Happy Birthday Charlie!!

A year has come and gone. I think I probably say this every blog post but I can't believe a year has come and gone.

First up, 1 year stats.

February 12, 2010

6 lbs 12 oz
21 1/2 inches long

February 18, 2011

23 lbs 14 oz

32 1/2 inches long

**Note that Charlie grew more inches than pounds since his 9 month appt!

Some comparison pictures...

Similar pose...

I had been planning Charlie's party for way too long - longer than I want to admit! But it was all worth it. We had family and friends and so much fun. Charlie handled all the people really well and we were all exhausted at the end of the day. We did realize that my Dad keeps the same hours as Charlie. Up early and in bed by about 8:00. My Dad isn't used to all the noise and commotion of having 22 adults and 12 kids over for a few hours!!

Charlie helped Daddy clean in the morning. He loves to swiffer while we are vacuuming.

Charlie's favorite things right now:

Favorite foods: fruits of any kind but especially loves mandarin oranges

Favorite toys: his singing lion walker, basketball hoop, fridge phonics games

Favorite book: He has 2 touch and see animal books that he loves. He gets annoyed if books don't have some sort of texture that he can feel.

He loves to dance to any type of music and any of his toys that has music he loves.

Favorite activity: Bath time! No matter how tired and cranky he is, he is content to be in the bathtub.

He's not walking yet but we think it will be really soon.

He didn't quite understand why we were singing to him or what the deal was with the cake.

But he enjoyed eating his piece!

Still not interested in wearing the cutest.hat.ever.

The big take. See how Charlie is clutching toys while trying to grab his cool new bulldozer.

Some of our friends! My how they have grown..

Family picture that night after everyone left and we were all exhuasted!

We also had 1 year photos taken the week before the Superbowl. I'm somewhat of a photographer slut (sorry to say that on the blog. Brian and I debated over whether the blog is too family friendly but I can't think of a better term.) I used a different photographer for his newborn, 6 mos and 1 year pictures and we were so lucky because they were all great photogs! Mandy did such a great job. I don't remember him smiling at all when we were there. I only remember crying, screaming, and whining so it is amazing that she came up with some that he was actually looking pleasant. :)

http://www.mandyguthphotography.com/p48920412

A quick video since it has been awhile since I posted anything. This was before bed the other night. Charlie's favorite thing to do is play peek a boo and/or chase him around the ottoman.

My cup runneth over

The years just keep flying by. Honestly, I can't believe it has been 4 years since we were walking down the aisle in the MUCH warmer climate of Mexico. I don't know if you would have asked me at that time what I would have expected in 4 years of marriage but I don't think my imagination could have lived up to reality and where the last 4 years have taken us.

Last year we were preparing to go to Wildfire (a great restaurant) and instead I went to the hospital to get checked out for my gas problems and ended up being checked in for high blood pressure. 2 days later Charlie graced us with his presence.

So this year Brian decided that we'd give Wildfire another shot! Grandma Pat came down to EP to watch Charlie while we had a very belated 3/4 year anniversary dinner.

I'm feeling so warm and blessed tonight (possibly on account of the 3 yummy glasses of Pinot Noir I had at dinner). But we have so much to be thankful for. Our wonderful family, amazing friends, each other and most of all...Charlie. Plus Brian got me the Season 1 of Glee so Charlie and I are in for a Glee marathon on Sunday! I'm so lucky to have Brian as my life partner/roommate/husband/co-parent, etc. He lets me boss him around and take him for granted every day and just laughs and rolls his eyes at me. I couldn't imagine a better friend to have gone down this journey with.

Here's our pre-anniversary post last year. It makes me laugh how quickly things changed in one day....

http://robynandbriankippley.blogspot.com/2010/02/happy-anniversary-to-us.html

My wonderful little family...

A hot mess of a weekend

I wish we could go back and start over on this weekend! Actually, come to think of it. The last 2 weekends have been pretty rough. Nothing serious but just a lot of little irritating things that add up!

