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.

Spring-time Fun

We've been having some fun lately with the nicer weather. It's easier to get outside and that's always nice. Here are some pictures from the past couple of weeks.

Ready to go "shopping" with her hat and ladybug purse

On Easter, it was nice out but a little chilly. Caroline got outside for awhile and kicked her ball around while we made dinner on the bbq.

After coming back inside, Greg helped Caroline make "stirred tea" with her new tea set. She likes to make tea, and definitely likes carrying around the spoons that came with it. She likes to carry all four of them at once.

Last week we visited Caroline's friend Natalie, and Natalie has a little stroller that Caroline really liked playing with. So when we went to the store, I got her one too. I knew she'd like it and she'd been having a rough week or two with being sick and getting her molars, so I figured she deserved something fun. Here she is pushing around her baby, and using an empty applesauce container (that she dug out of the recycling box) as a purse.

The nicer weather has also allowed us to dust off our bikes. Caroline's still too small for a bike of her own, but we wanted to be able to go on rides with her. So we thought we'd get a child seat to attach to our bikes. Seems easy, but what a pain that was. We found out that the rear child seats wouldn't attach to either of our bikes because we didn't have the necessary attach points. So instead of buying a new bike and the rear child seat ($$$), we decided to try this front-mount seat by iBert. We were skeptical about this seat at first...but we're really glad we got it. It was not only half the price of the rear mount seat, but it fits on both of our bikes and installs super quick and easy. It was also tricky finding a helmet to fit Caroline's head, but eventually we found one that worked. And it's cute too! So on Saturday we installed the bike seat, strapped the helmet on Caroline's head (which made her look like a character from Spaceballs with a giant head) and decided to go for a ride to a local park. This seat is not without it's faults....mainly that it makes it trickier for you to get on/off the bike and you have to ride with your knees splayed out a bit so that they don't hit the seat, but overall we're really happy with it. It's nice having her in front of us where we can see her, and point things out to her as we ride. She's got a better view too instead of having to look at our backs! But the main thing is that Caroline seems to love it. When we slow down or stop, she asks for more, more! She makes happy noises and claps her hands. So this seat was worth every penny. These pictures were taken before we went on our first ride. Now she gets excited when she sees her helmet, and definintely likes taking rides with us. I think we'll get a lot of use out of this. We took another ride yesterday evening around our local "lake" and she liked saying "hi" to the birds, dogs, and other people. Hope you're all enjoying the spring weather too!!!

Caroline's First Sentence

Last week Caroline officially said her first sentence.

"Take this."

She says this a lot. Most often when she's in her high chair, but also other times when she's done with something. When she's in her high chair, the trick is to take what she's offering you before she loses patience and throws it on the floor. When she's done eating, she'll gather up all of the tid bits that are left on her tray, and hold out the handful of goodies and say 'take this'. If you miss the window of opportunity, she opens her hand and lets gravity do the work for her.

I find it to be fairly amusing. She's very tidy about her tray.

She has started mimicking us a lot too. Greg and I were filling out our ballots for our local election the other day and she watched Greg lick the envelope and seal it. I was holding her and had my sealed envelope in my hand, and she grabbed it and licked it right over the address.

It's definitely time to be careful about what we say and do.

Caroline's Quick Getaway

Caroline had her 15 month appointment on Friday. As expected, there was a lot of screaming and crying. Not very fun for anyone. But....she's doing great and that's the important part. For those interested in her stats, she weighed in at 19 lbs 5 oz (5th percentile) and about 30" long (45th percentile). She got three shots and they checked her hemoglobin - the results for that were exactly where they should be. So all of that is good.

As anyone with little ones knows, the kid is only in a diaper for the majority of the check up. After the doctor had left, the nurse returned with the needles. I had put Caroline's pants, socks and shoes back on her so that all we had to do was put on her shirt and coat before we left. I had also brought her in the umbrella stroller which was sitting next to us with the diaper bag and blanket on it. After getting the shots the nurse left the room, I put on Caroline's shirt and coat, and she literally hopped off my lap and started throwing the things off of the stroller seat. She was saying to me "go! go!" It was hilarious actually. She wanted out of there, and she wanted out of there NOW! When I set her in the stroller she even started to try to buckle herself in. And she continued to say "go" just to make sure I hadn't forgotten. Poor girl. Anyway, we left promptly (after making the dreaded next appointment and picking out three cool stickers - one for each shot) and I thought she deserved a treat after that. And so did I. :-) So we went to Starbucks and she had some pumpkin bread while I had a coffee. And all was well in the world again.

