Busy Summer

Things have been busy at our house, which is my excuse for not having posted since April. I know, it's appalling. So there is much to share for those of you that care about these little things. :-) Let's see...where to begin.

Caroline had her 18 month check-up a month ago now. Everything was fine. One thing I'm pretty stoked about is besides annual flu shots, she should basically be done getting shots until she's 5! That'll be nice. She was 20 lbs 13 oz (8th percentile) and 31" tall (30th percentile). She's got about 12 teeth now. And her vocabulary is increasing like crazy. She is talking so much. She's doing really well with two syllable words and every once in awhile busts out a three syllable word. She has been saying 'please' for a long time, but now she says 'thank you' a lot too. Many times without us prompting her to say it! Her little voice is so cute the way she says 'thank you'. Though Greg's favorite word that she says is 'cous cous'.
She's putting words together well also; for example she will bring us a book and say 'read it, mama (or dada)'. She has started asking 'why?' and using words like 'own' and 'my'. A funny thing happened when she started using the word 'big'. She was naming body parts and pointing them out on Greg. She pointed to his eyebrows and said 'eyebrow', then she spread her arms out wide and said 'BIG!' We laughed pretty hard at that one. She's right though.... Greg does have big eyebrows. :-) She can almost say her name now too. She used to call herself "Line" but now it's a mashed two syllable version of Caroline. Hey, it's progress!

She is still obsessed with books, but is really starting to love coloring too. I'd say that now she basically knows her colors. She likes hearing the alphabet song and can say every letter of the alphabet with prompting, but all she can do on her own is "A, B". She's not interested in counting much yet, though she seems to recognize the number 8.

Let's see, what else? She's been throwing tantrums for awhile. Sometimes they're annoying, but so far they're mostly amusing. And things at daycare are going well. A couple of weeks ago we cold-turkeyed the pacifier during the day and only let her have it for sleeping. I was worried about how that would go, but she did better than I expected. Sometimes she asks for it, but we tell her that it's only for sleeping and she seems to accept that answer. Whew!

Awhile back we had a visit from Greg's parents and I think Caroline really enjoyed seeing them. Grandma got to see one of Caroline's swim lessons, and one night Greg and I got to go out with our friends and have the raw oysters we'd been craving. We had a fabulous dinner of oysters, fish and wine at Jax Fish House in Boulder.

Shortly after that visit, we were headed to PA to visit my family for the holiday. The travel part was not fun. Toddlers don't want to sit in your lap on the plane, and they do not care if the fasten seat belt sign is on. :-)  Luckily, there were many other lap-children on the plane and on the trip out Caroline entertained herself playing peek-a-boo with a 2 year old in the seats behind us. And on the way back, she colored for a surprisingly long time in the little paper/crayon holder that our friend Robyn had made for her. Thank you Robyn, it was a life saver! Though I need to know where you got the pad of paper so I can refill it. :-)

Once we were at my parents house though, it was much more fun. Caroline and Nolan seemed to enjoy each other even though they didn't really play together. They had fun in the pool and with their grandparents. They got to ride on Papa's tractor, and at one point Caroline put her arms out and said "BIG!" She also made car noises (vroom, vroom) as she rode on the tractor. It was pretty funny.

I have a lot of pictures from the past months, so here are some of the best. This is the part that I really get behind on when I slack on blogging!

"Helping" in the Yard

Getting Ready for a Bike Ride

Wearing Momma's Ruby Slippers...

Where Did She Learn the "Loser" Sign???

Caroline's First Hike! We were at NCAR.

Mid-Hike Snack

A Different Hike:  The Royal Arch, out of Chatauqua - We're Not There Yet...

Arriving at The Royal Arch

Riding the Tractor with Papa

Caroline Saying "BIG!!!" (See her arms spread wide?)

How Cute are They?

Caroline's First Oreo

Checking out the Marble Tower that Papa Built for Her

Cars and Crabs

Racing

SMILE!

 

Hugs!

 

Goodbye Hug for Craig

We have over 100 pictures from the trip to Pennsylvania, so these were just a few. There were a lot of cute ones and it was hard to choose just some of them to show you! I think this is enough for one blog post...but I guess it was bound to be given that it had been so long since the last one. I will try to be better! Hope everyone is having a wonderful summer.