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!