Our youngest

For perhaps only a few more hours, Charlotte is our youngest child. As I read her a few extra books tonight to celebrate the (maybe) milestone happening, I felt a lot like I felt with Caroline right before Charlotte was born. There is this strange contrast of feeling so happy that you are about to gain a child and your child or children are about to gain a sibling, but there is this sadness that the way things are now will never be again. Our little family of four is about to turn into a family of five.

Of course, Charlotte has no clue what is going on, or that she's about to be shifted from the "baby of the family" to the middle child. She is still a baby in so many ways, she loves to be held and she is on the small side for her age. Charlotte is also an independent little girl who knows what she wants, how she wants it, and how and when she wants you to make it happen! I love her determined spirit, the way she tries so hard to do whatever it is that Caroline is doing, her mischievous smile when she thinks she's getting away with something. She has a way about her that is endearing and makes you want to get to know what's going on inside that little head of hers.

I think I posted recently that she is learning so many new words and she surprises me with them all the time. Part of the independent spirit includes only doing what she wants, not what you want her to do (so asking her to say something will likely get the response, "Nah."). Last night she was eating rice with her dinner and she was making a total mess out of it, but she was happy and we were all sitting down eating together, so I let it go. After we were finished, I picked her up out of the high chair to take her straight to the bathtub. She kept pointing to her nose, saying, "Icey nose, icey nose" (I thought she was saying, "I see nose"). More like "rice in nose"! As it hit me that she was saying she had rice in her nose, I took a look and sure enough, there was a piece of rice in her nose. I used my doctor mom medical skills to remove that piece and soon realized that the piece I removed was the last of several that she shoved up there.

After some tortuous work, I found that there were five pieces of rice that had been lodged in her nose during the course of dinner. Great parenting night Jeff and Ash! When I was done, I asked her, "Charlotte, do you feel any more rice in your nose?" She replied, "No icey nose."

So, in honor of her maybe-last-day as our youngest, here are a couple of videos of Charlotte being Charlotte from Sunday.