Buhbuh!

The above picture features Charlotte's favorite new thing: buhbuh! That's bubbles, for those of you who don't speak baby. She's so into bubbles that she belts out "buhbuh" anytime we walk within sight of the bright yellow or green bubble containers.

We celebrated Charlotte's 11-month-birthday this week. She seems like such a little girl suddenly--no longer the little round helpless baby. I love how she's exploring her world. And she's learning so many new things, absorbing information like a fat little sponge. She's starting to do some of the baby signs we've been showing her for months. Her favorite is the sign for "hat," which involves patting the top of your head. Every time she sees Jeff wearing a hat, or a baseball cap hanging on a doorknob, or a character in one of her books wearing a hat, she makes the sign. Do I even need to say how adorable that is?

She now does the signs for duck, hat, bird, sleep, cat, ball, more, and her own version of dog. Bird, hat and sleep are new this week. It hardly takes any time for her to pick up something new...again, the little sponge.

Some friends of ours here in Athens had a baby last week. I ran into them today out for a walk with their new daughter. She's just a sweet, brand-new little bundle, much like Charlotte was 11 months ago. When I got home, Charlotte suddenly looked so...huge. Mobile. Competent. I was amazed. I am, every day.

One Year Ago

I was sorting through some of my image files on my computer tonight, and I came across this photo, which was taken one year ago today.

My, how things have changed.

Happy...

...birthday to my dad, who turns 51 today. Last year, for his 50th, I was enormously pregnant and unable to make the trip to Iowa to help celebrate. This year, too, we couldn't get to Iowa, but I was happy to spend the day with Charlotte instead of with my bulging belly. I love my dad, and I love seeing how he's fitting well into his new role as grandpa.

...Mother's Day to all the mothers in my life: my mom, my mother-in-law, my grandma, and Jeff's grandma. We were happy to promote you all to the next tier up in mother-ness (grandma, grandma, oma and great-grandma, respectively).

...baby Charlotte has been making some leaps and bounds lately. She's started climbing the stairs (gulp) making necessary the quick scramble to improvise a baby gate. She's saying quite a few more words ("buhbuh" for bubbles, "boh" for book, "bah" for ball, "gleen" for green, "lalalow" for yellow, "boo" for blue). She's starting to give kisses, which usually means puckering up or humming and pressing her head onto your face.

...is what you will be when I post a new video of Charlotte later this week!

For your reading pleasure, a poem by Jeff:

Baby’s First Booger
- for Charlotte, 10 months

I showed it to her, as proof
that my brutal raid on her nose –
all that effort in the face of her screaming,
her twisting and flailing –
hadn’t been for nothing.

“See?” I said, holding it up for her. “This
is what I was after. That thing
was in your nose!”
She looked. She stared. She reached. She took. It stuck.
She tried to take it off
with a finger from the other hand,
but it stuck to that one too, of course.

Eventually she got sick of it all,
shook her fists in frustration,
then lost interest.
It was time for a nap.

An hour later, she’d produced another.
Same routine, same struggle, opposite nostril.
After the liberation, I again presented the bounty, the evidence
to show that some things don’t make sense at the time,
but are really for the best.
“I’ll bet you can breathe a bit better now,” I said.
But she wasn’t messing around. This time
she grabbed it right away
and put it in her mouth.