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....

Weekend pics

Here's us hanging out in the backyard this weekend. That's the massive garden behind the gate. We've been getting lots of artichokes already!

Here's Caelen after a journey into the garden with me yesterday to water everything. I turned around and she had been eating dirt and had a rock in her mouth. I swear I can't take my eye off of her for a second. Most the damage was done from her dirty hands though.
And here's my peanut during bath time with Daddy!

Night Night Chicks

Tonight when Caelen was in her jammies and ready for bed I told her it was time to say night night to everyone. First she said, "Body!" which is Gabbie, so we went in and found her, gave her a kiss and then she said, "Cheep cheep!" So we came in to the computer room. She waved at the chicks in their box and said, "Bye, Night Night" and then grabbed my hand and turned to leave the room.
Too cute for my heart to bear....

And on that farm they had a chick!

The sound of "Cheep cheep" is a constant companion now that we've brought these baby chicks home from the feed store. With the price of everything (namely eggs) going up and the economy slowing down, we decided to, in addition to our garden and all the fresh produce that provides, have our own chickens. There's no ordinance against hens in RP, so if there turns out to be a rooster in the bunch we'll send it to Thomas' dad's place to live.
I don't know what kind they are (Thomas picked them while Caelen and I checked out a bunny) but they lay brown eggs (they're not Rhode Islands). And apparently they're racist little guys so they recommend getting a few of the same type so there's no odd man out. I've already seen a yellow picking on a brown!
Caelen already knew what chicks were from her extensive reading. LOL And she says "Chck Chck" for cheep cheep. Basically if we don't hear the chicks saying cheep, we hear Caelen.
She was so excited about these little guys and she's very gentle when we hold one up for her to pet, although she did grab the down on one's head and pulled it slowly back until I stopped her. No chicks have been harmed yet. So they'll live in the computer room in a box with a light until a little coop is built and they're old enough to go outside. In the meantime the chicken smell coming from the computer room takes me directly back to

the day my Dad brought home two baby chicks as an Easter present to my sister who had lost her pipe cleaner chick, while all the other cousins and myself had our own. So to make her feel better Dad brought two real ones home for her! Of course they belonged to the whole family and after a lethal cat attack, and a few turning out to be roosters, we had our Rhodies who laid great eggs! When they were babies, Heather and I used to play with them in our doll house and I think if I were to find that doll house today, the poop stain would still be on the second story floor.



Here's Caelen carrying her Bible and mommy's Bible around the house. So cute!

So what's going on?

I have a bunch of random pics that I want to post.


Here's Caelen and Ty in Woodrow's dog house one afternoon, after which Caelen had a severe rash and what looked like bug bites all inside her pants, so I'll bet if you look really closely you could see a bug climbing up her leg. Yuck...








This is one of Caelen and her Uncle Josh at Grandpa and Grandma Kline's house.

Here's finally a promised picture of the playhouse although it's already dated because the roof is sheeted and the decking is down on the front porch now.

Here's a couple of Caelen and her Daddy talking at dinner time.

Caelen is obsessed with babies, particularly Austin. So when he comes over she hovers over him and almost squishes him, but she's so loving and helpful it's just the darn cutest thing. She's giving him a "hug" in the first one (she lays her head on people or dogs sometimes as a hug).

She just keeps going, "Baby.... baby!.... Baby!" If we see a stroller or a baby in the store she'll about fall out of her cart seat to try and point it out as she yells for the whole store, "Baby!!!!" Then she'll say "Help please" which basically means she wants to get out and go see the baby so I have to explain that we can't and that she can just say Hi from her cart. She's such a little mommy :)

Poor Baby

It's a sinus infection for the missy. At least that's what a very hurried doctor decided it to be. Her ears are red (inside), her nose has been stuffy and runny for 3 weeks and she coughed so hard and non-stop this morning that she threw up her breakfast.
Why I ever doubted my child's ability to find even the nastiest things yummy, I don't know, but of course she thought the "All Better" medicine was delicious and she was asking for more after 1 1/2 dropper fulls. She almost cried when I put it away. Fabulous!!! Works for mommy.
I'm just hoping this helps explain why she's been a little more difficult than usual lately. That would be nice too :)

OK! but on my terms.

