January 2009

Caroline is still learning to feed herself. This is how it usually ends - and then straight to the bath.

Caroline loves for us to read to her. We read several books a day. On this day, she decided to read a book to her baby.

She loves to "help" daddy on the laptop. She always does things to the computer that require a "help" search on the computer for daddy to figure out how to change it back to normal. It's amazing how many buttons she can push at one time.

She also loves to work on her own laptop. She got it for Christmas, and she still plays with it everyday!

Miscellaneous

Here are a couple of pictures that I thought were cute.

As you can see, Caroline loves the camera. She probably thinks it is part of everyday life because she has seen it so much. I'm really surprised camera or smile or picture was not her first word.

This was one of those nights that began with a struggle to get her to eat anything. In my frustration, I put the food in front of her, gave her a spoon and let her eat. I'm not sure she actually got any to her mouth with her spoon (her hands were a different story), but it allowed me the opportunity to get her to eat almost the entire thing because she was so distracted spooning food onto her tray/floor/clothes. She had a really good time until I had to dry her off after her bath.

Christmas Day Excitement

On Christmas Day, we planned to be at my parents (where Santa brought her presents) at 8:00a. We had 3 stops that day so we didn't want to get too late a start but also didn't want to get up at the crack of dawn. Caroline was SO excited Santa came to see her that she slept until 9:30a - this from a child who normally wakes up no later than 7:00a. However, Cal and I were both able to get completely ready, load the SUV, and still have 2 hours to wait until she finally woke up. The whole day began 2 hours behind!!

At my parents, we started with Santa gifts which are not wrapped (a Renegar family tradition).

One of the presents we got her was a Sit & Spin Zebra. We told her it was a toy for her to sit on, so she climbed up on the box and sat on it.

Our next stop was Shelbyville to have Christmas with my father-in-law's family. At this point Caroline started losing interest in unwrapping presents, so she mostly played with toys we unwrapped.


The last stop was my dad's family in Nashville. We didn't arrive there until dinner time, but Caroline was a trooper and lasted until after she would normally go to bed. Since she went to bed so late that night and didn't get a great nap that day, she again slept late. This continued for a couple weeks, but we are now back on schedule.

Christmas Eve & Chicken Dance Elmo

On Christmas Eve, we went to Cool Springs to have Christmas with my mother-in-law's family at her niece's house. The first thing Caroline did when she arrived was check out their dog (Nelson), since she absolutely loves dogs! Nelson also did some checking out of his own, but Caroline didn't mind too much.

Caroline has unfortunately gotten to the stage where she constantly pulls her bow out unless she is completely distracted - even then she will eventually pull it out. Cal happened to be closest to her when she pulled it out , so he decided it could serve a different purpose - a bow tie for his polo shirt. All he needed were wire-rim glasses to complete the look. It did look festive though!

I think for the adults the entertainment was provided by Caroline's reaction to Chicken Dance Elmo. She had previously played with a similar one at a friend's house and thought he was funny; however, that was not quite the reaction we got. When Chicken Dance Elmo started "dancing" toward Caroline, she moved quicker than I have ever seen her move. Grammie was closest, so she jetted toward her to be "saved." Once Elmo came too close, Caroline picked him up and basically threw him at me. Kids are so funny though, because she kept wanting me to start him up but then she would throw him back. To this day, they still have a love-hate relationship.

Caroline really enjoyed unwrapping presents. We were surprised that she would actually rip the paper to see what was inside. I guess any time you have permission to rip paper at her age you can't pass that up.

Her aunt Deborah gave her a laptop - her first one but I'm sure not her last (she'll probably be required to have one for kindergarten). I think this was one of her favorite Christmas gifts. As you can see, she was typing away before it was even out of the box.

This is how Caroline and Nelson ended their night. Caroline had a wonderful time playing with him - I just hope he's recovered.

The Friday After Thanksgiving

The day after Thanksgiving we went to my parents' house. Caroline loves to go outside when she is over there to chase the cat, but she also enjoyed playing in the leaves this particular day. She's never seen this many leaves since we don't have any trees in front of our house. When she saw her daddy come outside, she couldn't get there fast enough.

It was also the first time she rode in a Radio Flyer! She really knows how to ride in style.

As you can see here, she was getting a little more adventurous, so my mom had to grab hold. She still doesn't realize that you can't just jump off something.

After all the excitement outside, we put the Christmas tree up. We actually put our tree up at their house, because I didn't want to spend every minute of everyday being the Christmas tree police.

I think Cal just went along at first because I felt strongly about it. HOWEVER, after a couple minutes of telling Caroline "No, don't touch the ornaments!" (or some variation of that), I think he realized how right I was! Hopefully next year, we will have our tree in a much larger new house! I'll post info and pictures of it if we EVER get a contract signed. But that's a post for another day.

Thanksgiving

I'll try not to go so long between posts next time! With the holidays (not to mention the food poisoning Cal and I got the Friday after Christmas), I just couldn't find the time or energy to look through - literally - a couple thousand pictures. I plan to catch up soon.

For the first time since Cal and I started dating in 1997, we had a very quiet Thanksgiving. We went to Cal's parents and had lunch with his granny and two of his aunts (on his dad's side). The aunts gave Caroline a mouse that recites the Night Before Christmas. Caroline really wasn't sure what to think about it at first, but now she loves it! It makes this funny/annoying laugh before it starts speaking, and Caroline turns it on and off OVER AND OVER AND OVER to hear the laugh - it hardly ever gets past the laugh.


Caroline loves playing with/trying to eat the magnets off the frig. She was pretending to give them away but would pull them back before anyone could touch them (which she thinks is the funniest thing). Cal calls her an Indian giver because she does that to him all the time.


Caroline thought Thanksgiving lunch was okay. She ate some turkey, but for some reason she has not grown to love mashed potatoes like every true Southerner - playing with "big people" spoons was much more entertaining.

She looked very stylish in her great-granny's Thanksgiving vest. I don't think you would confuse which holiday she was dressed for in this outfit.