The Last Ten Days or So

Whew. The last few weeks have been busy around here. It's been non-stop appointments, needles, rodeos and other fun.

It completely kicked my butt. I've been so tired the last few days that I felt like I was on auto pilot. You know, the wheel's still spinning, but the gerbil's missing? Yeah, like that. I woke up yesterday feeling better rested finally, and today has been much better again.

So last Tuesday was the get-up-at-the-crack-of-dawn-and-go-to-the-lab-glucose-test-day (hiss!) and Wednesday was needle-at-the-hospital-day. But after all that fun, we packed up Cailin and went to watch the chuck wagons at the rodeo grounds. She wasn't sure what to think at first, but it didn't take long before she was enjoying the horses and cheering from her stroller. Of course, she refers to them as "puppies".
"Mommy! Puppies!" she said. "No, those are horses."

"Puppies!"

"HOR-SES."

"PUP-PIES!"

She won. The next night we went back to watch the wagons again. She knew exactly what to expect by then; demanded mini donuts and cheered the 'puppies' on. A fellow spectator tried to correct her on her usage of 'puppies' but he didn't have any more success than I did.
She loved it. I see a lot more rodeo stuff in our future. I would also like to point out that even though I set foot on rodeo grounds, the Apocalypse did not begin as previously suggested. Ahem.

Friday saw me frantically scurrying around the kitchen trying to make this masterpiece for Cailin's friend Olivia's 2nd birthday party:
Cailin 'helped' by emptying the entire cutlery drawer into the dishwater. Twice. Yes, I washed every single spoon, fork and knife in the house twice. Plus cleaned up the shenanigans from the icing making adventures. And washed all those cake pans. And cleaned the microwave after someone got a little creative with plastic dishware and icing.

I wasn't sure how I was going to decorate the cake with the Smartie buzzing around the house and bouncing off walls. As I was getting the first layer of buttercream icing on my newly shaped "2" cake, I looked at the clock and realized that I was going to be late for my doctor's appointment. Panic ensued. At any rate, we got there only 5 minutes late. This would be the visit where the doc told me Jellybean is measuring 32 weeks at 29 weeks.

Once home, I put Cailin down for a nap and got jiggy with the icing. She complied by having a three hour nap and woke up as I was putting my masterpiece back in the fridge. Thank goodness for my little sweetheart.

The next day, we got up late and prepared for Olivia's birthday party. They loved the cake! The girls had a great time playing together all day. We went for a walk, played in the backyard, in the sandbox and on the slide. They jumped in the only puddle we came across:
Sunday was busy too. I don't quite remember what we did, but it was busy. I think we cleaned a lot and played outside. And priced out a new deck for our house. Cailin dumped popcorn in Ryan's truck and was extremely popular. Not.

Monday we tackled the mountain of bags of unsorted recyclables in the backyard. Even though some idiot helped himself to several bags of cans/bottles (and a gas can last fall), we still ended up with seven huge bags of bottles for the depot. We had three bags of just flattened milk jugs. It was gross. Sour milk and stale moldy bottle smell is truly nasty in the hot sun. Cailin helped tons of course. Once loaded in the back of the truck, we realized that none of the depots in a 50km radius were open on Monday. I was exhausted with a headache and Cailin was miserable with her teeth so we went home after a quick jaunt to the park.

Tuesday we went and picked up a new Peterbilt for one of the drivers at work and brought it back to town from the outfitters' place. Cailin loved sitting in the big truck. She had a nap on the way back to town. Then. We braved the bottle depot. We stood in line for 45 minutes with our huge stash of sour milk jugs while taking turns going to check on Cailin in the truck. The depot was full of crazy people and was so dirty that we didn't even entertain the idea of bringing her inside. Finally I told Ryan to go sit with her in the truck, got a cart and loaded the seven bags on it and waited for another 20 minutes for my turn. It took over an hour in the smelliest place on earth (after the sorting of sour milk hell) for a whole $47.90. It's much better than a swift kick in the rear though. The money is going towards Cailin's big girl bed fund.

Today we went out to the farm to visit Nana and Papa for the first time in a few weeks. We had a great day; played outside, walked dogs, ate pizza and didn't nap. Cailin walked a stroller out to the driveway, picked rocks, filled the stroller up and then brought it back to wash the rocks in a bucket on the patio. She had such a great time playing in the water. It was terrifically hot out too. I can say it's finally summer.

Other highlights this week:

- I bribed Cailin with playing outside if she would clip her nails without a fuss. Success! I even got one toenail trimmed too; hey, it's progress right?

- Cailin's birthday present came in - a bouncy house! She loves it. I can't wait to share it with her cousins. She didn't need any lessons, she knew exactly what to do with a bouncy house.

- Cailin will now willingly wear dresses! Yay!

- Cailin can now get out of all of her clothes and I routinely find a trail of discarded clothing punctuated by a diaper... and eventually one naked baby of course.

Jellybean is doing quite well. He is very active these days, kicking up a storm. In fact, you can watch my belly jump around from across the room like I'm hiding popping corn under my shirt. As you can imagine, it's hard to fall asleep with all that bouncing going on. Still, that's nothing compared to the heartburn. I think I'm finally going to give in and just take a prescription to stop the burn. I can't handle it anymore.

Bailey has settled down quite a bit now that Ryan is home. She's sleeping in her own bed again and has been sleeping through the night. Well, she was up once the other night but it's far better than being up every second night with her. Or multiple times in one night. There hasn't been any thunder for a while either, that's helping her quite a bit too I would imagine. She has gotten extremely bold with her food stealing though; the second your back is turned she will jump on the table and eat your breakfast. Cailin thinks it's hilarious.