Happy Holidays 2012!!

Her very own playroom

I am excited to share that we have plans to have a dedicated space for Caitlin to call her very own playroom.

Our current guest room is very large and with a small full sized bed and a computer in there, a lot of good empty space goes wasted.  Our laziness gets the best of us and that free space ends up being the dumping ground for things that we don't know where they go... such as a plastic 6-foot Christmas tree, a 40 pound box of timothy hay, and a large stockpile of good cardboard boxes I cannot part with.

We have plans to partition the room so the guest area is more private and cozy and the remainder of the room will be dedicated for Caitlin and all her toys.  Currently, it's a pain having Caitlin roam and crawl around the house since it's hard to keep the floors sanitized and spotless every minute of the day, everyday.  The last thing I want is for Caitlin to get sick from ingesting germs or bacteria or salmonella (from the turtles) or guinea poop (from the guineas).  With a smaller room dedicated for Caitlin, it will be easier to keep the floors sanitized and there will also be less traffic in that area, so it should stay clean longer.  I also hate how our living area has been taken over by baby toys -- I think they should start paying rent.  It will be great to exile all of Caitlin's toys to the playroom.

I am very excited and I can't wait to get the playroom set up.  I hope to get everything done this weekend.

Our very first pictures

I found a folder on my desktop called "Very First Pic".  It contained 2 very old pictures of Jeff and me from back in June of 2006.
I vaguely recall scrounging through my digital photos about a two years ago, trying to round up the earliest photos that Jeff and I took together and it appears that these 2 are it!  I don't remember what I planned to do with these photos, but the project was apparently forgotten and abandoned on my computer desktop.

Might as well share them here!
Ah, don't we look so young?

 the 2 of us.. pre-lasik days. hehe

 

I still remember this day...  We went strolling together down 3rd Street Promenade (in Santa Monica) together for the first time, then we walked over to Ocean Ave, across the street from the Santa Monica Pier, and had lunch at an upscale restaurant (I think it was Italian)? I remember feeling really embarrassed because we were under dressed (look at Jeff's AMD t shirt!!).  I don't remember what we had for lunch but I recall getting some type of ceviche for appetizers (odd since ceviche isn't Italian).
Don't remember the name of the restaurant and whether it still exists, but looking at the photo, it appears to be near the corner of Santa Monica Blvd and Ocean Ave, next to Sushi Roku (love this place!)

I'm thinking we should go back soon and look for it.

-----------
UPDATE:
After looking on Google Maps and Yelp, I think the restaurant is called Ocean Ave Seafood.  And it appears to be an American seafood restaurant, not Italian.
Looking at their menu, I saw a "Baja Ceviche" on their appetizers list, so that has to be it! And the patio photo on Yelp looks familiar and could be where our photo above was taken:

Dominate Dragons with Git

If you have not done so already, head on over to the Hulu Tech Blog to read Jeff's post about the benefits of using Git. 
Read the post here: Dominate Dragons with Git.
Jeff's arguments are well thought-out, well-written, amusing, and incredibly convincing. 

If you have no idea what Git is, it is a version control and source code management system for software development, and is far superior than other version control software out there such as SVN and CVS.  If you have no idea what any of that previous sentence meant, then maybe this post isn't for you, but head on over there anyways and show some support.  =)

And if you are wondering who is that talented artist that drew the adorable dragon illustrations.... well, that talented artist is me  =D

Our Dominican Republic trip

As you already know, we went visited Punta Cana (in the Dominican Republic) in mid-October for a destination wedding.
I have mixed feelings about that country.  On one hand, the beaches are quite pretty, and I really enjoyed the warm, humid weather and the rainy afternoons.  On the other hand, I found the locals and the towns to be quite a culture shock, where the locals are constantly trying to swindle a buck or two off the tourists (and their own locals as well?) and the town is so dirty, poor, and noisy.
I can now understand why visitors would stay at a resort (even if it costs $300-$400 per person per day), because you get to enjoy the beautiful land and ocean without having to deal with the actual people that live there.

Here is a not so quick summary of our one week trip to Dominican Republic.
If you haven't arleady read an earlier post about our trip to the DR, read it here.

Getting Around:
Because we flew into Santo Domingo, which is a 3 hour drive from Punta Cana, we hired a driver to drive us to and from the airport.  I am really glad we did this since not only is driving 3 hours after spending almost 10 hours on an airplane really sucky, but driving in a foreign country where people drive like a bunch of maniacs is not safe either (you will see drivers disregarding the lines on the road, 5 people squished onto 1 motorcycle, cars at an intersection going at it like a free-for-all... it's complete chaos).

