23 months!

Pictures from the last two weeks.

Beginning right where we left off... here is our big girl in her toddler bed, napping after the trip to the zoo!


Caroline may look a lot like her Uncle Daniel, but she just might have her Aunt Katherine's flair for style. She picks her outfits most days. Get a load of this one she put together one Sunday when I was preaching out of town and she and daddy were getting ready to go to our church. She insisted on the converse with the dress! It kind of works...



Caroline's favorite color is most definitely purple. If I ask her what she wants to wear without giving her concrete options she always says "a purple dress." She'll often dig around in her drawers and pull out different shades of purple and ask to wear them together. Such may have been the case on this day. She was definitely grooving on this outfit!



We had a surprise visit from a couple that I knew decades ago. My mom used to provide childcare for their oldest daughter who is my sister's age. C got to wear a purple dress this night! Thanks for dinner, Sue and Chuck! Great to see you!



Last weekend we headed to Georgia for the American Academy of Religion. We left Thursday night so we could see our friend Julie on our way to Atlanta. This turned out to be a great plan because I needed to draft a paper and Julie was happy to play with Kevin and C while I stayed back in her lovely home to write. Julie and I went for a walk in this park Friday morning, then the three of them returned while I settled in to write. Clearly C had a blast. This first shot catches the posture she assumes when she's asking "Where it go?" or sometimes "I don't know." C might have been a little precautious around the ducks outside Matt and Jenn's apartment, but not so in this park, apparently. She was running right up to them. She continues to appear to be generally fearless.









Thanks again for your hospitality, Julie! The white chili was FABULOUS! And from there we went to Caroline's godfamily's house where she set to playing with her Godsister Abby immediately- or, at least with her Godsister's Abby's fabulous toys.


While mommy was busy AARing and paper drafting, Caroline and Abby tried on their matching halloween costumes for the first time. They were twin pumpkin fairies! Great handmade costumes purchased off of Etsy- Caroline picked them out! Abby was not so into the wings, and only occasionally open to the head band. C loved it all. She called her wings her "buhfly" And wanted to wear the costume as much as possible.












Kev couldn't find where I had stashed the shoes we brought for her to wear with the costume so pink converse it was! Kev, Katie, Caroline, and Abby went to the zoo boo at "Abby's zoo" (so dubbed by Caroline without any prompting from anyone else!) It looks like they had a blast and I hear that they got plenty of compliments.









Two wiped out pumpkin fairies.



The 30th was Abby's grandma's birthday so they made a birthday sign and Caroline and Abby put on a little show. Some moments from that fun are captured below.






On halloween proper Katie and I took our fairies to a festival at a church not too far away. They were pretty cranky on our way out the door. Though I don't usually appease with sugar (occasionally, but not customarily) it was halloween so I grabbed a mini-chocolate bar and broke it into small pieces for the girls. It seems that Abby had never had straight up chocolate before. While C popped hers quickly into her mouth and then asked for more, Abby lingered over hers and got it EVERYWHERE. Oh well... twas halloween afterall!



The festival was pretty great (except for an obnoxiously loud youth band playing mediocre Christian rock). When we arrived Caroline saw a large, inflatable slide and recognized its inflation as similar to the bounce house she enjoyed so much a few weeks ago. She saw it as we walked up and said "I NEED TO JUMP!" And then she jumped in place! Fortunately the festival had bounce houses, and these were not time limited at all. C made a bee line for it, pulled off her shoes, and hopped inside. Abby was a bit more reticent, sticking close to mom, overwhelmed by the noise at first. Great photo opps of Abby while C bounced away.





I checked in periodically and kept finding C bouncing away. But one time I checked and she wasn't there. I asked the attendant if she saw a pumpkin fairy get out and she said "Yes." And I said "Well, where is she?" She shrugged. I panicked for only a brief moment and then turned my eyes to the toddler play area and saw her flitting about. Abby soon joined her there.




There were a few little slide in the toddler area that Caroline went down repeatedly.



But after the fifth or sixth time she had had enough of this kiddy business, apparently. She set her sides on the big, inflatable slide (that I am sure she would not have been allowed to go down) and took off running at quite a clip across the field, in stocking feet!





Eventually I got her turned around and she headed right back to the bounce house where I managed to get some pics of her ecstatic bouncing. We have a sweet video of her bouncing. Perhaps I'll post that later.




Other random pics of the pumpkin fairies before they were renamed...




The church had a costume contest. We decided to go in for the infant to preschool award time... why not? But it didn't seem like anything was going on... we didn't know where the judges were... the girls were getting antsy and cranky again. The finally started announcing winners and Caroline yelled out "POO! POTTY!" So... out we went. We never told anyone their names and winners were being announced by name so we figured they weren't in the running. It was a gigundo church so the bathrooms were a little ways away. We planted ourselves in the hallway by the bathrooms and dealt with cranky toddlers and prepared to go home. A woman came out with her kids a bit later and said "It's the butterfly babies! They won the prize!" I went back in to check and indeed they did! They were mistaken for twins and renamed the butterfly babies. Caroline picked a great costume, eh?




Just two more...

the girls in the bath together


and right before we left they insisted on putting their tutus over their outfits for the day... C wore hers almost all the way home.


Our 23 month old got her bangs trimmed today and did beautifully! No pics from today to post... but the last several are VERY recent.

Perhaps more text updates later!