marydell | Charlie Picspam! (Reply)

Things have been kind of depressing in Dell-ville lately, what with various health thingies and life thingies in our extended family. Fortunately we have a ready source of cheer (also a ready source of vomit and pee and so forth, but it's a good tradeoff).

Brush-a brush-a brush-a! (Well, sort of. First I brush his teeth for real, then he gets to have a go)

"Too bright!" A child I babysat in my youth solemnly informed me that once she finished brushing her teeth I had to shield my eyes and say "too bright!" because that's what her mom & dad did. So now I'm starting to do this with Charlie, because it cracks me up. He doesn't understand it yet, so it merely confuses him, currently, but he will catch on eventually.

Books that come in giant-size "Lap Editions" are great because he can look at them by himself occasionally...

Whereas small books must be read to him, over and over and over. Hippos! NOW Mommy! HIPPOS!

Finger-puppet books are also a big hit, and only occasionally lead to him biting my finger. Mostly he wants to hug the little critters (the book below features a bird in a nest, and is very cool).

Here he is sick with a fever and making himself feel better by snuggling with his Panda. He also likes Panda to snuggle him back, which requires Mommy to hold its paws together around him because Charlie can only hold one arm at a time. I did this Panda-hug thing for him once and of course it became an immediate and ongoing obsession. I am thinking about sewing velcro onto the paws...

Note: his outfit has monkey pirates on it. Since monkeys are a big positive thing in Chinese legend, we don't go crazy worrying about the problematic racial-slur associations of monkeys, but we do not put him in anything with bananas (once I learned about that slur...oops), or anything that actually says "I'm a monkey" etc. Meanwhile, the fact that they are pirates trumps most other concerns, since pirates are generally depicted as amputees, which means pirates=yay. Can I overthink an issue or WHAT? Also, it says "Arrrrrgggghhh" right across the butt, which means I'd pretty much have to buy it regardless of what was on the front. Seriously, "ARRRGHHHH!!!"