I put Caroline in her crib for a short while so I could get the bathroom scrubbed. Paul had free time. I came back a few minutes later to see he’d brought his game in to her room. She had flipped over and was eagerly watching his every move. I love these cute kids!!
I am having a really hard time comprehending that Caroline is six months old already. How did that happen so fast?
In this video, see how excited she gets seeing her brother!!
She loves to roll around. The problem with a nice soft shag carpet is that she purposely tries to get off the blanket so she can play with it. She’s close to figuring out the coordination required to become mobile. Already.
She started having cereal about six weeks ago. I took a video but it was embarrassingly bad. Here’s another bad video of me trying to feed her some peaches. With all the technology we have, it amazes me how my pictures and videos turn out so poorly a good portion of the time.
She really loves to eat. She grabs for everything to put in her mouth, so the fact that food actually stays in her mouth (for the most part) gets her excited! But you’d never know from the video, huh. No reaction.
Cousin Samuel was not feeling well. He is taking a nap inside. But these climbers wanted to put on a show! And they are holding puppets as they climb!
When a family has five children under the age of 5, another four between ages 4 and 6 (plus an 11 year old), the best possible place to have a family dinner is obviously the Train Restaurant!
Paul loves watching his food come out on a train.
Who knows when these four siblings will be together again?!
A great time was had by all! (Caroline slept through it in her carseat…)
At the end of June, we went to the zoo with a friend!
We saw the Dolphin Show.
Paul pretended he was a zookeeper.
Paul and Meredith had a fun time!
(Caroline slept in her carseat most of the day!)
Paul and I went to a kiddie amusement park, Pirate’s Cove. It is geared toward 1-8 year olds, mostly 4-6 year olds, and it was simply perfect for Paul’s age. I was too big, and Caroline was too little, so it was a day for Paul!
He wrote up his thoughts on his new webpage. He will be tracking his homeschool projects on that site, and I’m encouraging him to write and type his own posts. I am adding some previous posts that I wrote, but from here on out, it will be his!
Anyway, back to Pirate’s Cove.
Apparently, Caroline was happy to just be in her carseat, smiling at people.
Maybe this is still unintentional on Caroline’s part. But she is getting pretty consistent: I know if I put her on her tummy she probably won’t stay there! As much as I’m not looking forward to Caroline becoming mobile (I like her to stay put, thank you very much), I am so excited to watch her blossoming and developing into her own personality.
And what a personality she has! She seems to be a social bug: she loves to see a smiling face and will almost always return a happy smile. She wants to be near other people, even when they are not smiling at her. I’ve already pulled out her high chair so she can be table level when we’re eating — not down in her rocker or crib! She wants to be where the action is! She knows what she wants, be it food, a smile, or a clean diaper, and she will scream herself red in the face to make herself heard. If she simply wants a smile, she’ll stop crying as soon as someone approaches. Daddy says he will not give in to this “drama queen” behavior and I’ve overheard a lecture or two about it.
Paul usually wants to tell me what she needs as much as he can guess: “She’s still hungry” or “She has a messy diaper, Mommy.” But on occasion he’s informed me that he’s “tired of all that crying.”
Here are some pictures from our trip to Grandma’s house May 18, 2012.
Paul has one more day of preschool and then we’re off for a whirlwind weekend in Kirtland and Palmyra. And then summer officially begins, as well as my homeschooling years. I’m really looking forward to not having so much on my schedule: we’re going to take each day and each week as it comes, making fun plans to keep us interested and leaving plenty of open time on the schedule for imaginary play and running around outside.
We have decided to not send Paul to another year of preschool. There is a year before he’s officially kindergarten age, but we’ve started already. I’m really looking forward to learning and growing with him in the coming years. While I can’t say for certain we’ll home school forever, I’m planning on staying with it for the long haul. I believe that although it will be a lot of work, we are certainly going to have a lot of fun also!
Caroline is busy being adorable. Here are some pictures from April 21, 2012, the day before she was two months old.
One of these days I’ll get a good picture of her gorgeous smile. It’s so adorable! I treasure her little coo’s and goo’s!
Paul learned about his birth country, Australia, this month. Here’s the giant Australia cookie we made at the beginning of the project.
Beyond making a giant cookie, we didn’t do much other than reading lots of picture books about Australia. Are we There Yet? by Alison Lester was a child’s perspective of a month-long road trip around Australia. Paul enjoyed learning about the various landmarks and it was fun to show him the family picture in the Victorian mountains and a picture of himself with me by The Twelve Apostles when he was about six months old.
