Keeping Up With Leo and Carolyn (and Melissa too!)

Fall is here...

It's time for another update! The summer was great, and as the weather starts to turn cooler, we've been busy with all manner of stuff.

Early in October, Stacey got to take a trip back to Boston with her friend Kristin, a trip she's been wanting to take for some time now. The picture here is of Stacey at Walden Pond, her favorite spot in New England. Stacey has lost all kinds of weight in the past few months, sticking to a strict calorie count, working out 5-6 days a week, and more. This trip was a reward for her hard work, and she continues to work hard on getting the weight off.

Because of the way my schedule works, the only real option for me was to take time off and take Carolyn to California for a visit and a trip to Sea World.

The entire weekend was completely planned out, with activities every day. We arrived Friday afternoon, and stopped by Karl, Dawn, and Nana's house for a visit, and a fitting of her Halloween costume. Carolyn is still a three months shy of three years old, but is wearing size 4 clothes (and quickly growing out of them).

On Saturday, Carolyn's Grammy, Aunt Ginger and I took Carolyn to see her cousin BJ who was performing with her marching band in a parade in Placentia, CA. We spent the morning watching bands and antique cars roll by, and waited for BJ's band to make their way down the parade route.

Carolyn got a kick out of most of it, but the weather, though overcast, got warm pretty quickly. Still we had fun waiting for BJ's band to come by, and Carolyn got a real kick out of seeing her cousin marching in the band.


Later that afternoon, we made a trip to the church Fiesta with Grammy, and had a spectacular time!

Carolyn got her face painted, rode a number of rides and like most kids, didn't want to leave. I held up the Dad's end of the trip, and made sure I won a number of stuffed animals, all of which now happily reside on Carolyn's bed. (A side note: Carolyn is now in her "big girl bed", a transition that went virtually painlessly).

One thing we weren't sure about was whether Carolyn would enjoy the rollercoaster at the Fiesta. Our worries proved to be wholly unfounded. Not only did she like the rollercoaster, but insisted on going on it multiple times, squealing with delight every time it rounded a corner or rolled over a hill.
Sunday, we took a trip down to San Diego and Sea World. Carolyn had been talking about feeding and petting the dolphins for days, and this promised to be fun.

Let me preface this whole thing with a note: Taking a 2-year-old to Sea World and expecting to get pictures is not a realistic goal. I know this now. So there's not a whole lot of pictures (read: none).

But we did have a good time. The dolphin feeding was a bit of a challenge. Apparently, to Carolyn, the reality didn't match her imagination. We waited in line to buy our feeder fish, then made our way to the feeding area. The basic idea is that the dolphins swim up to the feeding wall, you lean over, drop a fish into its mouth, and pet it on the head. Carolyn was fine until the dolphin swam up. At that point, she hid behind my shoulder, wathing me with one eye. So here I am, leaning over the wall with one hand to feed the dolphin, while holding Carolyn in the other arm. A bust, right? Except that she wanted to do it again. Never did get her to feed them, but she got a kick out of watching me do it.

She did get a real kick out of the sea star pool, where you can pick up and hold starfish. We spent about 40 minutes picking up and looking at sea stars, running around the pool looking for different colored sea stars. This was Carolyn's favorite activity of the day.

As we walked around Sea World, Carolyn caught glimpses of these plush clownfish hats. Being a big Finding Nemo fan, she immediately named them "silly Nemo hats", and wanted one. I caved, and got her this giant squish ball as well that looks like an anemone. She hasn't gone to bed without them since.
Which brings us to Halloween. As you can see, the costume Nana got Carolyn was just right, and Carolyn got to be Ariel for Halloween. She loved the "glass" slippers that came with the costume, and spent the day at daycare in her costume as well as trick-or-treating in the evening.

I made an effort to put together a fun Jack-O-Lantern and I think I did OK with the Blue's Clues pumpkin. You can get all kinds of patterns online, and it only took about an hour to do.

That's it for this installment. Hope everyone had a great summer and a fun Halloween!

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