Merry Christmas!!

Merry Christmas everyone! We hope everyone had a safe and happy day! We had a great Christmas. Christmas Eve we went to dinner at Nana Bev and Grampa Bob's house with Sarah and Dan. We had a great time and enjoyed hanging out with everyone. Caitlin was dressed up in her Christmas dress and looked so cute. Every time she got a gift that needed to be opened, she would bring the gift to Grampa Bob to open. Needless to say, he had his hands full trying to get everything unboxed! For dinner she didn't seem too interested in eating anything besides Ruffles potato chips but we all enjoyed dinner and ate too much!

Christmas morning everyone came over bright and early to see Caitlin open her presents. I think she's still too young to understand what was going on but she continued her pattern from the night before of bringing everything Toni and I unwrapped for her over to Grampa Bob to be unboxed. :) By the end, Toni and I were opening her presents from Santa while she played with stuff that was already opened. :) She seems to be enjoying all of her toys so far and seems almost as if she's not sure which one to play with first. She got a lot of nice things from family and Santa but so far she seems to play with each one for a little while before moving on to the next one. :) For lunch, Toni and Dan made a great feast which we all once again ate too much of. :) This year I even tried making homemade egg nog which came out pretty good, albeit a bit thick for my taste. Lunch was great and after everyone left Toni, Caitlin and I sat down to watch one of my gifts from Aunt Sarah and Uncle Dan - It's a Wonderful Life on Blu-ray (one of my all time favorites). Overall, it was a great Christmas that I will never forget. :)

This week Caitlin also started really trying to help us when we were doing things. At Wal-Mart she helped us unload groceries from the cart to put them on the register. Toni would hand her something and she would walk around the cart to hand it to me and then return to Toni for another item. Then she started pushing the cart to help me as well. When we got home she helped us unbag everything and would bring me stuff from Toni while I was in the pantry so it could be put away. She's been trying to help by pulling laundry out of the dryer and sweeping the kitchen. It's so cute to watch her. :) Her help did lead to an embarrassing moment today at Target though.. We were looking at the Christmas stuff on clearance and Caitlin picked up a big tube full of 40 Christmas ball ornaments to hand to me and when she did, the bottom of the container fell off and 40 plastic Christmas ball ornaments rolled all over the aisle! Luckily several people stopped to help us! :)

This week should be pretty slow. Toni and Caitlin will be home Thursday and Friday and I am off Friday. It's a skeleton crew week at my job so hopefully it will be boring and uneventful. My next post I'll dedicate to looking back over 2009 and looking ahead to the changes coming in 2010. Whatever your plans are for New Year's Eve, we'd like to wish you a Happy New Year and hope you have a safe and happy year ahead!

Caitlin vs. Santa - Round 2

Hello everyone! I can't believe it's already Christmas week! This week went pretty well. Caitlin continues maturing. She's started eating with a fork pretty regularly and found a new favorite food - peanut butter and jelly sandwiches! :) I made one the other night and she pretty much ate the whole thing on her own! :) She also tried and seemed to really enjoy egg nog (my personal holiday favorite) and Coke Zero. She really likes drinking out of regular cups or water bottles and any time she sees us get one she comes running over holding her hands out! She's also been very talkative and seems like she really wants to say something but the only words that come out are babbling noises. :) She's currently got 3 words in her vocabulary - "hi", "up" and recently "bye". She understands so much now and will pretty much do what we ask. When we ask for a kiss now she'll suck half of her bottom lip in to pucker and will give us a kiss. It's amazing to me how much she understands now. I'm looking forward to when she can talk to us. :) She's also extremely affectionate and likes to be carried pretty much all of the time which can get tiring after a few hours! :) This morning she woke up at 5:30 and I sat on the couch with her watching cartoons. It was nice to just sit with her spending quality time together. :)

This week Caitlin also had another encounter with Santa and as you can tell from the pics, it went about the same as it did last weekend! Actually I think it went worse this time! Caitlin wanted nothing to do with him and started kicking and squirming trying to get away as soon as we put her on his lap! If nothing else, her pics with Santa will be entertaining every year! :)

This weekend Caitlin also got an early Christmas visit from her Grampa Joseph and Grandma Magda. She enjoyed spending time with them and really enjoyed playing with them with her new toys they brought her - a teddy bear and a toy cell phone. She's been running around hugging the bear and will pick up the phone and start dialing and then hold the phone to her ear and say hi!

