11 Months

In a few weeks we will celebrate Charly's first birthday. We haven't even written about her 11 month accomplishments like we usually do each month! We're falling behind! So, here's some things we've noticed about Charly lately . . .

She's innocent, careful, and wants to do no harm. We see it in the way she slowly lowers herself back to her butt after walking and in the way she lightly pets Elliot, not wanting to pull her tail too hard.

She's playful, tough, and hilarious. She loves her toys, her Cabbage Patch Doll, her bathtime, and screaming. She jabbers all the time and knows when she's making us laugh.

She's finicky. She loves to be pampered. She is perfectly able to pick up her sippy cup and drink from it herself (we've seen her do it) but she insists on us holding it so her hands can be free. She is perfectly able to pick up food herself and put it in her mouth, but she'd much rather us do it for her, like servants feeding grapes to a princess! Are we spoiling her?

She's determined. When she wants something, she gets it. She finds a way. She whines, grunts, points, furrows her brow (this is new), you name it, she does it!

She has such a personality and we swear, it develops more and more everyday. There's times we worry that she's beginning to act like a little princess, but then she'll want things rough and tough and make us think we're raising a tomboy instead. With Charly, you never know what you're going to get and that is her personality.

She's a handful, that's for sure, and our lives don't seem to get any less busier. School days and week nights fly by. We barely get home from school, entertain her, make something for ourselves to eat, and before we know it, it's eight o'clock! Between following Charly up stairs, making sure she doesn't eat the various cords plugged in around the house, and overseeing her nightly forays inside the dishwasher, we're exhausted by the time she finally falls asleep.

But it's definitely a content type of exhausted. It's hard to imagine what we were doing a year ago today. Probably watching Modern Family while we should have been nesting.

We can't wait to celebrate her one-year!