Finally on our way home!

Caleb thought this coon skin hat was so awesome!

St. George Temple

While we were in St. George, we took Caleb to see the place where his mommy and daddy got married. He was feeling super sick, and it was rather cold, so he wasn't very happy. But he was still a pretty good sport, considering.

I don't know what inspired this face, but it was just too cute not to post!




Brandon was so excited to capture Caleb's expression when he first laid eyes on the Christus in the visitor's center.

He's Crawling!!

Caleb is officially a crawler. I guess, he's been an official crawler since Thanksgiving, but I was asleep when he made his debut. He's still really slow, since he's been sick for a week now and doesn't really enjoy too much floor time.

We're in Mesa, Arizona right now. We're staying with Brandon's best friend from high school. The majority of their apartment is tiled, so Caleb hasn't been able to practice his crawling skills too much. We're sleeping on an air mattress, so during the day we let Caleb crawl around on that. That way if he gives up, he won't bonk his head on the tile. Although it does mean that we have to keep our eye on him so that he doesn't fall off the edge of the air mattress and still end up whacking his head on the tile.

So far, having a crawler isn't too bad. I'd been looking forward to it for so long, and everyone kept telling me that I'd regret it once it happens. He still doesn't get too far away. I'm going to have to clean our house once we get home, but I actually like having a clean house (I just don't like cleaning it), so maybe this will finally be the kick I need to become a cleaner person.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Things I'm thankful for:

My family

Such a sweet baby

Who can feed himself now

And even better yet -- we finally found a cup he can drink out of!! (Thanks for the suggestion Holly! Caleb's finally drinking and is loving it!)

Eight Months

Caleb's eight months old today. He decided to celebrate his special day by waking up early with a cold. Too much swapping spit (or slobber) with his cousins this past weekend.

He's starting to learn to wave bye bye. Sara can do it. So of course, Caleb wants to do it too. When Samuel and his family left St. George yesterday, Sara was waving goodbye and Nana was waving back at her. I waved Caleb's arm, then he decided to do it himself. He did it again for Nana after his cousins left. Then again last night, we went to dinner with some of my mom's friends, and when we left, he waved goodbye to them. And today, when my mom and I were going out without him and Brandon, he waved to us. Well, he moves his arm up and down and we all get excited. I think it counts as waving.

This morning, he was sitting in his chair for breakfast, and he placed his hand on my knee. He left it there the whole time I fed him. It was so cute. He's never done it before. I don't know if it was just that I was sitting closer to him than normal, or if it's just because he's feeling under the weather. But either way, I thought it was so adorable.

Another great trick he's learned from Sara (or maybe it was Holly's influence) is to feed himself real food. I think we'd just never tried before because we don't usually eat when he's awake. So while my family was all in St. George, Caleb followed Sara's lead and started eating all the food we put on his tray. He's getting so good at it. Turns out, Holly's a much better influence on my child than I am on hers. (I used my evil aunt skills to try and get Sara to walk. He he he.)

Cousins

Caleb's had a great time playing with his cousins while we've been in St. George. He's been really patient with them, and they've been rather gentle with him. He likes to watch them play and see all the fun things they can do that he can't do yet. And we like it too because then he is a lot happier and doesn't need us to entertain him.

As you already know, I absolutely love taking pictures of my baby. But I also love to get pictures of all the cousins together. Sometimes it's quite the challenge, getting them to sit close enough together that the composition of the picture looks good, but not too close that they beat up on each other (or rather, they don't beat up on Caleb).

I swear Nora was giving Caleb kisses, not trying to eat him. See, look at the next one.

The Blue Block

We're in St. George for the holidays. We were going to drive down while Caleb was sleeping, but didn't get around to it Friday night, since we had way too much to do. Then we were going to leave Saturday morning, but didn't. Finally, around two in the afternoon, we managed to get out of the house.

At the gas station, I handed Caleb his blue block. He held onto it for the entire ride. He held it while he was sleeping, while he was nursing, while I changed his diaper. He didn't let go of it until we got to St. George and his nana gave him a hug and knocked it out of his little hand.

Even funnier, Sunday we gave him his blue block and an identical one that's not blue. He loves to have both so he can bang them together. He even tried sticking them both in his mouth at the same time. Then Brandon got out Caleb's little giraffe and the baby just didn't know what to do. He wanted to have all three toys, but wouldn't let go of the first two. He managed to still take the giraffe from Brandon and work it to his mouth. With a block in each hand, and his giraffe in his mouth, he was beyond happy.

