Charlie = 7 months!

Another month has flown by again! Charlie is growing up before our eyes. This past month we've had some growing pains... it seems like Charlie and Ella (and Mark and me too!) have been passing crud back and forth so that as soon as someone feels better, someone else is sick! I feel like we have had someone sick in the house since Thanksgiving! We also switched Charlie to a new sleeping schedule and now he sleeps from about 8:30pm-7:30am (instead of 11pm-7am) so that took a while for him to get used to... meaning Mom was up with him almost every hour for a few nights- argh!

Charlie is getting WAY more mobile. We place him on the floor, leave the room for less than a minute and he has somehow rolled and scooted his way to the opposite side of the room! No crawling YET but Charlie spends a lot of time on his hands and knees rocking back and forth.

Charlie is continuing to try lots and lots of new foods and loves to eat. You can see by his size that he is not going hungry! Our big guy plows through an 8oz bottle and at least 2 jars of baby food at each meal. Whoa! But the biggest milestone for Mom is that he is starting to hold the bottle... he still needs some help, but hopefully he will continue to be more and more independent!

Charlie is also interacting with all of us a ton! He wants more and more engagement from us, which is fun, but it also means that he is no longer content to just sit and play with a few toys. He wants constant attention, gets upset when we leave the room, and is easily distracted when eating. It makes for a lot more work for mom and dad! He is really interested in the dogs these days and is always happy to watch them play around in the family room. Every once in a while our dog Henry will even let Charlie "pet" him and give him a few kisses.

Charlie's favorite playmate is still his big sister Ella. We have so much fun watching the two of them interact. In fact, today I watched Charlie attend a tea party that Ella was hosting.

Ella loves to tickle Charlie and make him laugh. She refers to him as "little buddy" or "handsome boy" and she just loves him to death. You can tell that Charlie already looks up to his big sister. It won't be long until he is trying to do everything that she is doing.