Odds and Ends

Many apologies for the long drought of Caroline/Katie news...I know that's the only reason you read this blog!

We went up to Michigan for July 4th weekend to visit Adam's grandmother. It was great to introduce her to Caroline.

Caroline is 16 weeks old and is such a sweetheart. She started laughing a couple weeks ago and laughs most often when you clap her hands for her. She also loves singing (or at least listening to mine). She's discovered her feet and spends much of her time lying on a blanket grabbing them. Her hand coordination has developed overnight and today she amazed me with her "batting" skills. Two weeks ago she was weighing in around 15 pounds. Her 4 month check-up is next week so we'll see what the official stats are then.

We did a photoshoot last week, with Caroline wearing my grandmother's christening gown. We did a similar one when Katie was a baby. You can see the close family resemblance, although Katie was 12 weeks in her picture, and Caroline was 15 weeks.

Katie continues to amaze me with her quick wit and increasing maturity. I recently discovered that she is able to sit through chapter books...super fun. We read Charlotte's Web first and finished The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe today. While she's definitely still into Peter Pan, reading these novels have added some more characters to her repetoire (Fern, Susan, Lucy). She's also gotten really good at coloring and is staying in the lines more and more!

We've had some funny conversations lately. Here are some of my favorites:

After Ricky and Staci's wedding, I was telling Katie about the decorations and the dresses and flowers. I started asking her what she wanted at her wedding. She said she wanted pink flowers and purple bridesmaids' dresses. Then I asked her what songs she wanted played during the ceremony. She paused in very serious contemplation and responded, "Jesus Loves Me, Jonah and the Whale...[dramatic pause]...and the Itsy Bitsy Spider." You better believe I'm going to remind her of this when it comes time to plan her real wedding!

Earlier this week we were reading through a Genesis storybook and got to the part about Adam naming the animals. Pointing to the pictures of giraffes, I asked Katie what she would have named them (assuming she would make up some kind of nonsense word). After thinking for a moment, she answered, "Flora and John." Classic.

Finally, I'm still laughing about the post my friend Hannah had up on her blog last week. Happy birthday, Han and Happy Anniversary, Jenny!