This week should go pretty fast. We're only working 3 days this week and then we're celebrating Christmas with family. I hope everyone has a Merry Christmas!

Santa Claus is Coming to Town!

The weather certainly has gotten colder so at least we can feel like Christmas is actually upon us! :) Yesterday we got up early and took Caitlin to Ingram Park Mall to get her picture taken with Santa! As you can see, she really didn't like sitting on his lap and pretty much from the moment we sat her down she was trying to get away! It went pretty much how we expected but we're both happy that we were able to get a picture of her sitting on Santa's lap. We'll definitely be going back there next year to get pics of Caitlin with Santa again. Last year we went to Bass Pro Shops for the free picture and spend an hour and a half waiting in line. This year we spent maybe 5 minutes in line and got a pretty nice set of pics. For only $25 it's well worth paying to not stand in line for hours. :)

This week went pretty good. Caitlin has started doing one new thing that's kind of cool, when she's done with her dinner she'll pick up her plate and hand it to us! That's a welcome change from her old way which was either flipping the plate over on the table or throwing food to Shiloh. :) She's also getting very good at drinking from a cup, although we try to keep her with sippy cups whenever possible. :) She also continues getting more playfull the more mobile she gets. In the last picture she's playing hide and seek with me in a piece of furniture. :)

This week we also finished decorating the house. I did have one incident with out tree lights and a pair of scissors.. Long story short - If you're cutting branches back, make certain there are no wires hidden in the branch you're cutting! And whatever you do, cut the branches back BEFORE you decorate the entire tree! Not only did I end up cutting one of the strings of lights, but then in my attemp to fix them, shorted then entire set out when I was trying to splice the wires back together! Needless to say, I ended up having to remove 400 lights from a fully decorated tree to replace them with working lights.... The house looks great though and I think Caitlin really enjoys it. She seems captivated by the lights and every night when we'd get home she would take me by the hand and walk me out to the tree in the living room and start sniffing at it! I think she likes the smell of Pine trees as much as I do. :)

We also managed to get our Christmas shopping done and this week we have to work on a Christmas project for Caitlin for school, bake Christmas cookies, write Christmas cards, make our gingerbread house kit that we got and I'm hoping to finally get around to making homemade egg-nog. I've always wanted to try making it so we'll see what happens. :) I hope everyone has a great week and stays warm! :)

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

Hello everyone! This week was COLD!!! At one point this week the weatherman even said there was a 70% chance of snow! Of course, this being San Antonio meant that the weatherman was wrong as usual and we just got cold temps down in the 20's. Even without snow the cold weather was enough to make it feel like Christmas is getting close! I think Caitlin really enjoys the cold and has gotten a lot of compliments on her new jacket and hat that Mommy got for her. I think she looks so grown up wearing them. This week we didn't do too much with the cold weather. Caitlin did do a couple of really cool things this week though. First thing was when we were trying to move a piece of furniture in our bedroom and Caitlin was watching us so I told her to help us push. After saying that, she walked over to the furniture and started pushing it with us! She also did the same thing with another box we were moving! It's so cool how much she understands now! Tonight Toni asked her if she was ready to go brush her teeth and she actually took hold of Toni's hand and took Toni into the bathroom and started brushing her teeth! Another cool thing she did was when I was upstairs watching a movie and she was downstairs with Toni. I turned on her favorite scene from Transformers 2 (for those of you who have seen it, it's when the 6 construction vehicles merge together to become Devastator). She actually heard the scene downstairs and started screaming and went and grabbed Toni by the hand and pulled her over to the stairs! When she got upstairs she ran over to me and started watching the scene and started clapping and screaming! Later on, we decided to try it again and as soon as she heard the scene she pointed upstairs and said "dada" and anxiously came upstairs clapping and screaming again!

