Discoveries

The past month or so has been so much fun watching Caroline. She is making new discoveries every day. She has always loved the water, but at the Y pool the other day she was kicking her legs like she was ready to swim a mile. She splashes her face when her arms get a little out of control, and she sometimes puts her face in the water and freaks herself out. But she is definately a water baby. Another new funny thing is that she has discovered her legs and feet. On Sunday while we were trying to take pictures of Caroline and Alexa, Caroline kept bending over to play with the beads on her socks. She lays on her back now and holds onto her feet and rolls to the side. I think she has found it's easier to roll that way. She also sits in my lap and kicks whatever I happen to be holding at the time. A book, a box of crackers, whatever. Well, she has found a new game. She lays on her play mat and kicks the toy bar over. She has to turn a bit to reach it, cause it's too high, but she can reach the side. She gets her feet hooked around the bar and pulls her legs down to knock out the bar. It's funny. I would load the video of her doing it and laughing the whole time, but my computer is slow...So here's how it works.

She kicks....

Success!Isn't this so much fun?So I leave her on the mat to finish getting the groceries out of the car. When I came back in, this is what I saw...How she got it to the other side, I'll never know. No witnesses...But she looks proud of herself.

She loves to lock her knees real tight, especially during a diaper change, which makes it impossible to put on a diaper. But she also loves to stand up, particularly when she knows she's doing it herself. I have to help her balance, but sometimes I'll let go and let her try on her own. It doesn't seem to freak her out too much when she falls over...Don't you just love her fat rolls? I know Aunt April does. :)

Haircut

I have always been very indecisive about my hair. Ask anyone in my family, my sisters and mom especially. I bombard them with questions like, "Do you think I should go short? Or grow it out? What about the color?" It's not that I'm really that obsessed with how I look. It's just hair and so easy to change. It grows back if you don't like, no big deal. I have just never really tried many styles, it's always been straight and almost always long, nothing to it. I have been thinking about cutting it for awhile, but I was gonna wait and do Locks of Love again before I settled on short. But plans changed when I got tired of shedding long hair EVERYWHERE!!! Everyone failed to mention that is something that apparently goes along with having a baby. Anyone else experience this misery? Anyways, I finally sucked it up and found some pics of styles I liked and took them to Stephanie and said, "Help me." :) She did. She probably thought I was annoying cause I kept talking about how I liked these styles but, "they probably won't work with my hair." Bla bla bla. I was wrong, she was right. It's shorter than I anticipated. But I guess a picture isn't the same as reaching up and thinking where did all of it go?!?! It's a very liberating, my head feels lighter and my neck cooler. Justin says he likes it, but keeps saying, "It's gonna take some getting used to." Which leads me to believe he doesn't love it, but likes it ok. He almost always gets used to my style of the moment and then when I change it again, he'll say the same thing. But anyways, now that you all have been sufficiently bored with my hair drama, let me just say that I LOVE IT! I think Caroline likes it too, she smiled at me alot today. :)

Justin vs. Police Dog

So the other day in class, they had a K-9 unit. Justin volunteered to go up against the dog. I guess he was the only one to volunteer and the guys in his class were like, "Dude, that's crazy." But that's Justin for you. I asked him if he was scared and he said he was a little, but he wanted to see what it was like. Then he said when he got the padded suit on he wasn't really as nervous. So he goes out and the officer gives the dog the attack command and calls him back and tells him to attack again. In the picture where Justin looks like he's laughing, he said the officer called the dog off and then 'searched' Justin and then he told Justin to push him. Justin pushed the officer and the dog attacked him. The officer told Justin to try to lift his arm with the dog hanging off it. Justin said he wrestled with that dog forever and couldn't get him off for anything. At one point I guess Justin had his arm out with the dog hanging off and was swinging the dog around in circles. Needless to say, Justin enjoyed class enormously that day. This past Saturday he had class also. I was sad cause he worked that night too, so I didn't see him much. We did get to have lunch and he told me that they got to drive the police training cars. I guess one is a new Dodge Charger. They had all kinds of crazy obsticles and they had to go through them as fast as they could. They were encouraged to test the limits, not just worry about running over cones. So again, right up his alley. This Saturday he gets to go to Carthage P.D. and begin hiring testing and today all the department heads for Joplin (SWAT, K-9, Drug units, all the 'cool guys' as he called them) came to his class to recruit and schmooze the cadets. He really is getting excited, but overwhelmed with trying to decide where he wants to go when this semester is over. I'm glad he is doing something he enjoys. I sometimes get worried when I think about some of the situations he may get into in the future. When I bring that up, he agree's, but thinks about all the people he could help. I guess that's the attitude he needs, so I'm proud of him. He found out in class that the divorce rate is high for police officers and of the one's who stay married, there is a high percentage married to nurses and teachers. Interesting huh? I'm neither, but we decided I'm kinda close to a nurse, at least in terms of patient care and service, so we're good. :)

New Toy

So this past Wednesday at Activity Day, I had Caroline with me, which I never do cause little girls are easily distracted by babies. Nicole was playing with her while I was giving my lesson and I mentioned to her that Caroline likes to be sitting up, but she's not good at it yet, so it sometimes can be hard to come up with different positions that make her happy. Makayla asked me if I had seen these seats and Nicole said she had one and brought it in for Caroline to try. Since Nicole's boys are too big for it, she let me borrow it until Caroline gets too big (or she needs it again, whichever comes first...) Anyways, as you can see, Caroline is greatly enjoying her new toy. She is starting to become aware of items and reaching to play with toys. It's fun to watch her discover that she has control over the brightly colored spinny things in front of her. I'm still constantly amazed at how much she changes every day. Just a few days ago I was wondering when she was going to gain interest in toys and things... I'm still learning to just not be overly concerned with her development and enjoy these times. I find my self constantly wondering, "Is it normal she doesn't roll yet?(she does now a little...)" or "When is she going to start doing this or that?" Even though I studied child development in school and I know she's completely normal, I still muse and look up stuff in old text books and such. I enjoy sharing with Justin. He says things like, "She always does that," and I will reply with something like, "That's ATNR, an infant reflex. She can't roll until she suppresses the reflex." I know, it's crazy and stupid, but my brain is weird like that. I can't make it stop!

Family Photo Shoot 8-22-08

I you could see mommy in this, it would be just perfect.



Daddy and Caroline are so cute.

Grandma Maureen made
her blessing dress.

It was the end of the shoot and she had had enough. We finally gave her the pacifier to make her happy. Daddy found the football in the pile of props and gave it to her. Thankfully the photographer thought it was cute too and this was the end result.

This Daddy's favorie picture

And so it begins...

So everyone and their dog has a blog site and I thought, why not? I'm not much of a pro, so bear with me. I also don't have tons of time, but will probably update at least once a week.

So life has brought us many changes the past few months. First and foremost the arrival of our beautiful baby girl, Caroline Ruth. She was born June 20 and is doing great. Justin is currently enrolled in the police academy and is enjoying it so far. Analla has returned to work just this week. :( I know, but somebody has to be the bread winner while daddy is becoming super cop. :)

That's our life in a nut shell. Enjoy!