Merry Late Christmas/New Years

Little Pickle

Happy New Year, Merry Santa Day, its been a long lazy time between posts. We have finally recovered from the holidays. We had a great time, put thousands of miles on our car, Charlie had the stomach flu (we did learn that she needs to learn to chew her food), and only 346 days until we will do it all again.
Charlie had a great Christmas even though she had no idea what was going on. In fact the unwrapping of presents freaked her out a bit. Emilie and I have been so diligent in teaching her not to rip books that the concept of ripping off wrapping paper was a bit scary for her. Ultimately Charlie conquered this fear and a good thing she did; she got thousands of gifts.
Of course the best part of the holiday was getting to hang out as a family. It is crazy how many tricks Charlie has learned (see Dec 12, 2006 for a comparison). Charlie can identify most of her body parts, use sign language so say 6-8 words (she learned this at day care), she can identify people in pictures, make a ton of animal noises on command, dance on command, etc... There are too many new skills to list. Most importantly these tricks can be done on command for her parents' amusement.
Over the holidays Charlie really got into music. Incidentally I should thank my parents for giving Charlie a 5 piece must set that includes symbols - very stimulating and loud. Her love of music has also encouraged the development of problem solving skills. Check out the video below - Charlie wants to shake her rattle, but she also wants to use both hands to play the music table.... she comes up with a unique solution.
P.S. New Years resolution - more frequent posts - lets see how that works out