This weekend I was on call so we weren't able to go get pics with Santa so we'll probably do that next weekend. We did go get a Christmas tree which looks beautiful and is huge now that the branches are opening up! I think Caitlin likes it and it's made the whole house smell like pine which is nice. We also put some stuff in our front yard which Caitlin really seemed to enjoy. She was even more fascinated with everything once it got dark and they were lit up. I'm looking forward to decorating the tree this week with Toni and Caitlin and hopefully getting started with Christmas shopping. I hope everyone has a great week!

"What's this?"

I hope everyone had a happy Thanksgiving! We went to Brownsville on Wednesday and spent the holiday down there with Toni's family. It was a nice visit and we enjoyed seeing family and eating too much. Caitlin did pretty well on the drive. She started getting a little fussy but after a few hours I can't blame her. :) On black friday Toni braved the stores while I stayed in bed and watched Caitlin and she was able to pick up a nice in car dvd player that definitely helped make the return trip go faster for Caitlin. :)

The other big news this week was that Caitlin started asking what we think is "What's this?" She's started pointing at things and will ask "what's this?" It's so cool to see but the coolest thing was that she got to a picture of a person's nose and when she asked, I told her that it was a nose. I then pointed to her nose and told her that it's her nose and then pointed to my nose and told her that was my nose. After explaining that, I asked her to show me her nose and she pointed to her nose! I've asked her a few more times since then to show me her nose and each time she points to her nose! It's so cool how much she's now understanding!

I'm going to keep this post short today but I hope everyone has a great week! We plan to try to get some Christmas decorations out and hopefully relax. :)

Happy Thanksgiving!

As this will be our last post before Thanksgiving, we'd like to wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving! Today we had an early Thanksgiving celebration here with Nana Bev, Grampa Bob, Aunt Sarah and Uncle Dan here at the house. We went all out with all of the usual Thanksgiving feast and it was great! I think we all ate too much but we had a good time. Caitlin seemed to enjoy her food and promptly fell asleep in the chair with Aunt Sarah while we all watched Star Trek (a great movie by the way). It was nice to have an early celebration and to be able to spend time with family. We'll be heading to Brownsville for Thanksgiving again this year with Toni's family which should be nice.

Other than today's celebration, this week was fairly uneventful so I'm going to keep the post short today. Caitlin is doing well continues to amaze us every day. We got her a nice dress for her Christmas pictures which I'll post as soon as we get them. I think she's going to look so cute in it. :) We're also planning to take her soon to get pics with Santa which should be fun. I have a feeling that she's not going to be as quiet as she was when we took her last year though. Something tells me that she's not going to want to sit on Santa's lap this year but we'll see. :)

This week should be nice at work since I'm only working Monday and Tuesday. Whatever your plans are for Thanksgiving, we wish you a safe and happy holiday!

Getting ready for the holidays!

Well, the weather's starting to get colder and the Holiday season is upon us! This week we decided to start decorating the house a little early. We go to Brownsville every Thanksgiving to see Toni's family so this year we decided to start our decorating before going so it wouldn't be quite so overwhelming after Thanksgiving. Caitlin really enjoyed decorating one of our artificial trees and was helping me by handing me ornaments. :) She seems captivated by the Christmas lights and and was having a lot of fun checking out our Christmas decorations and even sitting in the storage boxes from the garage once they were empty. :) I think this Christmas is going to be a lot of fun when we watch her come down the stairs on Christmas morning. :)

This week we also had an appointment with an eye specialist for Caitlin's right eye. She's always had a slight problem with her right eye that while it's not a big deal and doesn't affect her vision was still something we wanted to get checked out again. Some of you may recall that earlier this year she was diagnosed with "Duane's Syndrome". Essentially it's a fancy way of saying that one of the muscles that control her right eye never developed and when she tries to look to the right her eye doesn't move. It has no impact on her vision and Caitlin compensates by turning her head to the right. We wanted to get a second opinion just to be on the safe side and the second opinion came back the same. He said it's very mild and while it will never improve, it's not something that will cause her any problems later in life.

