Baptism, Round Two

I posted a few pictures of Caroline's January baptism a while ago, and I'm just now getting around to posting some of the ones my Aunt Heidi took. Here they are...






Grandma DeNiro and the girls

Grab Bag

I don't have anything "big" to blog about today, so I'm posting a few pictures to show what we've been up to over the past few days.

Check out this great gift Caroline recently received her California baby friends Nick and Alex. Caroline loves knocking the letters out of the frame and then sampling each one. She is pleased to report that the wood is very high quality :)
Thank you Nick and Alex!!




Here's a picture of Caroline's latest injury. While Mommy and Daddy were checking out pictures of a house online, Caroline motored over to join in on the fun. She pulled herself up on one of the kitchen chairs. Unfortunately, the chair came toppling down on top of her, resulting in a perfect right angle bruise on her forehead. There goes our "Parents of the Year" award.




Over this past weekend, Caroline and I went to a baby shower. Caroline had a really good time with the ladies. We played some games at the shower, and although I didn't win, I still managed to finagle a prize out of the host. I'll do anything for chocolate. Caroline was very pleased with my efforts despite the fact that she's not allowed to eat chocolate yet.

Caroline Conquers the Stairs, Part Two

Here's a clip of Caroline making her way up the first half of the steps. She gets distracted while climbing, so I didn't film her going all the way to the top...it would have been a loooooong video.

Thanks to everyone who signed up to be an official follower! I appreciate you taking the time to do it.

Mount Chipotle and a Plea for Followers

Here in Charlottesville, we have a snow problem. It all started in mid-December when we got 20 inches dumped on our fair city over a two day period. Add in two more significant snow storms, a few smaller ones, and temperatures that don't make it above freezing and what do you get? Mount Chipotle, of course.

What is Mount Chipotle, one might ask? Well, it's what Charlottesville does with its snow after they plow it off the roads, parking lots and sidewalks. Mount Chipotle is a mountain of snow that has grown to ridiculous size over the last 6 weeks or so. It emerged from the Barracks Road shopping center (the only semi-decent place to shop in this town) parking lot next to Chipotle. It now towers at least 10 feet above Chipotle. I noticed this monstrosity right away, but I have just recently been made aware of its "official" name and the fact that Mount Chipotle has its own blog.

And here's the kicker: Mount Chipotle's blog has more official followers than mine! I don't know what's more sad: the fact that a pile of snow has a blog, or that it has, in its short life, more than double the number of followers that my blog has.
So, here's my plea: if you read our blog regularly (or even semi-regularly), please sign up as a follower! It's super easy.

Just click on the "Follow" button on the top right side of this page and then sign-in using your Gmail, Yahoo, AIM, etc. email account. I realize that not everyone has one these accounts, but perhaps you'd consider creating one (my suggestion is gmail) in our honor?? If you're really feeling sympathetic toward my pathetic plea, you can even upload a picture of yourself. And for those of you who are followers and don't have your picture uploaded: get to it and make it snappy!! :)

And because I hold no grudge over Mount Chipotle and its blog, I'm even going to include the link to an article about it so you can check it out. It's pretty amusing. The link is below...
http://www.dailyprogress.com/cdp/news/local/education/article/daring_uva_students_scale_study_mount_chipotle/52201

Here is a picture of Mount Chipotle in its early days, before it grew taller than the restaurant itself.

Caroline Conquers the Stairs

Here is a video clip we shot last week of Caroline going up the first few stairs in our house. She can actually climb the entire flight of stairs now, so I'll post that video next!

1st Cookie

We recently gave Caroline her first cookie. I'll let the pictures do (most of) the talking...

Hhhmmm..what's this, Mom?


I'm not sure...


...but I'll give it a try


Pretty good!


More, please!!

Daddy's Little Girl

Daddy and Caroline "studying" together.

Houston, We Have a Problem

So, as I mentioned in the previous post, Caroline will be 8 months old soon. This Saturday to be exact. I've been so excited about all the gross motor milestones she's been making that I've conveniently ignored one milestone that she has yet to even come close to passing. I was reminded of this when I was on the phone with my mom a few days ago.
Mom: "So, how's the sleeping through the night going?"
Lauren: "Um, she's doing okay."
Mom: So, she's still getting up from time to time?"
Lauren: "Maybe once a night. Or twice. At the MOST, three times."
Mom: "And you just let her put herself back to sleep, right??"

I don't need to tell you how the rest of this conversation went. By the time I got off the phone, I was determined that sleep training boot camp would commence that evening. I talked out the game plan with Paul: Instead of going cold turkey, we'd take baby steps. After all, Caroline is only 8 months old. We decided that I would get up with Caroline the first time she woke, put her back to sleep, and then any other times she woke up she'd have to "self-soothe" (otherwise known as cry herself back to sleep).
I felt good about our plan. I'll admit I don't mind getting up a few times a night that much, but an uninterrupted night's sleep did sound pretty enticing. So we went to bed, full of determination to get Caroline's sleep habits under control.

Caroline woke at about 1am for the first time. I went in, took her out of the crib, and rocked and nursed her back to sleep. It was so easy and I was back in bed and asleep within 10 minutes. She slept until 3:45. At that time, she woke, immediately crawled to the side of her crib, pulled herself up into a stand, and began screaming at the top of her lungs. After about 15 minutes, she actually laid down and went back to sleep. There, I thought, sleep training was a piece of cake! I rolled over and settled in to go back to sleep...for about 10 minutes.
At 4:15, Caroline woke back up. And began screaming even louder. She screamed for 25 more minutes before I just couldn't take it anymore. I caved. I went in, picked up my whimpering, wet-faced Sugarboo and brought her back to bed with me. I thought I could just nurse her back to sleep and then we could all wake again at a more decent hour. I was wrong. Caroline was awake and ready to face the day, all smiles and sunshine.
I wasn't about to face this brutal start of the day on my own, so I nudged Paul out of bed and we went downstairs to face the day. It was 4:45am.
Now, one advantage of waking up at such an ungodly time is that we got to watch the exciting end of the Federer vs. Murray Australian Open tennis match live. The downside is that by 6:00am, I felt like I'd been hit by a Mack truck. By that time, Caroline was ready to go down for a nap and Paul and I went back to bed.
When we all woke up at 8am, I decided that sleep training would have to wait. Indefinitely. That's right; I gave up after one night.
Last night Caroline woke up twice. I nursed her back to sleep both times and then blissfully went back to sleep until we woke at 7am. I know this tactic is short sighted, but I'm just not ready to let her cry all alone in the middle of the night. Until I come up with a better solution, I'm keeping my fingers crossed that Caroline will miraculously and suddenly sleep through the night on her own.
Here are some pics of Caroline in peaceful states of slumber throughout her 1st 8 months.