11 Months: A Day in the life of Caitlyn

I would like to start off by apoligizing to everyone for my lack of blogging, leaving comments, and any sort of communication in the last month. It has been a crazy busy month, but I will explain more about that later. Right now is time to focus on our favorite subject, Caitlyn, and all of her many adventures of the last month. She is growing up way to fast and it makes me sad to see how big she is. There is really no way to describe this little girl, so I'll let the pictures do the talking and take you through a day in the life of our Caitlyn-roo this past month:

Eat Cereal with Dad

Sit way too close to the TV and watch HSM2


Debate whether to climb the stairs while mom isn't looking


Get stuck in an awkward position


Take a drive around the family room


Play with Clifford in the Lovesac


Get ready for Lake Powell


Perfect new standing skill


Play with toys in tent


Be cute


Fall asleep and get ready to do it all over again



We are so lucky to be blessed with our sweet little girl!

Perfect 10....

10 months?!?! That is just crazy! Only two more months and my little baby will be a whole year old. It just doesn't seem possible to me. But it is and our little Rouske just keeps getting bigger and smarter and more mischievous every day. She has a few new tricks that she has learned in the last month or so. She now does this scrunched face thing and breaths really fast out of her nose. I haven't been able to get a good picture of it yet, she usually does it when she is not happy that I have taken something away from her. Another new discovery is how to shake her head NO. I don't know if she knows exactly what she is doing but she likes to shake her head as she is crawling along. Sometimes though, she will be crawling somewhere she shouldn't, usually near the stairs, and I tell her to come to me and she looks at me, shakes her head and then keeps on going. Those are the times I think she understands more than she is letting on. She is becoming an entertaining little girl. I love her personality and that it comes out more and more everyday. She loves to laugh and make funny noises and than laugh some more at herself. My favorite is when she will just be babbling away and then start laughing like she just told the funniest joke ever. So here are some more fun pictures, just because I know everyone loves them so much:

A rare picture of Roo sleeping, funny thing, I sleep the same way with my leg up like that and Mike always made fun of me about it. I love her smile in the second picture while playing with Dad.

Playing in the "forbidden zone" by the stairsand front door, only Dad lets her do that, and that is why he is the cool parent and she loves him more, which I really don't mind at all!! Caitlyn has also learned that if she puts things in her mouth she can crawl with them, I think it is hilarious. She loves the free toothbrush from the dentists office when I had to go. She didn't love the dentist office as much, she had a major meltdown!!!

Caitlyn's tent that she loves to play in, how does such a little girl make such a giant mess. Oh, another fun thing she does is yell into cups and stuff to hear her echo, she is a smart one!

One of her new favorite games is to crawl behind the couch! Mike refers to those PJ's as her prison outfit, a very pink fashionable prison! Caitlyn in her pool with all her friends. I am a lazy mom so we rarely go outside and play. She loves to lean against things now!

Playing Blinko on the stairs with Dad. He would throw the ball up and try to hit Caitlyn on the way down, she thought it was funny. At least the ball was soft so Mom didn't freak out too much.


Caitlyn also loves to hang out on her chair in the front yard while Dad waters some of the plants. She also learned how to stand up on her chair and Dad didn't like that Mom had to get a picture of it first before saving her from potentially falling on her head.

She loves my sunglasses and they often keep her entertained in stores. She was wearing her Red Sox gear in support of her Dad and the fact that they moved into first place.

Happy 30th Birthday Julie!

My sweet Julie is 30 today. To celebrate her birthday, I wanted to share 30 things that I love about my beautiful wife:

1). She loves sleep. She would go to sleep at 8:00 every night if Caitlyn and I would let her.
2). She is afraid of cats – I’ve never met anyone who is afraid of cats, it is funny to watch.
3). She hates horror movies – yet, she watches shows like Medium and NCIS all the time.
4). She can read faster than anyone I know, give her a book and she will be done in a day.
5). Her favorite place on Earth is Yosemite.
6). She loves sports – although I think I have burned her out.
7). She hates the cold and loves the heat – exactly opposite of me.
8). She is not shy by any means, but she hates making phone calls.
9). She is smart – sometimes a little too smart.
10). She is extremely loyal.
11). Her favorite day is Christmas Eve.
12). She is compassionate.
13). Sometimes she cries just to cry.
14). She loves her family even when she doesn’t want to.
15). She tells me every Saturday that our yard looks nice, even when I know it doesn’t.
16). She believes I can do anything even when I’m convinced I will fail.
17). She fears not being liked
18). She loves a sale and clearance racks.
19). Even on the hardest days, she is a great mom.
20). She’ll watch Red Sox games just for me.
21). She can say a million things with her facial expressions.
22). Sometimes she wishes life was like a romantic comedy.
23). She loves the Gospel and is an example to me everyday.
24). She leaves a light on for me when I have to go to bed late.
25). Her and Caitlyn are waiting for me everyday when I come home from work.
26). She makes me want to be a better person.
27). Her dream in life was to get married and start a family.
28). She loves her Caitlyn-roo more than anything and is the best mom I know.
29). Her dream day would be for me to take a day off of work so the three of us could be together.
30). She hates that she is 30, so she will tell you that she is 25.