This weekend we also did some projects with Caitlin for school. In one of the pictures she's drawing (something she likes to do), and she also enjoys using glue to do crafts. :) The projects we did are also posted in the pics. :)

She also started trying to eat like we eat. The first thing she did was to eat breakfast tacos with us like we do. Usually we'll give her some eggs that she'll eat but this weekend she wanted to sit on Toni's lap and grabbed the Taco and started eating it in the tortilla! Then at dinner, we went out to eat and she was watching us eat fries and dip them in ketchup. After a couple of minutes she started taking fries off of Toni's plate and dipping them in ketchup and eating them. :) It was so cute to watch her. :) So far her favorite food appears to be broccoli of all things! We're not gonna complain about that! She doesn't seem to like sugar and the only sweet things she seems to like are sugar free jello pudding and an occasional sip of Coke Zero. :)

This weekend she also started playing drums! We got Rockband 2 (video game that comes with drums and a guitar) and Caitlin was watching me play the drums. After a while she sat on my lap and started playing! The next night she was looking at the drums and I told her, "get the drum sticks" and she went and picked up the drum sticks. Then I told her, "Show Daddy how to play the drums" and she walked over to the drums and started tapping them with the sticks. The coolest thing was that she realized that she was holding one of the sticks backwards and put it down and picked it up correctly and continued playing! She also has been picking up the guitar and messing with the buttons. Today she actually picked it up and put the strap over her head so she could wear it like Daddy!

Every day is amazing to watch her grow and she shocks me every day with how much she understands and how fast she's developing. Tonight she walked into the bathroom and came out with her foam potty seat. Toni then put her on the potty and she actually used it! I don't know if she planned it that way but it was a pretty cool coincidence if it wasn't. :)

Giving the nod....

This week was pretty busy. Tuesday marked a milestone for Toni and I - 9 years since we met! It sounds like a long time when I see it in writing or say it! All I can say is that I'm happy I went to my friend Victor's house 9 years ago to hang out with him, his wife at the time, and her friend Toni. :) I can say that every part of my life is better today than it was before that night and I am thankful that things happened how they did. :)

Caitlin had quite a week. Probably the biggest thing she did this week was to start nodding "yes". She now usually answers us if we ask her a question by either nodding yes or shaking her head no. Her understanding of words also continues to grow. She definitely understands the following phrases:

- Turn on or off the light

- Give me a hug

- Give me a kiss

- Pat Shiloh

- Do you want to take a bath?

- Are you hungry?

- Let's go upstairs

- Sit down

- Come here

- Put that back

- High five

I'm sure there are a lot more but these are the common ones so far. Today she was playing with a toy car/walker that Aunt Sarah and Uncle Dan got her and when I told her to sit on it, she actually sat down on it and started riding it! She also sat in her rocking chair and was trying to rock herself back and forth. Also today she rode on my shoulders and seemed to really like it. Toni said that she was smiling the whole time and I could hear her laughing the whole time. She seems to really enjoy hanging out with us and today was laying on the floor resting her head on Shiloh watching TV with us. I was trying to adjust my subwoofer and had on Transformers 2 to use to adjust the sound. At one part there is a lot of noise when a giant robot is changing and when Caitlin saw it, she started clapping! She seemed extremely interested in the movie and even sat on the chair with me and watched some of it with me. :)

She also had some quality time with Mommy this weekend. On Saturday Toni was cleaning the garage and Caitlin was following her around with a small broom trying to help sweep! It was so cute to watch her. She was also very careful after she was done to put the broom neatly against that wall. She has started handing us stuff now when she is finished rather than dropping it on the floor which is nice. :) No more bottles scattered around the living room! :) Yesterday she also decided that she was ready for a nap and walked over to Toni, took her by the hand and pulled her into her bedroom so Toni could put her in her crib for a nap! It was almost as if she wanted to say, "ok, I'm tired, it's time for a nap". It was pretty cool to watch. :)

The only other news happened tonight, she sat on the training potty and tried to use it! She only peed one drop but the cute thing was that after she peed the one drop, she took some toilet paper from Toni and started trying to clean herself. I think she's going to start using the potty pretty soon. :)

Hopefully this week won't be too bad. I've been on call all weekend and luckily it's been slow. Hopefully it'll stay that way. Hope everyone has a great week!

