One of the Girls

Caleb got to go to a bridal shower with me tonight. It was for my cousin Kristina. While both her dad and one of her brothers were upstairs, Caleb was the only guy that got to be at the party. Sadly, he didn't get that much attention.

It was kind of weird for me, being out with him, and not having everyone fawn all over him. Actually, it was really weird.

He behaved excellently. Crawled around some, but stayed out of the way and never ventured too far away from his mommy that I had to go fetch him before he got into trouble. He never even complained that I kept him up WAY past his bedtime because I was having too much fun to leave.

Such a good little boy.

I'm trying to teach him to be a boy though. When we left my mom's house earlier today to go shopping, he was holding my makeup brush. He loves my makeup brush. Every time I do my makeup (which is about once a week, but occasionally twice), he wants to come sit in my lap and play with the makeup too.

I figured his daddy wouldn't be too happy if I let him go shopping while holding a makeup brush the whole time, so I found his toy wrench and ruler and made a trade. He wasn't too excited about the trade, but didn't get a vote and traded anyway. I can't have his daddy blaming me if our baby turns out too girly. (Especially since Brandon's the one that's into art, while I'm the sports lover in our family.)

11 Month Tricks

For anyone who's obsessed with our kid, you probably already know that he's eleven months now (and has been for several days). He has tons of new tricks, although most of them he learned on the cruise since it was such a different environment than our house.

For example, he can now open drawers. The drawers on the cruise were super easy, and he's transfered the skills to our coffee table. Bad thing since that's were we hide all the fun stuff, like kleenex. He absolutely loves to tear the tissues. He can do it with his hands, but prefers to rip it with his mouth. He then makes the worst sour face, sticking out his tongue and feeling for the ripped pieces loose in his mouth.

He also does this super cute hand thing. I wish I had a picture or video or something so I could show you how super cute it is. He does it whenever he wants something. He'll reach out for me (or whatever he wants) and open and close his fists in this "gimme" kind of motion. I just love it. No matter what he wants, I always give in. One night, on the cruise, he was sitting in his high chair and he wanted out and I told him no. Then he did the hand thing and I immediately melted and picked him up out of his chair. I'm such a sucker. I'm doomed when he becomes a teenager.

After we got back from the cruise, while we were at my mom's house, I taught Caleb a new trick. Well, I didn't teach him so much and just decided he was going to do it and then he did it. He climbed stairs! (I know, it was a hard guess after that picture.) He climbed about six before he quit and started fussing. After I got the camera out, I could only get him to climb two stairs. But still...the stairs at our house are treacherous, so Caleb never gets near them. But he became quite the climber on the cruise.

Hmm...can't think of any other tricks. Though I'm sure I'm forgetting a bajillion. He's a cute kid. Getting bigger every day. Super huge actually.

Grand Cayman

The second port we stopped at on our cruise was Grand Cayman. A ton of the other APX people decided to go swim with the sting rays, but because we had the baby, we opted for a different course of action. (The excursions paper said the minimum age was six, but after wards, we were told by some who went that they saw another baby there, so we could have gone after all. Oh well. We had fun doing our own thing.)

We went on a little submarine ride and saw lots of fishes, two different shipwrecks, a bunch of coral reefs, and a sting ray. Caleb thought it was all great, so of course he fell asleep by the time it was over.

The captain of the submarine stops over Cheeseburger Reef, jumps into the water and swims around the sub holding bread in his hand. All the fish swarm him. I'd be terrified if it was me swimming, but it was fun to watch.

After our submarine ride, we went to the turtle farm. It was so much fun to see all the turtles. They just have pools and pools of them. Caleb was still asleep when we got there, but woke up about halfway through, much to my picture taking delight.

They have turtles from incubation all the way to full grown. I guess compared to this big ol' guy, our little baby doesn't look so much like a turtle anymore. Except maybe the toothless look they've got going on. And Caleb likes to give us the evil eye sometimes. Looks very similar to this here turtle.

They let you hold some of the smaller turtles. I thought it was so cute to get a picture of Brandon holding two turtles. It wasn't so cute though when he tried to get me to hold one too. Instead, I quickly volunteered to hold our turtle (i.e. Caleb), instead of the slimy one from the tank.

