Too Big

Caleb seems to be getting bigger every day now. I swear, he's huge now. No more little baby.

Both of our friends with babies the same age as ours, dress their baby in size 12 month clothes. He used to seem so much smaller than them, but these days, he's holding his own. So I figured, if they were wearing 12 months clothes, so could Caleb. And well, I'm getting tired of his 9 month clothes.

Today, I dressed him in this 12 month shirt and it nearly broke my heart each time I looked at him. He's just so grown up.

Then, we were going out and both Caleb's jackets were in the car, so I grabbed him a hoodie sweatshirt. He looked so BIG! I went into his room to get him a blanket too (since it's freezing in Utah), and Brandon hollered to me to get a really good baby one, since Caleb was looking way too grown up. I got out a white fuzzy one that says "Baby" on it in pastel letters. Definitely a baby blanket. It didn't really help.

It's like my baby is turning into a toddler right before my eyes. At least he's not walking yet. I think I might cry when that day comes. (Well, probably not. I'll probably be really excited. But in retrospect, will want to cry.)

We had another all nighter last night. We tried to put some of the teething gel stuff on his gums, but Caleb pushes everything away with his tongue, and hence had licked most of the gel off our finger before we could get to the gums (we both tried at different points in the night).

We also got him those teething tablets, since they came so highly recommended. But the directions for those were even more baffling than attempting to get gel to the gum. The directions say to dissolve the tablets under the tongue. How in the world are you supposed to get those things under a baby's tongue to start with, and then, if you miraculously succeed, how do you get the baby to leave them there while they dissolve?

Thinking Like a Ten Month Old

Brandon was running late getting home from his work meeting tonight. Caleb was already asleep in bed, so I thought I'd turn on the television. Our TV is in an entertainment center that has doors on it that shut, so I had to open the doors in order to watch anything. While I was already standing there, I switched the TV on.

Then I looked around for the remote. Apparently it had been a while since we'd last watched TV.

It wasn't in it's "home" (i.e. either drawer of our coffee table -- I can never remember which of those we keep it in). It wasn't under the couch. Or in the couch cushions. Or in the tiny section between the couch and the wall where stuff often falls. It wasn't lying on top of the coffee table, although way too many other things are. It wasn't hiding in the armchair behind the Christmas pillows that we forgot to put away with the rest of our holiday stuff. I'd already put away the baby's toys, so the floor was clean and it definitely wasn't hiding under the mountainous pile of toys Caleb rarely plays with but still seems to always get all over the place.

I called Brandon. He was pretty sure that the last time he saw the remote, Caleb had been playing with it. Maybe under the coffee table?

Nope. Not there. Nor was it under the armchair, the entertainment center, Caleb's exersaucer, anywhere in the dining room or kitchen. It wasn't in the entertainment center. Still not under the couch.

I was flat out of places to look. So I laid down on the floor and resigned myself to just watching TV the old fashioned way. (How did we live without a TiVo for so long?)

During a commercial break (which I sadly couldn't fastforward), I looked around the room. Now at the same general height as my baby, I tried to think as he would think. If I were only ten months old, where would I think a good spot for the remote control would be?

That's when I spotted Brandon's backpack. Of course. Why didn't I think to look there? I mean, sure, I'd moved the bag, wondering if the remote was under it, but I hadn't looked INSIDE it. How silly of me, I know. So I did. And lo and behold, I found the remote. Which meant that I got to then watch House from the beginning of the episode instead of halfway through when I had turned on the TV.

Ah. The good life.

Babysitting

Sometimes I feel like I'm babysitting my own kid. He just loves his daddy so much. Take tonight for example. Brandon has work meetings every Tuesday night. Caleb started crying once he saw Brandon put on his jacket. I then had to use the distraction method so Caleb wouldn't notice when Brandon actually left the house.

I totally felt like a babysitter trying to entertain the kid while his beloved parent sneaks out the front door.

On the plus side, when Caleb and I are home alone together, he doesn't usually care when I leave the room and he's all alone. After all, since Daddy isn't there, it doesn't really matter if Mommy's gone too.

Ten Month Old Turtle

At last! Pictures of our baby! By the time I finally got around to uploading them today, I had over a hundred on the camera. Impressive, right?

