Harper - 5 Years

Better late than never... our big girl Harper is 5 years old!  We celebrated back in July with another pony party, of course, for our little horse lover.  She's doing her best to save all the money she can in hopes to buy her own horse one day!

Five years old has brought a big, exciting change to Harper's world - kindergarten! She has continued at the same school where she did preschool so she was 100% excited for the transition.  It meant she finally got to stay at school all day AND eat lunch in the cafeteria.  She seems so genuinely excited about everything they do there... except the homework, haha.  And the homework is pretty minimal but still gets some grumbling.  Harper had been napping up until the day she started school so that was a huge change with one very tired little girl in the evenings.  She seems to be adjusting really well though and doesn't seem so exhausted at night.

Her fall has been jam packed with soccer, tball and dance.  I think she prefers soccer but has really liked tball as well.  It started out rocky and she is a little perfectionist so when it wasn't coming so easily there were definitely some tears shed.  We encouraged her to keep working, practicing and while she certainly isn't the team all-star she has gotten so much better and her attitude as well.  We are proud of her and totally ok with the fact that snack probably still is the best part of the game.  She loves soccer and will always say 'mom can you keep score in your head and just tell me about it after the game.'  Nevertheless, she has always counted them up perfectly on her own but win or lose she never seems too fazed by it.  Dance has been interesting too as she and Emma Kate are in the same class.  She came out in tears one day because Emma Kate had been trying to hold her hand and Harper was reprimanded to keep her hands to herself.  She is a little rule follower and does not appreciate getting into trouble!

Harper is so energetic and can be wild/silly and rough and tumble!  She has such a kind heart and is so sweet about sharing, doing things for others, especially her sisters.  It's not all butterflies and rainbows of course- she and Emma Kate certainly know how to push each others buttons when they want but the vast majority of time they play together so nicely.  Emma Kate ADORES Harper.  We were visiting Grammy recently without Harper and Emma Kate wanted to pick out whichever snack we thought Harper would want.  Last week I heard H and Emma Kate get ready to race - Harper says 'I hope I get 1st' and Emma Kate says 'I hope I get 2nd!'

Besides horses, she is into all the girl Superheroes.  Her favorite princess is Merida because she gets to ride around on a horse shooting with her bow and arrow.  She chose to dress up as princess Elena of avalor... probably because she found the cool accessories that go with the costume.  Harper hates the itchy princess dresses so I was surprised she stuck with this but after cutting out a little elastic she is good to go.

Other exciting news for Harper (and the whole fam) is that we got a puppy.  God knew I'm not the biggest animal lover so he gave me three little girls that are ;).  Andy and I have talked off and on about getting a dog and really felt like it was never a good time... and then eventually realized maybe there's never going to be a good time as they certainly are a lot of work so we just went for it.  Harper has been so awesome with her.  The first few days were full of lots of screaming by the little ladies as Rosie Cottonball was nipping at them but they've settled down for the most part.  I can count on Harper to get her leash on her, take her out to use the potty which is such a big help when things are chaotic as we all get home from activities.

We love our sweet Harper girl and are so thankful for her everyday.

 Rosie's first night with us

 Harper loves taking pictures on our phones

 Date night with Dad

18 Months

Our little Caroliney is definitely no longer a baby and has transitioned into a feisty toddler.  She finally decided to start walking July 30th.  I'm not sure what changed but I came home that day and she met me at the door and hasn't slowed down since then!  I think she she probably just decided today is the day that I'm going to walk :)

She has a huge personality and although she is certainly shy at the start, if she decides to warm up to you then it will be nonstop entertainment.  She loves stumbling around saying hi and bye to everyone, asking for hi-fives, blowing kisses, or if you're really loved... spitting at you.  No joke, she spits to say hi to Cam and Olivia and always when Andy gets home.

She walks around much of her day saying 'hoppa' and although I know she feels the love for Emma Kate too, her name is a lot harder for Caroline to say.  When a stranger says hi to her she usually likes to point at all her family members and say our names.  'Don't even think about taking me, I'm with mama, daddy, hoppa, em k'

She has this rather large streak of orneriness that keep Andy and I laughing nonstop.  This is my favorite example - Cam and Christie were over and Cam reprimanded her for something.  Caroline looks straight down at the couch, won't make eye contact for at least 10 seconds.  She had been holding two toys and all of the sudden she throws one to the far right with such drama we were stunned.  Then about 5 seconds later she chucks the one on the left, still staring down not looking at anyone.  Then a good 10 seconds later she looks at Cam and spits at him.... and this was not a friendly spit.  We were all so shocked and dumbfounded all we could do was laugh.