Here, Brandon's holding the turtle up next to Caleb. For the most part, Caleb wasn't a fan.

I think Caleb's mommy is rubbing off on him too much. He's starting to love shopping! The prices in Grand Cayman were a lot cheaper than in Jamaica, but they don't barter. At one store, we saw this marble turtle with a seashell for its turtle shell, which we had bought in Jamaica, for the same price we'd bartered ours down to. Although that was fifteen dollars below the sticker price in Jamaica, at least its the same price we actually paid. So if you are ever shopping on those two islands, know that you have to way barter down prices in Jamaica for it to be worth buying anything there.

Feeling Fat (not phat)

We got home from our cruise so late, that we ended up staying the night at my mom's. The next day (yesterday), I showered, then realized that I didn't have any clean clothes to wear. I asked my mom if I could borrow a pair of her pants, then suggested maybe a pair of her fat pants since she's lost a lot of weight recently. We went into her closet and she pulled out a pair. I asked her what size they were. She answered, "size fat." I put them on. Way too tight (but at least I got them on). The sadness of my life.

I actually didn't gain as much weight on the cruise as I thought I would. Too bad I was weighing more than I wish I did before we even left. Now, I just feel plain ol' fat.

Brandon and I told ourselves that we were going to start a diet AFTER the cruise, and ate like crazy while on the ship. Every night for dinner, we ordered at least one appetizer and two dinners each, not to mention dessert. Even Caleb got into the fun of eating. He realized that cruise ships have never ending amounts of cheese. All kinds of cheese, too. He was in cheese heaven. And grapes. I'd say grapes are probably his favorite food now.

Sadly, we're home again and have to cook our own food. I asked Brandon what he wanted for dinner tonight and he said that he wanted our personal chef to go make us several dishes that we could just take a few bites of and then send back and order something new. Ah, back in the day...

We're having fruit salad for dinner tonight. Healthy here we come.

Jamaica mon

Looking through our cruise pictures, I realize that the majority of them are just of Caleb smiling in front of different backgrounds, and occasionally wearing different clothes. So, we'll skip all those for now and get to the fun off-the-boat pictures.

Our first port of call was in Jamaica. Sadly, as is the new rule of my life, I didn't take very many pictures. Caleb did really good though. People were in awe at how well behaved our baby is.

In Jamaica, we decided to climb the Dunns River Falls (I think that's the right name). It was a really easy climb and we had a tour guide and everything, so we strapped Caleb onto Brandon's chest and up we went. Our tour guide carried our camera for us so that it wouldn't get wet and took pictures of us every now and again.

The climb was really easy. There were a couple of tricky spots, but the guide is right there to help pull you up. And there are a million other people climbing the falls, so it's not like you go very fast. The water was a little bit cold, but for the most part, Caleb didn't get too wet and so he was happy.

By the time we got to the top, Caleb had fallen asleep. Such a cute baby. Although, strapped up in his wrap, people kept asking if he was okay because he kind of looked like he was strangling himself to death. But he was totally fine, of course.

After the falls, you have to walk through a little market to get back to the tour bus. There are so many people there trying to sell you stuff. No, not sell you stuff. They give it to you for free, but then ask for a donation (or tip, or for you to "take care of" them) -- hence, not at all free. We only got suckered in by one guy, and mostly because we felt bad for him.

From there, we went to the Taj Mahal to go shopping. Brandon was in absolute heaven because they are huge into bartering in Jamaica and that's one of his favorite things to do. At the time, it seemed like we were buying tons of stuff, but now that we are home, I realize how little we actually bought. Our favorite bargain purchase is this awesome chess set made out of some beautiful stones (sorry, I don't remember what it is actually made out of -- but it's gorgeous). We've been looking to buy a chess set for as long as we've been married, which is kind of silly since we'll probably play it maybe three times before we die. Oh well. It's beautiful and was a great price.

Let's see...what else about Jamaica...oh, the drivers there are INSANE. Never try and drive in Jamaica. I'm surprised we didn't die several times over while in that tour bus. Not that our guy was a bad driver, but that everyone there is a bad driver. Somehow it works for them, but...

