Making do with a limited vocabulary

Yes, yes, "Outside" is the most exciting word of the week. So much so that last night at 5:00am I awoke to the sound of a little voice exclaiming, "OUTSIDE!" She was fast asleep in her crib.

In an effort to imitate her mother Caelen has begun ordering the dogs around. She walked up to Woodrow yesterday who was sleeping peacfully on the treshold of the open slider, stepped on his back with one foot and yelled, "Aye-Yo, Ow-Sigh!" (Woodrow, Outside!)

Last night while at our friends house for girl's night (which never really is a girls' night seeing as the boys have intruded and now theres no one to watch the kids except for us! Ugh) we were putting Tyler and Caelen down in seperate rooms across the hall from each other. Well, they were just feeding off of one another and having a competition on who could scream the loudest. Anyway Tyler was crying and saying "Bible" and Caelen was crying and saying "Wonder Pets". I guess they have a pretty limited vocabulary to express their distress with so whatever words come to mind have to do the trick.

Chicks to Chickens

What is up with the weather? I am not in the mood for clouds and cold at this point in the year! Yuck.
Not much has been happening but at the same time a lot has been going on for us. We've been so busy running around from here to there. We did a family dinner at my grandma's house for her 95th birthday this weekend. We visited with Thomas' Dad and Faith, and Thomas worked a whole lot this weekend.
Some of that work included getting the chicken coop built and the chickens moved outside. Hallelujah because the smell, sound and dust from the chickens is out of the playroom now! I always knew chickens weren't real brain trusts but seriously! Thomas put them in the outside part of their pen (completely enclosed with chicken wire) where their food and water is. The inside part has tons of straw and is covered so they can go in at night. Both are equal sizes and in all is about 8 feet long. So he put them in the pen at about 4:00pm and they hunted around and got aquainted. When we went out at 10:00pm to see how they were doing they were still outside, curled up together in the freezing night! Thomas had to go in and show them the inside area (which was a couple steps away.) They looked around like they couldn't believe their luck. They stayed inside all night. Dummies.
Now if you ask Caelen where the "Cheep cheeps" are she hollars, "OUTSIDE!" She loves that word anyway, so any chance to use it...

Tahoe '08

We spent our 6th anniversary (can you believe it?) in Tahoe with our little bug. Sometimes we couldn't believe we brought her when there are wonderfully willing grandparents to watch her, but most of the time we all had a great time together and (let's admit it) Caelen was most of the entertainment!
She did well on the drive up. It took us 5 1/2 hours because we kept stopping. First for dinner and for Caelen to play at a park in Fairfield while we ate our dinner. We wanted to get her last bits of energy out in hopes that she'd fall asleep in the car. Well we beat her to that and had to stop again at a Starbucks so that mom and dad would stay awake! Finally at 9:00 she went to sleep for the night. We arrived at 10:30pm to find our key and directions to our room taped to the hotel office door! They weren't waiting up any longer apparently ;)
We got settled quickly and all went to sleep.......... until Caelen woke us up at 6:00am! Needless to say she was super cranky until after her morning nap and then moods were great for the rest of the trip!

The beach was right out our door and down a couple flights of stairs. Caelen was reluctant about the water because of the waves. And she is SUPER finicky about anything getting in her shoes: dirt clods, sand, anything. So that will explain the lack of tiny sandles on the beach.

These Canadian geese hung around the whole time we were there. They're obviously really used to people and were quite calm and dare I say friendly? In this picture Caelen is telling her dad about the goose.

In these shots she's taking her Sesame Sticks out to see if the geese want any, they answered heartily YES!

Thomas showed Caelen how to skip rocks which turned into her throwing handfuls of sand into the lake the rest of the weekend.

During Caelen's morning nap we got a little hot tubbing in. It was nice having the hot tub right next to our room! The weather was gorgeous, about 80 degrees, the perfect weekend. Hotel workers were scrambling about to get things set up as they normally don't get busy until Memorial Day weekend but with the unexpected early heat they were quite busy!

