Let's Talk Turkey

There's been a turkey invasion at our house... Caitie's Kindergarten class went turkey craft crazy this month. Look at the cute turkeys she brought home, and a cute little owl as well. The owl was a fall craft. There were more turkeys than you see here, and other crafts as well, but decided to just show a few of them here. All these crafts were done before Thanksgiving.

Her class makes a lot of 'hats'.



I love this hand turkey. It's Caitie's handprint with a googly eye and legs added; so cute.



This owl matches her room decor. It's on her nightstand.



This turkey was a family project. I had so much fun with it. I did all the extra stuff on it and Caitie colored it. She wanted me to do all the gluing... she can't stand it when glue gets on her fingers; silly gal. Some of the orange toes kept falling off; they're orange beads. The red thingy (i forget what it's called) on the turkey's neck are red beads. There is a googly eye. There are pipe cleaners in between the tail feathers, and the brown wings are felt. I wanted it to have lots of color and texture. We were to design it however we wanted. I think it turned out pretty cute. We now have a Christmas Tree project to do that's similar to this turkey project. Should be fun! I can't wait. ha :)

Have any Thanksgiving traditions?

I do, even though it's not meant to be tradition... I end up baking dessert the morning of Thanksgiving to take to Uncle David's (per caitie) house. Michael doesn't like me baking the day of a planned family gathering, my baking usually makes us late. But it seems to happen no matter how hard I try to avoid it. I turn on the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade for the girls to watch while I'm baking. I must admit, I do love the smell of somethin' sweet bakin' while watching somethin' good on TV. Not that I'm much into parades, but there's something about the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade that I enjoy... maybe it's the location... NYC, and it being cold there, and the history linked to that particular parade... or somethin' like that. Anyway, I did try to do all the baking the night before... I started to just take the acorn cookies Caitie made, but decided there weren't enough of them and decided at the last minute to make some chocolate chip pretzel cookies, that are actually brownies, but they're called cookies for some reason... don't ask me why... and I decided this at about midnight the night before Thanksgiving. Michael decided it was okay for me to get some sleep before bakin' the brownies... I mean cookies, or whatever you wanna call 'em... and just do them the next mornin'. I should have left well enough alone... they turned out awful! The pretzel crust was... well... there was too much of it! Long story... one Michael would rather I didn't go into, I'm sure, since he helped me with that part. I'll let you wonder about that. ha Here are some pics from the night before Thanksgiving and Thanksgiving Day...

Caitie makin' the cute Acorn Cookies.



She did a really good job!



Aren't they cute? :)



Thanksgiving Day. The girls were waiting for me to finish getting ready to go. They were already taking a nap, and they hadn't even had any turkey yet. ha



One of the things Caitie looked forward to at Uncle David's was playing with the three dogs. Here she's playing fetch with one of the dogs.



She loves to play pool too...



She usually tries to hit a ball into a pocket by hitting it with another ball, but she decided to try a pool stick this time... it wasn't long before she went back to doing it the way she loves best... ball hitting ball into pockets.



Remember my mentioning our fifty somethin' Caddy last Thanksgiving? Well, it's still at David's house. It's been there over a year now. It won't be long before it's home though, they're almost done workin' on it. It will soon be fully restored. I didn't get many pics of Bailey, but you can see her in this pic... a bit blurry.



I finally got to drive the Caddy. My two girls, their daddy, and their Uncle David let me drive them around the block a couple of times. The Caddy has no seatbelts, the steering is a bit off, and there are no brakes... it reminded me of my '67 Mustang. It was a bit disconcerting to try and stop a 3000 ton (?) (all i know is it's big and heavy) vehicle that has hardly any brakes... I was told this while trying to stop; the brake pedal went all the way to the floor before the car even began to slow down. Yes, it brought back memories of that ol' Mustang of mine. I'm happy to report that we made it safe and sound back to the house.



Another fun thing to do at Uncle David's is play the slot machine. With that and the pool table, it's almost like bein' in Vegas... we were just wishin' there was an actual payout... she kept getting three in a row.



She hit the jackpot (get it? the above pic, and now mentioning 'jackpot'... um, yeah. i need to stop writing posts at such a late hour) when it came to Tinkerbell stuff... one of David's inlaws gave Caitie a bunch of Tinkerbell stuff. Caitie loved it.



And that, my friends, was our Thanksgiving. Oh... I forgot to mention, we did head to Kohl's at midnight for their Black Friday sale. We walked in, and walked back out about 30 seconds later... we should have known better than to go in after seeing the full parking lot. It was a madhouse! No surprise there. We decided to not try any other stores after that.

Ouch x 2

I took Bailey to her 15 month appointment yesterday. She measures 32.5 inches and weighs a little over 20 pounds; she's still long and lean. She got two shots in her left leg (vaccinations). Before getting the shots, her doc checked to make sure she didn't have an ear infection. She's been on Amoxicillin for the last week and a half for an ear infection... in both ears; poor thing. Her doc said she could also have had strep throat, her throat was somewhat red, but he didn't test for it since she was going to be on antibiotics anyway for the ear infection, which would take care of the strep throat as well. Caitie has had strep throat twice in the last couple of months, that's why the doc thought Bailey's red throat could have been strep throat. Caitie was on Amoxicillin as well due to an ear infection in her right ear; this makes the second ear infection she's had in the last couple of months. Caitie is fine now. Bailey's ears are fine now too, and her throat is no longer red, so she is now off the Amoxicillin.

