Caroline's First Birthday

Here's Caroline's belated birthday post! She loves balloons so I got a bunch...the star of which was the big cookie monster balloon. She kept pulling him down (as you see in the 2nd picture) and trying to hug him.

Now we skip to the cupcake. It had a little candle and she was getting very impatient as I was taking the wrapper off of the cupcake and taking out the candle so that she could have it. She had never had cake (or chocolate) before, but she knew she wanted it, and wanted it NOW! There are a lot of pictures here, though trust me when I say that this is only a small fraction of how many were actually taken. Needless to say, she really seemed to like it and made a fabulous mess. She also seemed to enjoy everyone looking at her and singing happy birthday. If I remember right, she clapped at the end.

Here she is with grandpa.

And playing with her new ladybug ball.

And now we flip back to party pictures - this was before the cupcake! We only had over a handful of little friends, but I think they all had a good time.

Where's Natalie? I can't see her behind the balloons! By the way, poor Natalie broke her little leg yesterday! She's gotta be the toughest little girl we know. She's not even 2 years old yet, and has already had a bunch of stitches above her eye and now a broken leg! Poor girl! But she's always very brave.

The twins: Izzy and Lola.

I love the look on Caroline's face in this picture. I don't know what she was looking at, but she was obviously very excited about it because she's doing her "OOOO!!!" face. Alex was enjoying the balloons too.

Caroline's birthday present from mommy - matching aprons (from Anthropologie)!

This was later that evening, with Papa and her new monkey puppet. She likes to put her pacifier in the monkey's mouth - but he can't keep it...she always steals it right back. But apparently it's hilarious because she does it over and over and over....

And back to the party. Here is Lola with some balloons.

Alex and Izzy getting acquainted.

I love this picture of Alex. So cute!

Playing with Mimi and Grammy.

Chillin' with dad before the party started.

When she had her 1 year appointment a couple of weeks after the party, she did something I hadn't been prepared for. She started screaming the moment we took her into the exam room. I hadn't thought about it, though it made sense that at some point she'd start to remember the place, and have a very strong opinion about it. So that was super fun. But, she's doing great. She was 18 pounds (8th percentile) and just over 29" tall (50th percentile). She's doing everything she should be so that's always good to hear. She's running around, eating really well, starting to drink cow's milk regularly from her cup (instead of chucking the cup on the floor), and has started talking too. Her vocab consists of words like door, ball, dada, bow, moo...you get the picture. She tries to say 'cheese' and 'woof' but she basically just deletes the vowels. Either way, I know what she means. :-) And her new thing is turning on/off the lights. She likes pushing the light switch. Hey - whatever makes her happy!

Stay tuned for a Christmas post. And then I'll almost be caught up!

Caroline's 2009 Catch-up

I know it's been a long time since I last blogged....but hey, the holidays got crazy and I'm only now getting a few spare moments during Caroline's nap time to sort through the massive quantities of photos and videos and post them. So bear with me as I catch up on all that has happened. By the way, does anyone else find it coincidental that this huge gap in blogging followed my last post where I mentioned that Caroline had started walking? She is now not only walking, but running and keeps me extremely busy.

So here are a bunch of photos from Thanksgiving on. This will be the first post of 2 or 3...so stay tuned for the birthday and Christmas editions. Hopefully I'll have time to do them sooner than later.

Kiss, Kiss!

Seriously, how adorable is she in this little Ralph Lauren dress and pigtails?

Blueberry Pancakes: A Great Way to Start Thanksgiving!

I Want YOU to Have a Great Thanksgiving!

Check out those teeth!

Practicing "Opening Gifts" by Opening an Early Birthday Present from Daddy

Three foot tall stacking cups - Score!!! Daddy chose wisely...she loves these things.

Admiring the Christmas Tree - She loved looking at it, and it also helped her to learn the word "tree"

Every so often she'd sneak near the tree and snatch a present...

Little thief!

Pictures with the Macy's Santa...these pictures were before she started screaming!

As an attempt to keep her from crying, we decided to try a group shot...she's still not very happy about it!

Caroline Goes Solo

Last night Greg and I saw Caroline's first steps. She's been cruising around holding on to things for awhile, but last night she took her first solo flight. It was very exciting, and cool that we were both there to see it! Caroline and I were in the middle of the rug in the living room and Greg was on the couch. She wanted daddy, so she walked about 3 or 4 steps to him! All by herself! She's getting braver every day, and I'm sure she'll be running around before we know it.

Hmmm, what cool trick should I learn next?