During our 8 day trip there, we also rented a car so we could get around Punta Cana.  While driving, we noticed that there were always people bunched up on the side walk next to speed bumps.  Turns out, people do that to try and hitch a ride on large trucks that have to slow down right before the speed bumps.  Like I said, the poor locals was a huge culture shock.

Things We Did:
Us folks with kids didn't do that much.  We went to the nearby beach twice (literally, a 1 minute walk from our condo), went to the Hard Rock Casino Resort twice (and we got food poisoning from the resort. More on that later), and we went out to dinner once (at Capitan Cook. I've never tasted seafood so fresh).  The folks without the kids did other stuff like cigar shopping and clubbin'. I thought I heard talk of some folks wanting to go zip lining but no one ended up doing that.  Jeff and I brought our snorkels but we didn't go snorkeling either.  Somehow, 8 days in Punta Cana just wasn't enough.

The lovely beach

The Wedding at Hard Rock:
Our cousin's wedding was held at the Hard Rock Casino Resort (I heard if you stay there for 4 nightsw, you get a free wedding?  Maybne we should renew our vows there?) and the night before the wedding, there was a cocktail hour at the resort.  Because it was held at a resort that we were not staying at, we had to buy a Day Pass to be able to enter the resort, and with the Day Pass, we would also have access to food and drinks and entertainment. The Day Pass was $90 per day per person, and unfortunately, since I had a grumpy baby in tow, I didn't get to use the Day Pass to my full advantage. 

The cocktail hour was held outdoors by this beautifully lit pool that had a shallow area that people waded through.  There was tray pass hors d'oeuvres and an open bar.  We got to mingle with the bride and groom to -be and their families and meet the fellow wedding guests.  Maybe an hour after arriving to the cocktail hour, Caitlin started crying a lot since it was past her bedtime, she was tired, and she was getting overstimulated from all the people trying to interact with her.  So Jeff dropped me and Caitlin off at the condo so I could put Caitlin to bed while Jeff returned back to the resort to eat dinner with the rest of the wedding gang.  I asked Jeff to bring me back some dinner but after waiting until 12:30am, I was done waiting for Jeff and crawled into bed.  Apparently Jeff had his own adventure after dropping me off... something about getting lost on the drive back to Hard Rock and all the restaurants except for 1 being closed at the resort. 

Stole this pic from the groom's facebook

The following day was the day of the wedding.  The ceremony was at 1pm on the beach at the resort.  From what I recall, the wedding must have started late because I thought we were going to be late to the wedding but once we arrived there, we still had to wait a bit before the ceremony started.  I was impressed by the number of wedding guests that attended considering that it was a destination wedding.  I would estimate, about... 60 people (could have sworn I saw 6 tables of 10 at the reception)?
The beach was so HOT since we were in DR and there was very little shade.  But by looking at the bride and groom, you couldn't tell how hot and humid it was since they looked stunning.  Jeff, Caitlin and I stood off on the side (with another family with a young baby) since we didn't want Caitlin to risk ruining the wedding.  Caitlin fussed a bit near the end but luckily, no one heard her. Phew!  I tried my best to keep Caitlin happy by feeding her some chilled bottled water (it was sooo frikin hot. geez) but it wasn't cutting it towards the end.  The entire ceremony lasted no more than 15 minutes (as I predicted!) and family photos followed afterward.  The reception was later in the evening so Caitlin and Olivia took an afternoon nap in the bride's parent's hotel room, then we all attended the reception.  The reception was a sit-down dinner with the typical events: first dance, toasts, cake cutting, dancing.  Our table was situated next to the speakers so we spent most of our time not at our dinner table since we didn't want the babies to go deaf.  As a result, I missed the cake that was served and someone swiped our wedding favors.  Towards the end of the wedding, after many of the guests had already left, Caitlin started getting exhausted and fussy so Jeff, Caitlin and I headed back to the condo while the rest of our group stayed to hang out with the bride & groom and their family.  I feel a bit bad that I didn't get to mingle with them on either of the days, but with a young baby that needs to sleep and she cannot sleep on-the-go, it's hard.

