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Saturday, September 29^th
Uh oh.  Somebody has a bad new habit.  He blows raspberries all the time now.  We were at the bank yesterday and this nice elderly woman came up to him to tell him how cute he was, and well, you can guess what happened next.  I want to wear a button that says, “I DIDN’T TEACH HIM THAT!”

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Friday, September 28^th
I usually do laundry on Friday’s and Caden loves to sit in the hamper in the laundry room while I fold clothes.  He’s hilarious.  I got some great pictures of him today.

Later on I plopped him down in the big chair in our family room and he was just cracking me up with his poses.

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Wednesday, September 26^th
I’m done teaching for this semester!  It’s been a lot of fun but I’m really relieved it’s over.  Grandpa and Grandma on the other hand are having a different reaction.  After having gotten to babysit Caden for the last five weeks, I walked in today to pick him up and you would have thought someone died.  Or that we were moving to Montana.  Grandma and Grandpa seemed so depressed.  Don’t worry… you’ll still get to see the little shrimp all the time!  (Once a week; that's all they ask).

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Sunday, September 23^rd
There are pro’s and con’s to having five cats in the house.  I won’t list all of the con’s; you can already think of them all.  But there are lots of pro’s.  Like taking a nap.  It was a lazy Sunday today and I decided to take a nap when Caden was taking his.  Before long, you have five warm and fuzzy friends with the same idea.  They’re pretty nice to cozy up with but a couple of them can sure be bed hogs.

We still have five cats because we’re fostering a litter of abandoned kittens.  Three more (the black ones) need to be adopted and they’ll stay at our house until then.

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Saturday, September 22^nd
Our friend Patsy sent Caden a Halloween costume.  Of course we couldn’t wait until next month so we had to try it on him early!  He looked so funny and I was laughing so much.  Caden could tell it was funny too and was really hamming it up when I was taking pictures.

Quite a cute little chicken.

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Friday, September 21^st
Tonight was our first hockey game.  We only bought two seats this year because we plan to hold Caden on our lap for the season.  Ought to be interesting.  We’ve got 42 games ahead of us, so let’s pray that was the right decision.  Caden had a blast.  He was mesmerized by all of the lights and action.  He was a really good boy and seemed very content to just sit on our lap and watch.  Nobody around us could believe that he was willing to do that.  Let’s just hope he plans to for the next 41 games!

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Thursday, September 20^th
Caden has had this one funny personality characteristic since birth.  If he’s ever not quite sure about something or if he’s trying something new for the first time, he is extremely serious about it.  Getting him to crack a smile is next to impossible.  Once he feels more comfortable, he will usually loosen up a little bit, but he seems to be a very cautious kid in some ways.  I’m not complaining… that might turn out to be a very good thing!

He loves taking a bath but he’s still very stoic about it.  It’s pretty hard to get him to smile.

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Wednesday, September 19^th
Caden is learning Spanish.  He has a frog, named Felipe, who only speaks to him in Spanish.  You’re saying WTF?  Ok, it’s actually me speaking Spanish but, you know, it’s Felipe talking.  John always laughs because when I do it, I sound like those people on the “Rosetta Stone Learn Spanish in 60 Minutes” audiotapes (…“can jew sayyy in espanjol, jwere is da bafroom?”…).  Caden thinks it is pretty funny too and always laughs when that voice comes out of me.

I used to be fluent in Spanish when I worked on the ambulance but I’ve kind of lost it from not using it everyday.  They say it’s really good for babies to learn other languages and dialects.  Hopefully Felipe will help.

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Saturday, September 15^th
We finally bought a video camera today.  And I will start by making a promise.  We will not be those parents who videotape everything and then make our friends sit and watch hours of boring movies when you’re at our house for dinner parties.  I always crack up when I see those fathers on vacation or at Disneyland who are videotaping the most inane things possible.  Do they keep all that footage?

Of course, Caden immediately stops doing whatever cute thing he was doing as soon as we turn on the new camera.  It’s been a little frustrating.  We’ve got lots of boring footage so far that I won’t torture you with.  Well, OK, maybe one.

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Friday, September 14^th
We went to the County Fair today.  I love the fair.  Call me weird but I’ve always loved seeing the animals and looking at the exhibits and stuff.  And of course there are the rides.  I love rides.  The scarier and more rickety the better.

Caden got to see a bunch of things he’s never seen before.  Pigs, cows, goats, you name it.  He seemed impressed but we couldn’t really tell.  The Fair here is small town enough that you pretty much see everyone you know in town when you come.  So you spend half the time looking around and the rest of the time talking to people you really wish you hadn’t bumped in to.

I coaxed my 13 year old nephew Connor to ride the zipper with me.  You have to have two people to ride.  It is the most awesome carny ride ever.  John refuses and told me once that he was sick for a week after he rode it with me.  Anyway, my nephew did pretty well.  He was silent for the first minute or so but then I think he realized that he wasn’t going to die so he started to have fun.

I sure hope that when Caden is older, he like rides and roller coasters!

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Friday, September 8^th
We have a weekend trip planned.  Tonight we are going to spend the night at our good friend’s house, Chris and Patsy.  They are Caden’s godparents.  They are like our second family.  Tomorrow we are going to John’s sister’s house for a family get together.

Caden got a little suitcase for Christmas and so we packed it all up tonight before we left.  He looked so cute and we had to take a picture of him with it; all ready to go on his big trip.

Chris and Patsy have two dogs that were being totally enamored with Caden.  I think mostly because they weren’t the center of attention for once.  He was pretty enamored with them too.  He hasn’t been around too many dogs yet.  I think one of them was licking him and caused him to have giant eyes.  Must have felt funny!

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Thursday, September 7^th
This kid is ticklish!  It doesn’t really matter where you touch him but he starts to laugh.  Of course he’s most ticklish on the bottom of his feet but it surprises me sometimes how often we hit a spot when we’re wiping his hands or cleaning his face and he bursts out laughing.  It’ll be interesting to see if he stays ticklish forever.

My dad says tickling babies makes them stutter later in life.  Old wives tale.

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Wednesday, September 5^th
So, I’ve been teaching at the paramedic school for a couple of weeks now.  Let’s just say that I’m really feeling the generation gap.  Most of the students are 19, 20, 21 years old.  And here I am … well … older than that.  I’m telling them about what we did during the big earthquake in 1989 and all I get back are blank stares.  Most of them were still in diapers!  Ok, no more earthquake stories.  Geez, do I feel old.

Things are going well at the school.  They are good kids, even if they are really young.

Speaking of little kids, Caden is having the time of his life during the day when Grandpa and Grandma are babysitting him.  It never fails, when I walk in the door at the end of the day, my dad makes some comment about me showing up too soon.  I’m so glad they’re having fun.

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Monday, September 3^rd
It’s Labor Day weekend and it’s HOT.  We should just stay inside in an air conditioned house but we decided to go downtown to a local art festival.  It’s a pretty huge event and they shut down several blocks with rows and rows of tents with artists peddling their art.  Most of it was crap so we didn’t buy anything.  We knew that from coming in previous years but we still came anyway.  Is that what people do who live in boring towns?

Caden did great even though it was pretty sweltering.  Lots of people stopped us to ooh and aah over him.  Of course Mr. Sexy got to have his shirt off!

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