What Caroline's up to at TWO!

Our baby girl is two years old today. Where does the time go? Seems like just yesterday I was pregnant and imagining what she would be like.

Caroline, at two years old you are an absolute joy to be around. You are the absolute love of our lives and we adore you.


At 2, Caroline is talking a lot. She has started repeating what we say and is using phrases such as, “More milk please” “bye bye daddy”, “eat please”, night-night bubba, mommy, daddy”. She is very polite and has great manners. It is soon time to start making her say “ma’am and sir”. She uses possessives a lot lately. She points to things that belong to me and says “mommy’s”, points to things that are Cole’s or Daddy’s and says “Cole’s, Daddy’s” and she’s usually right. She likes to point out the very obvious. She says “crying” when Cole is fussing. She points to the dogs and says their names. She can tell us a lot of the animal sounds.

Some of her favorite things to do lately—

-Baby Dolls. My, oh my! Caroline L.O.V.E.S her babies. She’s not too picky about which one, she just has to have a baby with her almost all the time. She pushes them in the stroller, shopping cart, wagon, or just holds them and rocks them. She is such a little mother and it is precious. She gives them her milk, covers them up with a blanket, pats their backs, and puts them “night night”.

-Be with Daddy. It is so sweet how much she adores her daddy. The second he gets home from work she harasses him until the second she goes to bed. She climbs up his leg and just wants to be held. She dances with him, waters the flowers, blows bubbles, bounces on our bed, etc. If he is on the phone, she screams “daddy” over and over again until he gives her his attention again. She reminds me of myself when I was younger. I would jump into my daddy’s arms the second he walked in the door. I love the memories.

-Dance. She consistently points to the iPad and says “dince” and Eric turns on some music. She has some great dance moves and shakes her entire body around. It’s hilarious. I need to try and upload a video to the blog. It’s way too funny.

-Torment the dogs. She LOVES our pugs. They LOVE her. She follows them everywhere and they do the same thing. Any time she has a snack or food, she throws them some pieces (which explains why they love her and tolerate her so much!). She’s had to go to time out a few times lately for hitting the dogs or yanking on their legs. She uses Shiloh as a foot stool to get onto the couch. They don’t seem to mind one bit, but she needs to learn that's not acceptable behavior.

-Read. She still loves to read books, which makes the teacher mommy proud. She enjoys looking through the photo books we have and pointing out our family members. She loves all books and really doesn’t have a favorite right now.

-Puzzles. She is great at putting together the numbers puzzle 1-20, a shape puzzle, and animal puzzle. She can do those repetively forever.

-Talk on the phone. She has a pretend cell phone that she walks around the house talking into. We’ll ask her who she is talking to and she always tells us either “Gigi, Papa, Mawma, or Papa”. She switches up who she is talking to. However, she has now learned that we really can call them and talk to them. So if she sees my phone sitting around she will bring it to me and say “Gigi” over and over again until I call my mom and put it on speaker phone. My mom doesn’t mind one bit. Caroline loves seeing my mom’s picture on the phone.

-She still loves her Cedarmont Kids DVDs. A while back we called them her “Jesus movies” b/c the kids on the movies sing all about Jesus. Well, now she calls the DVD “Jesus”, so we’re trying to break her from it and call it just a “movie”, so we can start to teach her about the real Jesus. We have a DVD player in our minivan and she LOVES to watch the DVDs in our car. She is starting to enjoy a little Elmos World on Sesame Street, but doesn’t care to watch anything else.

-Play with buckles. This warrants its own paragraph. The sweet girl is absolutely obsessed with buckles. She snaps them together and needs help unsnapping them. She sits still in Target or the grocery store b/c she sits there and plays with the buckles. She won’t eat while sitting in a booster seat b/c she is too busy playing with the buckle. Obsessed.

-Help with Cole. Caroline is a big help at handing me diapers and even throwing away the dirty ones in the “tash” (trash). She likes to cover him up, put his paci back in his mouth (or steal it and put it in her mouth), pat his back, etc. She loves him and has yet to get jealous. She is so sweet natured. She has tried to pick him up a few times, but Cole is a little chunky baby and I think is too heavy for her to pick up (thank goodness!!!).

At 2 years old she has become a tad picky with her eating. She has decided she doesn’t need to sit down in her high chair anymore. She stands up and eats. We need to look into a booster seat that doesn’t have buckles (see above). She still loves fruit “toot” and will eat an entire bowl of fruit for any meal. She eats French toast sticks “sticks” for breakfast almost every day, occasionally a waffle or muffin. She is going through a phase where the only meat she will eat are hot dogs, lil smokies, or bologna (gross, I know). She asks for hot dog and cheese for breakfast or anytime she’s hungry. She LOVES cheese and eats a bunch of it. Her favorite snacks are goldfish and fruit snacks.

She is starting to help around the house. Anytime we are doing laundry she’ll say “help mommy” or “help daddy”. She will take all the clothes out of the washer and put in the dryer!! We have a front load machine, so she is able to and we let her! She likes to take a paper towel and “help” wash the windows or dust the tables. Too bad she won’t help clean up her toys every night. We must start that as a nightly routine!!

She still takes a pacifier at bedtime, but our goal is to break her from it THIS month. I have heard several suggestions on how to do it, but I think she’s too young to understand the “binky fairy” or stuffing them inside a build-a-bear. I think we’ll just have to either cut holes in her pacis or just cold turkey take them away. Wish us luck on that one, b/c the girl loves her “pass”.

Lots of pictures to be coming in the next couple days and week. We have plans this afternoon with her little boyfriends and dinner with daddy tonight. Her party is next weekend!! We’ll have lots of fun celebrating TWO!!!