Here's Caelen staying hydrated with some watermelon. She thought to jab her fork into all by herself, mommy's big girl.

Getting ready to the spend the afternoon on the beach!

Just out of view in this shot is a bouy. Once she learned all the words pertaining to the lake (boat, goose, even an airplane flew over) bouy was the last thing she didn't have a word for. She pointed to it and asked, "This". I said, "Bouy." She pointed to her bottom and said, "Poopie." I said, "No, bouy." She pointed to my chest and said, "Boobies." .... I don't think we ever quite got it.
Here's Thomas enjoying a couple of the finer things in life; his little girl and a cigar.

These five little goslings were too cute, I just had to get a shot of the goose family!

There was a dog around that was white with black spots and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't convince Caelen that it was a dog. She knew that thing was a cow and she'd yell "Cow!" and "Moooo!" everytime she saw it. The dog's owner thought it was about as funny as we did!!

We had such a fun time, WAY too short a trip and Caelen's vocabulary seemed to explode over the weekend. She talks all the time and it's so fun to hear what she's thinking about at 1 1/2! Aside from the little bug Thomas and I had a great anniversary weekend and started making plans for #10, maybe Tahiti.....

My Day

Our Mother's Day was fun this year. To help our mom's out Thomas went to work at his mom's house and I cleaned my mom's house. That was Saturday. Then Sunday we woke up and didn't go to church because I was pretty nauseasous. Caelen had it, then Thomas, then me. It was this weird bug that I never threw up with but I'd get these waves of nausea and then they'd go away for half an hour or so. It wasn't bad enough to ruin mother's day though.
So after Caelen's nap and Thomas cleaned my car for me we went out to the coast. We got some fish 'n chips then we tried to go to the beach but it was so windy the sand stung your skin! So impromtu we headed for the river. The temperature went from 58 to 75 from the beach to the river. It was gorgeous and not to crowded. Caelen eased herself into the water after about 15 minutes and then didn't want to get out. Her diaper filled up to about 50 pounds LOL. She had a great time!
Then we went home, snoozed on and off, then put Caelen to bed and watched PS I Love You, which I cried through but I LOVED ;) It was nice to spend the day just the 3 of us as we rarely get to do that.

The chickens have been moved into Woodrow's old crate so they have a lot more room and can't fly out. We often go in the room to find the cat lounging close by on a chair watching the action.

Wanted: New Coop

The chickens are getting way to big for their tiny box and proved it today by flying out! I don't know how it happened but I heard Gabbie barking and a chicken sqwaking and came in to find Gabbie had cornered a chicken by the bookshelf in the computer room. That poor chicken had no clue where she was!!

Got Caelen some sidewalk chalk which she had a really fun time with this afternoon! It even comes with a cool bucket container that she can put the chalk in and out of. Can I just say, she is the cutest thing? Especially at the grocery store today. She wanted to walk. "Watt!" she says. So I let her down the walk the aisles with me. She's so good, she stays close, is very gentle with things on the shelf but rarely touches. The cutest part is her saying Hi to everyone she comes across. Here's this little shortie wandering the aisles saying, "Hi!". One lady asked her how she was and she squatted down, pointed to her bottom and said, "Poopie".

Shopping Cart Stories

The best toy ever! Caelen got this from church nursery. They were gonna toss it in favor of newer toys, so I disinfected it (well, my mom did) and now it's earned the status of "Most Used Toy". So here's a photo chronicle of it's life with us so far:

Caelen biffed it out the slider and scraped her knee, so in this pic she pointing to her knee and saying owie, while wearing my high heels and shopping.


In this picture Caelen had accompanied me to the garden. She picked all the artichokes off the ground where I had thrown them and put them in the basket. She then transfered them all to her shopping cart once outside the garden gate. At this point I'm trying to persuade her to put them in a bowl so I can wash them, but she's not interested.