That's how my mom described the attitude of a strong willed person and it's so true. I am totally that way (Caelen asks me to give her a cracker and I find myself saying, OK, just a second, instead of just doing it.) It's not on purpose, it's just the MO of a strong will.
And I wonder why Caelen is such a challenge. Nothing is just simple with her. I cannot say, "OK, let's get in your car seat." without it becoming this HUGE battle. A battle of wills that I immediately want to take on and win. But I'm learning Caelen needs to feel that she is in control of some parts of her life, that she has a say and is respected. (I know she's only 16 months, but trust me, this is how her mind works! LOL) So today when I geared up for the battle that is changing a diaper, I let her take a few things to entertain herself while I did it and then just as she was losing interest and about to start abusing me (I'm talking hitting, kicking, hair pulling) I asked her to pick her diaper, "Which one would you like to wear?" I held up a Kirkland diaper and a Luvs and she picked the Luvs and was very contented then to have it put on.
And this is what I mean. It's constant negotiation, asking for her opinion, finding out what would make her want to do this thing that must be done.
This book I'm reading, "You Can't Make Me! (But I Can Be Persuaded) really addresses these issues. The parent must maintain authority and boundries and bad behavior is never to be tolerated. But just because my little girl doesn't want to do eveything MY way doesn't mean that's bad! She may have a new and inventive or even better way of doing something and I must let her discover those things for herself. I'M the one whose having to deny my strong will to figure out how to best parent this little bug. It's a new way of thinking, percieving and reasoning and it's hard on my tired brain cells, but so far today (it's 10:45am, and she's been awake since 6:00) she's has 2 diaper changes, gotten dressed, gotten in the car, and is napping peacefully as I write and she has had ONE timeout for hitting and that was just on my leg (and she only had to be sat back down in the corner twice). I think this is a miracle, or maybe just a miracle day, we'll see about tomorrow......
Either way life will never be boring with Caelen.

I'll take that coat in white please.

My day went something like this:

Wake up late for a pretty busy day.
Get Caelen dressed and everything ready to go, when her diaper explodes all over her outfit.
Change Caelen's outfit and while she's on the changing table my Mom calls to tell me an item got sent to the wrong cleaners.
Leave the house, stop at wrong cleaners to pick up item (it was my fault, this is only fair!)
Go to work.
Change 5 poopy diapers, apparently Caelen's tummy isn't feeling well.
Leave Caelen with mom so I can go to the doctor's and wait in the room for 30 mins.
Caelen naps for a whopping 30 mins.
Stop at correct cleaners to drop off item.
Go back to work.
Caelen gets multiple time outs for hitting me. Lack of sleep has left her out of sorts.
Try a nap again, doesn't work.
Go to store to pick up items for the Trustees dinner that I'm in charge of making. Caelen destroys my wallet during trip.
Go home.
Caelen gets multiple time outs for hitting me.
Attempt to start dinner and trustees dinner prep.
Have to let Caelen go diaperless because her rash is so awful.
She poops all over the bathroom floor, tries to clean it up with three of her toothbrushes before I discover her.
Put Caelen in bathtub while I disinfect everything and change my clothes since they're poopy now too.
Take Caelen out of tub, she hits me.
Put Caelen on timeout, she pees in the corner.
Disenfect floor, put diaper on Caelen, she kicks and screams because of the rash.
Try and put some laundry away, Thomas comes home.
Finally manage to get dinner on the table.
Caelen gets another time out.
Clean up, put Caelen to bed and write in my blog....

.... about a day that should have sent me to the nut house.

E-I-E-I-O!

I got the video I wanted! It's posted on my myspace page: http://www.myspace.com/bakline18

Just scroll part way down and press the Play button on the smaller video screen, don't forget to turn up your sound :)

And on that farm he always has a cow

I WISH I could get a video of Caelen singing, "Ee - I - Ee - I - Oh!" It's flippin adorable. I put her a time out this morning and after she cried for about 20 seconds she busted out with a little Old MacDonald in her room. Pretty funny.
More playhouse fun today. I really should take a picture and put that on here. Hopefully the siding goes on today and it'll look more finished than it has!

My Accent

Stolen from Melissa Andrew, very interesting!

What American accent do you have? Your Result: The West Your accent is the lowest common denominator of American speech. Unless you're a SoCal surfer, no one thinks you have an accent. And really, you may not even be from the West at all, you could easily be from Florida or one of those big Southern cities like Dallas or Atlanta.
The Midland
Boston
North Central
The Inland North
Philadelphia
The South
The Northeast
What American accent do you have? Quiz Created on GoToQuiz

Orville would be proud

I woke up this morning to Caelen screaming from her room. Usually it's a "I'm-waking-up" cry but not this time. She was clearly hurt or very upset. I lept from my bed and ran in. As soon as she heard me open the door she said, "Yut!" (Stuck) and sure enough her little leg was stuck through the slats of her crib all the way past her knee and bent out at what I'm sure was an uncomfortable angle. We freed her though and she was good to go although a little shook up.

You know how often times you get into a "mode" as a family? Usually our mode is evident in the evening. Back around the end of 2007 our mode was to watch Pride & Prejudice in the evenings once Caelen had gone to bed. Now it's reading, popcorn and occasionally a glass of wine. Adria gave me "The Other Boleyn Girl" for my birthday and I could not put it down so I suggested Thomas read it because he loves history (he has one of those brains that just understands and absorbs history, I'm so jealous). I moved on to "I, Elizabeth" and it feels like the virtual sequel. The first book was about Mary and Anne Boleyn and the second is about Anne Boleyn's daughter and a lot of the same characters make appearances in both novels.
So we sit down in the evening and make some fresh popcorn in Thomas' new air popper (since the boy is obsessed with popcorn) and we sit on the couch and read until bedtime. Yes our lives are just that thrilling. But you know what, after a crazy day of moving around town with a toddler, I look forward to a quiet night (that is of course unless it's an American Idol night!)