Happy 2nd Birthday, Caroline!

My sweet girl, HOW are you two years old?  This year brought so many changes for you, physically & developmentally!  You weigh a solid 33lbs…above average for your age.  People always comment when they pick you that you don’t look like you’d be that heavy!  Your daddy has always said he has a heavy liver, maybe you take after him.   

You got a sister at 15 months old and it rocked your world!  You suddenly went from the only attention hog to 1 out of 2 attention hogs!    You truly love her, though!  Now that she’s sitting up on her own you LOVE to sit down with her and play.  You two take baths together and you love teaching her to splash!

You used to eat anything we put in front of you – but now you are the pickiest eater I’ve ever seen.  You love:  bananas, apples, froot loops, goldfish crackers, gummi snacks, chicken nuggets, french fries (“fwies!”) salmon patties, pancakes, biscuits, pizza, cookies, and sometimes you’ll eat a grilled cheese.  That’s about the extent to what you’ll eat.  Bread is your favorite…you get that from your mama! 

You have really gotten into pretend play and I love watching you!  You “cook” on your kitchen and make me meals.  You’ll stir a spoon around on an empty plate then feed me (or Amelia!) a bite.  You grab my hand at all points in the day and say, “Pway?” and you’ll drag me into the playroom and proceed to cook for me.  I love it.  Your favorite toys are:  Dancing Mickey, fridge alphabet & farm, kitchen, tent, shopping cart, Vtech laptop, bounce house, learning train, balls of any kind, & color wonder.

 

You know your ABC’s and can count to 10.  Not only can you SAY your ABC’s, but you can identify the letters!  You know all the uppercase letters and most of the lowercase letters.  You’re so smart! 

You are talking up a STORM.  You always have something to say – and sometimes it’s all jibberish!  Your vocabulary has grown exponentially this last month.  You know so many sentences!  Your most common phrases are:  “Hey Mama (or other name!)” “Whatchadoin?”  “Let’s read!” “Mia’s crying? (HA!)” “I sowwy Mama”  “You okay?”  “A drinkawater!”  “Some milk, pwease!”  & “Where paci?”  You love to pretend to talk on the phone.  You’ll put my cellphone up to your ear and say, “Hey ___!  Whatchadoin?  Oh, okay.  Bye!”  Apparently you’ve heard me talk on the phone a few too many times.

 

You’re able to understand way more than you can say.  You follow commands very well! 

Reading is your favorite pastime.  You could read for hours!  Your favorite books are:  Llama Llama Red Pajama, If You Give a Pig a Party (which you call “Pigaparty!”),  Silly Sally, Wherever You Are, Goodnight Moon, The Giving Tree (which you call “Tree!”), & On the Night You Were Born.

You do love to watch television!  Sometimes I have to cut it off and tell you no more tv for the day because you would sit in front of it all day if we let you.  You love to watch:  Veggie Tales, Elmo, Olivia, Yo Gabba Gabba (which I can’t stand!), & Ni Hao Kai Lan. 

You would LIVE outside if we would let you.  You can walk around the yard and play for hours without ever really doing anything.  You do love to swing and ride your power Jeep!  Playing with rocks from the driveway also keeps you entertained for a long time.  You love Duke & Sassy!  You crack me up with them.  Sometimes you try to make them lick you and other times you can’t stand it if they mess with you! 

Every night before bed you say “PRAY!” and fold your hands together and smile so big.  It melts my heart.  We then pray for everyone you’ve ever met…ha!  We thank God for all those people and thank him for Jesus.  Then when I say “Amen,” you basically scream, “AYMEEEEN!”  You’ve also taken to screaming that out in church when someone leads a prayer.  We’ve started covering your mouth at the end of prayers because you scream it so loudly. 

You are such a joy in our lives.  It blows my mind that you are two years old.  It just doesn’t seem right!  I love you more than I know how to describe.  My heart just swells with pride.  You are such a sweet, tender little girl.  I can’t wait to see the wonderful young lady you will grow into…but until then…slow down a little and stop getting so big!  You’ll always be my baby.  I love you.

Love,

Mama

This is Caroline’s 2nd Birthday video!  Turn up the volume and enjoy!  (If you are viewing this post from an e-mail subscription or through Facebook, you'll probably have to come to the actual blog to view the video!) 

Caroline’s 2nd Year Video!

MIA

I know I’ve been MIA.  The truth is, I just don’t have anything interesting to write about.  But for my family’s sake, I’ll try to think of random things.  Here we go:

 

1.  Judd is hardcore harvesting.  It makes me sad and happy at the same time!  He’s working late hours and usually only sees the girls for about 30min before they go to bed.  Sometimes he doesn’t see Amelia at all!  But it makes me happy because a full season is almost over.  December will be here and it will be full of family time with Daddy!  It makes me want to rush my favorite season (Fall) to get to December!

