How are Patrick and Charlie doing?

They're both fine.  Patrick is still smitten with the girls, and Charlie mostly follows his lead.  His adjustment issues at first seem to have died down; he's no longer being contrary just for the sheer hell of it.  (Patrick, on the other hand, is exactly as contrary as he always was.)

We made an odd discovery recently.  We think Charlie may have a photographic memory for certain things.  The way we know this is that he's constantly telling us what people were wearing at significant moments.  He's recently been very focused on clothing, particularly men's clothing, and he's especially interested in belts -- who wears them, and when.  As another example, he told me what shirt I was wearing when we picked Patrick up from camp months before.

And then today he asked whether it was okay to wear a tie with a short-sleeved shirt.

As we all know, a truthful answer to this question is complicated.  Some people do, but it's not exactly something I would encourage -- "live and let live" is my motto.  But I answered "no," for simplicity's sake, and to explain why he would never catch me wearing one.  His response was, "The man in 'Rio' wears a tie with a short sleeved shirt."  And so he does.  (Fast forward to 3:44 if you can't stand '80s music videos.)

We're currently looking for ways to capitalize upon this skill.  Maybe he'll grow up to be the first person kicked off "Project Runway" for plagiarism.