Uh-oh...

One, two, three... that's all it took, three little steps and our lives will never be the same. 

It all happened last Thursday.  It was late afternoon and I was finally squeezing in my shower (why would I waste the valuable time while Charlie's home -- I schedule them between conference calls!) when the phone rang and I saw that it was Donna calling.  Something is wrong with the phone in the master bedroom, though -- it picks up, but you can't hear anything and callers can't hear you.

For the five seconds it took me to run downstairs I was terrified.  Donna never calls -- she's right next door, and since I come over every day for lunch there is never a long enough delay to require updates between my visits.  Therefore, I of course assumed that Charlie had spiked a fever, broken a limb or was unresponsive for some unknown reason...  To be clear, I have absolutely no doubts regarding the care Charlie gets at Donna's -- it was just instinctual Mother Terror that set in.

During these 5 seconds I also debated calling or rushing over and opted to call because Donna had called here.  As soon as she picked up, I begged her to tell me what was wrong, but Donna just laughed and said "Your son walked!".  I was relieved, terrifed and bursting with pride all at the same time.  My baby boy can walk!

Now, at no point during the previous 11 months and 1 week had we had any reason to doubt that Charlie would walk -- but it still felt like a miracle.  We did it!  Jason and I succeeded in raising Charlie all the way through the baby stage.  He is officially a little boy!

To take a step back (pun intended!), here is exactly what happened.  Donna was standing in the pantry area of her kitchen while Charlie played on the floor.  All of a sudden she looked up, and he was standing right beside her.  Surprised, to say the least, Donna said to him "Come over here to me, Charlie," and Charlie walked the three steps into her arms.  Yes -- he is amazing!!!!

Of course, I went to pick him up early that afternoon and while it's debatable whether or not he walked again, he did stand unassisted and step/lunge/dive at me when I held out the remote control.  I say it counts!  Later that evening we tried many times to duplicate the feat, but only got as far as him standing on his own in the driveway looking back and forth from Bob to Jason and laughing at both of them.

Then Sunday morning while we were picking up his toys before church, Charlie took three steps to me when I pulled away the toy bin he'd been holding.  In my unbiased opinion, he may be an Olympian walker someday -- such skill, such grace!

Despite my obvious excitement and pride at Charlie's amazing abilities, it's bittersweet to realize that in the near future my son will be independently mobile -- he won't need me as much.  I can't wait to hold his hand and walk down the street, to watch him run to greet daddy and to see him chase Otis through the house, but I'm going to miss his crooked little crawl. 

Just learning to crawl...

Can't catch me...

Yeah, Daddy!

We are ALL so glad Daddy is home!  Jason spent the weekend in Daytona for the race with his brothers, uncles, dad, grandpa, etc, and they had a wonderful time and saw a great race.  On Friday I was very excited for him to get to go...but with the way the weekend turned out, I was pretty much counting the minutes until he got home yesterday.

While I know that it is nothing compared to what the rest of the country has been getting, Summerville got 8+ inches of snow Friday night.  It was absolutely beautiful, and since Charlie and I didn't have anywhere to go, we loved it.  In fact, our wonderful neighbors John and Johnny even built Charlie his very first snowman.  I was looking forward to a memorable and fun first Valentine's Day for my little guy. 

The power started flashing around 11 PM and finally went out at 1 AM Saturday morning.  I wasn't overly concerned, assuming it would be back on shortly.  Nevertheless, I decided to sleep in the hallway outside Charlie's room, because our master bedroom stays so much warmer than the rest of the house and I wanted to be sure to have an accurate gauge of how chilly Charlie's room was getting.  Once I got the crazy UPS backup to stop beeping with Jason's help (interesting that unplugging something during a power outage DOESN'T turn it off!), I settled in with a light blanket, a flashlight and my phone.

Well, by 3 AM I realized that the power wasn't likely to flash back on anytime soon and that I wasn't going to get any sleep on the floor, so I bundled Charlie up and brought him into my room with me.  After assuring and reassuring myself that there were no pillows, blankets or dogs close enough to his face to suffocate him (darn parenting magazines!), I cuddled up to him and went to sleep.  It was fabulous!  There is nothing like snuggling with your baby...which begs the question, why don't we just have him sleep with us all the time?? (I'm sure Jason is shouting the answer to this at his computer, but still...it was sooo sweet!). 

