Family Weekend

We're at my parents' house for the holiday weekend and having a great time! My sister Michelle (aka Auntie Em) and her husband Bryan are in for the weekend, too and it's been so much fun to spend time together.

Carolyn made a beeline for the stairs within minutes of our arrival and we spent most of the day yesterday watching her climb them over and over and over again. Today she seems sort of "over" the novelty and has been exploring more of the house. It's so much fun to watch her enjoying experiencing someplace new.

She was quite intrigued with the "down" aspect of the stairs so we had a crash course (not literally :)) on going down the "safe" way- backwards. It amazes me how much like a little sponge she is at this stage- this morning she started sliding backwards down the stairs just like we showed her yesterday- all by herself! We didn't think she'd get it so fast!One great feature of the stairs at my parents' house is the really cool landing at the top- Carolyn enjoyed standing there and we thought she looked like she was in jail (and thrilled to be there! :))
Or perhaps the Zoo- lately she's been making this sort of growly roar sound when she makes this face and I think with the orange PJs it makes her look a little like a small lion. :)

This fun throwing trick puts Carolyn into fits of giggles! And you can see from the picture how much her Daddy enjoys playing with her. I am so blessed to be married to this wonderful man! I've always thought he was a great husband, but it has been so much fun over the past year to watch him become the very best Daddy I could imagine for Carolyn. He truly Enjoys her and she is his #1 fan. :) The other day around the time when Daddy usually comes home from work, Carolyn crawled over to our garage door, stood up on it, and started banging the door with her hands, saying "Da! Da! Da!" And he wasn't even home yet! :) What a neat thing for her have such a special relationship with her dad even from such a young age. Great dads are a great blessing- and I should know- I have a great one, too, who always made me feel like my sisters and I were the most important things in the world- he always had time to play with us even though he has always worked very hard. He played real hard, too. :) Dads are the best! :)

More tossing fun- Uncle Bryan and Daddy practice their throwing (and catching) skills with an exuberant Carolyn. :)

Looks great in Orange!

One of my very favorite things Carolyn has for the summer is this precious little orange sun suit- short enough to enable crawling without undue hassle and the color looks great with her eyes. Dressing a little girl is sooo much fun!!!
Lately she has been making this silly face with her nose all wrinkled up. I think it's cute. :)

Carolyn's Latest

We've taught Carolyn how to "Praise the Lord" by raising her hands on high! The other day at breakfast she just kept doing it over and over even though I didn't ask her to. :) So cute.



She's learning to drive, too! She has this walker hippo and has been walking all over the house with it- sadly, it doesn't turn well, though- so she gets stuck a lot. But she still loves it!



Carolyn has turned into a little speed crawler! This kiddo can cover the distance!

Playdate at the Park

Yesterday we had a great time picnicking at a nearby park (as a side note, I love the picnicking is spelled with a "k" instead of picnicing. That's why I used the word instead of "having a picnic.")

The babies all had a great time chasing one another around in the green grass.
Congratulations to Rachel, who has learned how to crawl in the last few weeks! :)
Here Caimon and Carolyn are having a chat while scavenging for leftover snacks in Caimon's (or Rachel's; not sure which) stroller. I love that they are starting to actually interact with one another, though mostly they're still "parallel playing" and won't really begin "cooperative play" for awhile yet. It's still fun to watch them "talk" to each other.


Aidan's mom brought lemons to share. I never would have thought of lemons as a fruit kids would like, but despite the sour faces, the lemons held their interest for quite awhile!

Of course no trip to the park is complete without a visit to the swings. It was a bit more complicated than I've experienced before since Baby Garrett was with us this time and I had him in the Baby Bjorn while pushing Carolyn in the swing- this wasn't so bad, but trying to carry the both of them was a bit challenging. I guess that's why in general, most people don't have a second baby until the first can walk by herself! Fridays are good birth control for me- I get my fix of cuddly, precious "little baby" (though even Garrett's not so little anymore- almost 5 months! Heaven help us when he starts crawling! What will we do?!) and by the end of the day, having just one baby seems easy! :) It's been fun to watch another little one growing- it's so fascinating to see how much he changes from week to week since I only get to see him once a week usually.
Carolyn loves the swing now!

Swimming!!

Auntie Laura came with us tonight to swimming lessons, so we got some good pictures. :) Daddy even got to come, and a good time was had by all. :)

Carolyn's favorite time in swimming lessons is Jumping Time, where the kiddies sit on the edge of the pool and jump to their parents.

Here are all the babies getting ready to jump- from the left, there's Rachel, then Caimon, then Aidan, and Carolyn.
We also practiced kicking on our tummies.
And on our backs. :)
And a little bit of climbing...

Here are Carolyn and all her pals (Rich and Heather with Rachel, us, Lenore and Caimon, and Christi and Aidan).
Drying off afterwards... Princess Carolyn greets Aidan the Dragon (or Dinosaur?)

Stairs and Balloons

Yesterday we went to an open house for a friend's little boy... they live in a big, old house with this great staircase. I didn't get to talk with much of anyone because the second I put Carolyn on the ground, she was speeding off to the stairs and would be halfway up quick as could be! She had a great time!