Hope you have the best birthday ever sweetie!

Love Mike

The Adventures of our Lil' Roo

So I know that it has been awhile since the last post, sorry. I know when it has been a long time when Mike bugging me about it and how he needs new pictures to look at at work. This has been a busy couple of weeks and life has been crazy, fun but crazy. So here is a run down of the last couple of weeks, with pictures of course:
To begin, some random pictures of Caitlyn laughing, I love this girl!!

Caitlyn decided that she was going to start practicing her future in the circus as a contortionist by hanging out in the bottom shelf of our entertainment center. All items were previously removed due to her mobility and love of tearing apart everything she sees! She would get in and then get out and then back in again, this lasted about an hour! It was quite humorous to watch her try to manoeuvre herself around in there.


We went up to Sundance and stayed at Mike's families cabin with two of our neighbors and their families. It was so much fun and Caitlyn loved being outside in the mountains and playing by the water. She kept trying to go in and couldn't understand why we wouldn't let her drown!

Cailtlyn's new thing is to lay on pillows. I think it is the cutest thing ever of course and try to get as many pictures of it that I can, but she always moves when I go to get the camera. Since we have plenty of pillows around for her to play with because they are on all of the corners of everything sharp, she has a lot to choose from!


Then came the Fourth of July! We went to Gunnison to see Mike's Grandma and Caitlyn did surprisingly well with the car ride and tons of people and loud sirens during the parade. She looked so cute in her fourth gear! We tried to get her to crawl in the diaper race, it didn't work. She just went at attacked the other kids! Then we went to Cafe Rio, nothing says Happy Birthday America like a little Mexican food! Then we just hung out as a family and went to bed at about 9 or so, I loved it! Next year will go for the fireworks but I don't think Caitlyn was up for it this year and neither was I!


I went to the pool with my sister Diane and Bella and Parker and that was interesting. They wouldn't let me take in her floating thing so it was fun trying to keep her from crawling into the deeper end. You would think she would stop when her face got covered with water, but not my Caitlyn. So then we sat by the pool and Caitlyn discovered the joys of a churro, a little cinnamon and sugar never hurt anyone right?!?

The End- for now until another picture marathon of her on her 10 month birthday!!

9 Months in the making...

9 whole months old all ready, where has the time gone? It seems like the first 3 months took forever and now the next 6 months have just flown by! I am still amazed at how much she has learned in this short amount of time. I can hardly keep track of the different things that she is learning. She still has her short attention span and once she conquers a new trick then she just moves on to the next! Except for crawling, luckily she has stuck with that one! She pulls herself up on anything dangerous and that has sharp edges. She has started to walk along things a little but not much, she is content to just lower herself down and crawl to what she wants and then pull herself up again! I even try to stand her up in the middle of the room and she will just squat down, she is getting good at the squat. So walking is still a ways away, thankfully!!! She is getting more and more vocal everyday and letting her opinion be known, even though she has always done this, she is a Chalker after all!! She likes to grunt at me and tell me that she is not happy about whatever I am doing that she doesn't like at the moment. She has found a new love/hate relationship with dogs and cats. There are a few little dogs in the neighborhood and every time she sees them she starts grunting and wanting them to come over. Yet, when they do she just wants them to sit by her and not jump all over her, remember Caitlyn likes to do things on her own terms, even with animals!! She is a funny girl that is not boring in the least. Sometimes I which she would be a little boring and just sit by me and relax, but that is not her she is definitely full of life and I love it, most the time!!!




Caitlyn got a new pool and she loved it! She even liked it inside with no water!


She then proceeded to crawl out of the pool and try to get to the hammock, she didn't like the cement on her knees to much!


Caitlyn's duck bath popped so we had to move her to the sink and she loved it, she really liked the faucet spraying on her!

Another new toy this month, I bought this one, was the Mickey ride along. She loves to make the propeller go and then stop it with her hand and just starts laughing, funny girl!!

This is my happy girl, I love her smile, in the second picture she is playing hide and seek with her dad around the couch!!

Wake up Daddy!!! We need to play and you need to push me in my new car!

Caitlyn loves the car the we got from my sister, if you couldn't tell it was a hand me down by the half pealed off stickers, but it was free and Caitlyn loved riding in it!