Caien's Birthday Dinner...um...Breakfast

Dave and I decided to take Caiden to Ihop for dinner for his birthday. He loves their pankcakes, and we thought it would be a fun treat.

We arrived and Ihop was all decked out for the movie "Horton Hears a Who" which we were going to take Caiden to the next day. Caiden ordered from the Horton menu in that he had the Dr. Seuss special of green eggs (spinach mixed in with scrambled eggs) and ham and Horton hears a who pancakes with strawberry and bosenberry topping equipped with a flower (lollipop) in which Horton hears the Who from the speck on the clover.

Interestingly enough, the place was packed with people, but of a somewhat older crowd. After the waitresses came out singing for Caiden, the other patrons asked Dave and I to come over with Kiya and Caiden. They said their "oohhs"and "awws" over Kiya and then unexpectedly each table started handing Caiden birthday money. It was soo nice of them, but I felt a bit uncomfortable like the restaurant was looking at us making the rounds like the collection plate at church or something. Dave said that it was ok since THEY called us over there, and it wasn't like we were asking for money. Still it was VERY nice of them. Caiden was really grateful too.

After dinner we went home and Caiden sang a rendition of the birthday song that Dave had been singing with him for most of the day. I got a little video of it, but it was during our bedtime routine in which Caiden picks a book and we read him a story. He saw that Dave was picking out a book in the middle of his song, so he stopped and scolded Dave. Funny. :)



In case you can't understand what he is singing it goes like this:

Happy birthday, happy birthday
How old are you? How old are you?
Count the candles on the cake
make a wish for goodness sake
We want Cake! We want cake!

Weird Dream

I am no stranger to weird dreams, but I seem to be having them more often as of late. I was describing to Heather my latest weird dream and she said I should make it a blog entry, so here it goes.

This latest dream stars Heather, and it was one that I woke up with this morning.

The dream starts where I am visiting Heather at this fancy resort that she is staying at. As I approach her she is standing on a plush field of luscious green grass holding onto this HUGE funnel thing that looks a bit like a water tower. It is attached by all of these wires of squishy containers that bend and fold kind of like the exhaust containers that they plug into fire engines after they pull them into the station. Inside of it is a specially formulated fancy meal made especially for Gracie and Aspen (her dogs). She calls me over as she pushes this button on the side of the funnel and out comes a perfectly portioned meal for her dogs. They eat it up gratefully as it is filled with yummy goodness such as fresh meats, rice and vegetables.

I then ask Heather where this resort is located (although this is a bit strange to me as I came there, right? Why don't I know where the resort is). It gets a bit fuzzy from here as I try to see the location on a map, and as anyone knows me I have NO sense of direction - and strangely enough it is no better in my dreams.

Apparently I give up at finding the resort's location as Heather is taking me on a tour of the resort. We stop at the women's locker room which is like no locker room I have imagined. Inside, Heather states that she has to use the facilities, so I take a seat in the lounge area to wait. However, never have I experienced what happened next.

I walk into the lounge area which is furnished with comfortable leather sofas and a couple of flat screen LCD tvs playing some kind of movie that I cannot recall at this time. It kind of looks like the inside to Heather and Danny's spa where people can be entertained while their wait their turn to be pampered. There are other women there, so I take a seat and watch the movie. The women are all eating treats of some kind, pastries, cookies, cakes...I have no idea where they got them, and they are a bit catty in their conversations so I decide to patiently wait for Heather without engaging in any kind of a conversation.

Meanwhile, as Heather is using the bathroom, and I do mean AS she is using the bathroom, she has also engaged in a strange kind of baking competition. She is inside making all kinds of treats, cookies and cupcakes, and all kinds of yummy treats. Apparently as the other women are in their respective stalls they are all baking in this prestigious and unique competition. When the timer goes off, the competition ends and Heather emerges, as only perfectionist Heather can do, as the winner of this rather strange baking competition. She glides out of the stall with a shining silver plate of delicate morsels expertly made and decorated. Of course, as in ANY baking competition, design and presentation is of the utmost importance and Heather knows this and has complied to the fullest extent. Heather smiles this big toothy grin as she emerges, and if I didn't know better I could swear I saw a sparkle glinting off her teeth.

Heather glides out into the open lounge, not unlike Lucille Ball on "I Love Lucy", as she stops just shy of the leather sofas where we are all staying. She offers some treats to me, which for some strange reason I am about to take when the catty girl next to me snatches a few pastries off of Heather's precious plate and devours them. She makes some kind of comment which again is a bit fuzzy as I have been awake now for some time, and the details are being lost on me. This girl's actions and comments enrage Heather, but as Heather is known to do, she keeps her cool and glides away to a rather dark stainless steel kitchen a short distance away. (Don't ask me why she cooked in a bathroom stall when there was a perfectly good kitchen just outside the lounge. I have no idea...I told you my dream was strange).

