New Tooth Coming Soon

Looks like we'll be having some tooth news in the near future. Brandon told Brian this morning that he felt like his gums were loose around one tooth. I didn't find this out until lunch time. Brandon was obsessed with the Rice Crispy treats at Noodles & Company, so we relented and split one (huge) treat amongst the family. As he was noshing on his, he mentioned the loose gums again. Not only is one of his lower baby teeth loose, but you can see the new one already poking through! It might even be the same tooth that came in first when he was 6 months old. So many of his classmates have lost one or more teeth already. He'll be joining their ranks soon. Childhood rites of passage, here we come!

Clean-Up on Aisle 6!

Caitlin and I headed over to a little discount grocery store in Dacono this morning. The poor girl has fluid in her lungs, and sounds like an asthmatic jogger most of the time. Today was spent keeping her away from other kids.

The grocery store was a fun find. I'm a bargain hunter. I'm currently wearing my 1 cent hoodie from Macy's that I bought a couple of summers ago. I've found a couple more 1 cent bargains at Macy's, but I guess the cashiers aren't suppose to sell them for that price. Oh well. Anyway, this grocery store was very much like Grocery Outlet in California. I got power bars for 50 cents, Pirates Booty for a dollar a bag, and our favorite snacking cereals by Kashi for only $1.75 a box (they're usually at least $3.50 per box, which I refuse to pay!). I was pleasantly surprised to find my favorite laundry detergent, Bi-O-Kleen, at $2.75 for 64 ounces. This chemical free, environmentally friendly liquid is usually priced between $9.50 at King Soopers, to $12-14 at Whole Foods and other natural grocery stores. I quickly snapped up 2. About 10 minutes later, as I was walking down the pasta and cracker aisle, I noticed my shoes sliding on the linoleum. As I looked down to see what on earth was so squishy, I saw this.....

 

Lovely. Some form of liquid spilled all over the floor. Then I looked in my cart and saw one of the Bi-O-Kleen bottles flipped over completely. Lid off. Detergent everywhere. And I mean everywhere! All over the cereal. All over the power bars. All over the food, the cart, the floor..... everywhere except the girl. Caitlin! She was making towers of food  in the cart and then destroying them. She'd somehow managed to knock over the detergent and dislodge the cap, or was using the bottle as a wrecking ball. I'm not sure which one it was. About a third of the bottle poured out. The only reason that the entire bottle hadn't poured all over the floor was because it got caught in her shoe that she had taken off sometime after going to the store.  Her entire shoe was filled with Bi-O-Kleen.  I poured it back into the bottle.

I managed to maintain my composure, mostly because it's frowned upon to yell in stores, and ran up to the closest cashier to get some paper towels and a clean-up on aisle 6. It is seriously all I can do not to scream at the top of my lungs sometimes. Why is this girl so difficult to take shopping?  Ugh!!! This is not a new thing - she's been awful in stores since birth. Last summer she managed to pull a shopping cart on top of her in Sprouts after only being in the store for 10 minutes (for your information, the cage-free brown eggs did much better after a 10 foot launch than the regular white shelled eggs).  I love her dearly, but I'd love to just be able to leave her in the car, too. It was so embarrassing today. Not only did I have to call for a clean-up, but the poor man had to get two mop buckets, one with more water, to help him get the soap off the floor (should be really clean, though). I used half a roll of paper towels mopping up all the slimy detergent on the boxes. Then, I had to check-out and pay for my slightly slimy goods. No liquid seeped through anything, but it was a pain to clean-up. Caitlin at this point had no shoes, so we could only go straight home. On top of it all, she was really upset that she didn't get a gumball from the machine in the front of the store. I guess in my haste to leave I forgot that I'd said she could have one. *Sigh* She got over it a few miles down the road.

I did a load of laundry after we got home. My jacket, Caitlin's sweatshirt, and her shoes were coated with a layer of soap. I didn't have to add any to the water, though. I'm not sure her shoes will survive this. They're currently drying in front of the fireplace, and still feel slimy inside. It took about 10 trips to the sink (without any additional soap, mind you!) to finally feel like I'd washed the detergent off of my hands. You'd think I'd have learned my lesson by now, but grocery shopping is just not one of those things you can cut out of your life. I'm not looking forward to summer, when I have both kids all the time. Maybe I should hire a babysitter for my grocery shopping days.

