Happy 2nd Birthday, Caroline!

It's so hard to believe that it has been 2 years!  It has been so much fun watching Caroline transform from baby to independent toddler.  Underneath the occasional meltdowns, slapping, biting, and scratching that have taken place over the past couple months is a fun, loving, and sweet little girl.

At 2 years, Caroline can:

• spell her name (see previous post)
• identify colors 
• count to ten
• sing the alphabet

Caroline loves reading books and singing songs.  She is currently obsessed with Dora the Explorer.  From dressing up in tutus, having tea parties, and mothering her Bitty Baby, Caroline is very much a GIRL!  

Happy Birthday, Princess!  We love you and can't wait to see what the coming year has in store for you!!

Big Girl Room

In preparation for baby, we spent last night converting most of Caroline's nursery into a big girl room.  The rocking chair has now been replaced with her little pink chair that she got for Christmas last year. 

I ordered some store bin/bookshelf type items to take the spot of the changing table, and she has a new little shelf for some bigger books that we put on the wall. 

Caroline is still in her crib.  We figure there is no sense in converting it to a toddler bed since she doesn't try to climb out and seems (for the most part) to be perfectly content with the way things are.  We will cross that bridge when we get to it.  :) 

It's bittersweet to see Caroline growing up.  It seems like just yesterday we were changing the guest room into her nursery.  Hard to believe it's been almost 2 years!!

Spring Break 2012

Caroline and I had a fairly relaxing spring break.  My family left at different times, so Monday we enjoyed a yummy lunch with Pops, Aunt Jenn, and Chris at Pappy's.  So GOOD!!

I took Caroline to get her 2 year pictures done on Tuesday.  We will see how they turn out because she was not very cooperative.  Not a huge shock, but still...

On Wednesday, Caroline came down with a mystery fever, but was perfectly fine by Thursday.  Joe took off on Friday to spend the day with us.  We went to the zoo in the morning, and we ended up getting poured on!Fortunately we got there early enough to get through the Children's Zoo and see the elephants (Caroline's favorite!) and monkeys.

Smarty Pants

Here is a cute video of Caroline (almost) spelling her whole name.  She has been able to do this for the past couple of weeks thanks to Joe, but this is the closest we have gotten to catching the whole thing on camera.  As you can tell, she gets a bit distracted seeing herself.  :)

Happy Easter!

We celebrated Easter at Our Redeemer.  It was nice to go back and see faces that I hadn't seen in awhile.  Caroline and her buddy, Collin, were especially cute giving each other hugs and kisses after church. 

The rest of Easter was spent having a good time with both immediate and extended family. 

An Early Celebration

Since my parents, siblings, and significant others were in town for Easter, we celebrated Caroline's 2nd birthday a couple weeks early. 

Caroline is HUGE into Dora the Explorer right now, so I tried to incorporate her a bit into the day.  I found this really cute Dora shirt on ETSY, and I love how it turned out!  Also luckily for me, a coworker happened to have a Dora cake pan that she used from her daughter's birthday.  She did an awesome job on the cake, and it's all Caroline could talk about for days.

Caroline got a lot of fun gifts, some of which included a pink tricycle, a t-ball set, and a feeding kit for Bitty.  Her favorite gift, however, is her new toy house from Pops and Mim.  She LOVES it and would stay in there for hours if allowed!

Egg Hunt

The day before Easter, Caroline participated in her first Easter Egg Hunt at our church.  She had gotten practice with a few mini-hunts at school throughout the week, so we should have known she would be a pro.  There was supposed to be a 12 egg limit per child, but apparently rules are meant to be broken.  :)  Caroline decided she was going to find nearly 50 eggs.