Favorite Things

I think it's funny, the kinds of things that babies like. Especially considering how much money we spend on toys for them. So here are a few of Caleb's favorite things:

Burp clothes (which are really just cloth diapers)
Tags
The drawer handle on his dresser (typically the first thing he goes for once he finishes breastfeeding, since the dresser is right next to the armchair)
My hair
His little plastic giraffe (pictured somewhere on this blog)
A round blue block from a set of Ikea blocks

Hmmm...I can't think of anything else at the moment. But if any of the above things come into view, Caleb will often lunge dive for them and immediately stick them into his mouth. In fact, one time, he was already holding his giraffe when he saw the blue block thing and suddenly the giraffe wasn't enough. He needed the giraffe in one hand and the block in the other. Such a cute silly boy.

One of my favorite things...pictures of my baby. Because I don't have any new ones to post at the moment, I went through all the ones I've taken in the past month to try and find cute ones that I haven't posted before.

When Life Hands You Lemons...

...Trade it for a lime!

Tonight, at dinner for my mom's birthday, Caleb got to eat his first lime. Well, he at least got to suck on it for a while until he lost interest. Before I handed him the lime, I told Brandon to get out the camera, expecting Caleb to make a really great sour face.

But no sour faces. He loved it! After his first taste, he came back wanting more. Such a cute baby.

The only thing he didn't like is when he dropped his lime. But that face is still so super cute too.

Happy Birthday Mom!

Today's my mom's birthday. Since it's my blog, I think that entitles me to reveal her big secret: she's 50 now!

I remember when I was a kid and 30 seemed so very old. Now, even 50 still seems young. Crazy the way life works like that.

Anyway, happy birthday Mom! Thanks for all you do for us and for just being you. I love you!

(By the way, this picture is actually from like three weeks ago. But it's the most recent one I have of her.)

The Downside to Having a Boy

Today we went shopping to try and find Caleb some cute dress-up clothes. There's one store in the Provo mall that sells all baby girl dresses. Beautiful dresses. Not a single outfit for boys. Every other store we went into had tons of beautiful fancy dresses and gorgeous Christmas dresses and not a single boy thing that would fit our baby. They had some dressy stuff starting at 12 months. But we have a little baby. 12 months stuff is WAY too big on him still.

Oh well. I guess it's a good thing he still looks cute in not cute clothes.

More on Eating

We bought Caleb this mesh feeder thing so that he can eat more stuff without the risk of choking on it. Here he is eating grapes. I've also fed him grapes by first peeling them, then breaking them down into tiny pieces so he can easily eat them. The mesh bag thing works way easier. Simply cut them in half and drop them in the bag. Caleb loves them. At first, he was really confused about what I was trying to stick in his mouth. But he quickly figured it out and went to town.

He's getting a lot better at feeding himself. Granted, the only thing we really give him to eat are those Gerber finger foods that dissolve in your mouth. He used to just grab my hand when I offered it to him and feed himself by controlling my hand. Whenever I put them on his feeding tray, he'd have a real hard time getting anything into his mouth. Today, however, he fed himself like a pro. He's starting to master the pincer grasp, although he's much better with his left hand than with his right. Brandon wonders if maybe he'll be left handed, but I think it's too early to tell. Caleb uses both hands when playing, switching back and forth between the two constantly.

(Not) Crawling Causes Crankiness

Yesterday, I really thought I saw Caleb crawl for a least a foot. Like actually crawling with both his hands and legs working the way a crawler's should. But he hasn't done it since.

He's getting pretty good at scooting with his legs, pushing himself backwards with his arms, and rolling and turning every which way till he gets to where he wants to be. Only, he never seems to get there fast enough. And what he wants seems to be just a tad too far away for him to be happy.

Instead, we've had a cranky baby on our hands the last little while. Today was really bad though. We could not for the life of us figure out what was wrong with the baby. He'd been fed, changed, played with, held, put down, everything. Still, he was unhappy. Not being able to crawl is just so frustrating to him that then he wants to be held. Only, he doesn't really want to be held because he wants to play. So, actually, what he seems to want is to be held and handed all his toys so that he can continue playing without having to do any of the frustrating work himself.

Poor little guy. I'm sure he'll figure it out eventually. But in the meantime, his little life sure is rough. (Especially since we always intentionally put things just out of reach for him so that he has to work his way to them in order to be able to stick them in his mouth.)