Last Friday Brian came downstairs to let the dogs out in the morning and noticed water on the floor. At first he thought one of the dogs had an accident but then he noticed that the ceiling was leaking!! Apparently an ice dam on the roof had gotten so bad that it was causing a leak. We couldn't get anyone to come out and take care of the damn ice dam until Sunday so Brian asked Ben to come over and "help". Read: Ben get up on the roof and chip away at the ice. So Charlie is taking a nap, Ben is on the roof, Brian is on the ladder leaning up next to the roof and I'm handing out buckets of hot water to Brian through the upstairs bathroom window. We were really classing up the neighborhood!! Brian and Ben got enough to stop the leak and then the guys came out Sunday to finish the rest of the roof (at $275 PER HOUR!)

Charlie really enjoyed the buckets on the floor. I kept telling him to stop playing with them but I suppose one should know if you put buckets and pots and pans on the floor it's just asking for your child to play with them!

Stella thought we put a towel over her vent so she would be able to lay on a hot towel all day.

I had to go out of town on Monday for work so Brian and Charlie were left alone on Sunday night. I was flipping through the camera later this week and noticed this. Brian thought it was hilarious to set up Charlie in his own recliner using Stella's bed and our "floor blanket." Gross.

I should have known when I picked up Charlie from daycare looking like this, we were in for a rough weekend. This is what happens when your child has mulitple blowouts at daycare and none of the spare clothes really match. :)

I was really hoping to go out for dinner Friday night but Brian got home too late from work and we've realized that Charlie is like a Gremlin. You don't want to take him out in public past about 6:30 or you will be sorry. Brian was craving BBQ so we tried to call TGIFridays for takeout...but they closed their EP location.

Saturday we were lucky enough to go have lunch with Brian's grandma (Great Granny Frannie) but we thought we'd be smart and go to D'Brians (salad place) close to St Paul and not EP so that the food would stay fresh. Except the 2 stores that I had pulled up on my phone are only open during the week because they are in office buildings! So we were wandering around downtwon St Paul trying to find a salad place.

Sunday was the worst day yet. We were so excited to have Charlie's 1st birthday pictures with the amazingly nice Mandy Guth. We thought Charlie should be nice and fresh so we gave him a bath this morning. Except he slipped in the tub and split his lip - blood and everything. It all looked ok but I don't know if Charlie was just tired or not into pictures but he was SUPER CRANKY during the photoshoot. I will be shocked if we even have one with a smile. We even had a super cute cake for a cake smash but he refused to wear the adorable birthday hat I got. Oh well - hopefully he got it out of his system before his big party next week!!!

Charlie and I both needed a nap this afternoon to recover from the traumatizing morning! This afternoon was much better. Lots of playing. Charlie's favorite thing right now is taking things out of one container and putting them in another (and God help you if the toilet seat is up as both our daycare lady and we have learned!)

Below he takes legos and puts them into the block container or the big basket.

An example of our fiesty little guy. He has what some might call "a temper".

A good picture of his Alfalfa hair.

An almost smile but I had to work for it.

Charlie loves to climb over Sasha and Daddy.

Our daycare lady told us that Charlie has quite a few habits she thinks he might have picked up from the dogs. Prime example: when he runs out of hands, he carries toys in his mouth. This picture was before his haircut last weekend! Notice the wings on his ears.

Too cold to blog!

It is honestly too cold to type. I was driving home tonight and it said -9 in my car. I was driving Charlie to daycare this morning and he started to cry a little and I told him he better stop or his tears would just freeze to his little face!

To compensate for not having much to write tonight, I'll add a lot of pictures for you to enjoy. I'm so exhausted tonight, I don't think I could come up with much to say anyway. I was running my mouth (as usual Brian would say) last week to several people about how great of a sleeper Charlie was. "We can put him down at 8 and shut the door and not open the door again until 7 AM. Don't we have the best baby? Blah blah blah" Yep, I cursed us. The last 3 nights Charlie has gotten up in the middle of the night (Monday and Tuesday night at 4:45 and Wed at 2:30) just ready to play and kick up his heels. Needless to say, I'm not going to talk anymore about his sleep patterns!