Yesterday at church, Caleb was so full of energy. During sacrament meeting, he kept playing peek-a-boo with the couple sitting behind us. He'd duck down behind the bench so that he couldn't see them, then stand back up and smile. It was really cute.

In Sunday School, he started making this really weird noise. It was a total boy noise. In fact, I can't imitate it, but Brandon can. It kind of sounds like the noise a boy would make when flying a toy through the air. I think.

Last night was a pretty rough night for us. Caleb was screaming and screaming. I brought him into bed with us. He laid there in my arms, completely still, with his eyes wide open. That started around ten. I think I fell asleep sometime closer to three. I'm not sure how much longer it took before Caleb fell asleep, but when I woke up again, in the middle of the night, he was lying across my stomach. Poor sweet baby.

Today, though, I think we finally got a reason for all the screaming. He has his first tooth! It's barely poking through, but it's there. I can feel it more than see it. I did take a picture, but you have to way super enlarge it just to see the faintest bumps of his tooth. Maybe in a couple more days it'll be more photographable. (Is that a word?)

I think this picture is so cute. But looking at it now, I wonder why my baby is playing with a purplish cup in one hand and a pink letter in his other hand. Looks like I'm going to have to find where that blue block went to.

The other night, Caleb was up way past his bedtime, since we were having people over and I thought I'd be nice and let him play with his friend. At some point though, I was definitely ready for him to go to bed, and instead of just hauling him off to his room, I started decorating him with his link letters. It makes me laugh looking at the picture again.

Time to Pack!

We're one step closer to packing our bags. Not for our cruise, but for the summer. Tonight was the night. THE night. Brandon (and the other hundred guys managing for APX), got to pick where they are going to work for the summer.

So where are we going?

Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

We're really excited about it. That's where Brandon served his mission (though he spent most of his time up in Scranton), so I'm really looking forward to seeing all the places that he loves and meeting some of the people he still talks about. It's going to be great.

Plus, in the area for our office, is Hershey, PA. Which means that I might as well give up the idea of losing those last few pounds of baby weight because I'm just going to gain it all back this summer visiting the Hershey factory.

And only three hours from NYC. Guess what I'll be doing for my birthday this year. :)

The only downside is that the nearest Cheesecake factory is two hours away. Oh well. I guess you can't have everything. Maybe it's a good thing, considering all that chocolate I've already got planned, I probably shouldn't add cheesecake to the list too.

Oh, and as far as actually working goes... Harrisburg was fourth on Brandon's list of places he wants to go (out of 120 offices). The stats look great for the city. Even if Brandon hadn't served his mission there, he would have still put it fourth on his list just because of how good the stats are. So it should be an awesome summer for workers and wives!

My Favorite...Tag

My favorites:

Book: Twilight by Stephenie Meyer

Movie: I love teeny bopper movies. Some of my favorites are Mean Girls, Bring It On, and John Tucker Must Die. I also love The Notebook, but I don't think that counts as a teeny bopper.

Color: Orange

TV shows: Grey's Anatomy, Heroes, Chuck. In that order.

Guilty Pleasures: Chocolate Chip Skookies.

Outfit: I currently hate all my clothes. But I do own this cute brown sweater that's really long that I love.

Body part: My feet.

Kitchen tip: Whoever cooks, the other person's in charge of dishes.

Life lesson: You become who you want to be by discovering who you've always been.

Activity: Reading YA novels, writing, blogging, photography.

Food: Almost anything that I didn't have to cook myself. And I really love potatoes.

Child raising tip: There's a fine line between mothering and smothering.

Pet peeve: When people show up late. (Although now that we have a baby, it is SO HARD to be on time.)

Game: Fluxx

Tattoo: Not that I'd ever get one...but if I did, it'd be a crescent moon with a butterfly perched on the bottom half.

Element: Gold (though I prefer mine in the white variety).

I tag Shannon, Jaymie, and Nora. (Nora's my favorite person to tag. She always has the best answers.)

Happy Birthday Sara!

My niece Sara turned one today!

