Write it down

Or in this case, type it down. I'm taking Shannon's advice and making it a point to record some of the happenings in the lives of our two girls, because I know already that if I don't, I do indeed forget.

Caroline has some quirks that are really entertaining and endearing. She is much like her Papa in that weird textures do a number on her (if you want to get to Jeff, just put the corner of a towel in your mouth; he will never forgive you).

When Caroline was nine months old we visited our friends Allison and Jeremy in Nashville. We took her to a park in their neighborhood and as she when she was playing, Allison blew a bubble with her gum. Caroline was intrigued. That is, until she reached out to touch the bubble. At that point she gagged. All of the adults of course thought that was odd and sort of funny, so Allison did it again and Caroline again reached out to touch it. Lo and behold, she gagged again! That was our first indication that odd textures did something funny to Caroline. Over the past almost four years (gasp!), we've discovered that even looking at a cotton ball will elicit the same response out of Caroline. Don't put gauze near her and any food that looks odd or has an out of the ordinary smell to it will get her gagging.

She can't stand to look at baby food. When I feed Charlotte, I have to warn Caroline not to come into the room. This morning I was feeding Charlotte her breakfast of oatmeal and fruit. Today Charlotte tried peaches for the first time (and I'll admit that baby peaches are nothing nice to smell). Caroline walked into the kitchen to ask me to help with something and it went a little like this: "Mom, [gag] can [gag] you [gag] please [gag, gag, gag] . . ." At that point, I interrupted because I didn't want to clean up throw up before work, and said, "Caroline, I'll come get you when I finished feeding Charlotte." She replied as she made a mad dash back to her room, "Good. Charlotte's food makes me cough!"

Caroline is a do-it-myself kind of girl. She loves to clean up by herself, mostly I think because of the response she gets after her room is clean: lots of praise and hugs. I've recently discovered though that her idea of cleaning relies in large part to the empty space under her bed being a receptacle for anything she doesn't want to put away. We're working on that!

Charlotte is doing great. She is trying hard to sit up and as of now she can sit in a little tri-pod position for a while. After about a minute or two she falls down to the side in a kind of slow motion. She is trying to mimic what we say to her and you can tell that little brain is working hard when we have "conversations". Much to her sister's chagrin, Charlotte loves to eat and over the past couple of days she's upped her food intake significantly, eating cereal and a jar of fruit for breakfast, cereal, a little fruit and veggies for lunch, and the same thing again for dinner. She is still on the small side though, so perhaps she's storing up all of that food in preparation for a growth spurt. We'll go back for a check up with the doctor in a couple of weeks, so I'll report back on those stats.