At soccer practices for her sisters she loves to run off in various directions.  When we call her to come back she usually pauses, looks us in the eye for a couple seconds and you see a glint of mischief through her dark little eyes and she takes off again even further from us.  Even her big sisters laugh at how sometimes Caroline is just angry - don't even think about swiping a toy or snack from her!  But at the same time the sweetest, funniest little girl.

Her most prized possession is her bunny which she calls 'nonny'.  It's a sad day when nonny gets misplaced but fortunately we've always been able to find her.  As of late she is also obsessed with books and her favorites are llama llama.  She will sit in my lap for book after book after book.  Her favorite thing to watch on TV is Moana and she will sing passionately during the songs.  She also loves being outside and sometimes will stand at the door just crying and yelling 'outdie outdie'.

She loves pointing out all her body parts and for some reason loves going over all of andy's as well, jabbing his eyes and stretching out his ears.  She wants to be just like her big sisters going as far as to wipe her belly with toilet paper when she follows them in the bathroom. Clearly we don't have much personal space in our house these days.

Over the last month or so, Caroline is DADDYS girl!  Andy coaches Harper's tball and soccer and I'm not exaggerating when I say Caroline will stand at the fence with her arms through it like a little prison captive yelling Daddy over and over again.  When she hears the door beep as he gets home from work she hops up from whatever she's doing as fast as she can to rush to the door.  Sometimes I think her clinginess can get a little overwhelming but Andy knows he's the luckiest guy to have 3 little girls that adore him so!

Caroline started Mother's Day out in August and that has been a little rocky.  She generally leaves in tears but they assure us she doesn't cry the whole time :(. It will be good for her and I know she will settle in soon! It's just for 2 mornings/week for 3 hours and I think when Ava starts with her she will be even happier.

She's a long lady - I think her height was around 85% and her weight around 75%.  The weight we can only attribute to milk because she sure is picky. Some days it doesn't seem like she eats hardly anything and if she can't feed herself she doesn't want it at all... except ice cream - she will give up some control for that :). She still doesn't have a ton of hair though which keeps her looking like my little baby :)

We love this wild thing so much and love seeing her grow!

 This is Caroline 'brushing her teeth'

3 Years Old

Emma Kate is a big 3 year old girl now!  While she enjoys classifying herself as a 'big girl' she keeps reminding us that she will try certain things (like jumping off the diving board) when she's 4.

This girl makes us LAUGH all the time.  We are pretty sure she is a future attorney and we know this because she is forever negotiating and arguing.  She is difficult to turn down sometimes as she throws out the sweetest 'pweeeease???' and then 'tank you tank you tank you sooo much!'

One of my favorite things about Emma Kate is that nothing gets her down.  This can be a problem sometimes in parenting.  When she gets sent to time out she pouts her way over there, plasters a sad face on but the moment that we tell her she can get out she just comes bee-bopping her way out to give her obligatory 'I'm sorry' then goes along her merry way.  I'm slightly concerned maybe she's a budding sociopath but instead I'm just choosing to hope that instead she's going to grow up to be one of those people who just lets things roll off their back! :)

Emma Kate adores her big sister and wants nothing more than be just like her, but of course with her own twist.  Harper loves horses? Emma Kate loves ducks.  Harper wants to be a horse-rider when she grows up?  Emma Kate wants to be a duckkeeper. :)  Sometimes we feel guilty because Emma Kate gets basically all of Harper's hand-me-downs but EK is so proud that something that used to be Harpers is now all her own!  EK will be starting PreK3 at the same school Harper will be at for kindergarten and EK is SO excited to finally be going to the school that Harper has been at for 2 years.

Emma Kate also loves, loves babies and especially Caroline.  She generally is very gentle and sweet with her though they love to get rowdy with each other. Yesterday they got into a screaming contest - and not an unhappy one - just wanted to see who could yell the loudest!

If you spend any time at all with Emma Kate, you know that her most favorite thing in the world right now is Little Mermaid.  Often she will not respond to her name and instead insists I call her Ariel.  Yesterday when I laid her down for nap she would only call me Prince Eric.  So then for the next 5 minutes I hear her yelling for me to come fix her blanket... 'Pwince Ewic, Pwince Ewic, I neeeeed you!'  She had her birthday party at a little tea room in Lexington that was the sweetest and of course had Ariel in  attendance.