We first met Sara when she and her family came up to Utah for Caleb's blessing. Back then, she didn't have much of a personality. But then again, Caleb had even less of one. I remember being impressed at how well she ate and napped though. Those were things Caleb still hadn't really mastered.

We next saw Sara when Caleb and I flew down to California in June for her blessing. She was so good through her blessing and looked so beautiful in her dress. It was on this trip that I really fell in love with Sara.

Our favorite thing to do while we were there in June was to take pictures of Sara and Caleb together. I just love this one where she is holding his hand. I can't believe how little Caleb looks here!

We didn't get to see Sara again until September. Even though she's only two months older than Caleb, she always seems light years ahead of him as far as developing "tricks." Look how good she was at eating pasta even back then! Caleb still doesn't like the stuff.

For such a beautiful girl, she's also an expert at instilling terror. It was while we were visiting in September that Caleb got beat up by a girl. He was leery of girls for a long time after this.

We loved seeing Sara again for Thanksgiving. She taught Caleb lots of valuable lessons, like how to crawl and how to feed yourself.

She also taught him that even though girls are beautiful...

...you can never let your guard down around a girl. (Good thing she's a much better sport than Caleb is. Hopefully they'll be buddies yet.)

We love you so much Sara!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

And Three Days

Caleb's been ten months for three days now. And I've yet to start his ten month old picture folder. I've totally been slacking. But with good reason.

1) It's really hard to take a picture of a baby that's crawling right for you and wants to eat your camera.

2) Caleb no longer likes his mommy.

Yep. It's true. Caleb screams in terror if Brandon leaves the room. But if Daddy is there, and Mommy leaves the room, not even a wimper. It's actually really depressing. Today I even went so far as to tell Caleb we weren't friends anymore. He shook his head no, but I think he was actually trying to agree with me and say, "No, we're not." Hopefully he'll be back to liking Mommy again soon.

As far as a ten month status report...Caleb really likes putting stuff inside of stuff. For example, we have stacky cups that we normally stack up for him and then he'll knock them over. Now, we just hand him the cups all nestled together, and he'll pull the littlest one out, then the next, then put the littlest one back in the next, then put that one back in the bigger ones. It keeps him entertained for the longest time. This morning, he was putting a ball inside of one of his cups. It fit perfectly, and he kept doing it over and over. We bought him a little table last month and it has a spot where you can store stuff, kind of like a shelf or bin right under the table. Caleb loves to pull things off the table and stick them in the cubby underneath.

Other than that, most of his accomplishments have been noted on the blog already. He's really mobile and can go anywhere and do anything he wants (until he gets in trouble). Sometimes it amazes me the way his little body can move. He's still not really standing on his own (although he did for a couple seconds when we were at my dad's house this past weekend), but he can pull himself up and he can stand up using his legs instead of his arms. He can cruise along stuff too. I think he's just too scared to let go, plus he doesn't really have a need to. At times it seems like he's barely holding on though.

We've been working on waving with him. He did it around Thanksgiving time, but we don't really say goodbye to people very often, so he kind of lost the skill. We've been trying to get him to do it again now that we see other people occasionally. Usually, he'll just lift his left arm out, kind of like a Nazi salute. It's a work in progress.

Now that we're back home, he's eating better and sleeping just fine. Just one more reason not to want to travel anymore.

I did take a few pictures of him today, but haven't loaded them onto my computer yet. I promise I'll post one as soon as I do. But that may be tomorrow.

Trip-py

So it's been another couple days since I last posted. We decided to do a whirlwind trip down to California and back. It was fun, in ways, but mostly just exhausting.

For the most part, while we were gone, Caleb refused to take a bottle. He'd take his morning bottle, but that was about it for the rest of the day. We could get him to eat a little here and there, but not really.

Then today, home again, and the kid is trying to make up for all the meals he skipped while we were traveling. Which is a bad thing since there's no food in our house right now. For dinner, I used the last two pieces of bread and the only slice of cheese to make him a grilled cheese sandwich. Then I fed him a baby food thing of bananas (the most disgusting baby food there is, but Caleb likes it), since that was the only thing we had in our cupboard for him. This is already like five times more than he's eaten in days, but once he finished the bananas, he wanted more food. He drank some water and then went on to eat a thing of string cheese.