2.  Caroline will be 2 on Wednesday.  Be watching for a 2 year post because I am definitely doing one.  This is what I looked like 2 years ago today…

3.  Amelia is crawling!  She’s really starting to get the hang of it and she’s actually starting to get her belly off the ground.  I know it won’t be long and she’ll be shooting across the room! 

4.  We are still dieting and exercising.  Yuck.  I literally haven’t lost weight – but if my measurements are correct, I am losing some inches.  I hope my measurements are correct.

5.  I’m desperately wanting my backyard fenced in.  I would love to be able to open the back door and just let Caroline & Amelia go outside and play without having to worry.  It would also be great to have some places for their outside toys that the dogs can’t totally destroy!

6.  The weather is really starting to feel better.  It’s not nearly as humid this week as last week.  I hope it only gets better from here!

7.  My Fall décor will be out on Thursday – Sept. 1st.  Kiss my big fat rear end.  Fall doesn’t last long enough before you have to take down that décor to put up Christmas décor.  I’m getting full use of my pumpkins. 

8.  Squiggle Stitch is definitely keeping me incredibly busy right now!  That’s part of the reason I haven’t blogged in so long! 

Well, it’s time for me to allot myself practically zero some calories for lunch.  Hopefully I won’t starve. 

We have some NEWS!

HAAAAAAAA!  I know what you were thinking when you read that title.  That’s a big, fat, emphatic NO.   

Our news is really not news at all, and it’s really not exciting.  So why am I even bothering?  Because we need some accountability! 

We’re dieting.  We’re not the dieting type of people because we both eat portions that are way too big, I make sweets, and pizza is my favorite food…in large portions.  We started last Thursday.  We’re using www.myfitnesspal.com to track our calories each day.  They have an awesome app on Android (and maybe iPhone too?) phones.  You can just scan the barcode of what you’re eating if it has one.  If it’s a homemade recipe, you can type your recipe into a little box, tell it how many servings it makes, and voila!  It tells you exactly how many calories you’re consuming.  I’m really tempted to put my weight on my blog for the entire world to see so that I can be held even more accountable, but I think I’ll have to muster up some more courage before I manage that.

Along with counting calories, we’re working out.  I’m doing the 30 Day Shred with Jillian Michaels. She is a beast.  I hate her voice by the time the DVD is over – and strangely enough, I look forward to doing it again the next night.  I told Judd that if I don’t look somewhat different by the end of 30 days, I am hunting her down.  It will not be pleasant. 

I’m looking for some low calorie meals that we can make at home.  Let me just go ahead and tell you that if it has tons of onions or peppers, I probably won’t ever make it – much to Judd’s dismay.  I despise onions.  I usually substitute with a mound of onion powder. 

We like chicken, an occasional pork chop or pork loin, and lots and lots of beef.  Beef is a problem around here. 

Anyone have a recipe they’d like to link to or share? 

This & That

1.  I finally got Kroger coupons yesterday.  After calling and harassing the customer service people 3 times, I finally got them.  Persistence pays off.

2.  Too many people are mentioning potty training Caroline for it not to worry me that the girl seems no where ready to potty train.  However, if she gains much more weight there will no longer be a diaper for her to wear.  Yikes.

3.  Amelia is now saying “da-da” and it’s seriously adorable. 

4.  We got Caroline a “mini” bounce house for her birthday.  We thought it would fit in a small corner in her playroom and we could blow it up when she wanted to play with it.  It. Is. HUGE.  It has to go directly in front of the front door in the open space in our kitchen/living room area.  Huge.

5.  My kids are starting to play together and it suddenly makes 2 under 2 totally worth it.  They were 15 months apart and it was rough nearly killed me.  I’m not kidding.  I was heading for the light.  And suddenly, there became a glimmer of hope (the bottle) and she’s a new baby.  I am thankful for this every single day.

6.  I taught Caroline the “Clean up, clean up – everybody do your share” song.  Backfire.  Now she dumps ALL the toys out ALL the time just to sing the song.  What’s the problem, you ask?  She picks up about half of the toys before she realizes the song in itself doesn’t necessarily make cleaning up fun.

7.  We had a Veggie Tales themed birthday party for Caroline this past weekend.  My sister preeeeeeetty much pulled the whole thing together.  Without her, it would have looked like a red and green Christmas party in August.  Larry & Bob would have barely made their presence known.  However, thanks to Audra, Caroline walked around yelling their names everytime she saw them. 

   

 

8.  Judd and I are, together, counting calories.  Yep.  We’ve decided we’re not in very good shape and we eat awful foods.  Today was day 1.  I pretty much messed myself over at breakfast.  I only have 270 calories left for the entire night and we haven’t eaten dinner.  Not looking very successful.

9.  I haven’t blogged in nearly 3 weeks.  Oops. 

 

Amelia is in need of her mother now.  I kind of like ending on number 9 instead of 10.  Does that bug you?