A Charlie update!

Here is a Charlie update!

• Oh she has been soooo much fun lately! She is talking up a storm- both in English and Sango. Her new word yesterday was "funny." Everything was funny! She is making sentences- which are usually commands- "Mommy, come." "Mommy sit." But the phrase she says 500 times a day is, "aye yigh yigh!"  

• She likes to play pretend, especially with her babies. She sings to them and puts them "night night."
•  She is obsessed with coloring and we just painted a dresser for her with chalk board paint and she colors on it all of the time. She "draws," "flowers," "bugs," and "1,2,3."

•  She is really into counting. She always gets 1, 2, and sometimes she gets 3 in the right place. When she wants some more of something, she says, "2, 2!" even after she has already had 2. or she says, "oko" which is one in Sango. She knows her vowels also- we have alphabet stickers on the wall and she says, "a, e, i, o, u"- but she says them the French way.
  
• She does things to make herself and us laugh, like the other night we were looking at a book with animals and I asked her where the elephant was. She totally knows "elephant," but she pointed to every other animal on the page and laughed and laughed when she did. She thought she was so funny. 

•  She is also so sensitive. If she thinks we have a boo-boo, she pats us and says, "k,k,k" as in "are you ok?" Then she kisses our boo boos, and then the best is when she takes both hands, puts them on our cheeks, and strokes them softly while she "shushes us." It is amazing.
  
• She is also really into cars lately. Yesterday, Josh borrowed a jeep and Charlie pretended she was driving it. She was so excited. Then a Fulani group of kids came and she wanted the baby to sit with her- her first date. Not so happy that they went parking though! 

• She loves to play with the local kids. Today, all of the kids her age and younger cried and cried when she came near them. Poor Charlie- hope she doesn't get a complex. But thankfully all of the older kids love to play with her. They pick her up and play with her like she is a doll.
  
• She is doing really well with potty training!
  
• In the last couple of weeks, toddler temper tantrums seem to have been decreasing! Praise the Lord!

• She is becoming less shy again- now she shakes the hands of Africans again. 
• She loves to pray and several times during the day she will say, "pray" and put her hands together. I then ask her what we should pray for and sometimes she will name a person or she will look around a say a thing like flowers, door, cookies, or whatever else is on her mind.