Chloe - Then and Now - July

Wow! It's so hard to believe that is nearly the end of July already! And with the end of July comes time for my monthly update of Chloe. This has been a busy and tiring month for us ... Between my pregnancy and a beautiful 2-year old who has come full swing into the "terrible twos", I have been pretty worn out some days! Sometimes all it takes is one look at this angelic little face to bring things back into perspective! Enjoy!

I love love love this picture of Chloe! I can't believe someone so beautiful (not only on the outside, but also on the inside) is my child!

I know I've said it before, but Chloe has more stuffed animals than you would find in a toy store! I really think we should give some of them away, especially since so many are like new, but she is obviously sending a different message in the picture above!

The majority of Chloe's friends are boys, so I guess it should come as no surprise to me that she likes sports! At least since we went to the Dragon's game (maybe before and I just can't remember), she has been obsessed with baseball. She used to take her toy rake and hit the beach ball with it even! I wasn't the only one who noticed her new found interest in baseball! When my Dad was at the store a couple of weeks ago, he saw a wiffle bat and ball and thought Chloe would like it! Well, she loves it! She swings the bat in the air and also uses it to hit the balls on the ground. Looks like we might have to get her a tee next year ...
Here is a picture of Chloe and her Uncle Chris at Grandma Jo's (MeeMaw's) 80th birthday. Chloe really loves her Uncle Chris!

I really should have taken this picture a couple months ago, as Chloe has been potty trained for a couple months now. This was one of her potty charts. She got a sticker every time she went to the potty and it was filled up in less than two weeks! For this chart, her reward was a fun family movie night. We ordered pizza and movie snacks and watched Finding Nemo. We all had a great time celebrating this big milestone!

I'm not really sure why, but Chloe hopped into the laundry basket last week after swimming lessons. I thought it was so funny that I had to take a picture!!

The sand table is always a big hit for outdoor playtime! She loves to hide things in the sand and then dig to find them. We decided to keep the water out of it this year since the sand and water just make a huge mess when they are both in the table.

This is another one of my favorite pictures of Chloe. She looks so relaxed and happy as the warm summer breeze blows on her face and hair. It's when I see her like this that I am reminded how wonderful it is to be so young and carefree!

Chloe has really grown up a lot this month. She is very excited about her new baby brother and is finally telling people she is getting a baby brother instead of a baby sister :-) She realizes that Daddy's Den is now the baby's room and enjoys going into the room to look at her old things. I tell her how proud I am of her and that the baby will be happy to use the things that used to be hers. Most of the time she is very happy about the coming addition, although sometimes I think she is a little jealous. At times she will call herself a baby but then we talk about how she is just pretending to be a baby because she is really a big girl. Her vocabulary continues to expand and she says the funniest things! Her enunciation is excellent and even people who are not around her all the time are able to understand most of the things she says. And I think she has finally gotten over her fear of public toilets :-)

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July 2007 - Last July Chloe was 20 months old. She had several words in her vocabulary at the time, but Joe and I were the only ones who really understood all of them. She was very active and her obsession with shoes was in full swing by this age (she actually marched down the aisle of one store while trying on a new pair of shoes saying, "New shoes! New shoes!" and proudly showing them to anyone who would look!) She was really happy most of the time, except for when she was tired or hungry. By this age, we definitely knew the advantages of sticking to a scheduled routine!Chloe is riding on a tiny hobby horse at my grandma's. I don't think I have ever seen such a tiny little horse, but it was the perfect size for Chloe! She loved rocking and bouncing on the horse!

We went to the 4th of July parade last year and it was a lot of fun! It was so long that we actually didn't stay for the whole thing. Chloe loved the big red fire trucks ... there were several fire trucks in the parade, both new ones and antique ones. My Dad (Pops) went with us to the parade. Chloe is waving the American flag in the picture below. Some people were walking in the parade handing out flags so we grabbed one for Chloe.

Say Cheese! Sitting down to a yummy breakfast of Cheerios, milk, and fruit, still a pretty standard weekday breakfast in our house.

What a grin! She looks like she has something mischievous in mind! Of course at that age, the look was there a lot more than the action!

Chloe has a really nurturing side to her. She's been this way even since she was a baby. Here she has lined up several of her dolls around her and covered them up with dish cloths, hand towels, blankets, pretty much whatever laundry had not yet been put away that day! She is patting their backs to put them to sleep. She still loves to put her babies to sleep this way. She actually told me I needed to be more quiet yesterday because the babies were sleeping! I guess we are going to have to make sure she realizes that BB will need to sleep on his back without a blanket at first ...
What can we say ... the girl loves to eat!

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July 2006 - Chloe was 8 months in July of 2006. She was a super sweet little baby and very mobile at this age. I would put her on the floor and she would be across the room in no time at all! Her big milestones that month included pulling up and starting to eat real table food. She really enjoyed the change from bland baby food to the much tastier table food. We took Chloe to Topsail Island, North Carolina, for her first trip to the beach this month. My parents and my sister, as well as my Uncle and Aunt and their three kids went along too, so it was a really fun week!

This picture is of the first time Chloe pulled up on her own. She had been working on it for a little while and was so proud of herself. She actually pulled up on her own diaper bag which I had just finished packing for our vacation. We left the next day and she worked on pulling herself up more during vacation.
She managed to pull herself up on her playhouse once we returned home from vacation. There was not a lot to pull up on while we were on vacation, so she was so excited to get back to little "Chloe-sized" toys. I think she was as proud of herself as we were!

I love this picture of Chloe! She looks like a little porcelain doll to me!

Chloe in her pretty 4th of July dress. I went all over to find one I really liked before finally settling on this one! I guess her fascination with shoes started even earlier than I remember ... looks like she has tried on one of Nana's shoes!

A little pro at crawling by now, the warm sand didn't phase her a bit. She crawled all over that beach!
Chloe was going through this really funny phase where she would make these hilarious faces while eating! It only lasted a couple of weeks but we all thought it was hilarious!

Chloe's first taste of the ocean. The wet sand felt funny to her toes, but she enjoyed dipping her feet in the water.
Sandy girl!! We had to hose her down every time we came in from the beach! From this picture, it's obvious that she even ate some of the sand!
Sacked out on the beach! It was awesome that she would just nap on the beach at this age :-)

That's it for this month's update! Hope you enjoyed!