Caroline tried to share some love with Emma today at the Children's Museum. It was another school holiday, and the place was packed with school children in costume hogging all the cool exhibits.

We had five trick-or-treaters come to our house this evening, a 400% increase over 2004. Caroline didn't make the neighborhood rounds because we think she's about a year away from enjoying it and our neighborhood is scary at night.

No new pictures today, but here's a 35 second video from her playgroup Halloween party from Thursday: divx format, 4 mb; mpeg format, 9mb. In this clip, Matthew and Caroline are both dressed as dogs, Emma is dressed as Snow White, and AJ is a Jedi.

Edit - I've added another 1 minute clip from different footage: divx format, 5mb; mpeg format, 9mb.

The runny nose and cough returned with renewed vigor after the zoo trip, so we tried to have Caroline take it easy today. No such luck - she was a bundle of energy. The three of us joined Emma's family for a sample-filled trip to Costco - the girls loaded up on chocolate and sugar. Caroline ran around the house all evening with her crayons, terrorizing toys and books alike with colored wax markings.

Caroline and I went with three other families from the the MBA Partners Association to the zoo today. Public schools were on fall break, so despite the chilly weather, the zoo was packed with loud, irritating children blocking the peaceful viewing of most to the exhibits.


Our group of kids avoiding the camera - Aaron, Caroline, Emma, Bobby, Lane and Mikey.


Caroline with a tiny elephant by her left hand.

If Caroline could say more, I'm sure she'd say "happy birthday" and "woof" to Aunt Cristen.

I've got Caroline leashed at the playgroup's halloween party. She had a great time, except for the attempted destruction of the host's house (hence the leash - but it was only used briefly). Appropriately, Caroline also spent a long time chasing the host's cat. She wasn't fond of way the outfit restricted her movement, so we had to take it off after about 45 minutes. Caroline will have a second opportunity to wear her costume at the Children's Museum on Monday.

I think we might have managed to get close to 1000 calories into her today, with all the samples and ice cream at costco and some quality eating this evening. Here, Caroline's brushing her teeth shortly before bed.

Caroline's pretty much over her little cold, although I'm sure getting caught outside in the rain during our walk on this cold afternoon didn't help. On Tuesdays after the Little Gym, Cheryl usually picks up Chinese food, and Caroline gets tasty dumplings (and whatever she wants from our meals) for dinner. She's now really good at drinking unassisted from a cup, despite Cheryl's hand in this picture - and spent far more time taking sips of store brand artificially sweetened lemon-lime soda (only the best for our wee one) than actually consuming semi-nutritious calories. At least we still have 3 weeks before her next weigh in -

Caroline was in a great mood most of the day despite a waterfall of disgustingness coming out of her nose. It's going to get colder most of this week, so we took advantage of a beautiful afternoon to walk around the campus. Wake's football team had a rare win yesterday, so there's a bit of celebratory toilet paper strewn around the quad.

Caroline with her favorite game.

Caroline hung out with her boys at the school's happy hour tonight. She really dug the skittles they're all sharing here.

Congratulations to Melissa and Adam, who had a giant baby boy today (finally!). Her blog made pregnancy seem like such a cakewalk, so I'm sure they will be having more shortly.

We've had Tasty, Caroline's betta fish, for a year now. At least we hope it's the same fish, since we let friends watch him a few times while we were away, including one notorious fish killer.

Caroline and I went to the playgroup at Tanglewood Park this morning. Despite my prediction that one of the children would be greviously injured on the pointy metal jungle gym, they all seemed to escape unharmed (perhaps I wasn't trying hard enough). Cheryl and I took her to Costco for a sampler dinner this evening and to get cheap flu shots; it turned out that the flu shots are for high risk groups only until October 24th (Cheryl qualified), but at least the samples were good and, more importantly, plentiful. We are indeed living large.

Caroline's appetite returned this morning. Here she's eating a zone bar shortly after a brief morning nap. This afternoon we hit the Costco with Emma and Nicole, and sampled like the sample junkies we are. To tire a wired Caroline out, Cheryl and I took her on a nice walk around the campus quad; she spent a good half hour running around and making friends. She was also a little parrot this evening, repeating most of the things we said and eating lots of crackers.

Caroline did not eat the stopper. I found it.

There was Fresca, and there was the park with Aaron, and then there was the Little Gym. But there wasn't much eating. There was also a missing rubber stopper from a wall guard. We hope the lack of appetite is not related.

An exhausting trip north made for some quality naps today. The weather was great, so we hit the park for a good workout this afternoon. Caroline has also been repeating various words and letters like a champ.

Before I get into today's post, I'd like to say that I think I've figured out why Caroline tried to eat Emma at the Dixie Classic Fair. When she's climbing, she uses her mouth (and teeth) to grip onto things to give her additional leverage. So far on the trip, Caroline has sunk her chompers into several seats on her way to sitting in them. Since Caroline hasn't bitten anyone else since the mommy-nippings this past spring, my hypothesis is that Emma's arm offered a nice, tasty way for Caroline to scramble up into the stroller.

Moving on, today Caroline took her first ride on a merry-go-round with Grandpa. She was a little freaked out at first, but once the ride got going and the horse started going up and down, she loved it and started smiling like crazy. Of course, I didn't bring the camera, so the moment exists only in my mind. It was very sweet.

Also today, Aunt Roberta stopped in and brought some adorable fall outfits for Caroline. We also received a package containing a purple poncho from an anonymous family member. With these new additions and the other clothes Caroline recently received from both of her Grandmas and a bunch of her aunts, our girl is now prepped to be the best-dressed gal in the playgroup.

