Touch-A-Truck

We went to Touch-a-Truck on Saturday. Touch-a-Truck is an event with construction equipment and emergency vehicles where kids can explore all the equipment and "drive" most of it. Caroline loved it!! Our little girl LOVES construction equipment. Every time we go somewhere we have to look for equipment - dump trucks, cement mixers, tractors, etc.

They gave the kids hard hats.

Caroline is driving the dump truck.

We're in the back of a FedEx tractor trailer complete with a roller conveyor belt.

She's checking out the ambulance.

Sitting in the Franklin trolley car.

All the kids loved walking/running on this truck. Caroline was being very cautious and wouldn't let go of my hand.

The school bus was one of her favorites. We sometimes get to see a school bus in our neighborhood and the bus driver honks the horn and waves to Caroline, so she was very excited to see the bus up close and sit on the seats.

Caroline is the tiny speck in white standing in front of the back right tire.

I think the favorite piece of equipment of the day was the garbage truck because they were doing demonstrations. I have never seen a garbage truck arm as fast as that one.

After the demonstration, she wanted to sit in the seat and drive the garbage truck. We all had a lot of fun and look forward to the next one - hopefully it will be warmer. Caroline couldn't settle down for her nap 3 hours later because she was so excited - it took her over an hour to finally fall asleep. For those of you with kids, I would definitely recommend this (it's free).

Boring

The title doesn't mean this post is going to be boring (I'm sure it will be the highlight of your weekend) - only that we've been boring the last few weeks. Don't worry though, we've got something scheduled every Saturday for the next 5 -6 weeks so I don't think I'll have any trouble finding material to update the blog. I plan to update it every Monday.

For the past couple of weeks, Caroline has started talking exclusively in sentences. It makes my life so much easier, because she can tell me exactly what she wants/needs or if she doesn't like something, she'll say "I no like that." We will have to work on wants and needs though because she will sometimes tell us "I need some ice cream."

Speaking of sentences, I was rocking Caroline before her nap today, and she started rubbing/playing with my neck. Then, she started pinching my neck like she was trying to get some of it to come off, so I told her not to pinch. This was her reply - "Mommy, have a little piece of your neck."

Cal asked her to smile and this is what we got. I think we're in trouble for pictures next Saturday at the pumpkin patch!

Getting a precious hug from Caroline - she hardly gives them anymore so it's an honor when you do get one.

Daddy and Caroline playing after a hard day's work for daddy. Caroline is always so excited to see daddy come home. This is the smile we need for our pictures.

How do you eat a PB&J?

For the past few months Caroline has not eaten a sandwich if it has a top on it - I guess she wants to see what she is eating. More recently, she has decided she only wants the jelly on a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, so she takes her finger and scraps the jelly off the peanut butter and eats it.

Last week, she decided to try a different method - a spoon.

I actually prefer this method too because she gets some peanut butter and it is definitely less messy.

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.