Wednesday, August 01, 2007

Tuesday, July 31, 2007

point of comparison

As a point of comparison, Nathan didn't crawl until he was about 10 months.

(maybe in a week or two I will get back to "normal" blogging)

Monday, July 30, 2007

crawling achieved

Carline started crawling this weekend. She's not a speed demon yet, but she's definitely on the move. She's still working on moving her legs and her arms together, but she's moving! We're in trouble now!!!!

Friday, July 27, 2007

quick update

Caroline is moving all over the place these days. She's not actually crawling, but there is no keeping her on top of a quilt. She scoots pretty well. I don't think it will be long before she is all out crawling.

Tuesday, July 10, 2007

what insight

Our church has been without a pastor for 2.5 years. This coming Sunday, our prospective new pastor will be preaching and we will be voting on whether to "keep" him or not. Tonight I was explaining this to Nathan. I told him that most churches have a man that is in charge and that teaches the people about God and that man is called a "pastor" or "preacher." "Preacher," he said. I told him that for a long time our church had not had a preacher there all the time to teach us. To that, he responded "but God is there all the time and He can teach us." :) What insight! I told him that he was exactly right. The important thing is that God is with us. I'm a proud Mama!

another milestone met

This past weekend, I told at least three people that Caroline was working toward crawling but that she hadn't yet figured out how to get her belly up and her knees down at the same time. Well, Sunday afternoon, she pushed up on hands and knees. I guess she just wanted to show me that she COULD do it. :) She's done it quite a few times since. I managed to catch a picture just a little while ago.

Saturday, July 07, 2007

Caroline at Fripp

(don't miss Nathan at Fripp below)




Nathan at Fripp







Tuesday, July 03, 2007

Thursday, June 21, 2007

June pictures #3

Every time I get out my camera, Nathan wants to take pictures. He's getting pretty good at actually capturing what he wants in his picture. Here is a picture of Donald (that he took). This is his most recent train aquisition. He received it a few weeks back as a reward for staying dry 7 naps in a row. He is still doing very well with naps. Nights, on the other hand, are a little less successful. Matt has been getting him up in the vicinity of 6:00 a.m. and taking him (mostly asleep) to the bathroom. It seems to be working. He apparently goes sometime right before waking up otherwise. If he makes 7 nights in a row (yes, even with Matt's help), then he will get Donald's twin...Douglas.



Caroline likes playing with her big brother. He is quite interesting! This day, I had just finished feeding her and she laid back (headed upside-down) to watch him. She ended up looking at him under his "tent" and he liked that. So...she joined him. He liked having his little sister playing with him. I think she enjoyed it, too.



I think Caroline wants to be just like her cousin, Kate. She's been on her way to sitting up for a little while now, but she hasn't been steady enough to stay for any length of time. Well, after looking at Liz's blog this morning and seeing the picture of Kate sitting up, she decided to sit for a little while. Don't get me wrong, she's not going to be sitting for a long time, but she stayed long enough for me to snap off a few pictures.



...and then she rolled gracefully back onto her tummy. This is her prefered position as it allows her pretty good access to her toys. She has gotten really good at using her hands. She can scoop things and pull them to her. She can also grab on to the toys on the exersaucer and pull them to her mouth. If I remember correctly, it's a separate milestone when babies start using both hands simultaneously. Well, she's also doing that. She'll move both hands toward an object and grab on.



Nathan doesn't like to be left out of the picture taking, so he often jumps in when I'm taking pictures of Caroline. That's fine with me...I don't have to beg him to let me get pictures of the two of them. This isn't my most favorite picture, but you can really see the difference in their skin colors. Nathan's is like Matt's and is more yellow. Caroline ended up with very fair pinkish skin just like me...easy to burn. :(



Since Nathan was interested in taking pictures this morning (and because I often feel guilty for not taking more of him), we tried to capture some good ones this morning. This close-up shot is in the kitchen. I lightened it a little bit because the original may be just a little too dark for some of your monitors.



This one is a strange angle, but I thought it was interesting. Actually, the first couple like this were blurry, so we went back after looking at them and took more. This one is my favorite...at least for the moment.



Nathan wanted to play outside in his sandbox for a little while this morning so I thought I would try to get some more pictures. He was in full sun, so the pictures of all of him didn't make my favorites (though there were plenty that I liked). I did like this one, though. I love little feet!



And last but not least, here is my favorite of the bunch. I often have a hard time capturing a good smile. This one is at least close to natural. My favorite part, though, is the grass in his hands. When we went to take pictures of him laying down, he proceeded to pull up grass. He's a boy! Again, I also like to see his feet. (In case you're wondering, Matt hasn't been lax on cutting the grass...it's just that it didn't rain here for a while so the grass was all mostly dead. Now that it's finally rained, we've been letting the grass grow so that it will get back to looking decent.)



Ok. That's all for now. I hope that you have enjoyed the picture show. Since we are closing on the house tomorrow, things are about to get even more busy than they have been. I don't know if I'll do too much posting over the next month. I will at least try to get some beach pictures up, but otherwise, it may be August before much happens. We'll see. This is a sit and do something enjoyable outlet for me, so I might still be able to make time for it.