A number of books were about the animals of Australia. Koala Lou by Mem Fox, Wombat Stew by Marcia Vaughan, Snap! by Marcia Vaughan, Possum Magic by Mem Fox, and My Grandma Lived in Gooligulch by Graeme Base. I wanted to do more with the learning about animals, but Paul did not have much interest beyond reading the picture books. We did watch a brief documentary about the Great Barrier Reef and then we enjoyed watching Finding Nemo and making a Finding Nemo game based on the Great Barrier Reef facts he remembered. (He is already forgetting these facts, but it was fun making the game anyway! He will remember what a “predator” is at least.)
I also tried to give him a very basic introduction to Aborigines and culture, but it didn’t go over so well. We liked Big Rain Coming by Katrina Germein, which had Aborigine style artwork. We looked at the boomerangs we purchased when we lived in Australia and we talked about how the art of dots and lines created symbols. He didn’t much care, so we’ll have to return to that sometime! And we read a very silly folktale called Whale’s Canoe (by Joanna Troughton) which is supposedly based on a Dreamtime tradition.
And then he summarized all he learned in this video.
(Yes, Caroline is crying in the background. Ryan was holding her, so it wasn’t like I was just abandoning her. But my, it sounds pretty bad watching the video and hearing her crying!!)
It was fun! He wants to move on to Asia now, although I must admit, I’m not sure which direction to go in first as “Asia” is a huge continent!
This post of celebration is a few days late, but there is still cause to celebrate! Caroline, who was eight weeks old yesterday, has begun to separate night from day!
On Sunday night, she slept for seven hours straight for the first time. The next two nights she slept for five hours and last night it was three hours and then four hours. These longer stretches of sleep have been wonderful for this mama. I was beginning to feel a bit insane in the two or three hours sleeps I was getting. After almost two months, such sleep deprivation is quite discouraging. Now I feel like a human again. Monday I celebrated by cleaning the house.
Yesterday I fell asleep again mid-afternoon. I hate taking naps like that! It feels great at the time but then I wake up feeling groggy and lazy. I don’t get things done that I intended! Ryan says drinking lots of water helps stave off sleepiness. Do you have any other suggestions?
Caroline smiles regularly now. It’s such a pleasant thing to go to my baby and be greeted with a happy face of delight. I have been awful at taking pictures of her. I find I’d much rather hold her and cuddle and coo with her than run get my camera! Caroline notices toys and has begun to enjoy her mobile, much as Paul enjoyed it at the same point in his life (see his video here!)
Caroline lays there staring at the mobile without moving. Then I turn it on and she smiles or kicks or flails her arms. She definitely likes it!
Here she is in a new dress getting ready to go to church! (April 15)
I had the force the toy into her hand but she grasped on to it for a while. I love her expression in this picture. (April 14)
Caroline turned six weeks old this week. She is a fantastic baby. She loves to eat. She smiles to us all now (although the smiles are still a rarity, so I treasure them!). She is incredibly vocal about what she needs: food (NOW!!), diaper change (NOW!!), attention (!!). I feel like there is a lot of crying at various points in the day but I’m trying not to feel to guilty about letting her wait a few moments sometimes when really, I just can’t hold her all day long (much as I sometimes want to).
She is strong. During tummy time (if she’s happy), she’ll lift up arms, legs, and head/neck and just float on her tummy for a few seconds before relaxing. She tries to turn her head from side to side then too. She grasps hold of my shirt or arm. She tries to get her tiny hands into her mouth, a difficult task since she doesn’t realize she controls them. She’s clever because when she’s hungry, she knows the binkie is not going to do much for her and promptly rejects it with an angry yell. She’s sensitive because she recognizes the love surrounding her and responds with coos and a gentle six-week-old smile.
No, she’s not sleeping through the night — or more than 2.5 or 3 hours at a time (except for one night when she slept 4 hours!!). But that’s to be expected. I’m doing much better with the sleep spurts though. The first few weeks were a blur for me. It’s been a while since I had sleep deprivation (and Paul began sleeping long 5-7 hour stretches very early!) so these first six weeks required some readjustment, but I’ll make it.
Caroline is a precious addition to our family. Sometimes I stare at her and think “oh yeah, I have two kids now, that’s weird.” But other times I am only excited and grateful and excited to see her developing personality. I love having her in our family, and I am delighted to treasure these moments with her now when she’s still so innocent. And unknown: it will be great to get to know her too, but this little “doll-like” blank-slate stage has some precious bonuses too.
And Paul simply loves being a big brother. Yes, he’s had his moments of jealousy, (such as his frequent requests that I put Caroline down to do something for or with him). But in general, he can’t wait to greet her in the morning, and he’s just living for the days when she’ll understand that he is her Big Brother, a role he is incredibly proud of.
(Apparently, someone’s head always has to be cute off.)