Caroline Gets a Snow Day

We're experiencing a lovely "fall storm" here in Colorado right now. It feels like we've already had an awful lot of snow for it still being October! We've easily got 6" here at the house, and it's slippery out! Earlier today we took a little trip over to the library, and when we got back home it took a dozen or so tries for me to make it up our driveway. And anyone who's ever been here can testify that our driveway isn't very steep or very long. I was finally successful after a handful of attempts in reverse. Reminded me of living on "the hill" when I was a kid...

Anyway, schools and stuff were closed today, and are tomorrow as well. It's kinda nice knowing the night before. When our daycare called to tell us they'd be closed tomorrow, they said they had 24" of snow there today! And the snow's not supposed to stop until maybe lunchtime tomorrow. So the 6+ inches we have doesn't sound so bad. But we'll see how much we have in the morning! I just hope we don't lose any more trees...a lot of the trees haven't dropped all of their leaves yet, so we're apt to have quite a few broken branches. I already know we lost one of our large evergreens. I was out earlier today shoveling and trying to knock snow off of the tree branches and saw that most of the evergreen had broken and was on the ground. So sad. That's two trees this year. :-(

On a lighter note, check out Caroline in her winter gear. Pretty cute, huh? She still hates wearing hats, but I somehow managed to keep this one on her for the trip. There's room to grow in coat and hat, so she was a bit like the stay-puff marshmallow man in her carseat. Her arms just stuck out sideways. But it couldn't have been too bad, because she fell asleep. I suppose it was handy that she was asleep as I did my slip and slide all over the driveway.

Today's Little Tid-Bit

This morning I had to tell Caroline not to put her spoon in her diaper.
I immediately realized that this was a sentence I never thought I'd say. :-) Gotta love kids!!!

Caroline's Second Radio Flyer

As promised, here are two more videos. These are pretty short because she can't really steer the wagon yet, and so I can only get her going and grab the camera so quickly! But you can see that she likes it. Lots of smiles, laughs, and happy screams.





So you may be wondering, why is this post titled Second Radio Flyer? Well, because yesterday Robyn and I took the girls to Cottonwood Farm, a local place with some animals and halloweeny stuff. And it's free. If you live around here, check it out! We had fun looking at the animals, pumpkins, and pretending to go through a corn maze. The farm has a ton of radio flyer wagons for kids to use while they're there. It was really cute seeing all of the little kids in wagons, and also wagons filled with pumpkins destined to be jack-o-lanterns. Check out some of these shots. I love the one of Natalie giving Caroline a hug!







The girls enjoyed looking at some kittens, goats, a donkey, a cow, sheep, and tractors. And of course, all of the other people! Caroline was just taking it all in the whole time we were there. It ended up being a beautiful day...almost too sunny for picture taking! Natalie also found another friend there too - Madeline, from our library storytime. There's always room for one more in the wagon!






So that's the second radio flyer. :-) We all had fun.
Caroline likes to walk around the house now with her wagon, and point at things that she wants to look at. She will point at a picture on the wall, and you have to pick her up and show it to her. She's getting to the point that she can communicate with us in ways other than crying! (which is nice for obvious reasons...) She will sign 'milk', and then the pointing is actually quite informative! She and I went out to dinner tonight (Greg's in WY hunting), and in front of her I had her water, carrots, puffs, and part of my breadstick. She would point to whichever one she wanted next. And yes...she did sometimes pick the carrots! :-)

Caroline's First Radio Flyer

This is the first of two posts with some little videos of Caroline walking. Apparently I can only upload so much video to one post...so that's why there are two.

Anyway, last weekend when we were stuck inside because of the snowy weather, we decided to see how Caroline would do with her Radio Flyer Walker Wagon that I had bought the day before. We had thought about getting this for her at Christmas time, but I thought she could really use it now, so decided not to wait. I was also pleasantly surprised to have gotten it much cheaper at our local toystore, Grandrabbits, than I would have at Target or Babies R Us. I love this place! It's all that a toy store should be, and it's not a big chain so it feels good to support the local guy. I feel like a little kid whenever I go in there.

This video is the first time she tried walking with it. It has a clicker mechanism in the wheels that gives it some resistance so it doesn't totally run away from her, but it will go fairly fast if you're not careful! :-) The first day we had to help her a bit with the speed, and keep her from going too fast. Check it out! How cute is she? Notice the smile on her face too...I think she was pretty proud of herself!



So that's her first time with it. We were amazed at how much better she did just the very next day! She didn't need our help at all. She realized she could use it for balance but shouldn't put her weight on it. Check out the next post for more videos! She's definitely been enjoying the wagon. She thinks it's pretty funny.