Anyway, attached to this kitchen is a LCD tv screen (small and indiscreet in nature). Heather looks at me and stated that she was going to mark the catty girl down on her baking results by using the touchscreen feature on the LCD tv screen, but just as she is about to she stops and laughs. She looks at me again and says "If I mark her down then I will lose my standing as 1st place, so I'm going to leave her where she is".

For some reason this is normal to me, and we walk outside the women's locker room into a mall where Heather walks in to inspect some gloves that she see in a shop window. She puts a beautiful pair of gloves on and out seeps frosting of different colors. Now I am bit thrown back by this as it seems quite impractical and sticky to me, but Heather is so excited as this is EXACTLY what she was looking for to give her the edge on the baking competitions. (Since Heather uses the bathroom often she partakes in the competitions a lot, and has become very serious about perfecting her baking skills. These gloves are specially designed gloves that when you put them on, frosting comes out the fingertips to make it easier for decorating. How this makes it easier, I do not know, and I apparently don't question it as the walls of the mall disappear and we are standing out on some farmland where baby chickens are running around.

They are so cute and cuddly looking as they chirp around the farm grounds. Heather then asks me which chick I want. Perplexed I inquire as to what for...after all I have two cats and two dogs, I don't need a baby chicken too. She says (and this is the weirdest part of all) that you can pick a chick and they take fat out of your body (in locations of your choice) and inject it into the chicken of your choice. These chickens continue to live fat and happy on this farmland, and apparently quite enjoy the injections. I guess it is a little like botox only with fat and for chickens.

It is about this point that I hear crying, and it takes me a moment to wake up and realize that the crying is actually happening, and announcing that Kiya is awake and ready to be fed. Then Dave walks in the bedroom and tells me it's time to get up too. I am still reeling from my dream and trying to figure out what is happening. You see, I dream in vivid colors and it feels VERY real to me. When I was younger I used to have to pinch myself to see if I was really awake or not because I couldn't tell the difference. I begrudgingly get up to start my day. Unfortunately, I look down at my body and realize that I woke up just a wee bit too soon. I woke up before the fat disappeared off my body and was injected into my tiny chicken. :P Yep. I know I'm weird, but at least I'm not the one winning baking competitions in the bathroom. :)

Caiden's 4th Birthday Party

On Saturday we celebrated Caiden's 4th birthday with family and friends. It was a fun time, where we rented a bounce house, had party favors for the kids, grilled burgers and hot dogs and gorged on cupcakes and great conversation.

It was nice to see so many people, as I had a moment of "mommy brain" where I had written part of the invitations on one day, and gotten sidetracked. I then decided I would mail the ones I had done. Great idea, except for then I forgot who I sent invitations to and who I didn't. :( I made some rather hasty calls to a few people because I couldn't remember if I had invited them or not.

Small world: Our neighbor Paul on the left had previously worked with Jake (my brother-in-law) at Disneyland many years ago.

Family and friends gather to celebrate Caiden's birthday

and yes Danny brought his computer...although I told Dave "no WOW at Cade's party"
It was wonderful to see Trevor and Angela's daughter Katie



Caiden had a lot of fun with his friends and received a lot of nice gifts and some money for his college fund.
Caiden is into a batman phase right now which is curious as he has never seen a batman show. For his birthday he received many batman things, such as his watch, and new PJ's. He also received a batman backpack, car thing, and other batman related stuff. :)
Caiden received a spiderman watch too :)

We started the day out with a bounce house that arrived rather early. Once the party preparations were done, I joined Caiden in the bounce house, knowing that I would not be able to join him once the party started. I asked Dave to take a few pictures of me with Caiden as I am always the one taking pictures, and it looks like I am never at any family events. Of course, he begrudgingly complied...well sort of. This is what he took a picture of.
This was the better of the TWO pictures he took. The other one was closer up...I thought I would spare you.

When I figured it out, I asked for better pictures...you know. One with my FACE in it.


I stayed up late (or should I say early in the morning) making cupcakes and frosting colors. I was stressing because I knew that Heather, the cupcake queen would be coming. As she stated on her blog (see the link from my blog to hers) she is experimenting with making new cupcakes. Although I enjoy eating cupcakes, I am not much of a baker of cupcakes. I think they turned out ok though.
Caiden seemed to enjoy them anyway, as we blew out his candle on his birthday cupcake. Of course, he chose the orange one. I stole this idea from my cousin...make many different colors that way the kids can choose their favorite color to eat.