I stole this picture too

The Food:
After a week in DR, I still can't figure out what the local cuisine is there.
We did take-out for dinner on a few of the days, and for one meal it was Italian seafood and risotto (Italian cuisine), one meal was empanadas (Portuguese cuisine), and another meal was... I don't even know what that was... it was something like grilled fish and chicken sandwich and french fries (an attempt at American cuisine?).  The one meal that we did eat at a restaurant (Capitan Cook) didn't seem to belong to any cuisine, it was simply seafood (which you pick and choose while raw, kind of like at a super market) then they grill it for you.

The food that we ate at the Hard Rock Casino resort was typical resort/cruise line/cafeteria food: American.
The remainder of the trip, we went grocery shopping at the Super Mercado and cooked in our condo.

And after this trip, I have one piece of advice for you:  Don't eat resort food! 
After eating food from the local shacks, restaurants and grocery stores, we were all fine.  No tummy issues.  Towards the end of our trip, when we ate at the Hard Rock Resort for the wedding, 4 out of 7 of us in our party (me being one of them) got sick with food poisoning.  We were all still feeling the effects of it for 1-2 weeks after our trip.  It's kind of odd since usually, travelers are advised to avoid local food & drinks and to only eat resort food/drinks.  It should really be the other way around.
Upon returning home, the ill people got antibiotics and probiotics to remedy their tummy troubles except for me.  I was too busy and tired dealing with Caitlin's jet lag and swaddle weaning that I didn't even have time to think or deal with my stomach problem.  There were several times that I had to dump Caitlin somewhere while she wailed for 30 minutes while I sat on the toilet.  When I emerged from the bathroom, I simply got on with my day and didn't even think about my stomach issues until the next time it churned.  It was sad times for the two of us. 

The Flight Back -- this day was a doozy:
The day we traveled back home was hectic!  No one had time to eat!  Jeff and I were up for almost 24 hours the day we returned home.
The day all started at 6am when Caitlin woke up due to the sunrise (which led her to wake at 3am CA time when we returned from our trip).  After feeding her we started packing since we couldn't pack the night before as we returned late from the wedding so we put Caitlin straight to bed.  We can't pack with her in the bedroom -- she would wake up.  We checked out of the condo at 8am even though we were still in the middle of scrambling to clean up the condo at that time.  Around 8:30am, we left for our 3 hour drive back to the Santo Domingo airport.
Once at the airport, we had to wade through the crowds and find our proper place to check-in and board.  We had no down time eat or use the restroom since by the time we made it through security (they made me remove Caitlin from my baby carrier and scan the baby carrier before going through the metal detector. wtf? You don't have to do this in the U.S.  Maybe they have no idea what a baby carrier is and thought it was a bomb), it was time to board our flight.  And of course, I was "randomly selected" for a more thorough check before boarding the plane, so the plane was waiting for me.  I say "randomly selected" since the only people selected were people that didn't look Dominican/dark skinned.  The flight to NY went smoothly, Caitlin slept like an angel (it just so happened that the flight coincided with her usual nap time) while I watched "The Five-Year Engagement" and Jeff watched "Snow White and the Huntsman".  

