Check out www.howweelearn.com for tons of amazing art, craft and play inspirations).  

I'm going to tweak that phrase a tiny bit and say "Babyhood is not a race".  For many years now I've firmly believed in doing things with children at their own pace.  Granted, sometimes you just need to get somewhere quickly and the child's pace might be just a bit too slow, so you have to hustle...but at least once a day it's important to slow down to the child's pace.  Even if you're an adult sans children it's important to slow it down.  Slowing down helps one appreciate the simplest of things, I think.

Sometimes I get caught up in all the ideas I have for Charlee.  Her future elementary school, the German play group I want to enroll her in, dance lessons, volunteering in Cambodia with her...the list goes on.  Once my mind gets going I start getting really excited about all these fun things we can do with Charlee and then I remember she's only a baby.  We need to appreciate this time NOW.

People like to compare and contrast children.  Before I had a baby, even though I am an educated teacher and should know better, I was one of these people.  I'd be like, "Well Jonny can do this hard math, but Jennie can't even add yet, but they are the same age and Jennie is taller than Jonny so she should be able to add and what am I supposed to do!?"  Now that I have Charlee, my wise little teacher, I realize that's just how it is.  I also know that height has nothing to do with one's mathematical abilities, obviously.  While out and about these days I get asked these questions, once we establish the boy or girl thing:

1) How old is she?  (Almost nine months).

2) Crawling yet?  (No). 

3) Teeth?  (Nope).

My answers to their questions set off a cacophony of something along these lines:

Really? Not crawling? But she's almost 9 months! No teeth? Really? My daughter's best friend's sister's baby is only 6 months old and already has FIVE teeth and is pulling herself up on couches!

I'm sure you fellow mamas have all experienced these types of interactions at some point in your wanderings with your own babies.  Most people finally come to their senses and end our brief encounters with the agreement that "all babies grow at their own pace".  Yep, they sure do!  The way I see it is the longer Charlee takes to learn to crawl, the longer my sanity will stay intact.  She will do things at her own pace.  She won't be this little forever, and just like she learned to sit up on her own literally overnight, she will learn to crawl just as quickly.  Then walk.  Then run.  Then ride a bike.  Then go to school.

So for now, we are doing things at her pace and it's perfect just the way it is.

Charlee's first art project - elephant hand prints.

The Summer Life of Charles

When I was pregnant my dad called the baby "Sabrina" (he was guessing a girl from day one) and as soon as she was born he started calling her "Charles"...needless to say, we call Charlee Rae "Charles" quite often.

And what a sweet first summer our Charles is having! Cue the iPhone photo essay!

I recently sold all my older lulu clothes and bought new runners for SeaWheeze.  Charlee was the first to try them out!

Every morning once Joel heads off to work we sit in a pile of toys to play, learn and caffeinate.

Just learning her colours in English and German, no big deal.  Sometimes I sing her the most annoying song on the planet to go along with this game...but only sometimes.  PS - this abacus was mine when I was her age!

We managed to sneak a brief lake trip in - Charlee's first!

As you can tell, she simply adored her first boat ride.

Let's get a closer look at that first boat ride excitement, shall we?

Oh but THIS was fun! She spent over an hour just chillin' while we floated her around.

How to occupy a baby on the beach.

But then you can't do anything except for try to keep said baby from eating rocks.

Post swim snuggz.

Just watching Carter and Jaxen play "BC Ferries".  Lake life is so awesome for these lucky kids!

She is in awe of how sweet lake life is :)

We did our usual walk to Margaret Falls.

Her fav spot to chill these days.

Just being a little ham while playing peekaboo.

Lake life is exhausting when you play hard.

 

 

On our drive home she taught herself to hold her bottle.  Now we just need to work on the whole tilt thing...

This week marked my 10th week of half marathon training.  The last time I was 10 weeks into a half marathon training program I found out I was 6 weeks pregnant with this munchkin and I stopped running because of a pregnancy related hemorrhage.  This time around I'm about a minute slower in my average pace, but if I think about all my body has endured in the last year I think it's safe to say I'm pretty stoked on how far I've come in such a short time!

Seriously so stoked on picking blackberries!!!

We went for a walk in our neighbourhood the other night and these chickens questioningly eyed Charlee from afar.

Frankie the Sheep, however, was very pleased to eat blackberries.  Clearly Charlee loved it.

Joel just brushing up on his German vocab.

Charlee's favourite vegetable is zucchini, which amazes us because we both could kind of care less about it.  The Baby Bullet is probably the greatest baby gift ever (thanks mom!) and I make all of Charlee's food.  Here we have local, organic zucchini from Haliburton Farms, just across the highway from us.  Two medium sized zucchinis made ten meals for Charlee and cost me a whopping $2! Love it.

Yes folks, it is indeed a pretty sweet summer in the life of Charles.

xxk&j&charlee rae

Boy Clothes

We are getting to the stage now that when we are out and about Charlee interacts with people either by crying at them because they talk to her...or smiling at them because they talk to her.  These interactions usually go like this:

"Hi baby! Aren't you sweet!"