Thursday, June 14, 2007

the oatmeal did it

For those of you who aren't educated in baby poop, let me give you a quick lesson. :) When a baby is breastfed, the poop doesn't stink. It has a smell...but it doesn't stink. Once the baby begins to eat "real" food, all that changes. Today, Caroline had her first stinky poop. The oatmeal did it. We started rice cereal last week, but the rice didn't do it. We started oatmeal a couple of days ago...and the oatmeal did it. I know it will only get worse...

On a nicer note, we haven't give Caroline her medicine since last Friday. I don't know if the cereal had anything to do with it or if the medicine just wasn't doing much any more. Whatever the case, I'm glad that it seems that we're done with medicating her...at least every day.

Monday, June 11, 2007

June pictures #2

Ooh..la..la...a yummy French toy! Caroline is enjoying her "Sophie The Giraffe" that Aunt Erin brought her from France.


Just a smile...


This day, Nathan wanted to "read" to his sister. I hope he continues as he gets older!


Nathan and Daddy went swimming at Grandma and Granddad's pool for the first time of the summer. Hopefully, there will be many more of these adventures.


Here's Daddy helping him "swim."


We managed to convince Nathan to try to touch the bottom. Maybe by the end of the summer he'll be confident that he can do it.

Thursday, June 07, 2007

Photographer Nathan

(there are also two other posts from today below)

Nathan has decided that he likes to take pictures so I am trying to give him opportunities when he is interested. Mostly, I'm just trying to help him learn the idea of looking at the things that you want to have a picture of before pushing the button. Here are a few of his masterpieces. :) Oh yeah...the last one is supposed to be a picture of the rain.



June Pictures #1

Caroline has taken up the common baby activity of eating toys.


Here she is checking out just what that thing was that was just in her mouth.


I just thought this was a cute picture.


Here is Caroline "eating" her first rice cereal. It was pretty runny. As you can see, we had to use a bottle for mixing. The baby/kid bowls are still in the attic.


Her favorite activity these days is holding her feet. They are in her hands (and often in her mouth) all the time!


What a sweet picture of Caroline and her Daddy.


What a good Daddy!


Who knows what Nathan found on the ground, but I thought it was a cute picture.


Caroline was laying on her play mat while I was doing something in the kitchen and Nathan decided to join her. I quickly grabbed the camera for a cute brother-sister moment.


All smiles. As a side note, Nathan completely dressed himself this day - picked out his clothes and put them all on by himself. Go Nathan!

rolling and staying dry

Caroline rolled over back to front yesterday. Yay! I figured it was coming because for several days she would roll to her side. She just didn't roll the rest of the way. It doesn't seem to be a fluke either. She did it several times yesterday and once already today.

Nathan has continued to wear underwear and do pretty well. He stays dry about 75% of the time for naps and about 50% at night. However, he hasn't been doing so well at night over the last week. I'm pretty confident that he goes either as he is starting to wake up in the morning or just before...and that wakes him up. So, this morning, Matt got Nathan up early and took him to the bathroom. Nathan was dry, went, and stayed dry. So, we may just have to try that for a little while until he gets into the routine of getting up and going. I keep thinking "maybe we should just go back to diapers at night". He hasn't worn a diaper in about a month, though, so I hate to go back. I'm just getting really good at washing sheets and quilts!

Saturday, June 02, 2007

percentiles, medicine, opening up, and toys

We (Nathan and I) took Caroline to the doctor on Thursday. This was her four month visit. She now weighs 14 lb, 12 oz and is 25 in long. That is about 75th percentile for both. Her head is about 90th percentile. At least both of our children are "blessed" with big heads!! They'll get to sympathize with each other as they grow up.

We had planned to wait until Caroline was 6 months to start her on any solid foods. (That's what we did with Nathan and it went well.) However, Dr. Blevens suggested going ahead and starting her on cereal to (hopefully) help with her reflux. We would really like to get her off of her medicine. So...we'll probably go get her some cereal before long and see what happens. Maybe we'll actually be able to stop her medicine without too much trouble.

Since Caroline was born, Nathan has really come out of his shell. He is much more outgoing these days. He talks to everyone...and when it's us, he talks all the time. :) Some in my family say it reminds them of me...though I had him beat on when I started talking. Anyway, he has even started talking to strangers. We're going to have to really start enforcing the "be careful of strangers" lessons. At church on Sunday, he asked some random man (I didn't know him) what his name was...just out of the blue. I'm glad that he's come out of his shell some, but I don't want him to get too comfortable with people he doesn't know. Some of this may be related to his age, but I think it has mostly been spurred on by him seeking some extra attention...since his baby sister gets lots of what he used to get.

Oh yeah...one more thing...Caroline has really started playing with toys. Over the last two weeks, she has gone from not really being interested to actively trying to get toys. Of course, any toy that she can get close goes right in her mouth! We're going to have to start being more careful about what is close to her and how clean everything is.