Ethan had about 7-10 days of AWFUL diapers, just runny and messy and he'd poop about 5 times a day and EVERY poop was a blow-out.... it got old. REAL old. Joe was particularly frustrated one morning after a 16 hours of work and one very messy blow-out the minute he got home, so he put Ethan in the bath to clean it up. Not a big deal, except Ethan takes baths on his own terms - you do NOT get him wet, he'll scream. You do NOT make him sit down, he'll scream. You do NOT try to scrub him down, he'll scream. Joe, of course, was doing all three trying to get the poop off so Ethan was screaming bloody murder, which added to the frustration and mayhem. Caroline kept trying to get up in the action but was ordered out of the bathroom, in tears. Finally, bath time over, I took Ethan to get dried and dressed and Caroline came over and crouched low to look Ethan in the face. She sincerely proclaimed, "Ethan! I was so worried about you!" She was so sincere, she said it twice! I laughed because I was unaware that 2-year-olds actually worried about things, especially not their younger brothers. Very funny!
Caroline calls poop "stink," because it's a term we use about poopy diapers, as in, "did you put a stink in your diaper?" She translated it to a verb so instead of "going poop" she "goes stink," and "pooping" is "stinking." When she is "going stink" she's very particular about her privacy, so I'm not allowed in the room until she needs a wipe. One afternoon she'd told me she she needed to stink, so I just sat down in the hall outside the bathroom and waited. In the end it was a false alarm so she came out of the bathroom and found me seated in the hall. She warmly exclaimed, "you found me!" and then gave me a big hug and said, "you're my whole life!" Awwww! I told her she's my whole life, too. It was the only decent thing to say.
She still loves to sing her bedtime songs, the typical trio being "twinkle, twinkle," "I am a child of God," and "All through the night." She's been mixing it up lately, though, and one night she sang "twinkle, twinkle" to the tune of "all through the night" and had me sing the real words of "all through the night" at the same time - it was a pretty cool mash-up! And I can't believe my 2-year-old is making mash-ups! When she sings "Child of God" she mixes the words up a bit, but they still work - "I am a child of God, and peace attend me here..." (instead of "and He has sent me here").
She loves to play baby dolls with her cousins, but sometimes we're short on "babies." Like sippy cups partly full of milk, baby dolls seem to disappear for inordinate amounts of time under couches and in other sundry hiding places. The girls make do with stuffed animals, but Caroline's go-to animal is this big crocodile that Patrick and Eli got a few Christmases ago - it's green, rubbery, and about 20 inches long, but she's convinced it is HER crocodile and she swaddles it up and lays it down for a nap like a good baby. It's name is Crocadilla (another Wild Kratts episode). I guess being in the middle of a brother sandwich leaves deep impressions.
Caroline can get shy around other people, but when I'm around she deals with it by demanding my attention. Not in a loud, acting out way - she wants me to pick her up, then she takes my face in her hands and says, "look at me." She holds me so we're nose-to-nose and eye-to-eye so I can't give my attention to any of those weird strangers, and if I even slightly turn my head she reminds me, "look at me." It's so strange, it cracks me up every time! While I'm there, though, I get a good look at her face and I think she's a very pretty girl, she has very lovely eyes. Since most of the time I'm shooing her off, it's a nice (and funny) change of be quiet and close together.
And that's Caroline.
2 comments:
She is a sweetie!
What a cutie!
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