She's saying a lot more words. And she's having fun playing outside. We learned how to go down the slide at the park recently, and we're going to do that again this afternoon when she wakes up from her nap. She's got six teeth right now, but I see about four more coming. Two more on the front top, and two top molars. Those might be the reason for her fussiness lately. Her separation anxiety has kicked in lately though too. There is usually quite a bit of crying when I drop her off at school. But she gets over it pretty quickly. Though they tell me that whenever another parent comes to the door, Caroline gets kinda upset and says 'mama, mama'. But overall she's doing awesome!

On a side note, Congrats to our friends Maia and Rich who had their second baby on Wednesday morning! Little Evan might be the fastest birth ever - 39 minutes from start to finish is how we've heard the story. They just barely made it to the hospital in time. Yikes. We're sure that Lainey will be a great big-sister too!

So here are some pictures. Can't have a blog post without pictures. These next few are ones from Greg's parent's camera when we were out visiting. Some are a little fuzzy, but they're funny just the same.

Here she is, leading the charge! See that little finger pointing in the air? Onward, ho!

Chasing bubbles

Being silly

Saying "cheese" with Grammy

She insisted on wearing her new sunhat and coat inside...and she's waving hello.

Trying on mommy's shoes...it was hard to get a picture of this but it was pretty funny.

Eating spaghetti. Super messy.

Caroline Heads West

Caroline recently took a voyage to California to meet some of Greg's relatives. Here she is - preparing for the flight. Luckily for us, our pilot was never face-down on the ground behind our plane. Well, at least not that we saw.


She did well at the airport and on the flight. Then we got to grammy and grandpa's house. She did really well there too, except that her sleeping could have been better. But she had a great time with her grandparents, and meeting loads of other relatives every day. She squealed at grammy's cat through the windows and got to run around in the backyard. She had fun walking around, chasing bubbles, and kicking the ball.










We had an early morning flight to come home, and here Caroline is checking out the big fake sequoias that they have in the Fresno Yosemite airport. This was a new addition since we had been there last. Mom and Dad had some Starbucks, and Caroline had a banana and milk.








Asleep on the last half of the flight. And it's a good thing too, because it was really turbulent as we were descending over the mountains into Denver. It's usually pretty bumpy, and so it was just as well that Caroline was asleep for that part. Just in case!



That's all of the pictures I had from our trip. So here is a mix of other random pictures from the past month or so.








We call her Popeye when she sticks her pacifier out of the side of her mouth like that.






Last weekend it was nice out and we went over to our park and played a bit. She's still trying to get the hang of the shovel. Yesterday it was very nice again and we took Caroline back to the park. This time we taught her how to go down the kiddie slides. She loved it. She kept saying "up, up" (put her back up on the top) and "more"!






This last picture is of her asking me "please" can she have more chocolate? Notice that little brown line of chocolate under her lip.


Caroline and I went to the zoo last week because it was so nice. She had a good time. Besides looking at the animals, we rode the train and the carousel. We look forward to more fun trips to the zoo. Spring is here, and I'm so glad! Our first music class also ended, but the next one starts in 2 weeks. So that'll be fun too.
In daycare news, Caroline is scheduled to move to the toddler room in May. She's ready to go now, but they have to have a spot open up first. So for now she's teaching the smaller babies all of the tricks of the infant room and getting ready to join her friends in toddlers! And speaking of toddlers, Caroline's little friend, Natalie, is turning 2 tomorrow and so we're looking forward to her birthday party. Lots of fun things going on right now.
Stay tuned for a post in the next week or so with Caroline's stats from her 15-month appointment that she has coming up this Friday. I am NOT looking forward to that! Oh, the screaming...