I took her off of the Miralax while she was on the other medication, hoping she was ready to be without it anyway, but she is now back on it; she's still having problems with poopin'. The Miralax really helps with that.

She's going to a feeding evaluation appointment tomorrow; she still hasn't eaten many solids. She'll take snack food (cereal, crackers, baby puffs, etc.) and put it in her mouth and eat it most of the time, but that's about it. She doesn't like the feel of a spoon in her mouth, and she has never wanted a binky... but she will put some things in her mouth... certain baby toys, and she sometimes carries stuffed animals around with her teeth. Interesting how that works. She's been on Pediasure instead of a bottle for a while now since she isn't eating much solid food yet; the Pediasure has more calories and vitamins than the bottle.

I took this pic when we got home; she was in a good mood considering she wasn't too happy while at the doctor's office. She doesn't like to be poked and prodded at by the doc and she doesn't like to be put on the exam table, she likes me to hold her the whole time.



Here she is taking the colorful band-aid off (put on after her two shots).



Then the 'trauma' of the doctor's visit and the straining to poop took over... she conked out; she took a nice nap, using one of her doggies (as she likes to call all dogs) as a pillow. She did have pants on, but I took them off as soon as we got home in order to change her diaper. She decided she wanted them to stay off.



The doc asked if Bailey's saying many words yet... I said she sometimes repeats what we say, and some of the words she does say are (these are what comes to mind at the moment):

mama (my favorite, of course)
daddy
caitie
doggy
diaper
stinky
thank you
holly (for all cats)
ooowwwww for ouch
cracker
bottle
this, this
no
hi

Of course, she doesn't say them as they are above... except for mama, daddy, no, hi, this-this, ooowwww... she does say those pretty clearly... the others are said in really cute ways. I need to get her saying them on my flip recorder.

Oh, and one more cute thing that comes to mind at the moment... she copies some of my exercise moves, which are pretty weird lookin' when I do them, but sooo cute when she does them. Why do you think that is? Don't answer that.

Whether it be a good day or a bad day...

Be Joyful



Celebrate



Be Confident



Have Faith

***

Believe



Be Exuberant



Love one another...



This is the day the LORD has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.
Psalm 118:24

*** No baby or child was harmed during the making of this post. :)

All you need is...

Yep, you read my bottom right... L O V E ...

I love to play at the park. I love to climb on the couch and stand up, lean back, and wait to hear my mama scream; I love to do the same on the rocking chair where I get the same response. I love to climb on the step stool and stare at myself in the mirror. I love to open the toilet lid and splash around in the water. I love to open and close doors, even the door to the cat closet and to the movie room, which is where my favorite couch is to climb on. I love to play in the backyard, dig in the flowerpot on the patio and put the potting soil in my mouth.



I love goin' my way when at the store; I don't listen to anyone that asks me to stop, I just keep goin'. I love crayons. I love to hold them, put them in my mouth, put them in containers... I just really love crayons! I love to play peek-a-boo; I love to peek around something, and slowly go back the other way, and then back again. I love to pound on computer keyboards, and I love to pound on the piano too. I love to throw toys and shoes in the garbage. I love to stand in my bathtub and reach for my bath toys and the faucet.



I love to say holly, which means cat to me; I call all cats holly. I love to say noooo, and I love to say dottle, which is my code word for bottle. I say this, this, and point when I want something. I say ooooowww when I hear someone say ouch. I also love to say deetle, deetle, deetle. I love to climb up and down the stairs, and play in between, which means I take quite a while to get to where I'm goin', which gets my mama a tad bit irritated at times. I love to feed myself nutrigrain bars, goldfish crackers, and cereal. I love to take food out of the refrigerator.



I love to get in all the cabinets and drawers in the house... every. single.one.of.them! I love to scatter toys all over the house. I love to tease the cats, and I really love Holly and she loves me back... she rubs my head and licks my hair when I get my diaper changed. I love to walk wherever we go... no more crawling for me, unless I'm playin' a crawling game. I love to stand at the bathtub and feel water hit me when my sister takes a shower.



I love to play with long hair, just ask my my mama and my sister, I pull and twirl their hair all the time. I love to go through my sister's nightstand drawer when mama is reading to her at bedtime. I love to crawl real fast on my mama and daddy's bed at bedtime to see if they can catch me before I get to the edge of the bed; there's usually lots of screamin' goin' on... from both mama and daddy. I love to be chased when it's diaper time. I love to be tickled... most of the time. What I love most is keeping my mama, daddy, and sister on their toes; I'd say I'm pretty good at it, wouldn't you? And you know what else?



I love you too.

Thanks for reading my love story...

Love,
Bailey

P.S. My mama asked me to tell you that she took all the above pics at the park, back when it was AllStar fun run time; we went after picking my sister up from school that day.