36 weeks!

Well... I wondered if this would be the first week I failed to post on a Friday. We were planning to go on a birthday hike and campout with Auntie Tish (birth blogger extraordinaire). We would need to leave early tomorrow morning, drive all morning to the site... hike all afternoon, hike back the next morning... drive all afternoon. We think Caroline would do great on such a trip. She LOVES being outdoors and being with people... BUT as you might tell from the verb tenses above... we're not going. We all had a terrible sleeping night last night- the worst in awhile. Kev ended up driving around with her for an hour at midnight. She had a rough day today- barely napped. We think she's working hard on some new teeth. The night before last wasn't great either. We were going to wait and see how tonight went before deciding whether or not to cancel our participation in this fun get-away, but we would have to do a lot of packing up tonight (some creativity required as our good framed backpack for hiking is in NY- loaned it to Aunt Katherine when she was helping us pack up to move and haven't been up there to get it since we moved) and we just. don't. have. the. energy. Well, Caroline seems to have all sorts of energy all of sudden, but mommy and daddy both feel like we could go to sleep right now and sleep for the next two days. So... we cancelled. Sigh. The good news is that I have time to blog. (Pics likely tomorrow... we'll see.) If you still check in here, Tish, know that we love you, we're so glad you were born, and we're so sorry to miss your great birthday plans!

Other than the sleeping issues, we've had a great week. Pa and Abuelita arrived Sunday night and blessed Caroline (and us) with lots of wonderful, undivided attention devoted to their beautiful granddaughter. She took wonderful walks that helped her get good naps in. And learned some new songs- B.I.N.G.O. (Pa and Abuelita discovered while watching her while mommy and daddy were at a film Tuesday afternoon that if they just kept singing she stayed happy... so they did!) Caroline has a new sort of chuckle that she does- interactive laughing. She gives a hearty "Huh!" with a smile and if we imitate her it mutates into more of a chuckle "Heh! Heh!" Back and forth, back and forth until we're really laughing! Pa and Abuelita were impressed by Caroline's babbling, long strings of syllables pouring from her mouth AND they felt that she did a lot of good mimicking of sounds. She really does seem to be taking huge leaps forward language wise. A little bit ago Kev came into the bedroom where I was trying to nurse her to sleep (though she was more interested in moving all over the bed!) and she sat up, lifted her hand, and said something that sounded for all the world like "Hi dada!" Who knows? But... sure sounded like it.

I forgot to mention last week that Caroline's screeching personality has reappeared. She has taken to screeching LOUDLY, not necessarily when mad or sad, sometimes just to express herself. It seems she sometimes screeches to let us know she wants more cheerios on her tray- she is going through cheerios like you wouldn't believe. The high, shrill pitch of her screech is NOT something that Kev is wanting to encourage. It is darn piercing.

She continues to be a super explorer, fascinated by the world around her... into EVERYTHING.

New foods this week- nectarines- loves them! blueberries- fresh from michigan- loved them! (so did we! thanks pa and eepa!) oatmeal- not sure what she thinks of that weird texture yet, but took it pretty well with a bit of applesauce added! oh... and spiced sweet potatoes from the calypso cafe... she wanted a piece of the action when we were out to dinner on Monday night and eepa, daddy, and mommy all had a side of these sweet potatoes, so we shared. And she gobbled them right down! We should have gotten her her own order! We bought some sweet potatoes at the farmer's market today and we'll be giving those a try at home again! We think that perhaps she just was put off by the new solid texture and didn't really dislike sweet potatoes when we first introduced them. Caroline also had a Las Paletas treat while her grandparents were here. Daddy got a particularly tasty avocado popsicle... who'd a thunk it? And she and I shared two different flavors- plum and watermelon!

Well, surely there was more this week... but we are too tired to remember now... so for now... lets call this post done. And perhaps tomorrow after sleeping WAY in... please, Caroline, please... we'll put up pics and elaborate.