Needing advice!

So, I need advice on feeding Caroline. She's on all table food now, which is easier at times and tougher at times. The hardest part is what to feed her while she's at daycare. The room she's in right now still requires us to bring her food for the day and when she was on baby food and bottles, that was easy. But now that she's on table food, I feel like we send her with the same thing EVERYDAY. Her teacher told me that Caroline is tired of it and won't eat it anymore. For breakfast we take her yogurt, cereal, and a granola bar. For lunch we usually take her lunch meat, cheese, and either a fruit or a veggie. I have noticed myself lately that Caroline is getting tired of the lunch meat but will eat her fruit and cheese. So, I need ideas from all of you mommy's out there on what you feed your toddlers. At home we do a full homemade breakfast and then usually a grilled cheese for lunch or something like that but I can't take that kind of stuff to daycare...plus the amount of time to prepare that each night would be insane after cooking dinner for the night! SO, does anyone have any suggestions for me? I need things that are quick to prepare seeing that I don't get home till after 6 and have to prepare dinner, give her a bath, and then get everything ready for the next day. What do ya'll feed your one year olds???

Oh, and an update on the transition from bottle to sippy cup....Caroline is fully on a sippy cup now. We finally found out that the only sippy cup she likes is the Nubby cups. She's still not sure she likes the whole milk but she'll end up drinking it after she realizes she's not getting anything else. She doesn't drink as much as she did with the formula but at this point she's getting enough so I'm not too concerned!

I'm sooo glad tomorrow is Friday. This week has been a doozie for us and I'm ready to put it to an end!

Cousins

Every Sunday we all meet at my parents house for a "Sunday Dinner". We've done this for years and just LOVE it! Caroline loves to see her cousins, Kendall and Maddox. They like to push her on this John Deer car and Caroline would let them push her all day if they would. She cries anytime we make her get off. Here's some pics of them last night!



Wasn't the weather beautiful this past weekend??? We took full advantage of it and stayed outside all weekend. On Saturday we had lunch with friends and then hit up the outlet mall in Dawsonville. Then on Sunday while at my parents house, we washed my car to get all of the snow salt off of it. Here's a pic of Caroline showing off her shades. (*note, she did have pants on but they got food all over them when she had lunch so my mom had them in the dryer for us*)

Weekend recap!

On Saturday since it was so snowy and since Caroline had a little bit of congestion, we stayed home all day in our P.J's. It was a fun and relaxing day...which is just what we needed! While we were playing around in the living room, Caroline found a new hiding spot. She's learned how to open the doors to our entertainment system and pull everything out and crawl in and make herself at home!


On Sunday after church we had my parents over for lunch to celebrate my mom's birthday. Caroline was extremely fussy all day Saturday and again on Sunday. She is getting a mouthfull of teeth and she let us know that she was not happy about it. She's also having a little bit of trouble with her belly from switching to whole milk so with that plus the teething she was a mess. None the less, she had a good time entertaining her grandparents and celebrating her grandmothers birthday! My mom was tearing off little pieces of cupcake for Caroline to eat and Caroline grabbed the entire cupcake out of her hand and just smashed it in her mouth...I think she has my sweet tooth! The 2nd pic is so cute because my dad was trying to steal her cupcake and she kept shoving it in her mouth quicker so that he wouldn't eat it!

Mom's birthday, Snow and Video!

Today is my mom's birthday!!! My Mom is such a special person to me and I love her with all of my heart! She loves winter so I was happy that it snowed on her birthday!!! Here are some pics of Caroline working on a birthday sign for her grandma. She did a good job coloring it but not a good job holding it so that mom could take a pic of it. Oh well...you get the gist! And here are pics of Caroline looking out of the door at the snow and we even let her get out there for 5 minutes to get a close up view of it. She loved looking at it from the inside and was so funny...she would look at it and then look at me with the biggest smile and then she would just scream and jump up and down! I think she approves it:) I love snow and was so glad that we got at least one good snow in this year! It was even nice to get out of work 3 hours early...but the traffic trying to get home was another story! And finally, here is a funny video of Caroline. My in-laws came over last night to visit and they spoiled Caroline by riding her around and around in her new car. She could ride for hours! She was just laughing and talking her head off!

Watching cartoons

Caroline loves sitting in her minnie mouse chair and watching cartoons in the mornings while mommy and daddy finish getting ready for work! (and no we don't let her sit there for hours among hours) Here's a pic that her daddy took of her this morning. She was so into what she was watching. It's the life to have a paci, blanket, minnie mouse chair, and the tv on!



Our poor Caroline had to make a trip to the dr again today. She's been having a runny nose, tugging at her ears, and a little cough for a few days. Other than her symptoms she seems to be a happy baby so we weren't sure if we should take her in or not but after finding out that a few babies in her daycare class have RSV, I thought we better go just to be sure. Well she doesn't have RSV again, thank goodness, but she does have a viral infection. Her throat is sore with red bumps in the back of it and she has red bumps on her stomach and back too. They said it will go away in a few days..hopefully they are right!