Now we're completely out of food that we can feed him, especially if he keeps refusing the bottle. I was hoping to convince my hubby that he wanted to make a grocery run, since the world (or at least the bubble of a world that we live in) is covered in snow, but he's fallen asleep in his chair. Did I mention it was an exhausting trip?

My favorite thing about California, besides being able to see our friends and family, is all the good food. Utah is seriously lacking in the good food department (although we do have a Cheesecake Factory half an hour away now, so that's an improvement). We've decided that we can't live in Utah the rest of our lives, if for no other reason than we need good food when we go out to eat.

Every night, while we were gone, Caleb slept in bed with us. He wouldn't sleep otherwise, except in the car. I was real nervous for tonight. But he's asleep now, in his crib, and hopefully he'll stay that way till morning. Although, I do really enjoy cuddling with my baby.

I know it was a super short trip and we spent just about as much time in our car as we did in California, but somehow I managed to not take any pictures. 2008 has been a very bad picture year.

So instead, here's a shot from before we left. Caleb makes this face all the time. Sometimes, I like to give him kisses when he does it. But he definitely doesn't want kisses when he does it, so I'm not sure exactly what emotion he's trying to express here.


Oh, I nearly forgot to mention. I got my passport the day we left, so all is set for our cruise. Brandon got the travel itinerary from APX and guess what! We're not going to Belize! We're both extremely disappointed. I'm sure the Caribbean is fun too, but Belize just sounded so exotic. Maybe we'll have to plan a trip of our own.

Sleepy

We're starting to get really worried about our baby. After almost two weeks of crankiness, today was the complete opposite. He's been so cuddly all day. And pretty sleepy.

This morning, he fell asleep on the floor next to Brandon. Just doubled on over, asleep. He keeps laying on the floor, or on our shoulders. As cute as it is, I'd rather he was healthy.

And his poop has been so disgusting. We called the student health center and the earliest that they can fit us in is Tuesday. Hopefully he'll be better before then.

Shake It Baby!

As promised, here's the biggest excitement in our day.

Never Trust a Rating

We rent our movies from Redbox. Can't beat a dollar, right?

A few weeks ago (or maybe it was more recently than that), we rented a movie that we weren't too anxious to see. The previews had made the movie look...not horrible, but definitely not our type of flick. But Redbox lists Yahoo ratings on their website when they give a summary of the movie's plot, and this particular movie got a B+, so we figured, why not? The movies we normally rent are never rated that high.

Turns out, we loved the movie.

So tonight, when Brandon was looking online at the redbox movies and came across one we'd never heard of, but it'd been rated an A-, we figured we were good to go.

It was the worst movie I've seen in a REALLY long time.

I purposely don't watch bad movies. It's a waste of my time. We have way too many toys to waste time on bad movies. And yes, I'm kind of a film snob. Sorry.

But this movie tonight, wow. It's the reason I hate adaptations. Some people, who are book snobs, hate adaptations for not staying true to the book. But I disagree. The great thing about a book, or one of the great things, is that you can imagine it exactly the way you want. You don't need a movie to do that. You've already done it yourself when you first read the book.

A film adaptation should be its own creation. Taking its inspiration from the novel (or short story, or whatever) and becoming something more. Changing the plot as needed for a more concise story, because the way a book unfolds and the way a film plays out are structured differently and have to be treated accordingly.

This may be a bad example, but I'm going to use it anyway. Now, I really like the Harry Potter books. I'm a super huge fan. When the seventh book came out, I went and got my copy at midnight. I couldn't stand the thought of waiting even a second longer than I had to. But I did not like the fifth Harry Potter book the first time I read it. There's a part in the book where Sirius gives Harry a Christmas present that Harry never opens. The whole book, I'm wondering what the present is and when he's going to open it. It started driving me nuts. Why even add that Sirius gave him this present if Harry isn't going to open it or even remember that he has it? I remembered, so why didn't he? Then, in the end, he finally opens the present and if he'd only opened it when he got it, it would have changed the entire story.

I hate things like that. A reader shouldn't be smarter than a book. That makes for a bad book, in my opinion.

