The Hughes Family: January 2011

Sunday, January 30, 2011

January Pictures of the Girls!

Look Mom! You're shoes fit!

Caroline's first bike ride!

Close up in the bike seat!

Caroline eating in her new "big girl" seat at the table!

"Aww...I'm so cute!"

Girls all dressed up and ready for church!

Sister Chat

I love my baby dolls!

Katherine took this pictures of sweet Caroline.

Friday, January 21, 2011

Silly Katherine

So on our way home from an errand yesterday afternoon, Katherine and I had the following conversation, which totally cracked me up.

Katherine: "Mom, when are we going to go to Kohl's?!"
Me: Uh...do we need something from Kohl's?
K: YES!
Me: What?
K: Something expensive.
Me: We do? What would this something expensive be?
K: I don't know, just expensive and special for me. Cause I like expensive and special.

Yeah...don't we all. ;) You will be glad to know that we did NOT go to Kohl's. And funny that she mentioned Kohl's because I think she has only been in that store twice in her life! Kids these days! :)

Some pictures

Just lounging around.

Caroline playing...Katherine wanting to hug on her sister. It's a good thing Caroline doesn't mind being loved on!

Pajama day at school!

Sweet girl!

Caroline enjoying her breakfast...or maybe just the fork.

Caroline's 18 month check up!!

The Thursday after we got home from Disney was Caroline's 18 month well visit with our favorite Dr. W! He was quite impressed with her cognitive and physical development! She's quite the smart little talker for her age apparently! He also said that she is super duper healthy and growing like a weed...duh! :) Her stats at 18 months were as follows:

Height: 33 1/4" 90%
Weight: 23 pounds 12 oz. 65%
Head: 18.5" 75%

Sadly I didn't record any of Katherine's stats from 15 months until she was 3...what kind of mother am I? I know we were moving and changed pediatricians twice during that time, so I guess I just kind of lost track! :( Sad! Oh well...guess I will make sure I do a better job from here on out! :)

I was thinking yesterday of the similarities and huge differences between the girls. They are both SO very sweet and so caring. They both LOVE to play with baby dolls and really like playing Mommy. They also both LOVE, LOVE, LOVE their Daddy, Grammie, Gray Gray, CiCi, PaPa and Uncle Cory. Anytime they see a picture or hear them their faces light up and they go running for a big hug. They both love to be tickled and they both hate being in the car for long periods of time. They also both love the free cookies at Publix when we go. Who wouldn't?! :)

Now for the differences...Katherine will barely let me brush her hair, much less put it up with bows or barrettes...Caroline demands bows in her hair almost every day and usually requests MULTIPLE bows. Katherine HATES wearing shoes, it is all I can do to get her to keep shoes on at school! As soon as she walks in the door, gets in the car, etc the shoes are OFF! Caroline, however, wakes up in the morning and one of the first words out of her mouth? "Shoes! SHOES!" She will not leave you alone until she has shoes on her feet! Tantrums...Katherine will throw a tantrum at the drop of a hat for no reason at all...and it could last for hours! Caroline, however, is generally happy and content...until you push her to the limit and then it's over! She blows like a volcano, but then is pretty easily distracted and quickly calmed down. Bed time...Katherine has never liked going to sleep...ever. I can remember walking her around for HOURS until she fell asleep and then we would put her down in the crib, for her to wake up a moment later. Luckily she has outgrown that stage, but she still fights going to sleep like a pro. Caroline, however, will let you rock her for a minute and then sits up, points to her crib and says "bed." You put her in there and she just chats with herself for a minute or two and off to sleep she goes. I have a feeling that since Katherine was our first we contributed to her not going to sleep well by always jumping when she cried. With Caroline we let her "cry it out" WAY earlier and I think we are now benefiting from that. Guess we should have done that with Katherine too...doh!

We are so blessed with our girls. They are definitely the best part of everyday and even when they make me crazy, I still know how lucky I am to have them both. :) Now, if only I could figure out how to get them to sleep past 6:30am I'd be in hog heaven! :)

Disney January 2011

On Sunday afternoon, we all packed into the car and headed to the wonderful world of Mickey! Chris and I thought we were geniuses by planning our travel time right smack dab during nap time, so that we would get a peaceful drive over while the girls snoozed...yeah, not so much! Caroline of course conked out immediately...and was awake approximately 30 minutes later...DOH! With Katherine it isn't a big deal if she misses a nap. She will be a little cranky or impossible to keep still, but she is generally still in a good mood. Caroline, on the other hand, gets REALLY cranky and is just so tired she can barely function. So by the time we arrived at our hotel, Chris and I were dreading eating dinner in a restaurant and trying to keep them both under control. We checked into our hotel, got the suitcases unpacked, pull out couch set up for Katherine and got Miss Caroline's pac-n-play all set up. By that time it was almost 5pm, so we decided to head downstairs for some dinner. Chef Mickey's (where the characters come to your table) had an hour wait, so we instead opted for a quick service place next door. It was surprisingly good and quick...and both girls did pretty well!! Then we went to the gift shop. We told Katherine that she could pick out one thing and that at the end of the trip, if she had been really good, we would get it for her. Of course she immediately picked out a PINK Princess nightgown with Sleeping Beauty on the front. Caroline on the other hand, went straight for this giant pink cat from Alice and Wonderland (I don't know his name). She ripped it off the shelf and started carrying him around the gift shop. It was hilarious. I pryed it out of her arms and put him back...and that started the meltdown. High pitch screaming and squealing, which I'm pretty sure could have broken the glasses in the store. Chris and Katherine were in another part of the store and completely ignored us, he later said that he said out loud "Man, who's kid is that screaming?" (He knew it was Caroline!) Caroline and I made a bee line out of the store and went back to the room for some much needed rest! We all conked out around 8:30 and were up at 6:30 the next morning ready to go see MICKEY!!