Just for a visual, here's what I have left of my 64 ounce bottle:

Attack!!

Call me crazy, but I think the Rocky Mountain Ranch is under attack.

Good thing Brandon had positioned the ranch hand in a good place to fight off the Jurassic Park-esque attack.

Caitlin's 4-year Stats

We took Caitlin in for her 4-year check-up today. This is her second check-up she's had without Brandon tagging along. The first was at 18 months, and only possible since my parents were in town for a visit. I try to make the kids appointments as early in the morning as possible so that Brian can come, too. Brandon's early school schedule - before 8:00 am - makes it pretty easy to get up and get one of the first appointments! Caitlin's always happy to have her mother's undivided attention, and today she got the undivided attention of both parents for a while! I could tell she was loving the fact that both Brian and I were coming to her appointment when she kept looking behind us to make sure daddy was following us to the doctor's office.

Caitlin's 4 year stats are as follows:
Weight: 35 1/2 pounds  (50th percentile)
Height: 41 inches (75th percentile)

Brandon, at the same age, weighed in at 33 pounds, and was 40 1/4 inches long, yet he was only in the 25th percentile for weight at 50th for height. I never cease to be amazed at the difference between boys and girls physically. They are so different! Caitlin has never looked as skinny as Brandon does, even when she's weighed less and has been taller (at same age comparisons).

Things Caitlin is doing lately:
*School - loves, loves, loves preschool. Can't wait to go!
*Counting - she gets up to 29 before she gets confused.
*Tracing - her ability to trace lines and letters is better than Brandon's at the same age. Must be a girl thing.
*Playing girl games - and by that I mean playing things that other girls want to play, like Polly Pockets, or babies, or different toys. We even had a playdate with only preschool girls the other day. Having an older brother has meant that trucks, cars, trains, Legos and dinosaurs have been all the rage for both kids in our house. She plays well with boys, which is good since there aren't any girls her age on our street. Recently we discovered that a girl friend from preschool lives just up the hill, so I'm sure that there will be more playdates to come!
*Talks very well. Both kids were early talkers. Brandon was easier to understand earlier on, but Caitlin's sentence structure and vocabulary beat his at the same ages. She just wasn't as clear until she was older.
*Naps and diapers are becoming a thing of the past. She still takes naps sometimes (she has to rest most days, even when there are no naps). I thought naptime would be done by now, but the early schedule we're subjected to has keep napping in our day, at least for a while. Caitlin requested to be diaper free for naps back in early October, and has only had one accident since then (and she was sick, so I don't really count that one). She has requested to sleep diaper-free at night, but the results have not been so positive. Our new saying is that she can be diaperless after she wakes up dry. She asks me almost every morning about her progress (we're so not there yet!).
*Food - Caitlin has become picky on amounts, but still loves her veggies!
*Activity - I sometimes wish there was less. Man, that girl is like the Enegizer Bunny - she keeps going and going and going...........

Reading

Ah, so this is why it was so quiet in our house!

Caitlin's World

I was recently able to upload some pictures from Caitlin's camera onto the computer. In the past it's been impossible to do, but something about the software for my new tiny camera has made this possible. In case you're wondering about Caitlin's world, here are a few pictures to help you understand what she sees.

Things we now know about Caitlin -

#1)  She loves her family. She loves to take pictures of us. But her portrait aim is a little off.

#2)  She likes "Shaun the Sheep". She was very pleased with her well-framed picture of Bitzer.

#3) She spends much time in the car (as seen in these fine portraits of the inside of our Honda):

#4) Random things appeal to her, such as the Roomba, and her feet.

I Love You, Kid.

Caitlin's favorite game is "I'll be the mommy and you be the kid." Brandon never expressed any interest in this game when he was 3. Maybe all little girls play this game, but it's new to me. Caitlin will play it with anyone who wants to, and the dialogue goes something like this:

Random participant: "I love you Mommy"

Caitlin: "I love you too, kid."