The Grubers: Charlie, Lately

(24 months to 30 Months)

June 19th - December 19th

Now that Charlie is two years old, I decided to stop doing the monthly updates, but rather doing a bi-annual update. So here is a look at all things Charlie between two and two and a half years old.

Thanks to a tip from Kids on the Move, we attended the free Music and Movement class at the Orem Library. Charlie loves music and dancing around so I figured this would be something he would like. He was still a little shy, but I could tell he enjoyed it. The teacher was great...Jessica, who happened to be the teacher for the Great Beginnings class that I took at Kids on the Move. The only hiccup was Charlie being scared of the cotton balls that we were using as pretend bees for the song “Bringing Home A Baby Bumblebee.” Ridiculous!

Some of our summer outings

Day at the zoo with Zoey and Logan:

Logan, Charlie, and Zoey

Lunch date with Will and Desi Messam:

Bridal Veil Falls with family for July 4th:

South Fork Park

Draper Aquariam

Ogden Temple Open House

Discovery Park:

Timpanogos Park

South Fork Park with Kenzlie, Hayden, London, William, Ryder, and Emmy:

Kenzlie, Ryder, William, London, Hayden, and Charlie

We have continued with Kids on The Move, seeing our specialist (Justine) twice a month. Admittedly, during the summer we did it about once a month because we were so busy with our outings. Charlie continues to enjoy it, and is making slow but steady progress. He is really understanding more, but he is still not saying any real words. A few months after turning two, however, I did start hearing him say “up”. He would say this when he wanted to be held, wanted to reach something high, or when we walked up the stairs.

He will give high fives and “stones”. He seems to like that.

He spends A LOT of time with his stack of books. He will spend like an hour or so turning the pages quickly and then stacking the books.

We are starting to see more intense tantrums.

He is getting more and more picky with food with less and less of a variety. This pretty much sums up what he will eat: Rice Krispies cereal, oatmeal, bananas, grapes, peanut butter sandwich (literally peanut butter on bread...which he eats a particular way...with peanut butter on the top of the bread, he scoops up the peanut butter with the top of his index finger, sucks on it, and once he gets a good amount of the peanut butter off, he flips it over and starts tearing chunks away, starting in the middle), cheese quesadillas, rice, yogurt, crackers, orange slices (more sucking out the juice than eating them), and smoothies. We just keep rotating all of these same things for all of his meals.

Apparently I need to add donuts and candy to that list of foods...

Manifesting his OCD by lining up his smarties

In the weeks nearing his two and a half years old mark, thanks to Daddy's efforts he finally started showing interest in branching out to a few new foods, mostly cereals:

looking more and more like Daddy every day

One morning Charlie woke up looking very pale and slightly shaking. I felt so bad and knew he didn’t feel very good. After laying out a blanket under him on the couch and keeping the bowl near him, he threw up...but of course pushing the bowl away while he did it. He didn’t quite understand. And then he just kept wiping his hand across his mouth while throwing up, spreading it all over his face. Poor guy! Luckily he seemed to feel much better after that.

He is doing a lot better with nursery. Dad usually drops him off, but he doesn’t seem to have a problem with staying anymore.

He is terrified of flies!

I may have already mentioned this, but Charlie is so flat footed! It almost looks painful! Especially on his left foot. His toes are a little strange, too. His right middle toe curls under his second toe and he won’t let me move it. The toenail there is softer because it is always hiding behind the other. It doesn’t help that he has such clammy feet! It is pretty nasty.

Check out those feet!

He seems to be saying “da” for everything. I dont’ know if he is saying I want “that” or it is his way of “iPad” (he is always wanting that thing).

He now shows a strong preference for what shoes he wears. His favorite go-to pair is the crocs. If he is wearing anything else and he sees the crocs on the floor, he demands to change into them. Sometimes he won’t even let you put any other shoes on him, he just freaks out (especially if I try to put on this new pair of sandals I got that go between his first two toes. The times that I have tried to force them on his feet, he retracts his toes so the loop falls out of place).

He is starting to show more aggression. I have seen him starting to push and kick other kids away from his toys.

He has noticed his reflection in the TV while it is turned off. So when there is music on, he loves to dance in front of it so he can see himself.

His first favorite color was purple! He would always want the purple bowl for his cereal, or would go to his purple crayon first.

On September 22nd, we really saw Charlie turn the corner with his words. He finally started repeated what we were saying. It is all thanks to the magnetic drawing pad that Daddy gave him during one of his trips away. We were drawing on the pad and he started to repeat the words that I was drawing on the pad while he erased them. The rotation of objects he would repeat (and I could kind of draw) were ball, cup, shoe, car, book, and bubbles. We were so excited!!

Around the time of his six month evaluation with Kids on the Move, they determined that a speech therapist should also come, along with the usual specialist. I’m not really sure why we hadn’t been doing that from the beginning (since speech was the whole point), but we got set up with Christina. At that point, Christina came once a month and Justine came once a month. At the six month evaluation we found that Charlie had met all of his goals. That was surprising because the progress seemed so slow that it was hardly noticeable. But I guess that goes to show that he was progressing. We made some new goals for him: to say 20-25 words imitated or spontaneous, do interactive/pretend play for five minutes, and be able to identify 20 items or things in a book.

After the big move to our new house in Orem, we were apprehensive about how Charlie would do in the nursery. He was finally loving nursery in Pleasant Grove and I felt heart broken to tear him away from it. We were nervous dropping him off the first time in Orem but he did great! He didn’t fuss hardly at all when we dropped him off. He knew the drill. When Jason picked him up at the end, the nursery leader asked if Charlie knew how to say “sorry”. He had hit another kid. Apparently, we have some work to do.

Loving the new yard:

picking grapes one at a time, taking a small bite, then tossing the rest of it

thinking the lawn mower is chasing him

He has started doing this actions routine that he loves to do with anyone who is willing. Here is the routine: clap clap clap, pound pound pound, roll it around, fold your arms, up, down, “oh”, pound your chest, head, and the routine continued to expand from there. And then it would repeat. So fun to seem him light up at that and to see his memory skills.

The next big step in Charlie’s life was becoming a big brother! I had no idea how he would react to having a baby around. Before Colson was born, Charlie would get so jealous and cry anytime I held a baby. I was so relieved, and shocked, to find that was not the case with Colson. He didn’t ever seem to get jealous when I held him. For the most part, Charlie has just ignored his baby brother. I would go even a step farther and say that he seems a little disgusted by him at times. He does not want to hold him. We have miraculously gotten him to kiss him on the head a couple of times (kind of), but that is as much attention that Charlie has given Colson. I know, however, in time they will become best buddies. One nice thing about that is not really having to worry about Charlie smothering him. So there is looking on the bright side. Charlie has really done a good job with entertaining himself while I take care of Colson. That has been such a pleasant surprise! That is not always the case, but for the most part he has done really well.

before Colson was born

meeting Colson

Pictures from Amy - I think his body language in these pictures sum up his feelings towards Colson pretty well:

three of us holding him down for a picture

Ah! Finally a quick kiss on the head!

Just before turning two and half, when Colson was four weeks old, we finally started seeing Charlie noticing Colson more. It seemed like he became more in interested in him...and by interest I mean swatting at his arms and trying to point to his eyes. Hey, progress is progress.

More pictures from the past six months

in no particular order