EK has quite the imagination and does such a great job of entertaining herself.  She usually loves going to her Skilz classes although sometimes puts up a fight if Harper isn't going with her. The other day in class they were explaining one of the drills - the kids had to run down and pick up bean bags and run back.. and Emma Kate so sweetly looks at the teacher and says 'but I don't like running.' HA. She must get that from me.  She loves coloring and crafting and generally will play along with most anything that Harper concocts for them to do.  Often times EK pretends to be the puppy dog but she insists that she likes being the puppy.

She has the funniest, most expressive little facial expressions and the cutest sayings. My current favorite is how she says 'o-tay' instead of OK.  She often covers her mouth with both hands with she gets really tickled about something and it is pretty cute.

Recently she got a scrape on her knee that bled and bled and then left a huge scab.  Of course she refused a band-aid.  One night we were encouraging her to go to sleep and told her that she needed to stay in bed for it to heal better.  The next morning she laid in bed until 1130 AM insisting that she needed to stay there in order for it to heal!  I'm not sure where that stubborn streak comes from :)

She loves her blonde hair and blue eyes and is proud that she's the only one in the fam with them! We encourage her to eat vegetables so that her hair can grow long and she is finally so happy that it can be put into a braid, just like Elsa :).

We love this big-hearted girl that is so full of joy!

15 Months

Better late than never for our sweet baby Caroline!  Today our nanny pointed out that she is 15 months!!! Crazy!  Where has the time gone.

Caroline's little personality is blossoming and in the last couple months she is learning and changing so much!  She understands everything we say and will generally respond with very emphatic head nods or violent shakes to indicate 'no'.  She is the HAPPIEST when she sees someone she's been missing, her arms and legs start flapping and the biggest smile takes over her face when Andy and I walk in the door in the afternoons.  She loves music, especially the Trolls soundtrack and the Mickey Mouse clubhouse and will flap her arms to those like crazy.  She also attempts to sing which is so sweet - her specialities are the song Little mermaid sings when she's losing her voice as well as Let it go.

She is saying lots more words - mama, up, please, thank you, harper, 'hot dog', dad (sometimes - he also gets called mama from time to time), hi, bye, night-night, love you.  She hasn't quite figured out Emma Kate and that often sounds like mama too.  She love to drink milk and I finally got the bottle away about a month ago.  She just loved her morning milk in a bottle so much!  The girl knows what she likes and is committed to that. When we were first weaning her just to cows milk she would only take it warm, in a bottle. She would drink water or juice from a sippy but just threw it when there was milk in it.  Then I started spiking it with chocolate milk which she would guzzle down but still no plain milk in a sippy. Finally during a 3 day weekend we just went cold turkey and of course she decided cold milk in a sippy is better than no milk at all!

While we always call her our 'sweet Caroliney' she certainly is a feisty one with a bit of a temper.  Watch out if you take a toy from her. She will either try to hit, bite or flop over wailing.  I'm nervous the hitting/biting is going to get her in trouble this fall in Mother's Day out.  A big part of me doesn't blame her... she's got big sisters who are always in her personal space and since she can't tell them to move a little nibble does the trick... but since it's not socially acceptable to bite other kids we're working on it daily.

She is still not walking but I think she's capable and just holding out on me.  I bought her some squeaker shoes around the time she turned one because it seemed like she had no interest in standing or any desire at all.  She's gotten the hang of that tho, is cruising everywhere, pulling up all the time.  She CAN stand on her own but generally refuses to and then flashes this little mischievous smile.  Interestingly, when we babysit our niece Ava, (who is like 9 months old and has been standing up on her own for like 2 months), Caroline is more interested in standing.  I'm not sure if that's an early competitive streak or what.

She's not really the most adventurous - when we go to swim she clings for dear life and is generally content just to scoot around the side of the pool.  She has ruined so many outfits with her scooting but it is seriously funny to watch.  She is so FAST and when she uses two hands to scoot she definitely resembles some type of monkey.

She LOVES other babies - always hugging and kissing them... and for whatever reason likes to poke them in the forehead??  She is forever trying to hug on Ava when we're around them.  She certainly is still a mama/dada's girl and really is not very happy if a stranger is trying to hold her.  She has moments where she's cool with Uncle Cam or Aunt Carrie but those can be few and far between.

She now has 4 teeth up top and 2 on the bottom.  She loves brushing them and begs for a toothbrush anytime she sees one.  She eats everyone and really prefers having food more whole rather than cut up into tiny pieces.  Sometimes she will refuse to eat unless we give her a fork if we are all using forks... high maintenance right??  I think her favorite foods change daily.  Recently she's been into bananas, graham crackers.  She loves ketchup and will try to scoop it up with her hands if she's quick enough.

