Miss Caroline's year in review..

I got this idea from a blog that I follow and I thought it was too cute. It's amazing how quickly little ones change at this age.

January..crawling..and still lots of chub

February..Daddy was her valentine

March..turned 1 and started walking

April..discovered her love of water

May..took a trip to Corpus Christi

June..started working on her climbing skills

July..visited Deep Eddy Pool

August..visited her cousins in Pearsall

September..visited family in Houston

October..dressed as a pirate for Halloween

November..went to Wursftest and discovered the carosel

December..visited family, discovered her love of tutus

I'm excited to see how much Caroline will change over the next year!!

Christmas!

We had a great Christmas this year. It was so much fun watching Caroline open her presents! We did several Christmas' and I'm sure she was wondering if she was going to get presents everytime she went somewhere. When we finally got home and situated, I packed up some of her younger toys to make room for all the new ones.

Here's our weekend in pictures.

We celebrated cousin James' 3rd birthday with a pinata

We tried not to go too crazy with gifts for her because we knew she was going to get so much stuff from everyone else

She loves wearing anything puffy and girly these days. She loves hew new tutu from my parents!

She also loves this new dress from my grandparents! She opened it and started taking off her clothes so she could wear this.

Almost Christmas!

Am I a crappy blogger or what? I've been super busy at work..and at home lately.

Caroline had a fever off and on from Friday until Tuesday and she's finally back at daycare today for the first time since last Thursday. I took her to the pedi and it was just a cold virus so there wasn't much we could do. She was acting relatively normal while on Motrin so we still went to the Buda Trail of Lights and went driving around with my parents to look at Christmas lights on Sunday. Because I am so busy at work, Caroline got to stay home with Aunt Natalie and Grandpa on Monday and Tuesday (thanks so much!!).

I love this time of year but it is flying by so quickly! How is Christmas 3 days away? Today is my Friday at work and we're leaving for Mario's hometown tomorrow. I'm excited for Caroline to see her cousins..we haven't been there in a while. We will drive back home Friday night so Santa can come and we can wake up at our house Christmas morning. After we do presents at our house and my parent's house on Saturday, we're driving to Houston to visit family.

Caroline and I are spending the whole week at home together next week and it should be fun.

Oh, what's new with her? Talking, talking, and more talking. She's so fun and expressive. Christmas is going to be a blast this year.

I don't have access to all of my pictures right now, but here are some that I have.

We made some ornaments for the tree.

We opened a Christmas present early..she loves dressing up and picking out her own clothes and shoes.

The face rash..

We have been battling a face rash off and on pretty much since Caroline was born. She had bad baby acne and outgrew that, then the rash started. We talked to her pedi about it several times and we always chalked it up to drool from teething, the weather changing, the pacifier rubbing, etc. I started thinking it might be a food allergy because it gets worse/flares up after she has certain fruits..so we cut out those fruits, then the rash came back.

We finally got a referral to a dermatologist and we went the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. He was great and pretty much said it's just excema and it keeps getting infected. He said that drool, the pacifier, food, weather changes, etc. causes flare ups and it's easy for the face to get infected when she has a flare up. We've tried a few different creams in the past without any luck, but the stuff we have now is amazing! Her face cleared up over night. We have two different steroid creams to use depending on the severity of the flare up. We also have to use vaseline all the time and bathe her in a 3/4 bath with 1/4 cup of bleach three times a week. I seriously can't believe how clear her skin is!

Here are some pictures of what we've been dealing with..and some pictures now.

Her face has not been this clear in a long time!

20 Months..

Caroline turned 20 months old last week and, in keeping with my blogging slacker position, I didn't post about it. It feels weird saying her age in months now..how are we so close to 2!?

I love this age! I know I've said that at every age since she was born. Haha. I just love watching her learn new things and grow. Honestly, being a parent has been so much better than I thought it was going to be. I know that sounds bad. I've just never really been a kid person. I wasn't the adult that would crawl on the floor with the kids and entertain them..I figured I just wasn't born with that skill. That changed when Miss Caroline was born. The second I saw her, everything clicked and I knew I was supposed to be a parent. It's amazing. I'm so lucky..yet so terrified of her getting older. I wish she could just stay young and innocent forever.

Anyway. Enough with all the mushy stuff!

We had some issues around Thanksgiving with major temper tantrums and we thought that was the start of the "terrible 2s"..luckily it only lasted a few days and she's been back to normal since then. I think she's already working on her 2 year molars and they are driving her crazy off and on.

