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!