Fall Flowers

We haven't done much to our yard since we moved in last December. We paid some guy to mow it over the summer while we were in Texas. We've raked leaves into mountainous piles. There are these weeds that we've never gotten around to pulling. At least, I thought they were weeds. Maybe Brandon knew they weren't. Because, suddenly, they are beautiful orange daisy-like flowers. So beautiful and unexpected. I just love them.

Slumming

Nose Dive

I tried taking pictures of Caleb sitting in the armchair, but he was not at all cooperative. At first, I thought it was because I had taken away his burp cloth (which is his all time favorite "toy") and he kept trying to find it on the floor. Finally I gave up and handed him his burp cloth. But even then, he kept wanting to peer over the edge of the chair. So much so, that he took a dive right off the edge.

Head first. Falling to the floor. I was only sitting a foot or two away from him, so I easily caught him before he hit the ground. But still. It could have been a very bad day for us.

He's just so active these days. He still hasn't figured out the crawling thing. Today I was trying to teach him, mostly so he can have a fighting chance against Sara in another week, but also because he gets so frustrated that he can't do it. He can get where he wants to be but not as quickly as he wants. He can sort of scoot. He can crawl backwards. He can roll like a champion. But no crawling. I know I'll likely regret it once he can actually do it since then we might have to clean our house more than once a week, but right now I'm really eager for him to learn.

(Okay. In full honesty, we only actually clean our house when people are coming over. So, once Caleb learns to crawl, people better start visiting us all the time so that we keep things picked up.)

Cross Your Fingers

Caleb has taken a turn in the right direction. Knock on wood that he keeps it up.

This morning he woke up at quarter after seven. Yesterday was just a few minutes before seven.

Tonight he got to bed late since we were out shopping and then decided to go out to dinner as well. After all, it's Friday night and isn't that supposed to be date night? But it meant Caleb didn't get to bed till a little after eight. But maybe he'll sleep in till eight. Oh, wouldn't that be nice...

Early mornings

Every morning this week, Caleb has woken up WAY before he's supposed to. He used to wake up at 8:30 a.m. regardless of when we put him down to bed. As long as we got him to bed early enough, he would get a really good night's sleep.

Sunday morning he woke up at 4 a.m. Monday at 5 a.m. Tuesday again at 5. This morning though, 3:30. I don't know what's going on with him. Every morning, Brandon gets up and tries to get the baby back to sleep. Every morning, Caleb won't go back to sleep, regardless of what Brandon does. We've even tried to let him cry it out. The only thing that will get him to stop crying is if he nurses. Then he's fine.

After nursing, he went back to sleep one of those mornings. Today, however, was not that morning. Brandon tried in vain for an hour to get the baby back to sleep. Then I nursed him. He was happy after that, but wide awake. I brought him into bed with me and laid him between me and Brandon. Caleb was more awake than I think I've ever seen him. He was rolling around all over the place (in his tiny confined space -- although our bed is pretty big so it wasn't that tiny of a space). He wanted to play with my face (which is actually pretty normal for him when we're lying in bed). He wanted to give me kisses and eat my hair. When I wasn't responsive enough, he rolled his way over to Brandon to try and give him kisses and whack him in the face. It wasn't till 6:30 that Brandon got him to go back to sleep.

I don't know what's going on with him. Every time he acts out of the ordinary, we think, oh he must be teething. But we've been saying that for five months now and he still doesn't have any teeth. Not even a glimmer of a tooth. So I'm not chalking this one up to that. But what then? He has been sick since Saturday. Maybe Friday. But would that make him wake up so early every single morning?

If he wakes up again tonight/tomorrow morning, we're not going to be able to just let him cry since he's already in so much pain from getting his shots earlier today. I feel so bad for him.

Getting Shot

Sadly, Caleb had to get shots today. This may seem odd for anyone who stops to think about it. Caleb's seven and a half months old. What shots do you get at seven and a half months? Or even seven months? Maybe eight? You get your four month shots, of course.

When we were in Texas, we took Caleb to the pediatrician for his two month check up to get his shots. After our appointment, we called our insurance to get the appointment "pre-approved" only to be told that they don't cover vaccinations. Which meant that the bill we got from the doctor's office was well over $500. At that steep rate, we decided to wait till we got back to Utah to get his four month shots.

I scheduled Caleb a doctor's appointment at the student health center at BYU before we even got back from Texas. Sadly, they don't do vaccinations at the health center. So Caleb didn't get his shots then. He was five and a half months at the time. Then we went to Hawaii. Then to California. Then we were home for a month but just kept putting it off. Mostly because I didn't want to do it, knowing that the baby wouldn't like it.