She has become quite the chatterbug lately! I'm going to just delete her list of words because I can't even count everything that she says now. She will pretty much repeat (or try to at least) anything she hears.She says words that I didn't even know she's heard before..like she has started pointing out the moon and stars every morning when we leave for daycare. I don't remember ever talking to her about the moon.

Her daycare director is talking about moving her up to the 2 year old room a little early because she's ready..and is socially on track with the kids in that room. I think it's a great idea because she's the oldest in her current room and she's the only girl.

We went to the pedi yesterday and she was 29 lbs. She's in 24 month and 2T clothes and 6-6.5 in shoes.

I can't access Shutterfly at work anymore so I'll have to post more pictures later.

I'm a slacker..

I have been such a slacker about blogging lately. I didn't even post a McFatty Monday post last week..not that there was anything to report. I did the first two weeks of C25k, then got sick, then Caroline got sick, then I got sick again, then had family over for Thanksgiving..etc. etc. I'm not having a hard time coming up with excuses for not getting my butt in gear!

Anyway. We had a great Thanksgiving and I can't believe the weekend is already over and we have to go back to work tomorrow. Caroline is always a little more fussy than normal on Mondays and I'm sure this one will be worse than most. Speaking of being fussy, we have been dealing with some full blown tantrums lately..and apparently her teachers at school have been too. Ugh, I guess it's time to really parent huh? Anyway..here are some pictures from the past few days.

I'll have to do a post soon about Caroline's face rash. We've been dealing with it pretty much her whole life and we finally found something that will clear it up over night!

McFatty Monday..C25K Week 2

I finished week 2 of couch to 5k on Sunday. Whew, have I mentioned that I'm not a fan of running..at least while I'm doing it. It feels great afterward though..and that's what's keeping me going. Week 2 consists of 20 minutes of 90 second running and 2 minute walking intervals with a 5 minute warm up walk and 5 minute cool down walk. I'm nervous about starting week 3 tomorrow..I'll have to do two runs that last 3 minutes each (and two more that are 90 seconds). Yikes. I'm going to push through and I will do this!

Well, it's a good thing that I'm doing this program because my eating has gone to crap. I'm okay during the week, minus all the extra snacking I've been doing in the evenings. Luckily we don't keep much junk food in the house..but lots of halfway healthy food is still a lot of calories! The weekends are just blowoffs for me right now. I maintained this week..and I'm okay with that even though I'm still mad at myself for being over 180.

Oh, I'm posting from home again so I can do a before/after from this time last year..wow!

19.5 Months..

Time is seriously flying by these days! I can't believe Thanksgiving is the week after next. I'm so excited about the holidays this year. We're planning on going to as many Christmas activities as possible..I know Caroline is going to love all the lights.

We both had Thursday off last week for Veterans Day so we kept Caroline home from daycare and took her to the park in San Marcos. She loves swings and slides. We had a picnic lunch, then played until it started raining and we had to run to the car..Caroline thought it was funny.

Yesterday we went to a toddler get together..we rarely get to go to any get togethers because I work full time and most of them are during the week. Thanks K for having us over..we had a great time.

Here are some pictures from this past week.

Does this girl know how to trash a room or what? 30 minutes earlier, this room was clean and organized.

Why I LOVE Shutterfly!!

If you follow many blogs, I'm sure you've heard of the promotion that Shutterfly has going on right now. Just for writing a blog post about your favorite products, bloggers get 50 free holiday cards from Shutterfly..you can sign up here.

Ever since Caroline was born, I have been a big fan of Shutterfly! I wanted a way to share all of the pictures I was taking with family and friends living all over the country. I set up a site through their website where friends and family can view pictures and even print them.

I have a 2010 calendar on my desk right now that I made using Shutterfly..it's almost time to order one for 2011. Check out all of the different calendar designs they have to choose from. I also used their site to make a photo book for Mario for Father's Day and he loves it! We ordered our Christmas cards from them last year and I'm so excited about getting 50 free this year.

Check out these adorable Christmas ornaments..what grandma wouldn't love one of these?

Wurstfest

I mentioned in my McFatty Monday post that we went to Wurstfest last weekend. My family from Houston and a bunch of other family friends have been going to Wurstfest every year together for what seems like forever. It's know as the 10 day salute to sausage and they have lots of other (greasy, fried foods) besides just sausage. Yum!

This was Caroline's first year and we weren't sure how long we would be able to stay since she's not a fan of sitting still. She was great and we ended up staying for over 7 hours. We rode the carousel (a few times) and some other rides..she loved them!