Jamaica was great. I was disappointed that no one offered us any drugs. Isn't that an essential Jamaica experience? The downside of having a baby with you. ;)

Happy Agnes!

Happy Birthday Agnes!!

Sadly, this is one of the only pictures I've taken of Agnes this past year. It was after Caleb's blessing. She was thirteen months then. Now she's two years old!! Yeah for Agnes. (The even sadder part of my picture-missing is that Laura and Agnes were just in Utah visiting, but I didn't take a single photo. I'm sorry Agnes. I love you though!)

Agnes is so super cute these days. My mom had a birthday party for her before we left and Agnes kept saying, "Happy Agnes" instead of "Happy Birthday." It was super cute.

I love you Agnes!

We're (Almost) Back

We're currently sitting in the airport. That's right. Not on a boat anymore. The trip was great and I have lots of stories to tell, but they'll probably have to wait until we're back in Utah. Although I do currently have time to kill...the baby's sleeping and we'll likely be waiting for our plane for a long, long time still...we'll see what I can get started.

I'm so excited to be going home. Is that weird? Yes, I enjoyed our vacation, but traveling with the baby is stressful (although he was an angel and everyone on the cruise oohed all over him the whole time). I'm excited for Caleb to have his own room again, to get back into a routine of when he eats and sleeps, and to not have to spend naptime in the dark. And even more than that, I'm excited for my body to finally stop swaying. (It hasn't stopped yet though, and we got off the boat six or seven hours ago.)

Anyway, just a teaser of a photo for you. More to come...eventually.

Bon Voyage!

Here's Caleb looking out the window on our cruise ship. See you in another week!

Art Project

I've been trying to convince Brandon to apply to the photography program at BYU. As much as I love taking pictures, I think it would be so cool to have someone in the family actually know what they are doing with a camera.

The other day, while I was out and Caleb was napping, Brandon was photographing an artistic representation of our lives. When I came home and the baby woke up, I of course had to butt in on his project, since I figure everything is cuter with the baby involved.

Caleb was thrilled by the art project.

Obviously because art is totally cool.

And he could help with the artistic chaos of it all.

Did I mention it was edible? Such a cute baby.

Happy Love!

Happy Valentine's Day! My friend Jocelyn made me this cute little guy for Valentine's (or was it Teak who made it?). Either way, it's super cute and my only present for the day, so I thought I'd post a picture of it. Thanks Jocelyn!

So you'll never believe what we did to celebrate the day. We went out without our baby! Can you believe it? It gets even better though. We left him when he was still awake and let Kaylynn put him to bed. It was the first time anyone besides us has put him to bed. Kaylynn said that he was good and that she didn't have any problems. And somehow, I managed not to freak out too much.

We went with our friends, Jacob and Cristal, to see Definitely, Maybe. It was a cute movie. A tad predictable, but cute. Kaylynn watches Mirra all the time, so Cristal kept reassuring me that Kaylynn was really good with babies and Caleb would be fine. Which he totally was.

Put us down for five times out without our baby now. We're really on a roll. That's once every other month, kind of.

Tomorrow we leave on our cruise. Well, we leave for the airport where we're taking a red eye flight to Florida where we'll eventually board the cruise sometime Saturday. I'm way stressed about it all. I tend to stress about things I don't know. I'm not worried about the cruise, since I've been on one before and pretty much know what to expect. But the traveling...there's a lot of details that haven't been worked out yet. I'm so not a go with the flow type of girl.

The Biting Begins

Caleb bit me for the first time tonight. Well, by first, I mean the first time since his tooth came in.

It started out as a kiss. Then he bit my lip. It hurt a great deal, but no blood at least. I like kisses. I don't like being bitten. (I know, how peculiar.)

Perhaps we waited too long to feed him dinner. Even though he wasn't fussing, he kept trying to eat my sweater. It's a pretty cute sweater, but I doubt the fuzz is any tastier than the other fuzz we keep around the house.

Trevor

Caleb's cousin Trevor came to stay with us for a day, along with Brandon's parents. I'm not really sure why they brought Trevor up with them (especially since Trevor's parents didn't get to come). They said something about wanting Trevor and Caleb to get to play together so they can be friends.

