Thursday, April 8, 2010

Happy Blogiversary!

I am up in the wee hours as I was struck with some sort of gastro bug in the wee hours of yesterday morning and spent all day in bed which meant that when I woke up at 3:30 a.m., feeling quite a bit better than I felt at any point yesterday, I wasn't able to go right back to sleep. I had yet to write the assignment for my Thursday class (because I wasn't able to do anything substantial yesterday) and so I took a stab at that. I have a draft now... that's all it might be this week. And that's o.k. with me. As I put the header on it and checked the calendar on my computer for the proper date, I thought "Hey, Aprl 8th sounds familiar and significant, why is that?" I thought for a minute and realized that that was the day, 2 years ago, that we found out we were pregnant! How ironic that I've spent the last 24 hours puking! (And no, I'm not pregnant again. This is way nastier than pregnancy!) This also means that this marks the two year anniversary of the birth of this blog!

Check out that first post if you have a moment...

Monday, April 5, 2010

16 months!

Well, folks this is likely to be a pic heavy, text light update! Crunch time in the semester... I'll be lucky to get up all the pics I want to before crashing tonight!

Here's our sweet girl today! She's wearing the dress I wore my second Easter! So sweet! We had a fairly fruitless photo shoot this morning. Please forgive the blurry pics; they were among the best. Oh and the brown drool... yes... i bribed her with a chocolate chip!






So, with it being March we decided there was no better time in which to put the adorable S.U. outfit that Uncle Dan picked out for Caroline to use. We tried to make sure she wore it every time Syracuse played. The first two times she wore it they lost (after having won all their previous games!) We began to think she was their bad luck charm. But... when they lost in the tournament... we forgot to put her in it that day so blame Butler, not Caroline. Here are several in the S.U. outfit with particularly crazy hair!






And here are two in the glider in her room. She loves climbing up onto this all by herself and rocking away! She demonstrated these mad skills for Aunt Katherine via skype last night.




Unfortunately we're getting lazier about the picture taking. We took a trip to Atlanta for Kev's birthday and Caroline had lots of time with her Godsister Abby and favorite dog Lulu. But we apparently took hardly any pictures. Here's one so-so one of Abby in the crib, and C outside of it. Btw, Abby just turned one yesterday. HAPPY BIRTHDAY, ABBY!



And here are some pics to illustrate the apple story told below. These were taken the night she decided she'd rather eat the whole apple. The last one shows what was left of the apple when she had had enough (before we came back in the midst of prayers!)







We had a wonderful visit from Pa and Eepa (the weekend after my first whole weekend away from Caroline! She did great with that! And I did pretty well too! And despite picking up a stomach bug, while on solo duty Kev did great as well!) this past month as well. Unfortunately we took hardly any pics... Here's the only pic with both of them in it.



C had a great time with coloring with Pa and Eepa while sitting in mom's fun office chair!






And, of course, despite the fact that C loves the rocking horse lovingly passed on by Pa and Eepa (it was Pa's horse!) she wasn't too interested in it while they were here... though eventually she did ride a bit.




A week ago today it was SUCH a lovely spring night that we took a family walk after dinner. C rode in the ergo on my back for the first time ever and wore the bonnet I wore as a wee one!



And here's where Caroline spent most of the Easter service... out on the church lawn... she discovered early in the service that the doors to the outside were open... and that's exactly where she wanted to be. Who could blame her. 80 degrees, light breeze... she loved sitting under an oak tree playing with acorns and trying to pick pansies (yes, I stopped her!) Kev and I took turns with her outside. Fortunately, she was intrigued when the drumming started and we went in to check it out because he had a solo! He did a great job! I couldn't get her to look at the camera, but the lighting was gorgeous and I couldn't pick just one...







We went to Sam and Matt's house for Easter dinner. Fiona was very happy to see Caroline and happy to be held by Kev, her Monday caregiver! Isn't he just a natural with two babes on the hip? Fiona was nice enough to share a bow with Caroline. We seriously need to get some of our own. This one actually worked on C's slippery hair!







So... we had an Easter egg hunt at Sam and Matt's. Kev and I filled the eggs and brought them with us. Matt and Kev "hid" the eggs. I was wondering how we would communicate to Caroline what she was supposed to do... but she saw us fill the eggs, so the moment she found one she sat down, opened it up, and started eating (she was a bit hungry! and she certainly has a sweet tooth!) It was tremendously challenging to get her interested in looking for any other eggs. But we did manage to nudge her into hunting a bit, or at least to pick up the ones we pointed out!

Here she is with that first egg!

And here are some other sweet moments.






So... other updates?

At her 15 month check up she was 23 pounds, 6 oz, up to the 56th percentile for weight, highest she's been yet! She was 31.5 inches, 78th percentile for height. And her head circumference was 48.5 cm, 97th percentile!!! She seems to have grown at least an inch in the last few weeks... everyone gasps when they see her if they haven't seen her in a while. "She's SO big. She's a girl!" Yup! She sure is.

All sorts of exciting communication developments... such a delightful stage. She is addicted to her "baby signing time" d.v.d.. She asks to watch it far more frequently than we let her. But... it is nice that she likes it so much. She seems to pick up something new every time she watches it. She has a sign for bird now- she does it backwards though! It's so cute. She also signs for cracker and says cracker- not that we eat a lot of crackers here! And she has so many other signs and words.

That's all I can think of for now... Good night all!