So when the fifth Harry Potter movie came out, I wasn't expecting much, but still went to see the movie at midnight. It surprised me how much I loved the movie. For one, the stupid Christmas present wasn't even in the film. True, they changed a lot of plot elements in the movie and left out a lot of things from the book. But what made it a good movie, for me, was that it was a story in and of itself.

Recently, I read the Twilight series and LOVED it. Especially Twilight. It may be the best book I've ever read. But I'm nervous because they're making a movie of it. The actor they've cast as Edward...wouldn't have been my first choice (or second or third...or twentieth even). Of course, I'll still go see the movie opening night. (Another part of being a film snob is that I only like to watch movies in the theater on opening night. And after opening weekend, I'd rather just wait to see it on dvd.) Hopefully, the movie will be as good of a movie as the book is as a book.

Okay. I don't even know what I'm really ranting about anymore. I swear I'll get back to writing mindless posts about the boring daily adventures of Caleb Benjamin really soon.

In the Right Religion

I think this is extremely hilarious. So I went to this random website. I don't think I could even backtrack my steps to figure out how I got there. I was just pushing the Next Blog button and stumbled across a link on a blog that led to this website. I know, totally random.

Even more random, is that it was this political thing. But then I saw this other button that took me to this religion quiz.

After thinking really hard about my own personal beliefs, and answering every question as honestly as I could (not trying to guess the right answer or anything), here are my results:

Your Results:

1. Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormons) (100%)
2. Jehovah's Witness (85%)
3. Mainline - Conservative Christian Protestant (67%)
4. Bahai (66%)
5. Orthodox Judaism (64%)
6. Sikhism (62%)
7. Mainline - Liberal Christian Protestants (61%)
8. Orthodox Quaker (56%)
9. Islam (55%)
10. Reform Judaism (53%)
11. Liberal Quakers (50%)
12. Eastern Orthodox (49%)
13. Roman Catholic (49%)
14. Seventh Day Adventist (42%)
15. Unitarian Universalism (42%)
16. Christian Science (Church of Christ, Scientist) (35%)
17. Jainism (33%)
18. Hinduism (31%)
19. Neo-Pagan (31%)
20. New Age (25%)
21. Mahayana Buddhism (25%)
22. New Thought (24%)
23. Secular Humanism (24%)
24. Theravada Buddhism (23%)
25. Scientology (20%)
26. Taoism (18%)
27. Non-theist (15%)

I laughed when I saw the results. I guess I'm in the right religion after all. Although, it might have been interesting to see that I needed to switch.

Obviously, some things I believe because of my religion, but other things...I've been told by many people that I'm not what they think of as a typical Mormon.

Anyway, it was funny. Thought I'd share.

Watch Out World!

Brandon and Caleb got their passports in the mail. That means they are now free to roam about the world. They came a lot sooner than we expected. Hopefully mine will be that fast too.

Although, we're starting to have second thoughts about the cruise. Did you know that you have to pay to take your baby with you? It's true for all cruises.

As if anyone actually WANTS to take their baby with them on a cruise. But let's be honest, there's no way we'd leave him behind for that long.

I need pictures

It's really hard for me to blog without pictures. And I've been seriously lazy about taking pictures.

Sometimes, stupid little things happen that I think, "Oh, I should take a picture of Caleb with that, or doing that, so I can write about it on the blog." Yeah, maybe those stories will come some day.

We've been having more cranky days. Really bad cranky days. Today (being Saturday), I got so frustrated, after only an hour of watching Caleb, that I brought him into the bedroom where Brandon was sleeping. Both Caleb and I were crying (though you could argue his was more fussing than crying). What a sight to wake up to. Brandon's been really good and patient with both of us, but I don't know how much longer I can take the crankiness. Hopefully I'll toughen up soon.

Anyway, here's a picture I don't think I ever posted. It was taken a couple weeks ago. Sometimes, after changing Caleb's diaper, we stand him up to pull up his pants and he holds onto the wall. (Though, usually, he stands up facing me and holds onto me instead of the wall.) But we think it's such a hilarious pose. Shows him for the true criminal he is.

Despite the smiley pictures below, today's been another cranky day. Even with both of us home with the baby today.

It's been so cranky, that I developed a serious eye twitch for a good hour or two. It seems to have subsided, fortunately.

