Caroline's first...

Georgia Tech basketball game (and ours too)! Some friends from Sunday School were gracious enough to share some tickets with us!

Caroline just chilled through most of the game. She really did enjoy it and was alert and looking around most of the time. I just love the arm behind her head. This is when she was really tired at the end.

She did make a friend in the usher lady. Is that what they are called?

And we were thrilled with our best family picture yet!

Please tell me that someone could magically change the background so that it could be a framer. We really love Georgia Tech basketball and all but it would be great to get that picture with a somewhat normal background! Any takers - Vern?

Fun times!

New Favorite Game

Peek -a - boo!

I see you!

And I love it!

Goodness gracious do I ever love that silly grin!

Lately...

Caroline has been a busy girl lately...

She enjoyed her first cookie!


She played with her cousin and neighbor friend!

She became a cheeseball and smiled for the camera!

She became a jumping fool!

She finally wore herself out from all her adventures and layed down to snuggle her mama!

Caroline's gentle hug finally got me this morning. Don't you see that little cut on my face? I ate blackberries for breakfast this morning and tried to wipe them off before I realized it was a scratch. I guess I didn't hurt too bad. :-)

Seriously?

Alright.

I'll give you what you want.

Baby food...

makes for stinky diapers! We fed Caroline her first bit of real food last night....a mashed up avocado. She didn't really like it but she tolerated it. Today she has had several yucky diapers!! Since we were so excited about all her stinkiness we decided to make her some more baby food today. I was/am really excited about making her own baby food. One, it's really healthy since it is pure fruits and vegetables with no preservatives. It's also a lot cheaper than buying baby food and it's really easy to make. Mark thinks I got in a little over my head because I cooked carrots, peas and green beans and wanted to puree bananas and pears too. However, it is all coming together very easily and I think all this food will last for a couple of months! Yipee! I'm really excited about this new adventure in food tasting!

1/2 birthday!

Caroline is growing up so fast! I can hardly believe that today she is 6 months old. I could have never imagined how time really flies when you have kids! She has brought so much joy to our lives!

It is really crazy to see the new things she is learning every day! She can sit by herself for long periods of time now. We put a circle of toys all around her and let her play. She is doing rasberries again. She knows her name. She probably knew it earlier but now she knows it now for sure. She has always been pretty easy going (except for weeks 4-8 which were filled with crying) but the last few weeks she has been filled with smiles for me and Mark and strangers! I'm not sure if I posted this before but my boss at the church said, "She smiles with her whole face." and it's true. It still makes my heart melt. She has this really high pitched squeal that she does when she is really excited. And best of all she loves her Mama and Daddy! When I go to get her at 6:00 in the morning to feed her, she grabs hold of my cheeks and just squeezes and pulls her head towards me. A little baby hug - one day I will teach her to be a little more gentle with her hugs. :-) She loves Mark too. He can make her giggle and she gives the biggest grin whenever he walks into the room. Even though it's silly to say, I never knew how much babies loved their parents! Whenever I say to Mark, "She loves you so much!", Mark replies, "Yeah, she gets that from you." I think its the sweetest thought. I sure hope that she sees how much I love her daddy!

One another good note - our time with the pacifier has come to end! Yipee! I'm not saying she will never use it again, just not to go to sleep. She has only had it twice all week (at day care for two short periods). She goes to sleep without it peacefully during her naptime and bedtime. She also has been taking longer naps and sleeping through the night. I'm thrilled! One tough night of 35 minutes of crying, another night of 1 hour of talking/whining and then it was done! I encourage all parents to try/cry it out, once the babies are old enough!

What a sweet little blessing she is to us!

Quake in Haiti

Yesterday afternoon, a 7.0 quake hit just off the coast of Port-Au-Prince, Haiti. This morning, I saw images of the palace which had collapsed. I remember travelling to Haiti as if I were there last week. I remember the cinderblock buildings that were thrown together with very little rebar (which is much more expensive than block and mortar). I remember the lack of any government force or any ability to control even their own criminals. Now that the earth has shaken and has torn lives apart, I can't believe the dispair they must feel.

In the US, we are blessed because we know that someone will come help us. If our house is on fire, the fire department will come to help find us and put it out. If lawlessness reigns, the police will protect the innocent. No such luxuries are available in Haiti. The strong conquer the weak. The police run in fear and those that need help just go without.

Nice, huh! The US is a 2-hour flight away, but we let these people live with what they scrape together from the dirt and pull from the trash. We don't care about Haitians. Our actions don't show it.

Oh, and the cinder block buildings are the nice ones. Most of the people on the hillsides around Port-Au-Prince live in tin shacks, using discarded billboard tarps as their roofs. If they're lucky, they have a mudflap serving as a door to their house. Imagine that.

Grinny says...

there are not enough pictures of Caroline. Here is our latest photo shoot. :-)

The lightbulb just came on...

I have been wondering for a few weeks now about Caroline's pacifier use. She did not take a pacifier in the beginning and she started sleeping through the night around 8 weeks or so. We were thrilled. She started taking the pacifier regularly around 3 months or so. She then got sick for several weeks and then we traveled a few times and had visitors here at our house. Throughout the sickness, visitors, and traveling she was no longer sleeping through the night. I contributed her poor sleep to those interruptions. However, looking back I think it was the pacifier that did it! She was sleeping through the night without it. But since it is used consistently she now wakes about 3 times a night and we have to go put the pacifier back in. She goes right back to sleep but the interruptions aren't good for us.

The question is now what? She is at a point where her cry is so hard to hear. It's a grown up cry and she knows when we come to comfort her. Do we "suffer" through the next several months giving her the pacifier or let her "cry it out"?

This morning we took Caroline to the chapel service at church. The pacifier was a help when she decided to share her joyful screams. Is the pacifier a necessary evil?

Toes are yummy!

Raspberries

I'm not sure why they are named raspberries but Caroline loves doing them...for a day or so until she "forgets" and does them again a couple weeks later. Her latest raspberries are very intentional as you can see!

Parenting

There are so many unknowns being a parent. I continually catch myself saying things like...

I don't want to be a parent who lets their kid eat whatever they want (or allows them to not eat what they should).

I don't want to be the parent who has a one year who can't sleep through the night and needs to be rocked back to sleep.

I don't want to be the parent who's child can't live without the pacifier.

The list goes on and on. There are so many things that I think but the reality is I don't know how to control all of those things and I'm not really in control anyway. In some areas I hope that I will relax and let go and in other areas I hope I am able to stand firm. Either way it's funny at this point to hear myself making such strong statements. There will be many interesting days ahead for both Caroline and us as parents.