On another note, she took 2 steps by herself last night!!! I got so excited when she did it that I think I scared her b/c she didn't want to do it again but it won't be long now before we have a little walker in the house:)

Wordless Wednesday: Shopping

Girls Lunch

Every 2-3 months we get together for a girls lunch with my mom's side of her family and celebrate birthdays that are coming up for that month. It's a lot of fun to get together and chat and catch up with what's going on and to eat good southern food. Yesterday we went to one of our favorite spots, Journey's End! It was so good and we all left ready for a nap because our bellies were so full! They usually put us in a back room, since there's about 12 of us and we just sit back there for hours and enjoy ourselves! Caroline loved the food as well...she pretty much ate the entire time we were there. She ate more there than she eats in an entire day!!! Between January and February we had four birthdays to celebrate!!! Here are some pics to show how much fun we had!

First, I want to show you what Caroline and Logan looked like this time last year when we got together for lunch (same restaurant!). Caroline was 1 month and Logan was 2 months old.

And here they are now...what a difference a year makes!

Here's some pics of us sitting at the table!







Here's Caroline opening her gifts. She loved everything she got!


And to end our day, we had a nice gentleman take a group picture of all of us!

It was fun girls!!! Can't wait to do it again:)

On the go!!!

This is one of the gifts Blake and I gave Caroline for her birthday and we are just now getting around to putting it together for her.

Caroline was so excited when her daddy put her car together because she has places she needs to go and friends that she needs to visit!!!


They have the same car at daycare that they ride her in and the daycare owner told me that Caroline loves it so I thought she would enjoy having one at home! I can't wait until this summer when we can ride outside.

Caroline's ears

Let me start off by saying that I'm sorry for the lack of pictures in this post. We have been so busy and haven't had much time for picture taking...I'm hoping to change that soon!

Caroline has been full of appointments this week with a 1 year check up yesterday and today she had her surgery follow up appointment with the ENT. Well, it didn't go as great as we had hoped for. Blake took her since I had to work and I had taken off early yesterday for her other appointment so I'm so sad that I wasn't there but here's how it went. Her left ear looks great but the right ear was another story. It was full of fluid again, which suprises me b/c her dr yesterday said it looked great. Anyway...they had to lay her on the table and put a few things in it to drain it. Blake said he had to hold her down and that she was not a happy camper. I can only imagine b/c she does not like anyone to touch her ears since she's had her surgery. She was supposed to do a hearing test today but they had to postpone that because of her ear. So she goes back in 2 weeks to see if the right ear looks better and to hopefully have her hearing test. She also got sent home with ear drops to use 5 times a day for 5 days. Oh, this is not going to be fun!!!

Hopefully our little peanut will be better soon! I'm going to start the transition to a sippy cup this weekend...we are hoping it goes well. Last night when I offered her the sippy cup she kept throwing it on the floor! Good times:)

Caroline's 12 month checkup

Caroline had her 12 month check up today! She is meeting all of her milestones and developing just fine! Her dr officially gave me the okay to switch her from formula to whole milk and from a bottle to a sippy cup. I've known that this day was coming and I've had very mixed emotions about it. First, I'm extrememly excited to know that we won't have to spend $60 a week on formula anymore or clean bottles everynight. But this also means that I officially don't have a baby anymore. This makes it more real that Caroline has crossed the line to a toddler!

She still is a little shrimp and weighed in today at 19lbs. She was almost 17lbs at her 9month check up so she's grown over the last few months! She's still only in the 21st percentile for weight.


(something funny about this pic...she loves to jerk her doll out of the stroller and she tries so hard to put herself in the stroller. I keep telling her that she's too big and that she needs to push her baby around but she refuses to listen!)
I'm excited to see Caroline grow and learn new words and sounds! She's been quite the chatter box lately and it just cracks Blake and I up all of the time! She's also shown that she's a little determined girl. She will stop at nothing to get what she wants...I think we are in for it when she gets older:)

Grandmama's helper!

Last night while we were at my parents house for dinner, Caroline decided she would help her grandma by pulling all of her bowls out of her cabinet. She had the best time doing it too and made a huge mess in the matter of a minute!!!



We had a good weekend and hated to see it go by so fast! I went up to Cleveland on Saturday to visit with my mom and dad and to get my car fixed and my hair done! The weather was a little rough with all of the ice but we had a great time together. The trees were all iced over and it looked like a winter wonderland up there! On Sunday, we tried a new church and really enjoyed it. It's very similar to the church we were going to but it's a lot smaller...which is what we were looking for. Everyone was very kind and helpful with us getting Caroline checked into her room for the first time. She ended up being the only kid in her class, which we loved b/c that meant she got a lot of one on one attention and didn't share germs with other kiddos! They said she slept for over 30 minutes so she must have felt comfortable enough to be able to do that. For those of you who don't know...Caroline does NOT sleep at all at daycare..maybe only 30 min or so during the day. At home she takes 2 naps that consist of 2-3 hours long. After church, we went back up to Cleveland for the day. We had a lot of fun playing, napping (mommy's favorite part!), and eating grandma's yummy food. But today it was back to the grind! I'm ready for this week to be over with and it just started! The week days just simply wear me out! I'm excited for this weekend though b/c on Friday we are meeting up with some friends that we used to volunteer with at Northpoint. They have two littles ones are are expecting twins this summer! And then on Saturday, I am meeting up with my mom and her sisters to celebrate Caroline's, my aunts, and my mom's birthday! I love getting with them and visiting...it's always a fun time and good food is usually involved:)

Have a great week!