Ha, ha. It just started twitching again.

Picture Withdrawals

I realize I haven't posted new pictures for the last several posts. In fact, I have a serious lack of photos for Caleb being nine months old now. I know, I still have half a month to go, but compared to the last couple months, I don't know that I'll be able to catch up. In Caleb's seven months folder, there are 849 pictures (although, over a hundred of those are ones that my mom took of Caleb). In his eight month folder, only 569. Now, after taking a bunch of pictures today, his nine month folder is up to 216 pictures.

I realized today, as I was taking pictures of the baby, the reason that I've been slacking this month. For one, the holidays are over, not requiring any pictures (since the majority of the nine month photos so far are from Christmas). But more than that, Caleb's pretty hard to take pictures of these days. He likes to crawl to the camera every time I get it out, making his pictures extremely distorted and ugly.

Oh well, here are the cute ones today. (I know, hardly anything.)

Not All Days are Created Equally

Today was a hard day. Really hard.

So hard, that if you don't want to hear an extremely boring rendition of my day's events, you might as well stop reading. I won't be offended. Or even know, actually. But if you do keep reading, at least you know now that it's going to be boring. How I wish I had simply felt bored today.

School's started. Brandon's giving it another go (after taking last semester off). That means that Caleb and I are now home alone together. All day.

We got off to a rough start.

First of all, Brandon's been on the morning shift ever since we decided to start weaning the baby (yep, that was the first feeding to lose out...I wonder why). Yesterday, Caleb woke up at like five in the morning and Brandon was up with him for an hour before he could get the baby to go back to sleep. So when Caleb woke up at 9:30, even though it was technically him waking up for the day, I still got up with him. Which meant, that when I needed to get up again this morning, life was tough.

Usually, Caleb's up for two hours in the morning before Brandon puts him back down for a nap (although, some days they don't make it that long). Today, Brandon had to leave for school before we hit the two hour mark. Which meant that I had to put the baby to bed.

That didn't go over so well.

Eventually, I let him cry himself to sleep. (If you read BabyWise, I was actually giving my child the gift of sleep by letting him soothe himself to sleep.)

I don't know if he was mad at me about that an hour or so later when he woke up from his nap, but he was CRANKY! So our midday didn't go so well. So bad, that when it came time for the afternoon nap, I didn't even try to put him to sleep. Just laid him down in his crib, turned his mobile on, and left the room.

I think he only cried for ten minutes or so. Not too bad.

Brandon came home for a bit in the afternoon. He needed to run an errand, and seeing how stressed out I was from my day, he took the baby with him. I took a nice hot bath and read by candlelight. It was extremely relaxing.

Which was a good thing, since Brandon had to go to a work meeting tonight, which meant that I was left alone with the baby again. We did good for a while. He ate dinner better than he'd eaten lunch. Passed a lot of gas though. So much so that the poop ended up blowing out the side of the diaper. So then Caleb got a bath. He's doing so much better at baths. No longer cries when I try to put him in. But now he wants to stand up, which annoys me, since he's in a baby bath and it's likely to fall over at any second with him pulling himself up. Then he wants me to pick up his sopping wet body. I mean, I'm glad that he loves me and all, but...

Bedtime is the biggest struggle. If I thought I had issues trying to get the baby to nap, oh my, I don't even know how to describe bedtime. I used to nurse Caleb to sleep at night. He's completely fine with the bottle every other time of the day. In fact, he gets so super excited when he sees his bottle after he gets up from his nap. But at bedtime, he will not take the bottle at all. He squirms everywhere and it always turns into a huge fight. Caleb wins every night. But not without a lot of spilled formula (usually on him).

I'm trying to get him into a bedtime routine. It's so hard to do because his mood is so different every night. And we haven't been very consistent lately about what time we put him down. So, after the bath, then reading, very little bottle, and several songs, I put Caleb in bed wide awake. He screamed bloody murder for five solid minutes, but then went to sleep.

So that was the day in it's simplicity.

Only, it was so stressful. So overwhelming. So taxing.

