More pics as of lately...

I have so many more pictures I can post, and will try to go back a little further, but to try to at least keep up with the past month, I am at least posting these...

The first does go back a little bit, but I feel the need to post this one...since Ben and I both love to dive and love the ocean and have now gotten up the nerve to dive by ourselves (as in not with a dive center, but with other people on the boat) off of his Mom's boat, this picture deserves posting. It was the first time we ever flew a dive flag ourselves. Pretty exciting stuff to us.

Ben and our friend Chase speared their first fish (a hilarious tag-team effort---the fish did NOT want to die and got away numerous times before being hooked on to our D-ring). I witnessed the whole event and the bad thing is that it is hard to laugh when you are hooked up to scuba gear. It was hilarious.

A few weeks ago, Caroline spend her first night by herself in a big girl bed. No more pack - n - play! One less thing to have to carry with us when we travel (although I'd carry anything to have Caroline go with me). The second night we were gone she slept in a twin bed and she DID fall off the bed. Ben said he'd never seen me get up out of the bed so quickly. I hear the thud out of a deep, deep sleep.

She got to play with her cousin, Sarah Wellins, for the whole weekend. There are a lot of cousins at the beach, but Sarah Wellins and Caroline are the closest in age from her (Sarah Wellin's) particular family, and there were no other cousins there, so it was a good play weekend for them.

Sarah Wellins got this from her mother, I think....she said she was working on her tan:

Caroline's first time in a big girl swing (or at least that I have seen). I have kept her in her baby swing but now she is coordinated enough for this:

C ready to go eat dinner:

OK...onto this past weekend: Do you remember this picture of Caroline from last September? This was a picture of her from last year at the splash pad downtown.

NOW flashforward to this year:

She has grown so much! She doesn't look like a baby anymore!

She may look back at this one and want to shoot me for putting it in here, but his was when she realized she was tee-teeing:

We went with my friend Leslie and Caroline's friend Henlee. Henlee thought this was great:

For the life of us we couldn't get a picture of them both facing the camera:

A little out of order, but some good friends of ours Lisa Littell and Kevin Courson were married in Chattanooga not long ago, and her is her picture on the way out the door to get married. Ben and I both were honored to be in the wedding and it was a special weekend for all of us.

Another new thing for C is that she wants to be a gymnast! She took a trial class for gymnastics, and is going to her second this Thursday. If she does well, she can start next Thursday with the 3 year olds.

Here is a peek of her walking on the balance beam. She LOVED gymnastics!

The only pic I am missing here that I wish I wasn't is a picture of her getting her first hair cut! It is on my phone and I don't have the right cord to hook up to the computer to get it off, but she did great and why she didn't cry and fuss when the hairstylest brushed out the tangles when she pitches a F I T with me is beyond me!! Go figure! I guess because it is mama.

All for now, but I hope to be back soon!

Update On My Little Fish

I knew this summer was going to be interesting with Caroline and water. It is so much easier when your child can use swimmies and doesn't have to hold on to you every second in the pool. And my has she made it easier on mama! Just yesterday, she went from this:

to this:

I was so proud of her! Thanks to my friend Janene for letting us swim with you yesterday! We had a special day!

My New Attempt

fun with swimmies

1st manicure and pedicure (given by Sissy)

Brushing Teeth

Shrimping (left to right: Blake Carr, Ben Moore, Caroline Moore, Grady Ming, Matt Maier, Chase Ming)

Mommy's first attempt at a french braid

I am laying it out on the table that I am making an attempt to update this blog at least 1 time every month. Please help hold me accountable! I know my few fellow readers will appreciate me not letting so much time go by before I update you on what is going on in C's life and ours. Maybe a catch up blog spanning 1 years time will be in the works very soon, but for now, let me get a quick synopsis in of what life is like, present time, with the "boo boo", "c", "c-line", "punky", "caro", and "little munchkin".

Fun Facts:

Caroline is almost 2 years and 9 months old!

She has been potty-trained for 3 weeks now! I was dreading the process and had not planned on really giving it the final and "must-do" shot until right before she was 3, but to make a long story short, she just DID IT one day. Poof. Gone. No more diapers! The only funny little thing is that she won't go in a public restroom (smart girl, I know) because she was standing by a public potty one time that was sensored and flushed when she wasn't expecting it....and THAT was the end of THAT.

She weighs somewhere between 30 and 31 pounds and I can't tell you exactly how tall she is (over the 50th percentile).

She is a laid back, funny, independent, caring, loving, sweet, water-loving (learned to use swimmies this summer) child.

Some of her favorite "items" are band aids, Dora (for a long-time now), dolphins, whales, sharks, crabs, dogs, books, and her blankets.

Her favorite foods are strawberries, pop-tarts, fruit loops, chicken fingers and french fries and green beans (long time, too).

Some of her favorite things to do are dancing shows for daddy at night, playing with her cousins, friends, grandparents, aunts and uncles.

Her best friends her age are her cousins (Maggie Lee, Cromwell, and Mary Lawrence), Grady Ming (also her future husband if we have anything to do with it), Henley Garvin, Avery Jean Walker, Zoe Poff, Anna Williams, Ella Williams, and all of friends from daycare.

She has funny phrases. Her old "Lo Lu" (I love you) is now "Lub u" and sometimes the full correctly pronounced "I love you". Octopus is "oputus" and I love to ask her to say it over and over. For a couple of weeks she has been asking everyone "Whas ur name?". and now pronounces hers "Carline Moore Wibeth" (should be Caroline Elizabeth Moore). Last weekend when we caught a snapper and asked her to come to the back of the boat to look at it, she walked up to him and SERIOUSLY asked him "Whas ur name?", as if he should just shout it out to her. She tells me "I a good helper" a lot, which indeed she is. When she is excited about somewhere we are going, unprompted she will tell me "I so cited, Mom!". Or when she really likes something she will say "I love _____, Mom!". And yes, I am MOM now, not MOMMY, unless she is hurt or feeling like she needs attention. She says "mines" instead of "mine". She can conjugate verbs pretty well and definitely knows the difference between "mine" and "yours". If she thinks there is a problem she will ask "whus the problem?" and if she thinks you don't feel well, she'll say, "u sick, mom?", or "u feel better, mom?". Just telling you about these phrases doesn't do her justice...you have to HEAR her say them and HEAR the inflections in her voice to realize just how cute it is to hear her talk!

She has a love/hate relationship with dinosaurs...especially the t-rex.

She still cries when I leave her at daycare, but only for a couple of minutes. She loves her teachers and classmates and learns so much more than I could ever teach her from her time there.

She can count correctly right past 10 (almost to 20) and can almost say her ABC's fluently. She knows her colors and her favorite this week is purple.

She likes to sing and loves to say the blessing (God Our Father).

I talked with her about Heaven a few nights ago and she is excited about it and wants she and her whole family to go now. But I told her we couldn't go now and that I didn't want her to go now, but when she DID go, that I promised her that she could sit in Jesus' lap and he would tell her a story and the next morning she woke up talking about it. It was like she knew it was something very special.

When mommy upsets her, she runs to daddy. When daddy upsets her, she runs to mommy.

She gets a long with her friends but has a hard time sharing sometimes, and gets ill about her friends trying to love on her. So...we are trying to work on this and hope that progress comes, soon.

She puts a smile on everyone's face who meets her, and I am so proud to be her mother. I just pray for wisdom from God to help guide and cultivate her as she grows into the beautiful person she is becoming. And I can't wait to see what funny things she has in store for us down the road...