Labels, Anyone?

With Caroline headed off to her (one-day-a-week) Mother's Morning Out program in a couple weeks (hip hip hooray!), I began looking around online for children's labels so I could mark all of Caroline's territory (particularly the shoes I bought her for the fall...children's shoes are expensive!).

I found this company, Oliver's Labels, whose labels are vinyl and have a tracking system in case someone finds your stuff and doesn't know how to contact you to return it. Pretty cool, huh?

So I ordered her a bunch and then noticed that they offer a program where you can be an "agent" and assist in selling their labels for a small commission. I've decided to give it a go, with the hopes of earning a little pocket change (literally). If you happen to have kiddos or know someone with kiddos, please pass along this website...

www.oliverslabels.com/laurenhepper

(I tried to make it an actual link, but the Blogger program is being ornery today)

Thanks!!!

Breakfast of Champions

This weekend we went to Panera Bread for a quick family breakfast. Caroline slurped on a smoothie and shared a little of my breakfast sandwich. She also sampled some of Paul's bagel with cream cheese. It was her first taste ever of cream cheese, and I think it's safe to say that she liked it. Caroline commandeered the tub of cream cheese and began eating it straight with a straw. Disgusting, if you ask me, but clearly she didn't think so...
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Visit to CMOR

Today we took a late afternoon trip to the Children's Museum of Richmond, or C-MOR. It is such a fantastic way to spend an hour or two, is less than 10 minutes away from our house, and Caroline has a blast every time we go. As usual, we spent most of our time in the "Little Farm" exhibit, but today we also visited the dinosaur excavation exhibit, and the outdoor James River exploration area. Caroline enjoyed her visit, but was a little upset that Mommy wouldn't let her take home a "Seymour" the dinosaur from the museum gift shop. Luckily, we went straight from the museum to her Little Gym class, so she wasn't upset for long!

"Shopping" in the Little Farm exhibit.





Digging for dinosaurs


Can I have one, Mom? I love him so much!


Or maybe I could have two???

Our New Dogwalker

The Best Part of Their Day...

Paul came home tonight after being out of town for three days, and although he wasn't able to stay for more than 30 minutes before he had to leave for the office, he did get to spend a little quality time with Caroline. She was so excited to see his car pull up in front of the house when he arrived home. She followed him as he went to change out of his work clothes, shared a little bit of his dinner and dessert with him, and then snuggled into the couch with him to read a few stories. Caroline misses her Daddy so much when he is gone! I can easily say that this was the best part of both of their days.

(The last picture is from last week when I came into the living room after taking some folded clothes back to the bedrooms and found Caroline in the laundry basket. Too cute not to share!)

Finally...a Normal Weekend!

We've had our a "normal" weekend here in the Hepper household for the first time in over two months. Paul didn't have to go into the office for once (although he did work a little from home), so we were free to do some things together as a family.

On Saturday we all went to the Little Gym together so Daddy could witness Caroline's "Birds" class. She had so much fun showing off all the skills she's been learning and it was great that Paul got to see a little bit of how Caroline spends some of her days.

Last night we were invited to a last minute cook out at our friend Andrew and Elizabeth's house. They live on the street behind us. It was SO nice to just load up Caroline in her wagon and walk over for a night out! While we were there, we enjoyed tasty food, good company, and Caroline got to pick a cucumber from Mr. Andrew's garden! She was quite pleased with herself.

This morning we took a family walk to Starbucks so Mommy and Daddy could have coffee and Caroline could do a little people watching. It's been great to actually spend time together on a weekend!!!

First Dentist Visit!

Caroline went to the dentist today for her first exam! I have a high school friend here in Richmond who is married to a pediatric dentist and she told me that they recommend babies visit the dentist at one year or within six months of their first tooth. Since Caroline fits both of those criteria, I decided we may as well head on over for a checkup!

Everything went really well. Since she only has two teeth (she a late bloomer as far as teeth go), she didn't get a cleaning, just an oral exam. Caroline climbed right into the exam chair all by herself, totally unconcerned with the sterile office, bright lights, and mask wearing women around her. She sat pretty calmly for the exam itself, although there were a few tears towards the end. Nothing that couldn't be fixed with a new toothbrush, a balloon poodle, and a sticker though! Nothing exciting to report as far as the doctor's findings: her two teeth look fine and there's no other teeth in sight at the moment, but that's okay.

The whole visit took less than 30 minutes and although I'm not convinced it was entirely necessary, it was nice to establish a relationship with an awesome dentist that we will certainly be visiting regularly in the future. Hopefully Caroline will behave as well for those as she did for this first one!

A Fortuitous Day

My apologies for the long break in posts. I think I overextended myself with posts while in GA and with the redesigning I did. I needed a little blog vacation, so I took one. But now we're back and ready to post!

What started out as a pretty normal day for Caroline and me turned into quite an exciting one. First we went over to our friend Kim's house for a lunch play date and had a really good time playing and catching up.

Before we left Kim reminded me that she had a putting green that she's been meaning to give to us for Paul for quite some time. We loaded it into the back of my car and I drove away excited that I would have something to "gift" Paul with tonight. After all, if he's not going to see an actual putting green anytime soon, I might as well give him one that he can visit anytime on our back porch.

After we went grocery shopping (nothing exciting there), we headed back home for Caroline's afternoon nap. I had just put her down and was getting settled in for a little shut eye myself when the doorbell rang. I was not pleased to be diverted from snoozeland, but I ran to the door to see who it was. It was one of our neighbors asking if we might be interested in taking a Pottery Barn playhouse off their hands.

Um, let me think about it.....YES!! I locked the door - Caroline was asleep...she wouldn't miss me :) - and ran across the street to happily inherit the toy.
It took some work to get it out of their house and into ours, but it wasn't long before Caroline had herself a fantastic playhouse all set up and ready to go! When she woke up from her nap she was DELIGHTED by this new find and spent lots of time going in and out and in and out of the house.

Here are some pictures of the playhouse. I was too lazy to set up the putting green just to take a picture so you'll have to imagine it for the time being.

Parallel Play

If this isn't a textbook definition of parallel play, I don't know what is.