 SDQ --> JFK

When we landed in NY, we didn't have a gate so we had to wait while they prepared for a shuttle to shuttle us off the plane to the gate.  Once we finally arrived at the gate, we had to go through Immigration.  The line for US Citizens was LOOONG but luckily, our family and Connie's family got to go into the "family" line which was very short.  We were in and out of there quickly.
While we waited for the rest of our party (who were not in the "family" line), we got our luggage from baggage claim. (Since it was an international flight, they didn't automatically transfer our luggage to our connecting flight).  After waiting around forever for the rest of our party, we decided to continue on to our next flight since our connecting flight was earlier than the other folk's flight.  After we went through customs and re-checked in our bags for our connecting flights, we were greeted by a long TSA line.  At this point, we realized that our connecting flight was already boarding (for some reason, we thought our flight was at 8pm but it was really at 7pm) so TSA let us go through the fast lane.  If it wasn't for the family-line at Immigration, we would have surely missed our flight -- traveling with kids does have its perks! 
After getting through security, Jeff and I tried to run as fast as we could to our gate, and holy shit, I had no idea JFK was that large.  We were running and running and the airport just kept getting bigger and bigger!  I heard "final boarding" for our flight on the overhead speaker and I was freaking out -- with a baby, I absolutely don't want to miss my flight.  Jeff was able to run but I had so much trouble as I was holding a baby and trying to hold my diaper bag and pull a rolling carry on.  Thank god one of those golf carts that drives old people around stopped and told me "Get in the cart!".  I hesitated for 1 second, glanced at Jeff who was already a speck in the distance, then hopped into the cart.  I told everyone "thanks" for stopping to pick me up and that that my flight was about to leave.  The kind elderly folks on the cart asked the driver to skip their gates and take me straight to mine.  I explained to everyone about my tight connecting flight from an international flight, and others shared to me their stories of how the airport also screwed them over in the past while flying with a baby.  I was dropped off at my gate, waved goodbye to my new friends, telling them I would "hug them all if I had the time", and boarded the plane.  Jeff arrived about 30 seconds after I arrived. We plopped into our seats exhausted and defeated.  The plane took a while taking off, but luckily, Caitlin was in high spirits and the air pressure change during take off didn't bother her at all. When Caitlin's fuse eventually ran out and started crying, I nursed her on the boppy and she slept the entire flight (it just so happened that the flight coincided with her bed time).
When the plane landed, there wasn't a gate for us so we had to wait on the damn plane for an additional hour! Argh!  My coccyx hurt so bad from sitting in the same position for 7 hours.  It was past 11pm by the time we arrived at the gate.  After picking up our luggage and getting a ride home from Jeff's co worker, we arrived home past midnight.  After settling in and putting Caitlin to bed, we had our first meal of the day -- instant ramen.  By the time we showered and crawled into bed, it was past 2am.  Remember we started our day at 6am EST (which is 3am PST), that meant we were up for nearly 24 hours.  It was a really long day, but it was great to be home.

Pictures: 
I already put in a lot of time uploading the pictures to Picasa so you're going to have to look at them over there.

Punta Cana - Dominican Republic

Happy Halloween!

Halloween has come and gone and we have the exact same amount of candy as when we started, since we completely missed the trick-o-treaters! 
That's what happens when you take your kid out trick o treating for the first time and you forget to leave a bowl of candy out on your door step.
Well, we actually made off with more candy than when we started since Caitlin got some yummy candies while trick o treating.
I read online that the shelf life of hard candies is a year (even longer for gobstoppers, which we have a bunch of), so perhaps we can re-use these candies next year?  lol.

Here are our Halloween pictures.  Jeff and I didn't dress up, but Caitlin was a baby elephant this year.  We actually already have her costume for next year too -- ladybug costume from Carters, which I got for 70% off, with an additional 15% off since the tights were missing.

 On all fours like an elephant

I carved the large pumpkin.  It's supposed to be The Count (from Sesame Street).  It doesn't really look like him so you're really going to need to use your imagination. 

For some reason, I thought Jeff's favorite Sesame Street character was The Count, but I got all mixed up.  He actually likes Oscar the Grouch.
Jeff carved Caitlin's mini pumpkin, Cookie Monster, which is Caitlin's favorite.

Trick o treating for the first time.

Caitlin holding her own Halloween bucket, which is filled with candies! 
No, I didn't help her hold it.  She is just that strong.

So happy trick o treating

Caitlin's neighbor/BFF, Peggy 

Family picture!

Greetings from the Dominican Republic!

We are in the Dominican Republic this week to attend a cousin's wedding and we arrived a week early to do a little vacationing.

We are sharing a condo with some family members, which is much cheaper than staying at a resort, which is $300-$400 per person per night!  Food and entertainment is included but there is no way I can eat my money's worth in crappy resort food, and with an infant in tow, I wouldn't be taking advantage of the entertainment either.
We haven't left the condo that much since I'm pretty beat from the flight (5.5 hours from LAX -> JFK, then 4 hours from JFK ->SDQ, then 3 hours car ride from SDQ to our condo in Bavaro), and we need to stick around in the afternoon so Caitlin can take her afternoon nap.  I don't mind of course, I don't think vacations should be cramming a million items into a tight schedule and hating every waking minute of the "vacation".

At the beach, 30 meters from our condo

Yesterday, we finally emerged from our "air conditioned" condo (it is in quotations because the AC sucks, but still better than no AC!) to go to the beach.
The beach was lovely, and the water was warm (unlike the Pacific Ocean).  The water is not crystal clear the way it was in the Bahamas last year, which was kind of what I thought it would be like (Bahamas, Carribean, the gulf, same thing).

It was Caitlin's first time touching the ocean, and unfortunately, she hated it.  She looked worried at first, then started whining.  So I just held her, and I felt Caitlin cling onto me tighter every time the waves came in.  Maybe after a few more tries, she will get used to it.

