PUMPKIN HEAD

My little sweet Caitlin...master procrastinator. I know that when I was growing up, I always wanted to put everything off (especially those long papers I had to write). I believe I've somehow passed that on to my daughter. She won't go to bed and stay there to save the world. She'll do anything to put it off one more moment! Tonight, as I was trying to get her just to go to her room and pick out her two books for me to read, she found this hat and had to put it on. I had to make myself not laugh when I asked her why she was wearing the hat and she told me that she wanted to be a pumpkin for Halloween.

(By the way, I have to put Vaseline on her just about every other night because she constantly licks her lips and chaps above and below the lip line!)

(This hat is actually for Cody made by my friend Eileen last summer. Caitlin loves to wear it though and see herself in the pictures with it.)
So, I get her to bed and read her two stories (nightly ritual). Then, after she has been in bed for about ten minutes, she gets up and HAS TO HAVE her favorite (stuffed) animal(s). You can never tell which of her animals will be her FAVORITE on any given night. Tonight it was Whopper and O.J. (an orange cat). Of course I couldn't find O.J., so I told her that we would just have to find him tomorrow. "Oh, okayyyyyyyy," she says (as if that was the ONLY toy that could possibly make bedtime happen, and she would suffer and be LONELY without him). When I went in much later to make sure the light wasn't too bright, this is what I found:

(That's Whopper on her chest.) And that orange squished cat by the pumpkin hat (under the elephant) is the one she is currently calling O.J.

Lastly, people ALWAYS tell us to enjoy this time when they are little...it goes so fast. (I would seriously be RICH if I got $100 for every time someone has said that to us!) I know it's true. As agitated as I might get trying to get Caitlin in bed and have her STAY THERE, I know that someday I will miss her 101 excuses for why she is out of bed. ("I'm thirsty, can I just have some water?" "I'm lonely because my animals don't talk to me." "Casey won't let me sleep." "My light's too bright (or not bright enough)." "I have to go potty." "Can't I just stay up with you?" "Can't I sleep in your room?" "When Daddy gets home, can you just tell him...(this one is always something new)." She sure is a stinker, but I know that I do treasure her little personality and her imagination!