Happy Birthday Toni!

What a week! This was one of those weeks that it seemed like we were always doing something! We both had a short week because we took Thursday and Friday off to celebrate Toni's birthday on Thursday. Thursday we actually spent most of the day running errands and Toni had a lot of Doctor appointments. We started the day with Toni opening her birthday presents. Caitlin got her a charm for her charm bracelet. The charm is a peanut which for those of you following the site for a while will remember that after our first sonogram, we nicknamed Caitlin "Peanut" because that's what she looked like on the first sonogram. :) After opening her present and cards, Toni went to a Doctor appointment, then an orthodontist appointment to get fitted for a new retainer, then an eye appointment, then to buy new glasses. As she says, you know you're getting old when your entire birthday is spent at Doctor appointments! :) We went and had lunch and overall had a good day. Friday we just hung out at the house and didn't do too much but relax. :)

Yesterday we didn't do much for Halloween. Toni had a community party that she was in charge of from 4-6 so she was busy with that. Me and Caitlin stopped by for a little bit and then came home and hung out with Aunt Sarah and Uncle Dan. We passed out candy but we didn't take Caitlin out for candy. It was kind of chilly out and Caitlin was starting to get a cough so we decided to keep her bundled up and not dress her in her Snow White outfit. At least she got to wear it last week so we got to see her in it.

Today I spent the day finally putting up the crown molding I had bought several months ago for the upstairs. I had been putting it off for quite a while because there were 3 problem areas that I didn't want to deal with - 1)The house alarm siren needed to be moved, 2)the opening for the attic needed to be moved an inch or so, and 3)installing it over the staircase didn't look like it would be much fun... After several hours, I can report that the crown is all up! :) The alarm and attic took a few hours to fix and the staircase problem took some planning an Toni standing on the half wall to install it! I think it came out very nice and once we finish filling the nail holes and caulking the joints I'll post some pics. We plan on painting eventually but we're not sure when. For now, at least the crown is up! The only other projects I still have are to put window trim on 3 more windows and do crown in 2 bathrooms. Not sure when I'll get to them but I'm hoping to get it done fairly soon.

This week Caitlin also started drinking from a normal cup all by herself! I managed to get one picture of her drinking. She's doing really well but I think we'll continue with sippy cups for a little while longer. :) Friday we also went to Target and it was funny to watch her in the books section. She was having fun looking at the kid's books and was getting so excited every time she'd find a new one. She kept screaming in happiness and grabbing whatever new book she would see and start flipping the pages. :) She definitely understands a good deal of what we say and has even started answering yes or no questions (she usually answers NO) by shaking her head. Whether we ask if she wants to take a bath, go to sleep or brush her teeth, she'll usually answer us. I have a feeling that soon she'll start talking more. She's definitely understanding a lot. Also, in the third pic, she's in her new car seat that we got for Toni's car. It's a really nice seat and we'll probably get one for my car soon. She really seems to like it. :)

Well, I hope everyone has a great week. Hopefully I can get the crown finished and post a couple of pics next week. Hope everyone has a great week!

Lights off, lights on!

This week Caitlin started doing a couple of new things. In school this week, she moved to the young toddler room! I think it will be a good move for her because she'll get to learn from kids a little older than her. She seems to enjoy the new room so far. On Monday she also learned how to turn on and off the lights! She watched me do it a couple of times and then started turning the light on off on her own. Now any time we ask her if she wants to turn off the light, she'll walk over to us, put her arms up and say "up". When we lift her, she'll reach for the switch and turn the light off! She can turn the light on too but seems to have an easier time turning them off. She has started using 2 words quite a bit lately - "up" and "hi". This week she's started waving and saying "hi" quite a bit. If she's sitting across the room or sitting even on our lap she'll suddenly start waving to us and saying hi. It's so cool to see because it's obvious that she knows what she's talking about.

Her favorite word is definitely "up". She loves to hold her arms up and say it when she wants to be carried and this week also started wanting to climb things a lot. She'll usually say "up" while trying to climb onto the couch, climb onto us, or stand on stools. As you can see in the pic above, she is even climbing up onto chairs! She really likes walking around the back yard, playing with Shiloh and sitting in the chairs outside. We also bought her a training potty that doubles as a step stool for her. So far she seems to have the stool part figured out but hasn't christened the potty portion yet. :) We're going to start working on potty training this week with her.

