Planting Flowers

My parents brought us some beautiful mums for our front landscaping which definitely needs some help - the builder picked all the landscaping before we purchased the house. We decided the mums would look better in pots on the porch, so we all went to Home Depot and bought some pots Cal and I had seen the day before. Caroline is always such a big help. Surprisingly, she kept all the dirt in the pot.

The finished product - it really adds some color.

We also bought a grill Labor Day weekend for Cal's Father's Day from last year (2008). I'm not sure what took us so long. For our first meal, we had hamburgers and grilled corn. I really like the easy clean up when you use a grill!

That same night we gave Caroline a tricycle (with a parent push handle) that I bought at a consignment sale for $4. She loves it! We'll probably upgrade it for her birthday or Christmas, but for $4 we can live with how ugly it looks for a few months.

Caroline hanging out on her Elmo potty. She loves to sit on it - usually with her diaper on - but she does actually use it for the intended purpose once in a while.

Lazy Days at Home

It took us a little while to figure out what Caroline was doing here. She started saying "daddy's car," and we realized this was her car and she is driving her animals around. She drives different animals or baby dolls around - I guess it depends on where she is going that day.

She's enjoying a favorite snack - mott's country berry applesauce. She has to do everything herself. We hear "I do it," "I got it," etc. all the time.

Daddy and Caroline dancing in the destroyed living room. Since we have a playroom upstairs, I naively thought our downstairs would be fairly toy free, but Caroline had other plans. She wants to stay downstairs a lot - I think it's because downstairs she can run circles and circles and circles...

Caroline is planning her escape. I put the drinks there to take out to the garage. I guess we're going to have to put the door knob covers on our outside doors, so she really doesn't escape.

She especially enjoyed playing with the dead bolt - it makes more noise than the knob lock.

Cooking with Caroline

Caroline is cooking one of her favorite meals - scrambled eggs. Look at the eggs go! After a couple of minutes she started making a mess, so we had to take the whisk from her which didn't go well. The next time we fixed eggs I gave her a plastic container with water and a smaller whisk so she could get as messy as she wanted. It was a hit!

Outdoor Fun

Caroline is fascinated by lawn mowers so I decided she needed her own. It is supposed to blow bubbles - that part doesn't work quite right - but she doesn't seem to mind. She starts it up and off she goes.

She needed to work on it. As you can see, the bubble solution spills out every time you look under the "hood."

We finally got a chance to swim at my parent's pool since it was put back together after the tornado. We thought Caroline's reactions to sunscreen application were particularly cute.

Here she's cruising around with grandpa.

We were enjoying a really nice evening outside with daddy, grammie and ger. We're not sure what she was doing here.

Caroline was standing on the sidewalk saying, "three, one, two, blastoff!" She'd stand up and squat down while she was counting, then when she got to blastoff she would run and hug my legs. She did this over and over. It's amazing how much energy she has.

I was swinging her between my legs until she started holding her legs out to the side - and then she didn't fit so well.

Playing in the Dirt

A couple of Saturdays ago, we decided to go to Edwin Warner Park and play in the dirt piles. Caroline wanted daddy to put her shoes on.

As soon as Caroline saw the slide, she climbed to the top of the dirt pile to slide down the longest slide she's probably ever seen. The only problem was the landing - she didn't like landing in the sand, so one time was enough.

When she first starting playing in the sand/dirt, she would hold up her hands and say, "clean it." I wasn't sure if she would get over her hands being dirty and actually play - but she did until she saw the...

WATER SPOUT!!! She stood there and washed the shovel and her hands over and over. It was definitely her favorite part!

She monitored everyone's usage of the water .

Like the energizer bunny, she keep washing and washing...

This was her "swimming pool." Thankfully she didn't plop down in the water like some of the other kids. I'm sure that will be a future blog. Stay tuned.

Little Red Wagon

We bought Caroline a red wagon so we could take her to the neighborhood pool and for walks. She loves her wagon! The stroller she once loved has been unused for months - big girls don't use those.

Mathmetician?

Today Caroline was lying in her crib before she fell asleep for her nap. She always talks constantly until she finally falls asleep. She started calling out for me and then saying, "couple of dollars" over and over. We don't know where she picked that up but it's funny. As I kept listening she started counting. Normally she will count 1,2,3 then jump to 8, 9, 10,11. This time she said 3, 4, 9, 10, 11, 12, 14, 15, pond. I'm not sure where pond fits it, but you can't expect perfection at 19 months. She just amazes us more and more with her memory and verbal skills. She can say rhinoceros perfectly and only has a little trouble with hippopotamus. We always wonder what she'll come up with next.