Caiden blowing out the candle on his birthday cupcake.
How blessed he is to have family and friends to share this with

It seemed that everyone had a good time, even Kiya, although she was a little grumpy. Thankfully, her grandparents were there to make things right. :)


You know Kiya is thinking exactly what Grammie Sue's shirt says..."Life is good" :)

Finally, SUCCESS!!!

So, as you may or may not know, I am breastfeeding Kiya. Now, I have been known to pump occasionally, so I can store some milk for when I have to inevitably go back to work. Because of this, I have been her ONLY link to food and that wonderfully feeling of a comfortable full belly. This also means that I cannot be without her for a period longer than 2 hours, and that I get up at all hours of the night to feed her. In addition, I rarely get a warm or hot meal as she has an uncanny ability to know when I am about to eat and wake up SCREAMING. It is well known in my house that when I sit down to grab a bite to eat, before that spoon or fork hits my mouth and fills it with yummy goodness, the wails of my newly born daughter deter me.

Hmm, you might think that this is the answer to my prayers, right? Without the ability to eat a hot meal I will lose interest and not eat as much. That extra baby weight will just drop off without me having to even try? Unfortunately, this is not the case. This just means that I either eat the meal cold, or I shove some completely unhealthy and wonderfully delicious morsel of something into my mouth just because I can eat it quickly and with one hand.

This also means that Dave has not had the opportunity to revel in the cute wide mouthed smiles that Kiya tends to give me after she is satiated after a meal. This may or may not have also lead to Dave's feeling that Kiya "hates" him. I doubt that is true, but he firmly believes this. Whenever he holds her, even if only for a moment she screams bloody murder. He says, "She knows when she is with me, and hates me". I think there are other reasons, which I won't go into, of why Kiya may or may not scream when she is with Dave, but I don't want him feeling like this.
This screaming and Dave's feeling that his youngest child has ill feelings towards him made me feel sad, so I thought that we would give bottle feeding a try. My logic: if Kiya begins to associate Dave with her happy feelings of fullness and food, maybe she would not be so inclined to scream when he held her. Also, this would allow Dave to hold her without her body rigid with frustration. I went to the store and bought a few different kinds of bottles (because I couldn't find the ones that we had packed away from when Caiden was younger) and thawed out some frozen breast milk and handed her over to Dave.

WOW!! This DID NOT go well. You'd think that we were torturing her. We even alternated between me feeding her (breastfeeding) until she was calm and in that euphoric food feeling and then handing her over to Dave who would try and bottle feed her. NOTHING worked. He was sad, I was frustrated, and Kiya was screaming bloody murder.

Finally, I fed her myself and put her to bed. Then, I tore apart our garage, unpacking the kitchen items that I had not unpacked for the 2 years we have lived in this house. I found things I didn't even know that I had - like a fondue kit...who knew? Anyway, I searched until about 2am and finally resigned myself to go to bed. This morning, I gave it one last go ahead and FINALLY found the box of bottles that we had store. I sterilized them and gave them to Dave. We tried again...no success. Still tears, but not as loudly as yesterday. She seemed more tired than hungry, so Dave put her down to sleep. When she woke up, I warmed some breast milk up, and gave it to Dave and.....SUCCESS!!!! She ate!! She ate the whole thing!!!!! She protested a bit, but not NEARLY as much as before.

So on our third set of bottles, Kiya has found the one she likes. The Playtex Nurser. It has a soft nipple, unlike the Nuk, Playtex Ventaire, Munchkin, and Parent's Choice bottles that we have. Interestingly enough, it is the same bottle style that Caiden preferred. Maybe it is truly most like breastfeeding. I mean, many of the bottles touted their style as "most like the breast", but they had hard, plastic nipples that Kiya and Caiden did not like AT ALL.

So as I am writing this, I breath a sigh of relief. Finally, we have found a bottle that she will take. I know it was only this once, but I am hopeful that she will take it going forward as well. I am also hopeful that Dave's ability to feed her every once and a while will dispel his fears that his daughter hates him. After a nice feeding, she will be smiling those big gummy smiles at him too. :)

Great Finds At the Dollar Tree

We just had a store called the Dollar Tree open up by us, so Dave and I thought we would check it out since we were right by it. It was the BEST store!!!

It was clean and neat like Target, but EVERYTHING was $1. It was great. They had loads of fun things for Caiden - such as a gardening tools bag (well that was more for me, but since I recently bought Caiden gardening tools...), airplanes, glow sticks and glow bracelets, kites, books, and loads of other things.

I found hangers and air fresheners and mesh laundry bags that retail elsewhere for anywhere from $3-$10 and got it all for $1. It was great. We even got some great toys for Caiden's party to put in the party favors bags that we gave out to the kids.