She likes to sit in her high chair and color - she only uses a yellow marker and generally ends up with it in her hair, on her mouth, legs, etc.  She is still very attached to her bunny and bunny shows the wear and tear from all her loving.  One of her favorite games is where we tell her to lay her head down and go night night which she will do until we yell 'wake up' and she springs up with the biggest laugh.

We had a blast on our trip to Disney back in May.  Caroline was not a big fan of characters as predicted but she was certainly entertained by all the rides.  She also liked the beach and was content just to play in the sand.

We love this sweet little girl to the moon!!

One Year!

Our sweet baby Caroline is a year old!  Hard to believe - it has gone by in the blink of an eye but of course it also seems like she has been here for forever.

First things first, we celebrated her birthday on the 12th at a local ice cream shop, Crank and Boom.  I though I had dodged all the basketball games by choosing to have it on selection Sunday... oops... it was smack-dab in the middle of the SEC championship but the room was equipped with a big TV so we had a fun time cheering on the Cats and eating way too much ice cream.  Caroline was in a pretty good mood before the party, scooting around just doing her thing when the guy from the store that was serving the ice cream tried to talk to her.. big mistake... haha.  She broke down in tears and pretty much clung on to me or Andy for the rest of the party.  She's happy as a clam when one of us is holding her but if you want to make her cry just try to hold her ;).  When it was birthday cake time she didn't even attempt to take a bite but instead waited for her big sisters to give her little bites of icing.  Such a little lady and pretty status quo for how things go in her life ;)

On her actual birthday, Andy and I took the day off... b/c obviously she knew it was her birthday ;). I will say she did love it when we would sing Happy Birthday to her which we did many times throughout the day.  The whole fam picked Harper up from school and we went to celebrate lunch at Malone's.  Caroline enjoyed tons of bread, French fries, and a Cookie Monster! Got to hit all those food groups for bday lunch.  One of the sweetest pictures is of her and Andy with the Cookie Monster :). Both of them just look so happy and sweet.  The big girls were great too - meals out are never 'relaxing' persay but we're definitely hitting a stride where it's at least not too stressful or disruptive for others.  After lunch we all took naps then let her open her bday present... Moana.  That of course has been watched approximately 10 times in the last 6 days.  To top the day off we celebrate with some ice cream cone cupcakes.  Caroline definitely made up for her shyness at the party by shoving the cupcake in her mouth and not coming up for air until I took away the bottom of the cone.  She loved it and was NOT a happy camper when I finally took the last bit away.

I feel like between 11-12 months, Caroline has learned so, so much and understanding a ton.  She continues to wave, say hi, bye, mom and dad, loves playing Pat-a-cake, itsy bitsy spider.  She gets SO excited when the hot dog song comes on and says 'haa haa' when she hears it.  She does attempt to sing sometimes and it is the cutest.  She has started smacking her lips to give little kisses though very rarely will actually kiss and often gives a stiff-arm when you go in for a kiss.  She does occasionally blow little kisses though.  She is following directions so well and understanding a ton - i.e., put the cup back in the drawer, give me a bite, etc.  Her first word was mama :)  She continues to have this funny little scoot where her left leg stays kind of tucked in and her right leg hangs out straight - she does this so much that the side of her left leg is super rough, almost like it's getting calloused where a knee should be.  Sometimes she'll tuck whatever toy she is playing with in that left leg and pinch it in there while she scoots so she can get places faster.  She generally is dragging her bunny around everywhere and although I wash it pretty frequently, the white bunny basically stays grey.  She really isn't even pulling up on anything except my hands.  She'll get up on her knees but hasn't figured out how to move to her feet and literally has no clue how to walk yet.  I hold her hands standing to see if she'll take steps but usually she just laughs and pivots all around with her feet planted.  I'm sure she will figure it out sooner than later and then our house will officially be total chaos :)

Things that make her very unhappy include telling her 'no' though that has gotten better, at least when I say it.  When her sisters tell her no she still gets VERY upset and she can turn those tears on and off as fast as she wants.  She's a good eater but when she's done she is done and starts waving her hand across her tray slinging food everywhere or just picking it up and dropping it on the floor.

At her 12 mos check up I think she was about 19 lbs, 29 inches long - 45% in both height and weight.  Still wearing 12M clothes, eating everything we eat.  Some of her favorites are beef (taco meat, spaghetti meat), pizza, fruits, cheese, yogurt.

She does not seem like a 1 year old at all to me - maybe it's the lack of hair or walking abilities or maybe that I'm just clinging on to still having a little baby in our house, haha :). Either way, she is the sweetest and we are so thankful for all the joy she brings to our family!