At least Brandon doesn't have school tomorrow, so I get a day off before the insanity resumes. Hopefully, Caleb's cranky phase won't continue to coincide with Brandon's class days. (Especially since I'm starting to think that he likes Brandon better than he likes me. But in reality, he's usually much better for me than he is for Brandon, so how do you judge?)

There is Hope

I may get to go to Belize after all. My super awesome dad went to the Orange County clerk's office, or where ever it is you go, and got me a new birth certificate and had it rushed mailed to me.

After I got it yesterday, I went to the post office and applied for a new passport. A couple more rush fees later, and my passport may just show up before the boys'. That will be funny.

I'm excited that I have as good a shot as going as Brandon and Caleb. Now we just have to wait and hope our passports arrive in the mail as scheduled.

Thanks again Dad for doing that for me!

Good Job, Mom

Last night, Caleb did something that I thought was so super cute. Cute enough, that it warranted being on the blog.

I was holding him, while standing, and feeding him bananas. His right arm was behind my back. Every time I gave him a bite of banana, he'd pat me on the back. It was like he was saying, "good job, Mom, that's just what I wanted."

So cute.

The Ugly

I realize that in order to fully appreciate how much I love my kitchen, you have to see the before pictures.

These were taken when we were first looking at the house, trying to decide if we wanted to buy it or not. Overall, it wasn't that bad of a kitchen. But compared to the new version, oh my.

The right side.

The left side.

Floor. Obviously.

The world's ugliest sink. Just looking at it again makes me want to throw up for some reason. I forgot how utterly hideous that thing was.

Date Night

Tonight (being Friday, even though it's after midnight, so this will post as being Saturday), Brandon and I went out on a date. Without Caleb. Can you believe it? It's only the fourth time we've been without our baby since he was born. Well, the fifth time if you count those lovely few hours that I was having surgery and we left Caleb at home with my mom.

The first time (not counting the surgery), was in Texas. We put Caleb to bed, then took the baby monitor and a key to our apartment upstairs to the guys living above us (who also worked for APX). We went out to the Cheesecake Factory (my favorite restaurant), but I was so stressed about being away from our baby that I made Brandon get our dessert to go and we ate it at home. Of course, Caleb was fine and the guys even came down to check on him once just to make sure the monitor was working right.

The second time, we were still in Texas. Again, we put Caleb to bed before going out. This time, another couple (who also worked for APX) came over and watched our television while Caleb slept. That was for my birthday. We went to BJ's because we love their pizookies -- although now that we have a skookie maker, we'll probably never eat at BJ's again.

The third time, we were back in Utah. My mom came down and stayed with Caleb...while he was still awake! We went to an early dinner at Ruby River Steakhouse. I tried so very hard to not talk about the baby while we were out and not stress about being gone from him. Let's just say we weren't gone more than an hour and a half. Brandon wanted to go shopping afterward, but I was too anxious to get home. I can't remember now if we actually went to the store (he wanted to go to Home Depot to look at kitchen stuff, since this was back before we remodeled our kitchen), but I think I probably insisted we go home.

Finally, that brings us to tonight. Caleb's nine and a half months old. It's the fourth time we've been on a date without him. And still, despite the fact that I know my mom is completely capable of watching my baby, I still stressed when we left him. I was all worked up about it and Brandon tried to calm me down. I told him that I'd be fine by the time we got to the restaurant. I'm not so sure that he believed me, especially since I kept remembering things I forgot to tell my mom before we left.

But I did good. We went to Iggy's for dinner, which is a sports grill place. They have HUGE televisions. As soon as we walked in, worrying about the baby or thinking of things to talk about other than the baby was no longer the problem. The problem was peeling my eyes away from the HUGE television showing the Detroit-Toronto basketball game. I love basketball. Absolutely love it. And did I mention how HUGE the televisions were?

After dinner, we went to Walmart to buy a humidifier since Caleb has a cold right now. Of course, despite our "date" and my great efforts to not talk about the baby all night long, the first thing we do in Walmart is check out the baby section. I know, I'm pathetic. But I'm just so in love with my kid. At least I did manage to skip the toy section, which was harder than it sounds considering we walked right past it.

We came home and put the baby to bed (who didn't care at all that we had left him behind). Then we went back out and saw a movie. Check us out! We're totally dating fiends now.