Monday we started off with breakfast at the hotel with the very famous "Mickey shaped waffles." Katherine was in heaven. Caroline, on the other hand, was much more thrilled with the sweet potato pancakes...she tried to stuff three WHOLE pancakes in her mouth at one time. It was hilarious! We all ate really well that morning! We went back to the hotel room to get the jogging stroller and head off to the parks....yeah, our tire popped just as we were getting ready to leave...DOH! We decided to just rent a stroller at the park, so we hopped on the monorail (I think Katherine's all time favorite ride) to the Magic Kingdom. We spent the morning doing normal things, the tea cups, merry go round, watched the Country Bears, etc. Dad and I did manage to sneak away and ride Space Mountain and Big Thunder Mountain roller coasters while Mom, Chris and the girls did other things. Right about lunchtime Dad and I are walking off of Space Mountain and we see Chris sitting on a bench with Katherine crying in her lap. Yeah...apparently she had been trying to do the splits...and instead did a face plant. She busted her lip pretty good. :( So we packed it in and headed back to the hotel for lunch and naps! The girls and I semi-napped while Chris went to the store and purchased a new tire and other necessary supplies. He got back in time to fix the tire and get ready before we all headed off to Cinderella's Castle for dinner with the Princesses!! Katherine was SO excited! We got there a few minutes early, so we managed to squeeze in another ride on the merry go round and then we visited the Princess store and both girls got fairy dust sprinkled over their heads! They were beautiful! We then went into dinner. We were immediately greeted by Cinderella and took a picture with her! So fun! Then we went upstairs and sat right down at our table. It was a great experience. The waitstaff and Princesses were all so great! We had Ariel, Belle, Sleeping Beauty and Snow White all come to visit us while we ate! Katherine was so excited to see each of them and gave them all huge hugs! Caroline, on the other hand, wanted no part of them and usually just gave them a fierce stare down. After dinner, Katherine got a Mickey Cupcake with a card signed by all the Princesses AND she got a make your own sundae! Talk about sugar overload!!! I would say that it definitely made for a great birthday for the little Princess. :)

We crashed that night and the next morning we woke up and headed for Hollywood Studios/Epcot area. We visited Hollywood studios first and toured around seeing all the characters and we even visited with Handy Manny! Then we grabbed some lunch and went to see the Beauty and the Beast show. Katherine LOVED it...Caroline just wanted to run up and down the aisles the whole time. I then hitched a ride on the Aerosmith rollercoaster while Chris and the girls got ice cream...I miss out on all the good stuff! Ha! After that we headed to Epcot. We thought we would go back to the hotel and take a nap, but instead decided that Caroline would probably fall asleep in the stroller. Oh, speaking of stroller...did I mention that we had ANOTHER flat tire this morning?! It was crazy, but luckily my husband, the Eagle Scout, it always prepared and we had a spare for the spare! :) Anyway, we got to Epcot and first toured around the countries and enjoyed some funnel cake. We also sang God Bless America in the America area. Very fun! Then we headed to the Mission Space ride in the big Epcot ball. Katherine thought it was great...Caroline screamed the entire ride! It was NAP TIME! So Chris strolled Caroline around until she finally conked out, while Katherine and I went on the Nemo ride. She was really excited to see Nemo! :) Caroline finally conked out and we strolled around for a while. It was about 4:30, so we decided to catch an early dinner and then head home for the night. We ate in Italy and had a HUGE pizza. The girls loved it! After dinner we headed for the monorail back to our hotel. We got back to the hotel and Chris wasn't feeling well. I got the girls bathed and ready for bed and then we all conked out around 8pm. We were super tired! Yeah...about 9pm, the stomach ick hit me. Chris's stomach ick had passed by this time, so he was resting, thankfully! I, however, was in the bathroom from 9pm until 1am...ugh! I finally passed out at 1am...talk about tired! We were up early the next morning as we had early reservations for Chef Mickeys! So we headed downstairs for one last hoorah before we headed home. We had a great buffet breakfast and just as we were finishing Mickey, Goofy, Donald Duck, Minnie and Pluto came to our table for hugs! Katherine LOVED it...especially Goofy and Pluto...Caroline...not so much. She would start crying and trying her darndest to get OUT of the high chair when the characters approached. It was actually pretty funny! After breakfast the girls got to pick out their "prizes" from the gift shop and then it was time to head home.

Overall it was a great trip, but we were absolutely exhausted after two days! I'm not sure how people do a whole week there!