Rodeo time

Caroline started her week off with some accomplishments.  She had her 2-year check-up at the doctor's office and the nurse asked me to undress her down to her diaper.  In my attempt at compliance, Caroline decided to totally freak out and scream bloody murder about undressing.  I was highly unprepared for this reaction and couldn't stop laughing at the absurdity of it all.  So, I undressed her with feet and arms going every direction.  We took her to the scale and she yelled, "NO!" when asked to step on it.  (I've desired to do that myself at the doctor's office.)  So, I tried to sit her on the baby scale.  She somehow got the disposable paper barrier out from under her and threw it across the room while yelling, "NO!"  We did get a height and weight, but I'm not putting any money on the accuracy of them.  She calmed down by the time the doctors came in and was fine for them (one was doing his residency) thank goodness.

Another accomplishment was that she got a new trash bag ready for the trash can while I took the full bag outside.

She has also decided that she needs to go pee before bath time much like the boys do.  She runs to her potty and sits for a while and runs back to the tub.  Yet, on Tuesday, Todd was waiting for her to "pee" and he heard the little music go off on her potty...twice.  So she actually peed on her potty for the first time totally on her own.  It is the only time it has happened, but it would be nice if the third child potty-trained herself.  We could totally go for that.

She has also started to be very generous with her food.  When she gets her food, she will either walk around the table giving a piece of it to each boy, or she will hold the piece of food out in her hand and say, "Siah? Siah?  Renry? Renry? Uhhhhh. Uhhhhhh."  For her to share her marshmallows is pretty big.  She is quite the fan of "mar-marls."

The rest of our week revolved around Aunt Claire, all the kids' favorite person.  We picked her up from the airport on Wednesday.  Caroline gave her the furrowed brow "I-have-not-warmed-up-to-you-yet-so-don't-look-at-me" look the entire ride back to our house.  And this was no small furrowed brow.  It was as deeply furrowed as she could make it.  An hour later, Aunt Claire was Caroline's new best friend.  Caroline quickly dubbed her, "Momma."  (I am "Mommy" to distinguish.)

We had to bring Claire to the rodeo, so that's how we spent our Wednesday afternoon.  We knew it was big, but really had no idea just how big.  Both boys insisted on holding Claire's hand while walking from the car to the rodeo.  There were many puddles on the sidewalk to navigate around, but neither boy was willing to let go of her hand to make the navigation easier.  :)

The slightly long walk to the rodeo.

There was a huge carnival area right when we walked in.  Josiah tried to get us to spend time there, but I pushed forward and said I wanted to see animals.  We were there for hours and only managed to see a small corner of the livestock show and a tiny portion of the Kids' area (with it's own little kid carnival).  In the livestock show we went into a petting zoo enclosure.  It was a fairly small enclosure with a lot of people as well as pigs, llamas, donkeys, ducks, goats, sheep, chickens, kangaroos, and a cow (which was sleeping smack in the middle).  Josiah and Claire loved it.  Henry was laughing nervously the whole time.  He kept jumping away from the pigs (which were tiny in comparison to the other animals), but loved the deer.  He is scared of big dogs, so I was pretty impressed with him going in and doing as well as he did.  I think he wanted to be with Claire more than anything.  He even got a hair brush out of the bucket and brushed a few animals.  Both he and Josiah said on a nearly constant basis, "I love you Aunt Claire."  or "Aunt Claire?" "Yes," she'd say. "I love you."

Henry feeding ducks and chickens

Josiah with a goat

One funny llama was very wise and followed Claire to the food dispenser.  Claire put her quarter in, turned the dial, and the llama had his mouth at the ready to catch all the food from the machine.  It got 50 cents worth of food and then followed Claire around for a while nudging her for more.

Her llama eating from the dispenser.

Llama looking for more food

Josiah's favorite part of the rodeo, in his opinion, was the snow cone he got on the way out.  Caroline got a taste of the snow cone and became a quick fan.  Claire and Josiah were both very generous with giving her spoonfuls of theirs.  We ended our rodeo day with a high-pitched scream from Henry while at our car.  He had gotten his fingers caught in the car door.  He says he did it to himself, but we didn't witness it.  Three fingers had deep indentations on them and they looked bad.  He cried a good bit, but in the car on the way home he was easily distracted by looking at pictures on my phone, so we were certain they weren't broken.  Poor kid.  He seems very accident-prone lately.

Back at the house, Henry only wanted Claire to give him a bath, dress him, brush his teeth, read to him, and snuggle with him in his bed.  So, Todd and I graciously stepped aside and allowed her to do all of these things. :)  We even got to go out to dinner by ourselves the following night which we hadn't done in 9 months.  It was a treat for us to have her visit, but that's partly because she was doing all the work with the kids.

Friday, Claire drove to CC in her own car because she had to make her way up to Dallas for a conference.  Caroline was super upset the whole way to CC.  "Momma, Momma" she shouted.  Then in her absence this weekend, Caroline has pointed out of our front window and said, "Momma."  Fortunately, Momma is coming back for another day and a half next week before heading home again.  These are going to be some heartbroken kids when we drop her off at the airport.

Over the weekend, Todd started reading Charlie & the Chocolate Factory to Josiah.  Josiah enjoyed it so much that they finished it in two days and watched the movie of it while we ate dinner tonight.  I love that we can read chapter books to him now and Todd does a great job of reading those to him.  We finished Pippi Longstocking last week.    

So that was our week.
One last picture of this cute kid.