One other quick Charlie story. Here is a conversation I had with him.

Me: Charlie, say Mama.

Charlie: da

Me: No Charlie, say Mama.

Charlie: DA

Me: No honey, say MAMA

Charlie: DADA

Me: Charlie, that's yucky (I have no shame). Say MAMA

Charlie: DADADADADA (laughing hysterically at me)

Yeah, it's sweet. REAL sweet.

Every night when Charlie is done with dinner, Sasha basically attacks Charlie's lap and the sides of his highchair (before I take him out) looking for any morsels that may have fallen out of his hands. Charlie thinks this is hilarious and thinks Sasha is just trying to tickle him. I'll have to get video of it soon because he just giggles and giggles.

On Saturday we had dinner at my friend Leah's house. Leah is due Feb 15th but we think that baby is getting anxious to be here and will probably make his/her debut sooner than that. Leah came to visit us in the hospital after Charlie was born. What a difference a year makes!

2010

2011

Charlie is holding his bottle by himself and while I still like to hold him, Charlie likes to chill with Daddy and Sasha.

Charlie has become a big camera ham. He scrunches his face and breathes funny through his teeth and nose somehow which looks and sounds weird...but cute!

Lastly, some pictures my Dad just sent from Christmas in SD. The camera must have been on the wrong setting because some look a little odd but you get the idea.

So excited for more presents...

Hmm. No more presents?

I guess I'll go after the dogs' presents then.

With Grandma and Grandpa

Grandma always has a SUPER happy grin when Charlie is around.

Happy 2011!

Happy New Year to everyone! I can’t believe it’s 2011. I feel like I just got used to writing checks that say 2010. 2010 was a blur with a lot of exciting happenings for the Kippley family. The year started off with my justification of ordering a 5 lb bag of conversation hearts in January. Apparently I had a sugar fixation while I was pregnant and I wasn’t afraid of indulging. I became slightly crazy around January 5th when they still didn’t have conversation hearts in the store. I even tried to get Brian to browbeat the candy buyer at Target to do a special early delivery to the EP Target. No dice. So I ordered from a candy website. One might think it would be impossible to get through a 5 lb bag of just conversation hearts before Valentine’s Day. They were gone before we even checked into the hospital! I’m surprised when they cut the cord, sugar didn’t fall out! The fun in 2010 continued when Brian and I tried to celebrate our 3rd anniversary and ended up in the hospital being induced! 2 days later (yes, I still say I was in labor for 48 hours) we were blessed by the birth of Charles David Kippley. We celebrated Valentine’s Day having breakfast at McDonald’s at Abbott Hospital and later that morning bringing Charlie home to meet Sasha and Stella who were way more interested in seeing Brian and I than meeting Charlie. We shortly followed that excitement with births of more friends, lots of fun play dates on maternity leave, going back to work, quitting CHR and starting at AMS, trips to the Lake this summer and Charlie’s first boat ride, and our first trip away from Charlie when Brian and I went to Mexico in October.

He has just grown so much in the past year, I can't believe it.

Charlie really enjoys pushing his walker....

right into the dog bed!

As usual, I’m already way over thinking Charlie’s birthday and driving Brian crazy with invitation mock ups and decoration ideas. You’d think I was planning our wedding all over again. But I’m pretty excited to celebrate his 1st birthday and hopefully leave the baby germs and ear infections behind us!! Yeah right! Brian is also finishing up his last 2 classes and will be graduating in March. We are so excited and I’m so proud of him for getting through school along with working full time and having a newborn (and lord knows he didn’t give up any softball either!)

This is Charlie's new look. He purses his lips like he tasted something sour. It's so funny and I'm not sure why he does it but he crawls around with his lips just puckered up for a kiss.

More crazy hair - I've given up on a "style". We're wash and go at this point.