When 7 AM came around and the power was still out, I started to strategize.  I had closed all the shutters in the master overnight to keep the heat in, so it was still quite comfortable.  We hung out in there for a while, but soon realized that the rest of the house needed attention, so I went around closing doors and shutters, battening down the hatches so to speak (this boat/nautical thing is apparently contagious in our family).

Next up, a fire.  To be clear, I'm not even very good at lighting matches, but I was bound and determined to keep my baby warm so I tracked down some of those self burning log things in the garage, piled a couple real logs on top and we were in business.  I am proud to say that I was able to keep a fire going until 5 PM Saturday evening.  While this might not seem like a big deal, I would like to remind everyone reading this that I am from Johnson County and my girl scout experience consisted primarily of eating Thin Mints!

It's pretty amazing to realize that with an all electric house, you can't even boil water during a power outage.  Charlie, Otis and I stuck to the family room all day, expecting the sudden boom of the surround sound at any moment.   By mid-morning, I had Jason do a little research from Daytona and find us a hotel in town that accepted dogs, so we had a reservation for Saturday night in the event that the power didn't come on. 

So the day passed...minute by minute... hour by hour... broken up only by the need to add more wood, newspaper, etc to the fire and by the two highlights:  Charlie's belly laugh when we took turns balancing pillows on our heads and our absolutely fabulous neighbors Bob and Donna bringing me coffee from town! 

It was actually kind of nice to spend the whole day in our jammies, unable to even think about starting laundry, vacuuming or running the dishwasher.  Add to that the fact that Charlie took two good naps, enabling me to do my crossword and read part of a book, and it was almost like a vacation...for a while.

By 4 PM I was over it, though.  The sun was going down and our roasty-toasty living room was starting to feel a bit cooler,  so I started packing for the hotel.  I even figured out how to switch the garage door to manual (with a bit of guidance from Bob).  Certain that the power would come on the second we pulled out of the driveway, Otis, Charlie and I loaded up at 5:00 and headed for town.  As expected, Bob called at 5:20 while we were getting gas, the power was on!  We got to go home! 

I have never been so excited to see porch lights in our neighborhood or to hear the ridiculously loud whir of our heatpump.  I learned a number of key lessons this weekend:
1 - I am NOT a pioneer woman
2 - About 9 hours of peace and quiet is all I can handle
3 - My neighbors are even more amazing and wonderful than I already knew
4 - I am fully capable of handling a "crisis"
5 - I am extremely blessed to have a husband who does not travel regularly
6 - Single moms and military wives are a cut above the rest of us!

The rest of Charlie's and my Valentine's weekend, was pretty uneventful in comparison to Saturday.  We celebrated Sunday morning with strawberry pancakes, spent church together in the nursery (following a brief screaming fit when mommy left and about 15 minutes of hiccough/sobs when I returned), and ended up driving all the way to West Ashley in desperate search of a nap around 4:00 Sunday afternoon. 

Charlie clearly noticed and did not appreciate Jason's absence.  Of course, if I was trapped at home with just one other person who apparently broke the entire house, I would probably be pretty anxious for Daddy to get home, too!

Charlie's first snowman

I thought it was "Summer" ville?

Our own winter wonderland

Mr. Goofy

Mr. Cool

Shame

I have been debating long and hard about this particular entry, and even as I'm typing it I'm not certain I'll post it -- primarily out of shame, but also because it's definitely not a cheerful, humorous update on my silly Charlie.  But, my goal with this blog is to be completely honest and truly capture Charlie's life, so here goes...

This morning has been hectic from the start, because the CenturyLink fleet crew was coming to pick up the EMBARQ-mobile. They apparently finally decided that data analysis doesn't require a company car.  Unfortunately, the driver completely disregarded my email directions only to find out around Holly Hill that our address wasn't in his Tom-Tom, so we had multiple calls back and forth with him trying tell me where he was, so I could give him directions -- rather than stick to the interstate, he thought side roads would be better!  Add to that the standard, getting dressed, packing a lunch, preparing a bottle, etc of a weekday morning and it was a bit crazy around here.

