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. :)