Bonding time for the cousins! 
Photobombed by the Infantino Horse on the lower-right

And what was Caitlin's first airplane ride like?
Let's just say... if I had a choice, I would NEVER do it EVER again.
On the plane ride from LAX to JFK, it was a red eye flight and the flight was at 9:30pm, which is about 2 hours after her bedtime.  Caitlin was exhausted and pissed.  While people were still boarding and getting settled in their seats, Caitlin was bawling the entire time and inconsolable.  Maybe if we were able to get up and pace up and down the aisle, she would have been ok, but we needed to stay seated in preparation to take off.  Everyone seated around us were very polite and kind to us, but I can tell they were a little worried they would get no shut-eye on the flight.  I offered ear plugs to our neighbors and gave a bag of chocolates to the flight crew.  I held off on nursing Caitlin until take-off since you want the baby to suckle during take-off and landing to clear their ears when the air pressure changes.
Once the plane started taking off, we laid Caitlin across the Boppy which was on my lap, latched her on, and placed a nursing cover over her.  Caitlin's body spewed across my lap onto Jeff's lap.  Caitlin quietly nursed for several minutes then eventually dozed off and she slept the ENTIRE flight! woohoo! Both Jeff and I were too scared to move during the entire 5.5 hour flight, fearing we would wake her.  Caitlin eventually woke up after we landed, when people were getting their carryon items from the overhead compartments and leaving.  She was all in smiles.

I wore Caitlin in my BabyBjorn during our 2 hour layover and we enjoyed breakfast at one of the restaurants.
The flight to SDQ sucked a lot.  We were unable to get our seat assignments until right before we boarded the plane.  All 3 of us (Jeff, Connie, and me), were all split up on the plane and we were all assigned window seats, which are incredibly cramped.  Once again, Caitlin started crying before take off since she didn't want me to be seated.  The old man next to me spoke zero English and kept staring at me and Caitlin and also kept staring at me as I pulled out my breast to nurse Caitlin during take-off.
Como se dice "F*ck off" en Espanol?
Poor Caitlin, there was no room in my window seat to accommodate her laying down to nurse.  The Boppy is already wider than the width of my seat.  With Caitlin laying down to nurse and nap, her head partially went onto the other guy's area so she kept getting her head bumped.  Caitlin's butt hit the window of the plane, so I had to wrap her legs around my waist, bending her in an "L" shape. Since the Boppy didn't fit in my seat, I kept squishing it in my seat to make it fit, but the Boppy still kept sliding out from beneath Caitlin.  It was all a disaster.
Caitlin fell asleep while nursing before the plane even took off since it took like 20 minutes taxiing the runway.  Caitlin slept maybe 45 minutes, due to the terrible cramped conditions.  I'm pretty sure if she had the freedom to stretch out like on the first flight, she would have slept the entire duration of the flight.  The flight was 4 hours so she spent the majority of the remaining 3.25 hours of the flight crying.  Towards the end of the flight, we thought it would be good to try nursing Caitlin again but there was just no room to nurse in my seat. Connie asked the flight crew if I could sit in one of the empty 1st class seats to nurse and the flight crew said 'yes'.  So Caitlin nursed for a bit but then cried because she didn't want to nurse anymore.  This was right about the time we were landing!  Uh oh! Babies need to suck to clear their ears from the change in air pressure!  Now what?!  As it turned out, Caitlin didn't even notice we were landing.  She sat around smiling at the faces Jeff was making a few rows back, and it was a very easy landing. phew!
I wore her in the Bjorn again to get off the plane , through baggage claim, and through customs.  Caitlin slept a grand total of about 6 hours that "night", which is about half of what she usually gets.  We were so busy traveling to our condo and settling in that it was too much stimulation for Caitlin to sleep again later in the day.  Because Caitlin got half the amount of sleep she needed, AND she missed her nap that day, that night, she was too overtired to sleep and cried for 1.5 hours in her crib before finally falling to sleep for the night and it was close to midnight.  (Overtired babies are too wired to sleep!  You don't want an overtired baby...)

I really don't want to fly ever again.

-----EDIT: 10/18/2012-----
I completely forgot to post up the video of Jeff "taking care" of a giant cockroach that was in my bathroom in our condo.  It was such a fiasco since we weren't sure how to dispose of the cockroach without having to touch it or risk it getting away. 
In the end, it was a great success!

