Uh – oh, mommy has hit the wall

Charlotte’s newest word is uh-oh. It is a very useful word to know, apparently. When you can say uh-oh, you can drop your food on the floor and then smile sweetly and say ‘uh-oh,’ and still look really cute. Everyone around you will have to stifle their giggles.
You can use the same phrase and smile when Mommy catches you playing with the buttons on the DVD player (even after being told at least 1000x that it is a no-no).
You can also lift the toilet seat and drop in a sock, and then say it really loud. Mommy and Daddy will still have to work hard not to laugh.Yep, ‘uh-oh’ is the most useful word yet.

On a more serious note, we’ve made an interesting observation about Charlotte’s vocabulary….as she learns new skills (i.e. walking) and new phrases (like uh-oh), she seems to forget the old ones. For example, a few weeks ago “UP” was all the rage. Now if she wants to be picked up she just pulls on my pant leg and whines and/or screams depending on how long it takes me to respond to her request. It is like all her brainpower is taken up with the new skills/words and she has to ditch the old ones to make way for the new. Thankfully Mama and Dada, “A,” and ‘yum, yum; (meaning I want food) still seem to be in her repertoire.

The other interesting thing about Charlotte lately is that her English comprehension seems to be almost 100%. You can say, “Charlotte, please pick up the blue ball and take it to AJ.” and by God she’ll do it. Or, “Hey Charlotte, I’m going to the bathroom, come with me.” and she will follow (yes, I gave up on trying to have a quiet moment in the bathroom long ago. We have reached and understanding now that this is just one of the things we do together). She is also starting to nod her head to indicate approval, and shake it vigorous while saying ‘na!’ when she disapproves. It blows me away every time. That means it has taken her approximately 4 months to understand English. If only I could learn mandarin so quickly…….

The other news, as the title suggests, is that I am officially dead tired. Bagged. Utterly exhausted. I’ve hit the wall. Since May 8 our ‘best’ night’s sleep was 4.5 hours in a row. On a typical night she goes to bed at 7:30, and wakes at 8:30 or 9:00, 11:30/midnight, 2:00 and 4:00. She is up for the day at 7:30. Last week we had 2 nights in a row where she was up every hour. IT IS KILLING ME. Sometimes she will let Steve hold her, but mostly it is I. I actually broke down and called our agency last week to see if they had any words of wisdom. As I expected, they told me that most families report that it does get better, but not until the 6-9 month point. Ahhhhhh – that means that best case it that we have 2 more months to go. Also, I have this nagging fear that it might not get better. When the nannies handed Charlotte to us we had a few minutes to ask questions. When we asked them about her sleeping habits they looked at eachother and smirked and said, “If she only wakes once or twice you should consider that a good night.” That scary little scene just keeps replaying in my head every time start dreaming about a good night’s sleep. Anyway, on the advice of our agency I’m going to make another appointment with the International Adoption Clinic just to rule out anything physical.

OK – so enough complaining. So the nights really suck but during the day we are having fun. Last weekend we did the Terry Fox run. The whole thing was inspired by our friend Thomi (of China adoption trip fame), who gave AJ a loonie with Terry Fox on it. She became obsessed with learning/understanding his story, and insisted that we do the run. To her credit, she went door-to-door and raised $172! Not bad for a 5 year old. AJ’s friend Ben came along for the ride and it was great. We thought we could do 1K, but it turned out there was only a 5 and 10K options. Ooops. So the kids biked 5K (and Charlotte slept in the Chariot). I was impressed.

Charlotte got to see her first Wiggles video this week and of course, she loves them. At first she was just stunned, but then she started dancing along. Looks like I'll be hearing "Lights, camera, action, Wiggles!" for a few more years to come.

Oh yeah, and I know she will hate me later in life for posting this pic, but I have to show you that she is not all smiles and cuteness all the time. This week she was a snot MACHINE. She has a nasty cold and, my word, who would have thought that so much mucous could come from such a small body! Go ahead - click on it to enlarge it so you can get a really good look....

Another important landmark this week - she finally hit the 20 lb mark and we finally got around to getting her a new car seat. She LOVES facing forward.

And last but not least, naturally the best thing about getting a new car seat is the big box it comes in. IN addition to spending hours playing in the box, AJ has been putting on puppet shows. The first one completely freaked Charlotte out - now she loves it!