Daddy's home (well, sort of) and Happy Bday Caroline!

On Wednesday afternoon, Nora and Caroline were thrilled to discover another mailing from Daddy...this time, a package containing two books - "Ladybug Girl" and "Pinkalicious" - and a DVD of him reading them. Nora watched it that night for her bedtime stories (she begged me to watch it twice), and we watched it again yesterday (Thursday morning) with Caroline, and again last night before bed. It was fun to see Caroline's reaction...she was busy standing on the couch, looking out the window at the backyard (one of her new favorite activities), when all of a sudden, she heard Daddy's voice. She turned her head and stared at the screen with a perplexed look on her face, and then lit up and said "Dah" (I kid you not!). I helped her off the couch and she crawled right over to the tv and started smacking the screen with delight. Nora got annoyed with her (prompting a whiny "Ca-ro-line!!!," a phrase we're hearing more and more of these days) b/c she was trying to follow the book and Caroline was in her way. What a wonderful gift, Mike. It's almost like you're right back home with us, only not really. We should have taken more video like this before you left, but oh well...maybe I'll just dig up old family videos and we can have Daddy-movie-night once a week. (Nora took the photo of just Mike on the screen...I like how she captured part of the map and how the word "World" appears next to Mike's face).

Today is an exciting day - Caroline's 1st Birthday! I sang Happy Bday to her when she woke up this morning (the 5:30 am wake up, and not the 1:30 am wake up that woke up me and Nora and prevented us from falling back to sleep until after 3 am!) and organized a little get together with a few friends and neighbors this afternoon to celebrate with pizza and cupcakes. I hope to squeeze in a trip to the Y as I do all my errands to prepare for tonight, but we shall see how that goes. There's always tomorrow...(which makes me think of the song from "Rudolph the Rednosed Reindeer," the movie Nora watched on our way up and down from NY, and loves).