Yeah, Caleb doesn't do the friends thing very well.

He's getting better with Naomi, since he sees her a lot more than any other baby. My sister and her daughter Agnes are staying with my mom right now. Caleb and I were up there this weekend. Before they got there, Caleb played with all the toys and roamed happily around the playroom. After Agnes came, Caleb sat and watched her, fussing occasionally, and hardly touched a single toy.

He did a little better with Trevor today. But mostly, the boys didn't want anything to do with one another. Caleb did really like the legos box that Virginia sent up with Trevor's toys in it. Caleb liked taking the lid off and then putting it back on. He didn't actually want the toys inside. Just liked playing with the lid.

I tried to get a good picture of them together. Apparently, Trevor doesn't like the flash on the camera, and kept covering his eye. I think I got one picture without, but the one posted above is cuter.

I also go this cute picture of Trevor. Everyone says that he looks just like Nathan, but I think he is a splitting image of Virginia in this picture. There's just something about it that reminds me of her. Maybe it's the eyes.

While they were here, my mother in law commented several times that Caleb is almost as big as Trevor now (Trevor is nine months older). Caleb is still so little for his age, making Trevor actually quite a bit bigger still. But Brandon swears Caleb's grown a full inch since the last time he saw him (all of three days ago).

Daddy's Home

After several days apart from one another, Caleb is so happy to have his daddy back again. Daddy is his favorite person to play with and he's just all around happier and better behaved when Daddy is here with us.

Although, after several days without Daddy, Caleb is now liking his mommy again. But there definitely wasn't enough laughter in our lives while Brandon was in California.

Scary Duck Head

Since I'm not supposed to be lifting things heavier than my baby and I have to do crazy maneuvers to even pick Caleb up, Caleb and I are staying with my mom for a couple days while Brandon is in California.

Last night, he mashed banana in his hair (which isn't unusual behavior), so he had to have a bath. We usually bathe him every night, just so he knows it's bedtime, but wasn't going to worry about it while at my mom's. The banana insisted, so Caleb got to have a bath in my mom's nice huge bathtub. He cried the whole time. It was a very short bath.

Today, we bought him this inflatable duck tub, thinking that if he had his own little tub, like he does at home, that maybe he'd be okay. Once we were home (well, my mom's home) again, I blew up the tub. Sitting in the middle of the living room, I put Caleb in the duck. Instant tears. In the middle of the living room, with no water in sight, and all his clothes still on.

I didn't let the tears deter me. After all, I'd expelled a lot of air getting that thing to fully inflate. So Caleb got his bath. Apparently, the bath part wasn't scary. It was the duck's head. If Caleb could see the back of the duck's head, he'd start to cry. If I covered it, with my legs, or with the washcloth like in the picture, he was just fine.

What a silly baby.

Eating out

His first chicken nuggets. He seems to like them.

Sweet Dreams

Bed time is becoming one of my favorite times. We have a pretty good routine going these days, and I just love spending these moments with my son.

Okay, bath time isn't necessarily my favorite part, and I sometimes pass this one off to Brandon. But the rest of it, I cherish, and always insist that I put Caleb to bed. We read scriptures (Caleb's baby version), have family prayers, then turn out the lights and rock in the chair together while I sing to the baby.

Lately though, Caleb's started singing along. It's so cute. Sometimes it's hard for me to keep singing, I just want to laugh at how cute he is.

Most nights, Caleb falls asleep in my arms. On the nights that he doesn't, I put him in his bed awake and he rarely cries. When he does cry, it's not for long. But most nights, when he falls asleep in my arms, I have such a hard time putting him down in his crib. I just want to hold him and hold him and hold him. A couple times, Brandon's come in to Caleb's room wondering if everything's okay because I've been in there so long. But I just can't help myself. My baby isn't going to be a baby much longer and I want to soak up every precious moment I can.


Not the best picture... but Caleb's cutest smiles usually end up a little blurry.

Killing Mommy

Caleb went with me to the doctor's today. It was kind of fun, since I had the same doctor that Caleb normally sees. Caleb just stared at him in awe the whole time, not really sure why the doctor wasn't paying as much attention to Caleb as he normally does.