We are *so* LA

How are we *so* LA?
We just hired a gardener to come mow our postage-stamp-sized lawn twice a month.

My husband came from a place (New Jersey) where his backyard was over an acre in size and they mowed their own dang lawn.  Him and his mom came out to LA and both laughed at how everyone in LA hire gardeners for their teeny tiny lawns.

After 3 years of trying to maintain our lawn ourselves, we gave in and hired a gardener today.
It is not the size of the lawn that makes lawn mowing on the regular basis hard.  The hard part is finding the motivation to pull the gardening appliances out of the garage (which is located in our backyard), then push them through our driveway, which is completely blocked off by our 2 parked cars, to the front yard.  This motivation wasn't extremely hard to find before we had a baby, but now that we have baby Caitlin, when we have a couple minutes to ourselves, dealing with the lawn is the last thing we want to do.

The final "push" that caused us to hire a gardener, is that our neighborhood is not entirely thrilled with our "overgrown" lawn.  Last week, the guy that maintains the church grounds (across the street from us) politely brought up the topic of referring a gardener to us.   And this morning, he was banging our front door at 8am wanting to introduce us to his gardener.  After a quote of $40 per month (pretty good!) we hired him on the spot.

Our "overgrown" postage-stamp-sized front yard that our neighbors have a problem with.
There isn't more to our front yard.  That is seriously how small it is.

 
We previously had a gardener for 1 month, when we first moved into our house (apparently he was hired and I didn't even know about it).  He charged $90 per month and he came once per week, which was completely overkill.  I canned him as soon as I realized he was hired and draining us almost 100 bucks every month.
Based on that experience, I am more than happy to pay $40 per month for this guy to come twice per month and not have to worry about our lawn (and neighbors) anymore.

Apparently, it was our 3-year anniversary yesterday

It was our 3-year wedding anniversary yesterday, but we all forgot!
I just remembered right now as I was looking at the calendar.  So sad!!
This baby sleep training thing is consuming our lives.

Happy 3 years of marriage, Jeff.  =)  Here's to many more (unforgotten) anniversaries to come.

Wish we were doing this right now

Beach and Park

Summer is coming to an end!
Luckily, we got to squeeze in 2 small adventures before summer comes to a close.  These last 2 weekends, Jeff, Caitlin, and I crawled out of our hermit cave, shielded our eyes from the harsh natural light that we have not seen in what seems like years, and dragged our pasty selves about outdoors.

You see, we (or at least I) are not hermits by choice.  With Caitlin being short-tempered, and you don't know when she is just going to flip out and become hysterical, it makes going out in public very difficult.  And when we *do* go out, they are only brief trips, doing things we *have* to do like pick up a few groceries.  I actually get uncomfortable when people ask me if I "take Caitlin places, like the park or Mommy-and-me movies".  I find it difficult to explain that Caitlin doesn't exactly behave a lot of times, so going out is a huge chore.

Well, two weekends ago, cousin Connie invited us to join them at the Santa Monica Pier and I 'm glad she did.  We had a lot of fun and it was Caitlin's first time at the beach!  And the best part was, Caitlin patiently sat through lunch and made it to the beach and back without flipping out hysterically.  In fact, quite the opposite, as she was full of squeals and smiles the entire time.  Caitlin also didn't ask to eat, which was great since I don't really know how to breastfeed when it's not done in my bed. 

Last weekend, we took Caitlin to Clover Park in Santa Monica to soak up some grass and sun.  It was such a beautiful day.  Caitlin had a little fun, but maybe 30 minutes later, she started complaining so it was time for us to pack up and go.  Oh well, at least we all had fun during those 30 minutes!

Sadly, I don't foresee us venturing outdoors in the near future (bummer, since tomorrow is Jeff's birthday and Caitlin's 6 month birthday).  We are on lock-down in this house since we are now training Caitlin to be on sleep/eat schedule.  (I actually HATE the idea of putting a baby on a schedule, but since Caitlin just can't settle into her own routine naturally... unlike other babies... we have to do it for her).  If you look at her schedule, you will see that throughout the day, she gets put down for a nap every 1.5 hours.  It's difficult to feed Caitlin, leave the house, hang out, and return home, all within 1.5 hours.  And Caitlin's new bedtime is 8pm, with a nighttime routine starting 7pm, so there goes our night life!  =(  How in the world do people with babies go out?