Grandma went shopping today and went a little nuts with the shoes. Caroline will be going home with a sweet pair of boots (pictured here), a fabulous pair of suede moccasins with colorful rhinestone details, and some awesome Weebok sneaks.

Caroline spent quite a while with Kaleigh, one of the little girls from next door, this afternoon. From the second Kaleigh came in, Caroline was fascinated by her. She gave her several hugs and kisses and invited her to share her Dora the Explorer couch. Caroline then wanted to sit on her friend's lap. It was very cute.

Caroline Incognito.

The rain is following us. Caroline got some great playtime indoors today. Grandma picked up this awesome couch/futon. Caroline loves it. She's pictured here, perched next to her other favorite toy, the pull turtle.


Later, Caroline shared some ice cream flurries with Aunt Carrie and Uncle Matt.

While at the airport yesterday morning preparing to fly to NJ, Caroline was caught on film by a local news channel's report on the airport's new bomb sniffing dogs. Cheryl said the cameraman thought she was really cute and had to be worked in somehow. Here's the 12 second excerpt where she appears.

Caroline and I are in Toms River, NJ hanging with the rest of the Zukowskis for a couple of days. This shot was snapped in the Piedmont Triad International airport just after Caroline was filmed with Jay the bomb-sniffing dog for a segment on airport security that aired on the local Fox news earlier this evening. As usual, Caroline was intrigued by Jay, but as soon as he paid her any attention, she started shaking and clutching my leg.

The rain finally ended this afternoon. We took a nice walk, hit the grocery store, and fought against an afternoon nap. Actually, only Caroline fought the nap - I was more than ready for one. She decided this afternoon that she prefers only to pull apart the ritz sandwich crackers and eat the peanut butter from the center, leaving the cracker portions all over the living room.

It's been raining forever. We went on some errands this morning, but nothing really exciting. The Children's Museum is closed Mondays, and anyway, we went yesterday. So during a break in the rain, we went for a walk outside. We didn't make it back before the rains resumed. While waiting under an enclosure for Cheryl to pick us up, Caroline decided it would be fun to play a bit in the rain; it was pretty warm, and it wasn't raining very hard, so I let her.


She's been putting up a fight against eating much of anything at dinnertime. This morning, she woke up about 5:15am and pretty much ran to her booster chair - likely starving since refusing most of her meal last night. Tonight we gave her some microwaved pizza for the first time - looks like we have a winner.

And yet another rainy day. Caroline spent most of the day trying to test how much force it would take to crack her skull. We also read a few books, watched part of the nearly-not-a-blowout game between Wake and FSU, and took a walk between rain showers. We capped the evening off with a trip to Pig Pickins; our SoCal girl was not a fan of North Carolina barbeque.

Finally, I'd like to congratulate semi-regular reader James (and his wife Amy) on the birth of their second baby girl a few days ago. Now get with the blogging!

A rainy day here in NC. Other than our afternoon walk between rain showers, our only outing was a trip to Harris Teeter. Here, our shopper-in-training is pushing her cart of wares through the aisles.

Today, our heroine awoke at 6:15am yelling for someone to free her from her slumber pen. I responded and tried to rock her back to sleep to no avail. She quickly wriggled free of my warm, comforting grasp only to run through the dark to climb into her booster chair and demand food. Luckily, I made enough noise to rouse Jay, and he quickly came out to relieve me of early KP duty so I could get another hour of sleep.

Later this morning, Caroline and her dad hit the playgroup. I hear they had fun. Neither has been voted out yet. I'm not sure what excitement transpired this afternoon, but I was home for some evening festivities. Caroline and I read some books, watched some of her TMBG DVD, and ate Ritz cracker snacks. In all, a lovely day for my girl.

On our previous visit to the Dixie Classic Fair last Friday, we ran out of time before seeing the Canning Competition, so Caroline and I walked back over today. It was considerably less crowded, possibly because of the weather, so were able to get a good view of some of the shows. First we hit the duck races.


The we checked out some of the animals, including some very unhappy looking kangaroos, zonkeys, yaks, goats, ponies, and a llama.



Our friends Mike and Ginger went to the Virginia State Fair earlier this week, and Mike reports that they also had the world's smallest woman, live and in person. What 's up with that? Anyway, Mike said Ginger actually paid and went in, and was significantly traumatized by the exploitation of a tiny, deformed woman. So, despite the barker's pleas that one should "Bring Dad, bring Mom, fun for the whole family!", we kept our dollar.


Finally, mission accomplished! The Canning Competition.


Lunch of Champions.


Just before we left, we checked out the Extreme Canines show, and although I don't really consider dogs catching frisbees to be very 'extreme', Caroline loved it. She had to be dragged away well after the show ended as the dogs were being taken back to their trailers.

We won Caroline a goldfish at the fair on Friday. I bought a new fishbowl yesterday. Caroline spent a few minutes enjoying watching him swim around before trying to empty his bowl. Tasty, her betta fish, seems to enjoy the new companion - though they're in separate bowls, he has become much more active looking at his new neighbor.

Rather uneventful day - some good naps, a few walks, a trip to the grocery store. Caroline is rapidly improving her ability to identify various pictures in her books, and hopefully reading on her own isn't be far off. Here she's hugging the Georgia Bulldog shortly before bedtime.

Caroline and I took a walk around the campus quad this evening to give Cheryl a chance to get some school work completed. Caroline could have spent all night standing on a bench and saying "hi" to passersby.