Beach day

We had our first family beach outing this weekend. We went to Torrey Pines Beach, a couple miles from our house. It was a far cry from the days when we would pack up our beach cruisers with a 6-pack and some munchies and ride them to the beach without a care in the world. I'll treasure those days!

The beach was super busy so Caiden loved the people watching (and bird watching) more than anything. He was not impressed with the cold water, he really disliked it. He would try to crawl on top of you whenever it would touch his feet. We tried three different times and we thought he was getting used to it a couple times but by the end he still wasn't into it. Maybe next time? By the end we were all a mess. The tide brought in a huge wave that pretty much drenched all of our stuff so we ALL had to ride home in wet, sandy clothes. Caiden was such a trooper and didn't care at all that we made him stop at Chipotle on the way home either. Quite the adventure. The car looked like a hurricane went through it when we were done. We'll eventually get the hang of it, I'm sure.

11 months

 This is how the majority of the shoot went. So hard to keep him in one spot.

• We Marc started brushing his teeth this past month with his electric tooth brush (for some reason it just freaks me out to stick something electric in Caiden's mouth so if Marc's not home for bedtime his teeth don't get brushed). But he loves it so much, he gets so excited when Marc props him on the bathroom counter and turns the tooth brush on. 
• PARENT OF THE YEAR AWARD: I found him crawling up the stairs (on the second step going for the third) a few days ago and kicked myself for not dealing with the baby gate earlier. But seriously, it's a pain in the a** to put together and then we found out we needed an extender. We did finally get it up a few days ago and it only took Marc about 4 hours.
• Thank god our kitchen cabinets were baby proofed when we moved in because you love to bang them open and shut with the one inch space a gazillion times. He hasn't found the one that doesn't have a lock on it yet but I'm sure it's only a matter of time. I put all the plastic containers in that one so when he does find it I'm sure that will give him hours of play time.
• He gets so dang excited when Marc walks in the door after work. It's probably one of the cutest things that happens all day long. He's usually in his high chair eating dinner at this time and he'll bang his hands on the tray, smile and pump his feet with excitement. 
• Some of his favorite foods right now are Cheerios, grapes, watermelon and salmon. I swear he eats a piece of salmon the same size we eat, he just loves it so much.
• Your two naps a day are still pretty good. Your morning one is anywhere from one and a half to 2 and a half hours. Your afternoon one still ranges from 40 minutes to 2 hours. Guess it just depends on how much I wear you out between the two.
• You are still obsessed with your dog blanket and sleep with it wrapped in your arms or over your head and face. I'm pretty sure if we were on a sinking ship and you had to choose between me, Marc or your blanket....you'd probably take the blanket.  I haven't let him take it out of his crib yet and I'm hoping it will stay that way. I really don't want to risk loosing it, although I did buy a spare just in case.

Side stepping around the house.

Playing with all of Landon's new toys he got for his birthday before pool time!

Stuffing his face with salmon and watermelon.

Landon's 1st birthday party

Caiden's best friend, Landon, had his first birthday party on Saturday. Landon was not a fan of the cake he was supposed to smash in his face and hair and eat. This is pretty typical of what I've seen from a one year old. I'm wondering how I can change that for Caiden next month. I really want him to get into it and make a complete mess. Landon stuck one hand in the cake, pulled it out and that was that. He wanted nothing else to do with it. I'm convinced it was the 30 people standing within 3 feet of him yelling a birthday song at him and then cheering him on, probably scared the shit out of him. So at Caiden's party I'm going to put a barricade up around him so he can eat his cake in peace. HA!

"Daddy, seriously.  I hate this hat. I'm not joking and it's not funny."

See that bruise on his left cheekbone? Face planted right on to a toy last week. Then a day later he did it again in the same spot, he was NOT a happy camper.

Aunts ARE the best!

This couldn't be more true. I can only imagine all the stuff Sara is going to let him do that we just don't want to deal with. {I secretly hope she doesn't have kids for a long time so he has her all to himself} ;)

I remember all the things my Aunt Sally would do with us. She always let us drive when we were learning, took us to concerts, the College World Series, hockey games and countless other things that I know my parents wanted to get out of (and I don't blame them, I'm already dreading the day he wants to start driving, oy vey). I guess I'm just saying that he's lucky he has an aunt that digs him as much as my Aunt Sally dug digs us!

The life of our built-in

I think I mentioned in an earlier post that we were building a built-in bar in our new house. It was the thing I was most looking forward to having done and probably spent the most time researching, well it's FINALLY done! We hit quite a few snags along the way and it took waaaaaaay longer than it should have to complete but I'm so happy with the way it turned out. Here's the progression:

This is a picture from the listing when the house was being sold. You can see the previous owners had a book shelf there.

We removed the half wall next to the built-in.

Ta-da!

And this also happens to be one of Caiden's favorite spots to play.

busy, busy boy...

We had a busy weekend full of long car rides, a birthday party, Father's Day and house stuff. The highlight was the Gallagher's twin girls' 1 year birthday party on Saturday. They had lots of favors, good food, a bounce house AND a kids band named, Hullabaloo. Caiden was really into the band and just sat and watched and ate crackers.

Here's how the weekend went...

"Mom, my ball is under the chair...help me please!"

"These twins keep taking my cracker, me no likey."

"Maraca's, so I can play with the band. I really loved these."

"It's going to be my first birthday soon so Mom was getting me prepared for wearing these hats!"

"Happy Father's Day, Dad. You're the best!"

"Helping mom cook dinner for Dad"

Allergy appointment

We took Caiden to an Allergist today and it's official- he's allergic to dairy...and nuts. Surprisingly not melon even though his lip swelled up that one time. We think it may have just been something that the restaurant got on the melon. The milk thing we were kind of expecting since we've given him yogurt, cheese and cottage cheese a handful of times and he always vomits within a few minutes. For the skin test they take an ink pen and write the first letter of each allergen on his back then they take a liquid form of the allergen and put a dot of it next to the letter. There is no skin pricking involved. Then you wait 15 minutes to see what flairs up.

Trying to keep a 10 month old from having anything touch their back for 15 minutes is like wrestling a pig. We played Mary Had a Little Lamb a few times on the iphone, jumped around like idiots for a few minutes and fed him puffs.

They also prescribed an EpiPen for him that we need to keep handy in case he does ingest something that makes him go into anaphylactic shock. Unfortunately the test doesn't tell us the severity of the allergy so we don't know how bad it is and if that will ever happen.

You'll see from this picture that it's pretty obvious he's allergic to milk. Right in the middle there is an "M" (kind of hard to read) and you'll see to the right how bad it flared up and turned into a welt. The "H" above that is just the control, to make sure it's working.  They also tested for shell fish, soy and a few other things we've never given him. Now we go back every 6 months and do the testing again to see if/when he ever grows out of the allergy. The doc said it's an 80% chance he'll grow out of the dairy allergy and a 20% chance for nuts. Until the tests come back negative we can't give him dairy or nuts. Looks like we'll be buying soy milk for this little guy when he turns 1.

Helping with the umbrella

I was looking at old pictures on my phone tonight and found these. I always get a smile on my face when I look at them so thought I should post. We were at the mall last month and it started raining. Right when I pulled out the umbrella Caiden grabbed it and would not let go for a good 10 minutes. He loved holding on to it and I felt like he was thinking he was helping me. Marc and I got such a kick out of it.