(Charlee either starts to cry or smile depending on how she feels about the person - ha!)

"What's your name baby?"

(I answer for her because duh).

"Charlee? Is that short for Charlotte?" (Note - first time strangers acknowledge that I even exist).

I answer, "Nope - not short for anything.  Just Charlee!"

This is where people either tell me they love it, or put on a questioning face that reads, "What the heck...is this lady insane naming her girl a boy name?" or they come up with some obscure nickname that Charlee is going to be called one day.  The best one I've heard so far is, "People will call her Chucky!"

Most of the time these days people can tell that Charlee is a girl baby.  Back when she was only a few months old I was constantly asked if she was a boy or girl because that's just what people ask when they encounter tiny babies.  I had a great conversation with a friend the other day who had her daughter last week.  We both agreed that we feel victorious for having girl babies.  Not that there is anything wrong with boy babies, because a baby is a baby and we are blessed to have them no matter what.  But there are just so many places in the world where girl babies are unwanted and I feel like we did good to bring a girl who will be educated, brilliant, confident and well cared for into the world.  A feisty girl.  A strong girl.  A smart girl.  These are the things I tell Charlee every single day.  I rarely tell her she is a pretty girl (although she is).  I rarely tell her she is beautiful (although she is).  I guess I am training myself to use the language I want her to grow up hearing...she is strong, she is smart, she is worthy of other things besides her appearance or her beauty.  It's not that I don't think my child is good looking, I just want her to hear from me that I value her mind and emotions and the way she interacts with the world before her outward appearance.  I think this is why I like to dress Charlee in boy clothes.  It's like my dig I can get at society for thinking my girl needs to be pretty first and strong second.

"Boy clothes".  Why do boy clothes have patterns of trucks and cars and diggers and dinosaurs and girl clothes have patterns of French poodles and bows and sparkles and phrases like "Je t'aime Paris"?  I just bought Charlee some 12-18 month jammies the other day because she's outgrown her 9 month jammies already and every single pair of girl jammies had some form of pink, purple, flower, heart, sparkle thing going on.  Out of curiosity I decided to check the boy clothes section of Joe Fresh (shopping online, the vice of every person who is at home with a baby) and I was like, "Hey...these boy jammies are way cooler than the girl jammies!" I ended up buying Charlee eight items from Joe Fresh, six of which were from the boy section.

This is one of my favourite newborn photos of Charlee.  In fact, I love it so much that it is printed and posted on our fridge.  She's two or three days old here and isn't that face just the sweetest, most peaceful little thing you've ever seen?  While Charlee stayed in the NICU at Lions Gate Hospital we got to dress her from the wardrobe of tiny clothes donated by all kinds of people.  On this day we chose the onesie with trucks on it and man, did we ever throw the new nurses on shift for a loop.  Nope, our Charlee is not a boy, she's a girl.  Yes, she wears truck jammies like a champ.

I watched a documentary over the past two days during Charlee's nap.  The film is called It's a Girl and it is currently available for viewing on Netflix.  While the content is graphic in description, there are (thankfully) no photos or videos to put images to the script.  It's a Girl profiles several families in both China and India who have struggled with the cultural challenge and dishonour of producing and raising girl babies.  The film speaks at length about gendercide, the killing of the female gender, and the implications these deeply entrenched cultural practices are having on today's generation of both men and women.  Surprisingly, I only cried once during this film.  The part that hit me the hardest was about a little girl who was found roadside in a box, umbilical cord still attached.  The old woman who found her brought her home and vowed to raise her as her own.  Watching the old woman speak into the camera with such conviction that she was doing the right thing rocked my soul.  The old woman's grown daughter ends up adopting and raising the baby girl as her own, even though it means that she will have a difficult time finding a husband (she was unmarried at the time of the adoption).  Adopting the baby girl also meant that this woman would not be able to have her own child one day because of China's strict rules around child rearing.  This woman decided to adopt the baby and raise her anyhow.  What courage.  The part where my tears began to overflow came next, when the camera showed the little girl, now around 7 years old, dancing and smiling and holding on to her adoptive mom's hand.  She is happy, healthy and thriving because her adoptive mom decided to take her in.  A life was saved.

Isn't it crazy that this goes on in the world? While I sit in my safe, cozy kitchen typing this post and worrying about whether some people might think my baby is right to wear boy clothes, girls all around the world are missing out on education, nutrition, sexual health information and their basic human rights.  I'm sorry, but to me this is entirely messed up.

My girl will grow up wearing whatever she wants to wear.  Maybe she will do ballet and wear pink bows and butterflies, like most in our society expect proper little girls to do.  Maybe she will play with mud and wear trucks on her t-shirts, like my sister did when she was little.  One thing I know for sure is that Joel and I will raise our girl to know that she is a girl and she is strong before she is pretty.  She is brilliant before she is beautiful.  And she will be capable because we will do our best to make sure she truly believes in these things about herself. 

Eight Months

Just a big photo drop for today's 8 months post!

We love our girl more every day, she keeps us on our toes!

xxk&j&charlee rae