Brandon decided that it'd be a lot worse if Caleb died from smallpox because he didn't get vaccinated against it, so today, he took the baby into the county health department or wherever it is that they do the shots at. I didn't go. I couldn't bear it. When they got home, Brandon said it was probably a good thing that I didn't go, because Caleb cried a cry Brandon had never heard before. A "I'm in serious pain" type of cry that would have definitely made me start to cry. I'm overly emotional now that I'm a mother. (Before becoming a mother I was just emotional.)

The good thing about the day is that the grand total for the baby's shots today rang up at $36. Yeah.

The bad thing is that Caleb is so super unhappy. He was fine when they first came home. All smiles. As if he didn't even remember what had happened. But that didn't last. Not even after taking Tylenol to help with the pain. The poor little guy. Makes me want to cry to hear him cry. (Which is a stark difference to when he normally cries -- i.e. the middle of the night -- and I tell Brandon that it isn't actually our kid crying.)

More of the turtle

Look at him getting ready to go. So close but not quite there yet.

Daylight Spending

Last night, Brandon was up late building a computer. I went to bed without him since I was plum exhausted. He came up to bed around 3 a.m. really confused. All the clocks in our house said that it was 3 a.m. but his cell phone said it was only 2:00. In my half-sleep state, I mumbled something about daylight savings ending, but didn't know if that was what was wrong. So he searched the internet and found out that was indeed the case (to which I wonder how people without the internet are supposed to know these things, since it's wrong on our calendar).

Anyway, I've decided I'm quite the fan of daylight savings having ended and wish that it had happened at it's normally scheduled time. Why? Because our baby now goes to bed an hour earlier. It's quite nice.

We'd been struggling to figure out when to get our baby to bed and usually the earliest we managed to make it was 8. But it's just barely after eight right now and he's been asleep for quite a while.

The plus side of this is that now we can enjoy watching our nightly television shows without worrying about the baby watching them too. Although, we're borrowing my brother's tivo until he moves out of my dad's house and asks for it back, and Brandon finally got it to work yesterday. So either way, we're pretty much covered on the tv thing. Before Caleb was born, I said I wasn't going to let him watch tv till he turned 2. That never worked out since he watches it when we watch it and I just couldn't give it up. (I did try though.) But now we can go back to that rule and just pretend the last 7 months of tv watching didn't happen.

I know that tomorrow morning I'll be wishing the clocks didn't change because my baby will be getting up an hour "earlier," but hopefully it won't be too bad.

Happy Birthday Addyson!

Today we went to a birthday party for my cousin's daughter, Addyson. She turns one tomorrow.

Caleb was really good at the party, even though he wasn't the center of attention. He didn't mind at all when Addyson got to open all her presents and he got none. He just sat happily in my lap playing with the same toys he always plays with.

He didn't even mind (at least not too much) when the other kids tried to play with him and his toys while Mommy ate her lunch. The other babies were all really nice to him and didn't hit him or poke him or steal things out of his hands. I think he had a few flashbacks to visiting Sara, so he was a tad apprehensive about the whole situation.

The only time he got a little cranky was when Addyson got to eat her birthday cake. I don't think he cared that she was having fun and he wasn't. Or even that she got to eat cake and he didn't. I think it was all the people standing around watching, making so much noise. He's not a big fan of people making loud noises.

We took down a few pointers for when Caleb turns one. I've been planning his birthday party for months now. But still, we've got a long time to go.

In the meantime, happy birthday Addyson!

My Little Turtle

A Halloween Day in the Life

I thought Caleb's first Halloween turned out great, but that was mostly due to our fantastic party. Caleb didn't really like Halloween so much - he spent most of the day crying. But he sure loved his party. So I think we made up for it.

Caleb in front of the pumpkins we carved the night before. We got the carveable ones at JoAnn's so that we'll always have (until they get destroyed and we throw them away) the pumpkins from Caleb's first Halloween. He's sitting in front of the one Brandon did. I carved the face one that you can kind of see. Then Brandon and I carved the trick or treat pumpkin together. We had a lot of fun carving them -- probably because the baby was in bed. And I thought they were way easier to carve than a real pumpkin.

Cute Halloween bib. And of course, Caleb got to eat lots of orange food (since, well, that's all he eats anyway).

Here he is in front of the huge pile of leaves that Brandon raked up from our front yard.

I thought it would be cute to get a picture of Caleb in the pile.

Caleb thought that was a very BAD idea.