We went because I've been having this tingling in my foot for a long while now. It feels the way your foot/leg feels when it's fallen asleep and then is waking up again. That sort of tingling. Well, lately, I've been feeling it all the way up my leg, so I figured I needed to get it checked out. The doctor thinks I have sciatica, which means the sciatic nerve in my lower back is pinched or something and is effecting the rest of the nerve all the way down my leg. The fact that it's gotten progressively worse means that if worse comes to even worse, I'll have to have surgery on my back to get it fixed. We're hoping it doesn't come to that. In the meantime though, I'm not supposed to lift my baby. I'm allowed to carry him, but lifting is bad.

This is the third disease I've been diagnosed with that I've been told not to lift my baby. Seriously. I don't know how they expect me to not lift him. But, we really do like the doctor we saw today, and he gave me detailed instructions on how to pick Caleb up without really lifting him. We'll see how it goes.

While we were at the health center, I thought it would be fun to see how much Caleb has grown. He weighed in at a whopping 20 pounds 4 ounces! But that was with all his clothes on, including a sweatshirt and a poopy diaper. So who knows how much he actually weighs. But he's roughly 28 3/4 inches long (I say roughly because he's really very squirmy), which, according to a growth calculator I found online, puts him in the 41st percentile for height. Way to go baby! In fact, we were babysitting Naomi earlier today and we think Caleb might be just a smidgen taller.

Speaking of Naomi, it turns out that it's not just my own baby that doesn't like me anymore. Naomi wanted Brandon the entire time she was here (until her mom got back). When Brandon left the room, she started crying. I'm starting to get a complex. Why don't babies like me? I'm fun. And nice. And I don't smell bad. What else could a baby really be looking for in a person? And I feed them. That should totally seal the deal.

Oh, I just remembered. The last time we were in St. George, my nephew Trevor, sat in my lap and gave me hugs. So maybe there's hope. At least once my baby is a toddler. Maybe then he'll like me again. (But Caleb is good for me when Brandon's nowhere to be found, so it's still manageable.)

Happy New Moon!

I have a gadget on my google homepage that shows the current moon phase and noticed that it's a new moon today.

So, this one time, my sister and I threw a new moon party. Included in the night's festivities, we'd scheduled time to go outside and admire the new moon. Then someone had to tell us that there is no moon when there's a new moon. (Well, technically, there's always a moon. We just can't see it right now.)

Interesting the way life teaches you its lessons.

Growing Up

We're out of baby food (except for his rice cereal for breakfast) and haven't bothered to buy more since every day seems a bigger battle to try and get him to eat it. Which has actually turned into a greater challenge trying to find something that he will eat. He's good with bread; he loves cheese and bananas. Other than that, finding variety is tough.

But then, out of nowhere, he's eating big people food. Last week, I gave him some of my chicken tetrazinni and he ate it up. Noodles (which he never eats), chicken, even the mushrooms. He ate hamburger a day or two after that. Tonight, he ate minestrone soup (minus the liquid). He's doing so good eating. If only I was doing just as good cooking.

Tonight, Caleb and I had a lot of fun playing. He really likes to put things inside of things, or onto things, depending on what he has. Tonight, we were sitting on the floor together with his sippy cup. He was trying to put this circular block (with a hole in the middle) over the spout of the sippy cup. It didn't fit, so I gave him a teething duck with a hole in it that fit better. He kept putting it on the cup over and over. And when he didn't want to put it on the cup himself, he would hand it to me and I would put it on the cup. Ah, such fun.

His other fun game for the night was to put his block in my mouth, then stand up so he was the same height as I was sitting, and then put the other half of his block in his mouth. It's like the Lady and the Tramp spaghetti thing but with a little round block. Then we would both roar. He loved it.

He's so much fun and so super cute these days. Sometimes a pain, but still just the sweetest boy.

Where's the Sunshine?

I was just looking at the weather forecast for the next couple of days. You know how they give a high/low? Well, the low for Chino, CA is higher than the high for Provo every day.

It's times like this that I wonder why I live in Utah.

Monkey Bum

Don't those pockets just look like they were made for monkeys?