I think, overall, I did really good tonight. And maybe, if we ever make it to the big number five date without the baby, I won't stress out at all about leaving him behind. Maybe.

Caleb in 2008

Despite the fact that he's currently sick and hence grumpier than usual, our little baby is just a bundle of fun these days. (Can't you tell by the sweet kisses he's giving his daddy?)

I realized I haven't been noting all of Caleb's achievements of late, so I wanted to jot a few of them down.

Christmas Eve, Caleb started clapping. He's really good at it now and loves if you clap with him.

He can also pull himself up to standing and can stand forever holding on to stuff. He's fairly decent at finding his way back down to the floor without a big crash.

And today, he started cruising! Sometimes we can get him to walk if we're holding on to his hands. But today, he was holding on to his table and moved over to Brandon's legs. Then walked all the way along Brandon, holding on to him as he went. It was so cute. We were very proud of him.

I still think it'll be quite a while before he's actually walking, and that's okay. But maybe one of these days (or weeks) soon he'll be standing up on his own.

Tonight, before we put Caleb to bed, I was putting away some of his six month size jammies (which it seems like he only outgrew just a bit ago) and they are so super tiny! How did my baby get so big? I remember the last day we were able to fit him in his 3 month jammies and being amazed that he had actually outgrown those. Now it's hard to imagine him having ever been that little.

Missing Christmas

Caleb is so good at opening presents. But now that Christmas is over, he's having a hard time finding ways to keep up his skills so that he'll be a master at his first birthday party.

Wait. Did I say a hard time? Just kidding. Mommy has lots of fun magazines to rip.

At least he's learned that he's not allowed to eat the paper anymore. After each piece he ripped off my magazine, he reached up to hand me the piece.

I just love my little devil angel.

And boy does he love ripping!

Our little reader

One of Caleb's favorite things to do is to crawl over to where we keep his stash of books and pull them all down from the shelf. (We keep them on the very bottom shelf, so pulling them down doesn't take much skill.)

I absolutely love to read. Brandon's not that big of a fan. It's one of my many hopes for my child that Caleb will love to read. So I treasure each time I catch him knee deep in his books.

(One of my other biggest hopes is that Caleb will play sports because I love sports. Why do we need our children to like the same things we like?)

Spaghetti Monster

So, I think it's a tradition: if you have a baby, you take a cute picture of them with a face covered in spaghetti. Such cute babies. Such cute spaghetti grins.

Not my kid. We gave Caleb a tiny taste of spaghetti tonight. We didn't think he'd like it considering his past record with pasta. The first bite seemed to go over well, so we strapped him up in his chair in hopes of giving him more.

On his next bite, he started crying so hard. Full out crying, with tears streaming down his face.

Needless to say, he didn't get any more spaghetti. And hence no cute spaghetti faces from our kid. By the time we get this kid to eat spaghetti, I doubt he'll still be a baby. Oh well. Maybe we'll have a cute spaghetti baby next time.

Party Pictures

Here are the pictures from our New Year's Eve Party. Thanks Liz for sending them to me! I swear I'm going to start bringing my camera with me one of these days.

The Collinwood Clan in 2008.

Kisses for Naomi.

You can see how thrilled both babies were at the idea.

Happy 2008!

Happy New Year!!

Last night, we went to a friend's house to ring in the new year. Caleb thought it was such a fun party that he only went to sleep for an hour or two, then was back up, ready for more action. Which meant that yes, when the new year finally hit Utah, Caleb was up to experience it in all it's glory.

I doubt that it was quite what he was hoping for, since all his little girl friends were sleeping and he only got to have kisses from boring grown ups. Oh well. Maybe next year he'll realize how not fun it is and stay asleep.

Although, at one point, Naomi did wake up, so we had her daddy bring her out to the living room so Caleb could give her kisses. She could barely keep her eyes open, and Caleb was far from cooperative, but we made it happen. (I'll have to post the pictures later, since I left my camera at home. I know, I've really been slacking lately on picture taking.)

These pictures are actually a month or two old. Back from November. But I don't think I ever posted them. We had them taken at Target and thought the overall experience was terrible and wouldn't recommend anyone ever taking pictures there. Oh well. Happy new year!