Caroline 10 month

Caroline at 10 months...

• She took her first step during the middle of this month.  I don't really think that she realized that she did it and has only repeated the performance a few times.  She is standing and balancing all the time without assistance and doing really well.  But when she wants to go someplace she drops down and crawls instead of trying to take a step.  She does love to walk with the push walker and wagon.
• Two more teeth popped through this month.  The only silly thing is that she added two teeth on the top on the outer middle.  Right now she looks like a little vampire at times!

• Loves to be applauded and smiles, giggles, and claps.
• Starting to mimic us... wants to run the brush through her hair after I brush it, tries to feed me bites, points the remote at the TV... it is so cute to see her trying to be a big girl!
• Starting to play with babies.  She gives them kisses and hugs and works hard to try to put a paci in their mouth.  She has also started to get territorial about toys especially this one piano and microphone toy.  Even if I'm just moving or adjusting it she gets defensive, much less Bailey trying to share it.  Right now it is still cute but I see this developing into a problem in the future.  

• Really likes to be outside and stands and bangs on the door while the big kids are out there.  But she gets eaten alive by mosquitoes and her skin really reacts to the bites so unfortunately we don't let her out as often as she would like.
• Loves to eat and is getting really good at bigger bites of finger food.  She thinks that anytime I am eating or the big kids are eating, she should be too.  She is the only kid I know that goes searching in her bib pocket for food she has dropped when her tray is clear.  Ha!  She loves to eat!

• Adores her big brother and sister and they adore her.  They have started calling her 'Caroline-y' which I think is really cute.  She always wants to be around them and gets extra excited when they play with her.... if she wants to play with them.  If she doesn't want to play then she is forceful about sharing her opinion.

• While she loves George and her siblings, I am definitely Caroline's favorite and I love it!!  At this age, I remember the other two liking George best so I love having Caroline's affection!  She gets so excited  when she sees me and is starting to get sad when I leave her with our sitter (which I don't love!).  She is still shy with new people but as long as I'm not leaving, that is almost when she is the cutest.  She will often make a fast crawl b-line straight for me and bury herself in my arms and snuggle close.  She will usually smile at new people but only when she is close to me.  She will give George snuggles and hugs too but even then she will often reach out for me.  This melts my heart and I'm trying to soak it all up!

Big Boy Bed

This post is very belated (as are most of my posts these days!) but I wanted to be sure to document this transition anyway.  At the beginning of the summer when he was 3 years old and a few months, Bailey, began asking if he could sleep in his big boy bed.  Both his crib and his bunk beds had been in his room for about 9ish months but until this point he hadn't really shown an interest in his bed for anything other than playing and reading stories.  So just as we did with Ainsley, we started by letting him sleep in his big bed at naps and after a few weeks of being successful with that, we said he could sleep in his big bed at night.  And we haven't looked back since!  It has a great transition because then we could move his crib into Ainsley room and use it for Caroline so that she could move out of our room.  Again, all this happened back in June-ish but it was a win-win for everyone!!

It still takes Bailey about 30-45 minutes of playing in his bed to calm down at the end of the day but he is very obedient and doesn't get out of his bed unless he has to go to the bathroom.  He does call for us a handful of times in the evening as he is winding down but we are working on that.  On any given day, he will have 10-15 different random toys and books in his bed.  He's funny about it though because as much as he likes to have "my stuff," as he calls it, all over and in his bed, before he goes to sleep he often likes to have it "clean."  So he will spend all this time playing and making a mess in his bed and then he will spend a few minutes cleaning and organizing it all before he goes to sleep. 

To sleep he needs his two loveys or his "hop-hops" as he calls them and sometimes his baby doll, his blue blanket and usually another random item that has his affection for the moment.  He says that when he goes to bed at night he grows and gets bigger.  I say that I don't want him to get any bigger so I'm going to tuck him under the covers really tight so that he can't grow while he's sleeping.  This always makes him laugh and say "silly mommy."  

He's a sweet and silly boy and we love him to pieces!!

Thomas the Train

About a month ago George and I took the big kids on an afternoon date to go see Thomas the train!  It was such a neat event with a real talking Thomas pulling the train.  The kids were so enamored!  We chose not to wait in the obscenely long line to get our picture taken with Thomas but I did get this one as he was pulling into the station, I so was pretty happy.

There were lots of train related activities and carnival-type food to enjoy while we waited for our ticket time to ride on Thomas.  The kids each got to  choose one special train as a souvenior.  Ainsley chose the Rosie train and Bailey chose a tow-truck named Butch from Sodor's Heavy Recovery Unit.  :)  

The train ride itself was about 30 min in a vintage type passenger train.  It was awesome!  The conductor came around and stamped our tickets and the kids were in heaven.  

I love getting to do things like this that feed their imagination.  For weeks afterwards they had a revitalized interest in our train track sets and their imaginative train play got so much more elaborate.  Plus we got to leave Caroline at home so Ainsley and Bailey had mine and George's undivided attention which doesn't happen as much as we would like.  It was just a really special afternoon.

Bailey on the way home.... he wanted to be sure his baby doll was safely strapped into this car seat as well.  Sweet boy.

Dirt!

My kids love dirt!  I think most kids probably do... and although all the time I spend trying to get the dirt and mud stains out of their clothes makes me groan, I love seeing them having in the earth.  There have been several times when I have wanted to landscape our backyard to get rid of all these dirt holes and make things 'cleaner' - and I will one of these days - but for now it is nice for them to have a place to explore and imagine.  My yard vanity will have to wait.

In the picture below, I told the kids that they were allowed to put their feet only in the mud one night before bath.... I came back out a few minutes later to this.  Naturally the temptation was too great.  On another night, I might have been mad... but on this day I just laughed and took a picture.  Poor Bailey doesn't know if he's in trouble or not but Ainsley is just embracing it!