A (Text) Week in Review

Daddy Kev here with highlights from the past week.

Monday evening saw Caroline taking in a worship service at Vanderbilt. An event co-sponsored by the local American Guild of Organists (as a kick-off event for their new year) and the Vanderbilt Divinity School, it was a service featuring lots of great music (choral, organ, and brass) and the Rev. Dr. Don Saliers as homilist. Caroline loved the music, looking up to where the choir was each time they started singing and joyfully waving her arms along with the peppier musical pieces. Before the service, Don Saliers let Sarah know to just let Caroline start crawling around if his part of the service started getting too boring, but we didn't need to let that happen.

Over the course of the week, Caroline has been sleeping for longer and longer stretches, both in her crib and through the night. There have been a couple of mornings where we've been able to start our days and let her keep sleeping!

On the down side, we did make a trip to the pediatrician for a mild case of thrush (yeast/rash). We got a LOT of very good and very helpful advice from a LOT of people (thank you, all!) before the visit, and we felt very good about the doc's approach to and treatment of the situation. The rash has already cleared up quite a bit.

Caroline received a children's book from Great-Grandma Fontaine (who will, at her request, be officially referred to as "GG" from now on). The book was written by the son of one of the people who works where GG lives. A cute story about a bee looking for his bzzz, it is a great addition to the wonderfully varied library Caroline is amassing.

Caroline is doing a lot more close imitating of the sounds she hears, even seeming to echo words that haven't just been spoken. She also continues to explore further her world, actively looking out the back windows and intently watching the back yard, trying to peek over more and more ledges and low surfaces, and rooting through boxes and baskets with more organized intent. She's also discovered that she can control when music plays on one of her crib mobile bases via the buttons on it. She is very pleased with herself each time she does it, and quite justifiably so!

She's also learning to throw things. At first, she'd grab and hold on to something (usually a ball) and wave it up and down repeatedly until finally letting it go. But she's developing her technique, and tonight she was tossing some rings and being pretty consistent about tossing them away from her.

And she's up to almost three full seconds and standing on her own. No walking yet, but it looked like she almost tried to take a step while standing once tonight.

And we'll post a picture this weekend with another of her developments from this week. So do check back in soon!