Finally, during the third call I sat down at the computer to pull up mapquest and figure out exactly where the driver was (he'd passed us and was in Goose Creek!).  As soon as I hung up with him, I started writing an email to his supervisor to let him know what a mess it was. 

During these few minutes, Charlie was playing on the floor of the study -- he loves to take all of Otis' toys out of the basket.  While I was finishing up the email, Charlie started fussing, but to my distracted ear it sounded like the standard "I'm bored...come play with me..." cries.  When I stood up I saw that he was actually playing with the old router that's been sitting on the sofa for a couple weeks.  I knew it was there, but as it wasn't atached to anything, I didn't think it was a big deal.

As I knelt down, though, I saw that Charlie had the cord for the router wrapped under his arms and I thought, "well, no wonder he's fussing", but as I tried to unwrap it, I discovered it was actually tightly wound around his neck, as well.  Of course, I immediately unwound it, but I was almost physically sick.  Now, to clarify, Charlie was breathing the ENTIRE time and didn't appear to be in any pain...but it was horrifying.

Charlie plays all over the first floor regularly while I'm making dinner or feeding Otis -- he's never out of my sight for more than a couple minutes, but that's all this was.  Part of me keeps defending myself by saying that I was only 6 feet away, it was only for a minute, I didn't even realize the cord was attached to the router (it's the removable kind), etc, etc -- but the truth is that none of that matters.  Had Charlie pulled more tightly or had he found this when I was in the kitchen making his oatmeal, it could have been tragic.

This is by far my worst mothering moment, and I feel more negligent than I ever thought possible.  Jason and I have worked hard to secure all dangerous cabinets, put away any sharp or breakable decorations, cover all the outlets and protect the stairs...but I let my baby wrap a cord around his neck within an arms reach of me, because I was distracted by my work and complacent with the idea that we had made our home "safe".

I keep reminding myself that Charlie is perfectly fine.  He had a red mark around his neck, but within a few minutes was laughing, playing and eating his breakfast like nothing had happened.

I am ashamed and embarassed to admit that this could happen in my home to my Charlie, but it did.  I am trying to think of this as a blessing, so I don't completely lose it. God protected us and nothing horrible happened to my baby, plus I learned the danger of distraction and complacency. I've read about it a million times, but apparently I had to experience it first-hand to get the message.

Whirlwind!

Where to begin?  Charlie is doing so much right now that it's hard to keep up, much less record it all.  I know I'm going to look back someday and wonder when he started doing things we will have grown accustomed to.

He is sooo close to walking and I'm torn between excitement and sorrow.  I really feel like his ability to travel upright will be the defining step between baby and little boy.  The emotions are so confusing.  I would give anything to go back and relive the past 11 months, but at the same time I can't wait to see what's next.

Charlie can stand unassisted right now, as long as he doesn't notice he's doing it.  He has also learned to moo -- in imitation of one of his barnyard toys.  It's absolutely hilarious.  He just started doing it one day on his own.  Obviously, since he can moo, say da-da, say Donna, say no-no and say dog-dog, he can say ma-ma, right? Nope...and interestingly enough, if you ask him to he just laughs!  My son is already teasing me!

In addition to his new mobility and expanding vocabulary, Charlie is becoming something of a food connoisseur.  Spaghetti-os have joined spinach on the grimace list (I was shocked!), but he absolutely adores blueberry pancakes and pizza.  Charlie is a two-fisted, chipmunk-cheeked eater given the opportunity. 

Other new skills include rolling a ball (intermittently), climbing up the stairs (yikes!), climbing down off the bed (huge step!) and finger painting (just imagine!).  I love how proud he is of himself when he does something new.  I just wish it wasn't all happening so fast!

I'm soooo cute

Playing with dog-dog (formerly known as Otis)

Where's Charlie?

The artist at work!