Growing, growing, grown!

This little face isn’t quite “grown up” yet.

 

He’s still got a mouth full of tiny, sharp baby teeth, he still says “weawoh” instead of “yellow” and asks me to “pick you up” (he still confuses me and you) and rests his head on my shoulder. He still gets scared of fireworks and other loud noises. But he is also becoming a creative, thinking, feeling boy. He tells me stories and expresses his feelings. His chubby baby fat face has become a slender little boy face.

Charlie is morphing into more than just my sweet, adorable baby. He’s my best little buddy, my friend.  The way he communicates now has really changed our relationship. As his parents, we’re negotiators and conversationalists, and sometimes still translators, but not as often as we used to be. I love that I can ask Charlie how his day was and he can really tell me. Sometimes he makes some of the events up, and other times he brings in events that happened weeks ago (“Pamela took you to Chuck E Cheese” is a regular report, and I don’t think they’ve been in weeks. Clearly it made a big impression!) – but he gets the concept of relating the events of his day and does his best to make his events good ones.

Tonight after work, I took Charlie to the park to play. He found a baby doll stroller someone had temporarily abandoned, and he was pushing it around, pretending he was going for a walk. He said, “Have a nice day, Mommy” and headed off on his way.

We had Charlie’s preschool orientation today. His beloved teacher, Ms. Lynne, isn’t back this year, but some of the other teachers he knows from last year were there. He raced into his classroom and started playing with his familiar favorites, chattering away and sometimes yelling with excitement. One of the teachers said, When did Charlie become the loud kid in the class?  They don’t know what they’re in for this year!