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Saturday, June 19, 2010

Happy Birthday sweet Charlotte, 2 years old today!!!

My little girl turns 2 years old today, for the sake of reliving her 1st year I’ve summarized each month’s accomplishments.

In July ’09 she was still crawling and managed to pull a hanging plant onto her head! We had a blast on 4th of July and we had fun making her hair into a Mohawk!

In August ’09 we worked really hard to teach her to be nice to the animals, it’s paid off! We rarely catch her hitting the animals now and she has a healthy respect for the big cat!

She learned to walk in August and her first steps were so amazing to watch; now she walks the entire length of the mall with us!

In September she progressed to climbing!

In October we learned that walking could take us to greater explorations! Like Deerfield Beach Island and more head first days in the sand – but intentional!

In November we played dress up, developed a love for gardening, rode a carousel for the first time, she learned to push her stroller instead of riding in it and we discovered a secret tropical garden that is completely fenced in and unpopulated with people so I could let her run free!

For Christmas she scored a big red wagon and had a blast riding in it, she also got to subtly tell the world that mommy was pregnant with her “big sister” t-shirt. She got her first serious illness right before New Years called “Toxic Synovitis” where she couldn’t walk for a week and freaked us out beyond belief! It turns out to not be a permanent illness but scary none the less.

In January she decided she didn’t want to be rocked to sleep anymore. After 1.5 years of rocking her to sleep every night this came as a shock. Later in the month we went on vacation with our friends from Pittsburgh who took us to Everglades City and Lover's Key. She charmed everyone with funny faces and exuberance for life and we learned she's really fun to vacation with!

In February she spent almost 3 weeks in Texas with her Mema, grandpa and great grandparents! It drove me half crazy to be apart for that long but we got tons of stuff ready for the nursery plus a refinished dining room table. Charlotte came back knowing how to drink out of a straw and that’s been the most useful trick!

In March we debuted the toddler bed and spent all month teaching her to stay in bed, in fact it took another 3 months for us to realize it’s just better to invest in a toddler rail to keep her from rolling out in the middle of the night. And to make up for lost time in February, we went to the beach every single weekend!

In April we enjoyed Easter Sunday as a family, Charlotte learned to walk the dog, got her own gardening tools to be more “helpful” and we had our last “comfortable” day at the beach of 78 degrees without suffocating from the heat.

In May the toddler tantrums kicked into full motion with the onset of summer heat triggering most of the drama and making for a very exciting Mother's Day! I tried to soldier on with beach visits but the heat and tantrums accompanied every visit until I sadly realized I was too pregnant, too hot and too tired to continue going alone with her and called it quits for the summer.

And finally June 2010 - she loves her morning Flintstone Vitamin which she calls “mummy’s”, she is very serious about walking each parent to the car when they are leaving for work – her routine is important but she can break the rules to stay up an hour late when “needed”. Her social skills have grown in that she loves her church nursery so much she cries when we leave – oh how I remember the days when she would cry as I dropped her off!

So goodbye to year one and we are so excited to see what year two will hold.

4 comments:

amanda said...

Happy, Happy Birthday Charlotte!
Love the mohawk from last summer. :)

Unknown said...

this is such a sweet reminder of all her milestones!
it was so weird to read about your charlotte having toxic synovitis...flashbacks to my tiny tim being diagnosed with the same thing in Aug '06...right after she turned 2...i've never heard of it since. (turned out to be something much worse than that...osteomyelitis which had us back at the ER the next night, admitted for a week and with a PICC line for 6 weeks...) but this is about your Charlotte! Sorry to hijack! just had a blast from the past when i read that :-)

R. Molder said...

Thanks Amanda, it's a shame her hair is too long for Mohawks now :(

Hi Shannon - that's what blogs are for, finding similarities and shared experiences! When ours got the Toxic Synovitis we couldn't find anyone who'd had it and it was really scary. I didn't even blog about it because we were so focused on her at the time. Sounds like you had a much worse experience! Seeing an active walking child go lame is a nightmare I don't wish on anyone!!

Grit said...

Happy Birthday Charlotte! And bravo mum and dad!