Well here we are on Bastille Day and it’s not just a big day for the French…Caroline turned 28 months today! This has been a GREAT month for our little lady. She is a joy to be around. She is constantly hugging and kissing us and Finny, she loves to have Popsicles (only red!) on the porch after dinner, loves getting a ‘special surprise’ (note–especially gold coins!) and remembers EVERYthing we tell her. She is getting braver and braver in the pool and has not had a single temper tantrum this month (for me anyway–whew!)

But by far, Caroline’s favorite part of summer? The ICE CREAM:

She makes her own waffles for breakfast:

She and Vivi and Suelen go to the park almost daily and she can climb, slide, and run by herself…she even (gasp!) shares her toys with her good friend Fiona:

She loves Vivi. SO much. She wants her to come everywhere and she is very helpful getting her dressed, changing her diapers, and giving her coppis. Most mornings she wants to climb into Vivi’s crib:

They love to swing “together”…

And no one can make Vivi laugh the way Caroline can!

Caroline can put her shoes on all by herself…although most of the time not correctly!

She loves to root through bags and gets into mischief…sunscreen anyone??

She still loves her scooter…and hide and seek. Here is her scooter playing hide and seek:

We have spent countless weekends at Meg’s pool swimming and eating alll the snacks…

Oops. Sometimes we stay a wee bit too long…

Here’s a snapshot of Caroline at 28 months:

• I have started asking her what her favorite part of the day is and her answers always surprise me. Just when you think that what you’re doing doesn’t really matter, her answer makes you realize it does. My favorites from this month? When she said her favorite part of the SplashDown Water Park was “playing with Mommy.” After a HOT day at Glen Echo Park and waiting in a loooong line for the carousel (that later I had to drag her off of), she said “thank you mommy for letting me ride the horsey.” She also told me she loved playing with the water bead station I set up in our driveway on a day where I had zero patience left.
• She answers with an enthusiastic “I will!” when you tell her to do something. And then doesn’t do it, haha…so you have to add “right now please!”
• She sometimes says please, thank you, and you’re welcome totally unprompted and it is adorable.
• She has started putting things in her mouth so now we say the only things that go in your mouth are food, coppis, and drinks.
• She knows she isn’t supposed to say “stop it” to adults and so she enjoys saying it to Finny and recently started saying “no say stop it to me mommy!”
• She will tell you when she climbs in her little pink car that she’s going to visit “her boyfriend.”
• She can now pedal her little red tricycle! By herself! Around the neighborhood! It’s unreal.
• We read in either her room or Vivi’s room before bed and some new favorites are Addi’s book Go Bikes Go, Goodnight Alaska, and Dear Girl.
• Her vocabulary and ability to notice EVERYTHING is amazing. She will say Mommy I miss you, I love you, Mommy where are you? She talks about yesterday and tomorrow and can sort of tell you about her day…sometimes it’s even true, haha!
• She is developing strong empathy–she cries when she sees someone looking sad (in a book like Hop on Pop or in a little video about 5 Little Ducks where they dont return to their Mommy) and she is the first one to offer a hug to someone sad at the playground.
• She loves to tell me about when she was a baby…that she was inside my belly and that she ate baby surfboards.
• She feeds Finny breakfast and dinner…this is her job and she knows it.
• Most mornings she wakes up dry in her pull-up.
• She loves playing with these water beads (that grow when submerged in water) that Mike hates. But she is always pouring them from one bucket to another and very rarely misses! She is quite careful and stays very focused and if one drops, she will find it!
• She doesn’t really ‘play’ with toys as much as she organizes her stuff into little bags–she collects treasures and groups them into bags that she will then carry around until she eventually forgets about them. It is a funny thing and makes me very careful about what toys we bring into our house!
• She loves Suelen so, so much too. She cries when Suelen leaves and yells down “Hi Suelen!” in the morning when she hears her stirring. She has learned quite a bit of Portuguese too–hello, good morning, thank you, and a few expressions!

Happy 28 months, Sugar Bear!