1000 Words

 1000 Words

Twins

 Lee Lee and I both wore shirts with collars and buttons today, and when I pointed that out to her, she was SO excited to be twins.  She made sure she and I both wore sweaters, had our hair done the same way, and she even asked that I curl her hair because I curled mine.

I love all my little girls, but she really is my favorite five-year-old daughter!

Ice Cream Date

 Last year for Mother's Day, I got coupon books from Hubby AND each of my big kids.  Included in the my coupon book from Caroline was a coupon for an "Ice Cream Date" just the two of us.

Well, last Mother's Day was the pandemic, so we didn't rush right out for that ice cream date.  Also, Hunter was still nursing so I wasn't going many places without him.  I kept the coupon and I told her we'd make sure to do that when we could.

So... yesterday we did.  LOL.

Honestly, I am not good at doing things with just ONE child at a time.  I know that the others will enjoy it too... I want them to do things as brothers and sisters and when I do something special with the kids, I want to take ALL the kids.  Hubby is much better at doing special things with children one at a time.

But yesterday, I spent all day doing laundry, and continuing to clean and organize the upstairs post-construction (construction is still going strong in the basement, but the upstairs has been completed for about a week, so I felt comfortable in some final stages of cleaning and organizing upstairs)... so by about 4:00, I told Caroline I was ready for our ice cream date!

We went to Baskin Robbins and ate ice cream in the back of our rental mini-van like a tail-gate party (our suburban hit a deer a few weeks ago so its being repaired).

It was short, sweet, and very special to have that time with just her.

She did say several times that we should get pedicures while we were out getting ice cream, which was really funny.  I responded by saying that the coupon was for an ICE CREAM date, not a pedicure date.  She told me that this next Mother's Day she's going to give me a coupon for an ice cream AND pedicure date.

When I asked her if she was going to pay for our pedicures since she was giving me a coupon, she said No, I was going to pay for them.

I love motherhood.

LOL.

This Look

I often think how little Tracey (or any of my girls) looks like me -- but the other night, I finally saw something in her that I recognized.

This look:

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. 

 

Quiet

Tracey is at an age where I can usually tell by the sounds from the other room whether she is getting into trouble or not.  If the sounds are chatter-y and playful with just a few crashes here and there, she is not in trouble.  If HUGE crashes occur, something is wrong, and if an eerie quiet hangs in the air, she has, either accidentally or on purpose, found some mischief.

Such a quiet occurred a few days ago when I was watching both twins, and Tracey and her older cousin Zivah.  The girls were playing relatively well and Zivah wanted to play with my purse.  Now, the purse is about the size of a paperback book, and I never use it accept for going out without any children -- which happens only once or twice while we're on vacation, so I knew not much, if anything was in this purse.  I made sure I grabbed my wallet out, and I knew there was a chapstick and a few frequent shopping punch cards in there, but I figured if they found it, they could have it.

Ten minutes later, I couldn't believe how well they were playing together.  I couldn't hear anything.  Were they even still downstairs with me?  Usually I at least hear them talking to each other.  

Well, they were downstairs with me... and they had found gold in my purse -- not one, but two lipstick containers.

 

Pigtails

Apparently pigtails are just about the cutest things on babies... somehow I did not know this, but luckily Tracey Ann has two aunts who clued me in.

1000 Words

1000 Words

Our Little Reader

Our precious baby girl is such a sweetheart.  Staying put this spring has allowed us to get into such a great routine, and as a result she goes down for naps and bedtime with very little, if any fuss.

While we have our nightly routine -- bath, story, nursing... she also has her own routine, which includes flipping through books once she's been put to bed.

Hubby and I watch her on our baby monitor, and we both think this is the sweetest thing.  She has two little books in her crib, and she will quietly sit in her crib, sucking on her pacifier, flipping through books for sometimes as long as 15 minutes before laying down and falling asleep.


She's also starting to do this in place of her afternoon nap.  She is now taking a really long morning nap, and then, when she gets fussy in the afternoon, she will go in her crib and flip through books for a little quiet time.

I find her reading in bed habit especially adorable because throughout elementary and middle school, I always had a book hidden under the covers in order to read after I was supposed to be asleep.

We love that she is becoming such a little reader.