Here are a few pictures of us (and by us I mean here are some pictures of Dave and Caiden since NO ONE EVER TAKES PICTURES OF ME PLAYING) playing with some of our newfound toys.
Dave runs with the kite
Caiden throws his airplane
Airplane flying
The airplane landing
Of course, Kiya was overcome with joy and excitement at our newfound toys. As you can see, she can barely contain her excitement.

Lunch With Grandpa Lance and Grandma Susan

Lance and Susan were on their way to a marriage retreat somewhat close to our house, so they decided they would stop by and have some lunch with us.

We went downtown and ate at Red Robin (Lance's choice) and then stopped to admire the fountain and snap a few pictures before they had to head out.

As you can see Caiden dressed himself. He always does, but this was the first time he did not match

Dave was explaining to Caiden that you could go close to the fountain and still not get wet

It was so nice to see them, and we always enjoy having them visit.

Pre-Easter Pictures

Here are a few pictures from when we were taking Easter pictures. I just thought you should see a picture of Kiya awake in one of her Easter dresses.

Here, Caiden is trying to entertain Lindsay who was not so happy about having her picture taken.

A Visit With Gigi

Kiya, Caiden and I surprised my mom at her work about a week ago. Since she teaches Digital Photography she often uses pictures of us and my sister's family in her class demonstrations. Because of this, her students have seen us grow up and our families expand.

Her students are very sweet and have been so generous to us. They make Caiden and Kiya gifts (like a handmade hats and treats to eat) , and even gave Kiya cute baby gifts when she was born. I wanted to stop by and thank her students but also show off my new brood.

After we visited a little while at her school, we decided to go out for a bite to eat at Polly's Pies - one of my favorite places to eat when I lived in Cerritos. The area has changed a bit, but the people at Polly's were still sweet as can be, and their Spinach Salmon salad was SOOO good.
Kiya at the restaurant. She was wearing a little skirt and ruffled tights. :)
It was nice to be able to stop in and spend some time with my mom. :)

Caiden Turns 4!!!

Can you believe it? My little boy is already 4 years old!! Today is his birthday, and for me it is a combination of excitement and awe and sadness. I mean, I know he is only 4 but he is growing up so fast. If you look back in my blog postings you can see him grow from a little baby to this little boy that has manly features.

You know he started calling me Mom. :( The day we brought Kiya home he called me mom and my heart sank. I am no longer "mama" to him. He is getting bigger and older and apparently so am I.

Last night our power went out (planned outage by the Electric company), but it was a bit scary for Caiden. Thankfully, I had given him a blue glow stick for fun last night (without thinking about the planned outage), so I was able to find him upstairs when he was telling me he was scared. I just looked for the "floating" blue glow stick. Needless to say, he slept in our room, which means he takes over the bed and I am practically on the floor. He has learned a lot from his father - spread out and don't give an inch to anyone else! :) It was a bit challenging changing Kiya's diapers by candlelight, but whatever.

Anyway, due to the power outage we got a bit of a late start. We woke up, got dressed, picked up the neighbor's girl Mackenzie and headed off to Chuckee Cheese! Caiden and Mackenzie had a lot of fun. We ordered nasty pizza and played lots of fun games. They played everything - no game or ride was left untouched. We loaded them up on sugar and then let them go!!!!
Mackenzie and Caiden after we loaded them up with pizza and sugar before the games
Caiden loves riding the carousal
Playing games
Kiya and me...self portraits.
Dave and Caiden playing games
Me trying to beat Dave's score. It didn't happen.
Caiden taking his turn
Kiya and Dave
Kiya looking thrilled :)

Of all the things Caiden did there, he seemed to like this drawing machine the best. He did it 4 times. The first time he didn't seem to quite understand it. It had a camera and a chair. You would sit in the chair like one of those photo booths at a carnival and push the button for 1 or 2 people. You would then smile until it took your picture and it would then draw it. The problem was that it took SO LONG to take your picture Caiden had lost interest or started looking at something else. We did it 4 times though and he wanted to do it more.
The top one was Caiden's first try. I then tried to explain it to him. The bottom one with Mackenzie was the last one we did before we left. I had to shove them in front of the camera at the last minute.
The one with me Caiden WAS smiling and looking, but it took so long to take the picture he got distracted. The one with him and Dave turned out the best.

Afterwards, we came back home and Mackenzie and Caiden played until Caiden was SOOO tired he couldn't see straight. At that point, Dave and Caiden took a nap (I think Dave took a nap cuz I asked him to help me fold the laundry) :p Two hours later I woke them up and got dinner and brought it to the park for a picnic and then played until it was too dark to see.




Kiya amused by Caiden



All and all I think Caiden really enjoyed his birthday. He is excited to tell people he is four!! I can't believe it. My baby is 4 years old!! Where did the time go?