In other news, Caitlin got her first haircut this week! Toni took her to a place next to school one night and got her a trim. I think it looks nice and doesn't have the wild look that she was starting to get. :) We also stopped by school on Friday night for a Halloween party. Caitlin got to preview her costume as Snow White. She didn't seem to like how big the dress was but once she got used to it she seemed to like it. This week she also got to see some family, her Nana Bev stopped by on Monday to see her and then Uncle Dan and Aunt Sarah stopped by on Friday night. I think she really enjoyed seeing everyone. She gets so excited when people stop by. :)

This week should go fast. Toni and I are both off Thursday and Friday to celebrate Toni's birthday. We're still trying to decide what we're going to do but I'm sure we'll have fun. :) I'll be sure to post some pics of Toni's birthday and Halloween next week. We're probably going to hang out and pass out candy for Halloween. If it's as slow as last year, we'll probably head out to dinner or something. I hope everyone has a great week!

The Pumpkin Patch!

This week went pretty well. Caitlin had her 15 month appointment and everything went well there. This weekend we decided to take Caitlin back to the Pumpkin Patch. We had taken Caitlin last year but she was too young to enjoy it. If you go back to the pictures from last year's trip to the Pumpkin patch you'll see that we had to prop her up against the bigger pumpkins for our photos because she still wasn't sitting up on her own. This year was a completely different story! Caitlin walked around on her own and even picked out her own pumpkin! :) When we first walked up, she didn't want to let go of my hand and didn't seem too sure of what was going on. She kinda sat back and watched other kids to figure out what was going on for a while. She definitely got my "look before you leap" personality. We got a lot of great pics that I wish I could post but there were so many good ones that I settled on my favorites to post this week. Toward the end, Caitlin was really having a lot of fun walking around and touching all of the pumpkins. On the way home she didn't want to let go of her small pumpkin (the one she's holding in most of the pics). After the pumpkin patch, we went to lunch and Caitlin seemed to enjoy the Chinese food we had. She also enjoyed looking at the big fish in the restaurant's huge fish tank. We ended Saturday washing my car. Caitlin walked around the yard with Toni and they even walked down to get the mail.

Today we washed Toni's car and Caitlin again seemed to enjoy being outside with us. When I was cleaning the wheels, she came up behind me and gave me a big hug. :) After washing the car, we went to the back yard where I started painting crown molding that I'll be installing upstairs soon (hopefully). Caitlin had a lot of fun chasing Shiloh around the yard and even figured out how to open the screen door to go back in the house by herself. She spent a good 10 minutes opening the door, going inside, closing the door, opening it again, going back outside, etc... I love hearing her laugh when she gets excited!

This week she also learned another new word. She now understands the word "up". If we're on the couch and we ask her if she wants to get up, she'll raise her arms to be picked up. She's understanding a lot now. New phrases I've noticed this week are, "hug Shiloh", "give me that", "let's put your shoes on", and "sit down". This week she started wanting to climb things. Toni has a small step stool next to her bed that Caitlin picked up and brought over to us, put down in front of us and proceeded to take one of our hands for support and climb up on the stool and stand up! She seemed to really enjoy it and was laughing and clapping each time she would get up. She has also tried to do the same thing in her toy rocking chair which we are obviously trying to discourage!

We also put out a couple of jack-o-lanterns which Caitlin seemed to enjoy today. One of them is almost as big as her. :) Hopefully this week will be a good one. I'm hoping to try to get the remaining 7 pieces of crown molding painted (I painted 5 today) and with any luck I can hopefully get started on the upstairs soon. There are 3 problem areas though that I've been putting off for a while but I'd like to get it done soon. Hope everyone has a great week!

15 months old!

