This Girl - Our Caroline

To walk the block and a half to go get the mail, Caroline insisted on bringing her baby, her baby's blanket, her baby's passie, her baby's toy, and wearing her sunglasses.  I suggested the baby-wearing and the picnic basket to hold all the accessories she planned on lugging to the mailbox.

This girl is so awesome -- truly the sweetest, kindest girl... until she is not anymore, and then she is a very difficult, stubborn little girl.

Remember that poem, 

"There once was a girl with a curl, 

and when she was good she was very good, 

and when she was bad, she was horrid."

I'm pretty sure it was written with our Sweet Caroline in mind. 

At two-and-a-half, this girl loves style and insists on wearing specific sunglasses and loves all kinds of shoes.  She likes to choose her own outfit and is very prim and proper most of the time.

And then, this same little prissy girl, is completely at home in the dirt and mud with bare feet in the coldest water we find.  While she insists on wearing shoes inside, I can't keep shoes on her when we're outside.

Caroline loves a set of dishes that her Aunt Sharon bought her in St. Louis.  She picked out this gift that her aunt bought her and setting up tea parties is her favorite past time.  She meticulously sets up a tea party, then cleans up the tea party, then carries her dishes around talking and singing to them.  Sometimes she takes her dishes for a rocking horse ride, sometimes she takes her dishes up to the table to watch her eat a real meal... she LOVES these dishes.

 

She started taking dance classes over the summer and she spent the first two classes watching everything very closely, but not really participating.  After those first two classes, she has been a dancing maniac ever since.  She practices her dance steps at home, and asks to wear her dance shoes, practices on anything she can pretend is a balance beam.

She also is a little fish anytime we go swimming.  She tries to emulate Tracey's swim strokes and stays in the water from the moment we get to a pool until the moment we drag her out.

Caroline loves babies and seriously loves being a big sister to Addallee.  She almost always wants to sit next to Lee Lee and gets very upset when she is not able to do so.  Any time Addallee coughs, Caroline, without fail, leaves whatever she is doing to walk across the room to pat Addallee on the back -- no matter how much time was elapsed from Addallee being done coughing.

She loves to match Tracey and/or Howard most of the time either with the same outfits, or the same color plates, etc.  However, when she is saying something or singing something and someone else tries to sing along, she frequently responds by saying, "Don't copy me."

While Howard and Tracey are two peas in a pod the way they jump into activities and adventure, Caroline is more thoughtful and cautious.  Sometimes she wants to do exactly what Tracey and Howard are doing, but she also has no problem hanging back and watching an activity before participating.  Or, foregoing an activity entirely in favor of spending time with Lee Lee or her Daddy instead of tagging along with her twin brother and big sister.

She was potty trained for a glorious six weeks or so last Spring... but then she decided she wasn't potty trained anymore and now we are back working on it.

I cannot imagine our life without our Caroline.  She is so fun, and so sweet -- until she's not, and then she has quite the strong-willed streak (both with her siblings and authority).

This girl is awesome.