She also received a balloon at the party, a further source of great delight. :)

Growing Girl and Garden

This is my favorite part of our front yard. We have a crabapple tree that is in full blossom right now, with a heap of phlox at its feet and a beautiful array of tulips growing around it all. I tried to get a couple pictures of Carolyn with these flowers this week, but found again that she was more interested in tasting dirt and bark and anything else her chubby fingers could grab than in having her picture taken. :)
She is really getting to be such a big girl! The tide is going out on the baby phase and the toddler phase is rapidly approaching. I see her more and more as a little girl now that she spends so much time standing and can even take steps while holding my hands!

Carolyn is just like a little sponge right now; she understands so much more of the speech going on around her- it amazes me how much she "gets." Today we were at the zoo with our playgroup and were looking at the sloth exhibit (one of the few exhibits in which the inhabitants were actually moving; we must have gone at the sleepy time of the day). I told Carolyn that the animal was a sloth and she just stared at it and eventually looked away. I asked her a few minutes later where the sloth was, and she looked right at it! She's learning!

This week Carolyn decided that she was big enough to really drink from her sippy cup instead of just trying to pour its contents all over the floor. Something just clicked and all of a sudden she could do it!
This week we've been working on "weaning" Carolyn from the sleep sack she's been sleeping in (because it is cold for nearly forever here in Michigan and because initially it was to serve as a transition from swaddling, which we stopped around 6 months). She's used to that snuggly feeling, but it's getting too warm to be in a fleece sleep sack, so she's had to learn to sleep without it. There have been some rocky points this week, especially at nap time, but today she took two good naps and looks so sweet in the various positions she chooses to sleep in. :)
This one's my favorite with her cute little bottom poking high into the air. :)

Baggins and Carolyn

So today Baggins actually let Carolyn play with him a little bit! She was thrilled to be allowed to get so close! The video is about a minute long, but I think it represents a significant step forward for poor Mr. Baggins!

Graduations and Tulips

On Sunday, my youngest sister graduated from Hope College (the same school all three of us attended- I don't want to think about how much Mom and Dad had to pay for that! What goes around comes around... :)) So we went to Holland, Michigan, to watch her walk across the stage. A good time was had by all.It was breezy, but quite sunny, so I got a chance to get out the darling sun hat we bought on clearance last year... Carolyn thinks it's better for tasting than for wearing. :)
Here's Laura graduating! She's the teeny blue person next to the guy with the light blue thingies hanging down from his robe (that guy's the president of the college :))
And there's Carolyn, a teeny tiny spot on the top of the bleachers, walking through the whole reading of the names... she slept through most of that... thankfully. :)
In Holland, early May is also Tulip Time, so there are plantings of tulips all over town. Yesterday we went back to help Laura move and took a walk in the downtown area, where I tried to get some pictures. You can see that Carolyn was far more interested in attempting to eat the tulips than in posing for pictures. :) Glad none of the tulip police stopped by! It's a $50 fine to pull up a tulip! :) Seriously!
Some nice people offered to take our picture together... but Carolyn would not consent to smile! :) I assure you, she does smile; just not in front of a lot of people waving their arms around and when she's sitting in the middle of the tulip bed. :)
When we visited the Pink Tulips, she found something else she enjoyed playing with... Dirt!
It simply had to be tested... and being distracted by the camera, I didn't get there fast enough to stop her (does that make me a bad mother that I let my child eat dirt?!) I also wondered whether one taste would maybe make it seem a bit less tempting...
I don't think it was as tasty as she thought it would be... or maybe it was the fact that I stuffed my fingers in her mouth in attempt to remove the handful of dirt from within.

Watching the world go by...

If you had driven by our house this afternoon, this is what you might have seen. Carolyn loves to stand at the baby gate at the front door and feel the breeze in her hair and watch the cars drive by. This kept her entertained for about half an hour today! That's like forever in baby time. :)

"Helping" Mommy

We went grocery shopping yesterday and Carolyn wanted very badly to help me put the groceries away. She was particularly fascinated by the fridge. Now I can't keep her out of it whenever I open the door! :)
Discovering the pantry... guess I'm going to have to move those canned goods! :)

Oops! Got caught!

Spring! Spring! Spring!

It's FINALLY here! My tulips survived our late April snowstorm and are looking beautiful! They are some of my favorite flowers to see because they seem to signal that Winter is finally coming to an end! We have some really fun varieties of tulips since we live in Dutch West Michigan and it's always fun for me to see what comes up since they all look so different.

Carolyn is also enjoying the nice weather. We've been to the park twice this week and yesterday we went wish Isaiah and Kelly and I remembered my camera. The kids had a great time!

Carolyn has officially accepted The Swing as something Fun. She cries now when I take her out.
This park has the greatest play area- it's this huge wooden structure with tons of small steps that each end in a platform, and it is all enclosed so it's pretty much impossible to fall off- in other words, perfect for beginning climbers with lots of energy. :)

Exploring the grass on a hill. She loved the slope of the hill and how easy it was to build up speed going down. :)
That flyaway look...