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.