Best Buds

(this is charlie, here)

I have a lot of friends, some old, like as old as pa, and some very young like my baby sister, little aunt kate. I have taught Kate everything she knows. Here are some pics that we have taken together. I won't lie, there have been times where I haven't wanted to share with baby aunt kate, or where I have hit her hard across the top of her head for no reason....most recently my favorite thing to do is the walk up behind her real close until she thinks I am going to knock her down, and then I run away laughing while she is crying. But really, mostly we play. At first she couldn't do much except stay real close to mommy, that was hard. real hard. I had to stop sleeping with my mom, and had to learn to do things on my own...Now little Aunt Kate is my very best friend. We play together all day, and I am teaching her words, and signs and how to do fun things like throw a ball and leaf blow. Here are some pics of us together over the past year:

Before the baby came my grandma (mama) bought me this doll, Bobby. I love Bobby and used Bobby to practice gentle kissing.....

and nursing.....

Here is one of our first pics together. I am about 19.5 or 20 months, and the baby is less than a month. 

I tried to teach her how to sleep in the crib.....

but it was more fun to lay on top of her than to sleep.....

Of course, I spent a lot of time kissing her. She was so soft.

I tried to show her how to smile for pictures, but in the beginning she just sat there....

One of my favorite things to do with the baby was to play on the playmat. She loved it when I would sit on top of here....

And she loved it when I rested on top of her too.

Here I am getting better and better at holding her, which was not easy as she quickly became a chunky monkey.

I taught the baby to snuggle.

Once she started sitting, I showed her how to tickle.....

And I showed her how great it is to snuggle and sleep with mom and dad.

And soon enough I let her tackle me.

I taught her everything she knows about snuggling and wrestling...

And over the months I have gotten better at holding her even though she just gets heavier and heavier...

When she was too little to move around I would go around the house and gather up all the baby toys and bring them to her....

At Nonnie's house I showed her everything I knew about swimming and jumping in a kiddie pool, boy am I good at that kind of stuff....

Some say I am the one that pushes around the baby, but here is the honest truth....I tolerate more from her than you will ever know, she is always grabbing my hair, hitting my face, and kicking me, and I LOVE IT!

Once baby graduated out of mommies ergo I showed her how to ride in style. Whenever she would fuss or cry I would just turn around and say, "it ok baby, charlie here!"

I do this a lot, how could one not kiss those yummy chubby cheeks all the time.

Once I fully realized that keeping the baby meant she got to sleep with mommy at night instead of me, I tried to get her all excited about her crib......but I failed.

At Halloween we got to dress up like animals. Here I am asking mommy and daddy why baby looks like a bear.

And when I realized it wasn't a bear, but really kate inside I gave her another kiss

I starting doing this the day she came home, and look she is bigger now and can take it.

Around Christmas time we set up my big train set, and being the nice bro that I am, I even let baby sit in the middle....

Once she started crawling I knew I had an unfair advantage, so often times I would regress to a crawl myself, just to keep her happy....

This is one of the most important things I have showed little kate...all that exists on the outside..it took some time for me to learn how to share this sacred spot, but once I got it....I got it for good...

Next up came sharing baths. Boy that is fun. I love splashing her, stealing her toys and one time daddy dropped his very nice camera in the water while saving the baby who fell over backwards. I picked up that camera so fast, what a helper I am...

Daddy and I decided that now that the baby is walking she can come onto our courts. We haven't given her a racket yet, but we do let her pretend with a rattle. Here I am making her laugh as usual...

I try my absolute hardest to be silly so that kate will laugh at me, even in the wee hours of the morning......

We can sit together at the beach on a beautiful sunny day:

And it isn't always me teaching the baby things, she has taught me how to suck on new cabinet knobs..yum:

Now that she is so steady on her feet she can cook with me:

Playing in the snow was so much fun together. I would make silly faces and noises and the baby would belly laugh so hard!

Look at how she looks at me...she loves me!

Most recently we have discovered how fun it is to hike together, Kate has learned how to leaf blow from the best toddler leaf blower out there. At one point Charlie had all of us leaf blowing our ways through Heritage Grove in La Honda area:

And I love her!