Here's some backyard time with the cart. She most enjoys trying to run Woodrow or me over with it. She's a reckless driver!

That's it for the cart. Onto mom's water bottle!

And a PB&J!

I didn't know you could do that

This afternoon as Caelen was on her way out the door to the backyard she caught sight of a picture of herself on the piano, waved at it and said, "Bye me. See ya."

My name is Dee Dee and you're Mama.

Caelen calls herself "Dee Dee". LOL Caelen is just too hard to say I guess.

Chicks are getting big! They have a lot of feathers (not their baby down anymore) and can "fly". We let them out in the backyard occasionally and they have a great time on the lawn, but they all manage to stay in a group. No one wanders off to far. Two chicks were trying to see who was the tallest, or they were getting ready to fight, but Caelen broke them up. And some other chicks would lay down on the warm dirt, roll onto their sides and spread their wings out to soak up all the heat. It was amusing.

We're going to celebrate our 6th anniversary in Tahoe. I'm so excited. It was kind of a last minute plan but since our Hawaii trip went out the window with the ATA bankruptcy we thought that it would be nice to just take a couple days and get away. We'll bring Caelen because I feel like life is just boring without her LOL! The whole time we'd be there I'd just be thinking, "Oh Caelen would really enjoy this!" Or "I wish Caelen was here to see this." I haven't spent a night away from her since she was born and I just don't think I'm ready yet. I don't know if I ever will be. I think it's great and very necessary to get away from your children occasionally as a husband and wife, but after a few hours at a restaurant and movie, I'm ready to see my baby girl again. I know that she would do great on a sleep over at Grandma and Grandpa's, it's not her that I'm worried about ;)

Lot's of cows today, and plenty of snot, typical day in the life......

Thanks Amoxicillin

RASH UPDATE :)
The doctor said that an allergy would be large spots that move around every few hours (not Caelen's rash) and the fact that she continued treatment and didn't get any worse doesn't sound like an allergy. Then he said that there is a rash caused by amoxicillin that happens after about a week of treatment that is not allergic- it looks like little raised red bumps, and are about an eighth to a quarter of an inch across. It lasts 4-5 days and goes away even if treatment continues.
I think we hit our BINGO. Amoxicillin rash? Who knew? Thanks Doc.

Tip clo through your tulips.

I am so thankful we live in a county populated by cows, but that might be more the cause than the remedy to Caelen's bovine obsession. "Dow! Dow! Moooooo!" Is about all she says anymore while we're driving around town. Thankfully we can usually find a cow to view out the car window on each trip, and if not then the Clover cow on the billboard by Walmart does the trick. She knows it's coming and starts talking about it about 1 mile ahead of time. She just loves cows!

I'm thinking of buying a trailer and moving into the Kaiser hospital parking lot. I figure I'll at least save on gas. Caelen has probably been to the doctor at LEAST every other month since she's been born. Rashes, sinus infections, Roseolla, stitches, the list never ends. My patience for doctor's visits and my checking accout are running low. But NOW we have a mystery total body rash to deal with. She was taking antibiotics for her sinus infection and 8 days into treatment broke out in a rash from cheeks to toes. I didn't put 2 and 2 together until yesterday because it was such a delayed reaction but the pharmacist thought it could be related. I'm waiting for an E-mail back from her doctor. Oh and in the meantime, we all got a new cold so the snot is back in full force! I'm so thankful that she's a happy go lucky girl who has no clue there's anything wrong with her!!!

She's busy charming everyone with her new words and adorable laugh. And now she has a new shopping cart toy that she just LOVES and walks around talking about all her little friends. I don't know what the correlation is. Either she remembers playing with the toy at nursery and that's where her little friends always are, or she thinks it would be fun to go shopping with her buddies. I'm sure it's probably the former senario come to think of it....