Yesterday Caitlin turned 15 months old and spent her morning at the Doctor's office for a checkup. Everything looked good and she is growing nicely. She has grown 12.5 inches since she was born and is now 33 inches tall! The nurse was so shocked that she actually measured her twice to verify! Her weight is up to 24.8 pounds as well which is nearly triple her birth weight! Besides the 2 shots that she was given, she will have to go back soon for her flu shot soon. There's a waiting list for the flu shots this year but we'll get her in soon and get that taken care of. The only other thing to report is about Caitlin's eye. Some of you will recall that earlier this year we had her right eye checked out because it won't move to the right. The specialist we took her to told us that she had "Duane's syndrome". Essentially, that's when a muscle in the eye doesn't develop. It's not a serious problem and doesn't affect her vision but we were told that there's
nothing that can be done for it. The Pediatrician would like us to take Caitlin to another specialist to see if that's actually the case or not. We have an appointment scheduled for the end of the month and we'll see what happens. Hopefully there's something non-surgical that can be done for her. If not, it's no big deal. It doesn't affect her vision and the only thing it would ever impact is if she wanted to become a fighter pilot (she wouldn't qualify). Overall the appointment went very well and Caitlin is doing great. Her next appointment is in January when she turns 18 months old.

A visit from Uncle Mike!

This week was a busy week. The week started with Caitlin being sick. She had a stomach bug or something and didn't seem like she felt good. On Sunday and Monday nights she threw up but did ok during the days. We monitored her temperature every 30 minutes or so and it never got high and the problem seems to have run its course. She's feeling a lot better now and is back to her old self.

This week Caitlin seemed to want to draw a lot more than normal. In the picture, she's drawing at school and during the week she also tried drawing at home with a crayon and was even coloring at a restaurant. She also was extremely entertained the other night by Toni's Nintendo DS! She laid on her back and was just touching the screen laughing and smiling and trying to press buttons. It looked like she was laying there actually playing it even though she was just messing with the game introduction. She seemed to really enjoy playing around with it.

On Wednesday my friend Mike came in from California to see his daughter Britni graduate from Basic Training. Congratulations to her and we all wish her nothing but success in her career! We had a nice visit with Mike and I hope to see him again soon. It seems impossible but I've known Mike for 27 years! We went out to eat with Mike and found that Caitlin likes Buffalo Wild Wings. :) We cut up some of my mild wings and gave her just the chicken (not the breading on the boneless wings) and seemed to enjoy any little amount of wing sauce that she got. We also took Caitlin to the Disney store and got her Halloween costume - Snow White. I think she's gonna look very cute. :) We also got her a new pair of shoes at Stride Rite. They have laces rather than the normal velcro but they are really nice and I think she'll get a few months of use out of them. She's up to a size 5 1/2.

Today when I picked Caitlin up from school it was so cool! She saw me when I was opening the door and her face immediately lit up and she came running to me with open arms. She gave me a big hug and started trying to talk with her babbling noises. It was a high point of my day. :) Tonight we got some great pics of Caitlin taking a bath. She seems to love taking a bath and as you can see in the pics, really seems to have fun. She actually gets mad when we take her out!

Tomorrow Caitlin turns 15 months old! She has a checkup at 8:30 that Toni is taking her to and then they are both stopping by my job for lunch. I'll post her growth stats tomorrow night.

What was up with last week?

Last week was weird... Every day of the week seemed like it should be the next day to me. From Monday to Thursday I felt like it should have been a day later. Other than that, I had a pretty easy week of on-call and the days seemed to go by pretty fast. Caitlin did very well this week and seemed to want a lot of attention. In one of the pictures she's sitting with me playing my Nintendo DS and most nights she wanted to sit with us or be carried.

On Saturday we went out for lunch and then stopped by Nana Bev's house. Caitlin had a lot of fun playing with their dog Mandy and overall had a good day. Today we went to Target and Caitlin walked around quite a bit with us. She was very well behaved and held our hands whenever we were walking. She had a lot of fun walking around in the toy aisle too. :) Before we went out this morning she also watched an episode of The Smurfs. I'm not sure if she liked the show or the dvd case more..

I'm going to keep this post short. This week should be a good one. I'm off Thursday and Friday. My friend Mike is flying in on Wednesday afternoon so I'm going to spend some time catching up with him. Have a great week!