Hello world! I'm back for what seems to be my once a month blog post. I said I was going to be better didn't I? Well, apparently I lied. Life has been a bit on the crazy side. No big momentous events to report, just lots of crazy little here and theres. And keeping up with my crazy Caroline. Which brings me to:
Caroline is 15 months old! Since she turned 1, I have almost stopped keeping track of the "months" and I always have to think about her technical age when people ask me. Obviously, I am not doing the monthly milestone pictures/reports, so I decided to do it every 3 months. So here we go.
Where to begin??? Caroline has changed SO much in the past 3 months. For starters, she is climbing on EVERYTHING. She has figured out how to get on every piece of furniture in the house. I walked into her room the other day to catch her standing on the arm of the rocker, holding onto the crib, with one leg on the rail of the crib ready to make a leap for it. She hasn't climbed out of her crib yet, but I have caught her trying. I'm already shopping for big girl beds.
We had the little shrimp's 15 month well visit on Monday. Good news is, she is in fact growing. At her 12 month appointment, she weighed 18 lbs 15.5 oz and was 30 1/4 in long. At 15 months, she is 20 lbs 9 oz and is 31 3/4 in tall. That means she grew an inch and a half in 3 months. Didn't gain a ton of weight, but hey, at least she finally hit the 20 pound mark. Overall though, she is perfectly healthy, so I couldn't ask for anything more.
Caroline is finally coming around to eating again. We had been in a long, horrible stretch of food strikes. She had become a little picky, but her biggest problem was just sitting still long enough to eat. For awhile it was an absolute battle just to get her in her high chair. The girl does not like to sit still and definitely does NOT like anything which constricts her movement in even the tiniest way (including her pool floatie). But, I am happy to say that in the last 10 days or so, she has actually been eating quite a bit and is eating just about anything I give her. I'm fairly certain that she is in the middle of a growth spurt which probably accounts for her bigger appetite, but I'll take whatever I can get. Dinner no longer ends in tears (mine included), so that's a positive thing.
Like I said, climbing on everything. This is her new favorite spot to sit and watch Elmo. I love how tiny she looks in the middle of the couch.
And climbing again... The water table was fun for about 2.5 seconds.
This girl loves grits. She is definitely a little Southern girl ;)
Hanging out with Daddy in his Father's Day present. There for awhile, Caroline went through this really weird phase of not wanting much to do with Steven. He was devastated to say the least. Fortunately, she has gotten over that and she is Daddy's little buddy. She gets SOOOOO excited when he comes home from work and she loves crawling on our bed in the morning to wake him up (something totally cute and adorable that I have yet to experience myself.... hint hint Darling Husband....) Of course Steven is elated to be in her favor again, but I think I am even more ecstatic because I can get 5 minutes to catch my breath after Steven gets home.
With a big pool and her own personal kiddie pool, she decides the dog bowl is a better place to cool off. Go figure.
Gone are the days of peace and quiet in our house. Instead, it is filled with constant jabber, shrieks, and giggles. Caroline is really trying to talk now, and she is actually saying a few things. Of course she says the standard "Mama", "Dada", but she has also started saying "Ni Ni" which equals "Night Night". Even though half of the time she is not actually making words, I still know exactly what she is saying because I can tell the difference between her sounds. She has gotten very good at saying "Thank you", even if it is just "Thaaaayyy". Manners are uber important, so I'll take it. She can say "cat", but only about every third or fourth time. She has just started trying to say "Elmo", which is surprising that it has taken this long because he is the Justin Beiber of her world. So for now Elmo is "Mo". One weird word that she picked up with no trouble was "hot". It is probably because we use that word so often here in death-hell-heater-box Texas.
Caroline is all about animals. She flips out when she sees any kind of animal and her favorite books are the ones with animals. Whenever she sees a horse, she says "Nay nay", a cow "ma ma", and "ba ba" for a chicken. She was doing "bah" for a sheep, but now we can't get it out of her. Horses are definitely her favorite though. I will hear her saying "Nay nay nay" and find her looking at a picture of a horse in one of her books.
First pony tail. A bit of a mullet tail, but a little business in the front and party in the back never hurt any one.
Caroline looks more and more like a little girl every day. I know that this is just what happens, but it is so crazy to see her go from a baby to this crazy little person right before my eyes.
My Sweet Caroline has become such a ham. She is so happy and friendly. This little girl has never met a stranger and she can get even the grumpiest old man in the grocery store to smile. She loves going places and seeing new things and new people.
Eating like a heavy weight.
While she might not be saying much, I know that Caroline understands A LOT of what I am saying. I can tell her to do certain things, find certain things, or go to a certain place and she actually responds. It is amazing. Yes, I realize that eventually, this is what children do, but as a mother, you begin to feel like you will literally be doing ev-er-y-thing for them for the rest of their lives, so when the little boogers start to show some independence, you feel the need to do a victory dance. Don't get me wrong, the baby phase was sweet, but I think I am just more well-suited for this phase and up. I like that we can actually interact together and it is not so one-sided. I almost wish that I could freeze time because every smile, laugh, hug, shoulder pat, and kiss is so genuine and it absolutely melts my heart. As a mom, that is the best kind of reinforcement there is. Ok, enough with the cheese. You all knew it wouldn't last for long. Toodles.
Looking at the Chimps at the zoo. It was fairly warm, so the animals were pretty lazy, but Caroline still had a blast.
This gorilla was sitting by the glass partition, so Caroline could get up close to him. She got so tickled by him and he just kept staring at her. In the bottom right pic, she is "loving" the him (this was before the gorilla started picking his nose and eating it).
Checking out the animals with Daddy
The giraffes were behind this pond, but Caroline could have cared less because there were ducks in the pond. She LOVES ducks.
Having fun!
I think this was probably one of Caroline's favorite things. We ate lunch at one of the places near the reptile house. The dining area had a huge tank with crocodiles, turtles, and other creatures in it. Caroline could not get enough of it. She and Grandma Daisy looked at the turtles for a long time.
Reading up on the animals!
We tried to get pics all together, but these were the best we could manage. I love Jimbo's face-he looks so surprised!
Caroline probably got the most excited for these little mountain goats. They came running down the hill and she got so excited. Probably the biggest reaction of the day.
Checking out some birds with Daddy
Looking at the parrots with Grandma Daisy
Caroline loved the petting zoo. Sure, looking at animals is fun, but touching them is SO much better!
We like to never got Caroline away from the water tower. She loves having water dumped on her head- definitely didn't get that from me.
We had such a great time at the zoo. It was so nice to have my mom and Jim with us too. Caroline was so worn out when we left that she was asleep before we even left the parking lot. All in all, it was a successful day!
Getting a push from Daddy
Caroline is a big fan of bubbles. But I think what actually intrigues her is watching Fred run and around eating the bubbles. Yes, we are a special family.
This was the invitation for her party. I decided to go with a St. Patrick's Day theme because, duh, she was born on St. Patrick's Day. And I figured this would probably be one of the only years that I could get away with doing my theme of choice (I have a slight hunch that next year will involve Elmo... Just a hunch). I took the picture of her and just ordered the invitation online. But, of course, I had to find some way of complicating things, so I cut out teeny-tiny little clovers and glued them and the ribbon on the invitation (because I clearly don't appreciate sleep).
