Chick-fil-A Fun

Some friends invited us to go to Chick-fil-A on Tuesday because there was going to be a party there. Caleb refers to the night as "Grace's friend-brother's party" of "Ben's birthday party" or "Grace's party." It was actually Ben's baseball team's party (and he's Grace's brother, in case there was confusion there, and Grace is one of the girls Caleb loves).

They had someone there who was doing balloon animals and face painting. With an entire baseball team (of mostly five year old boys), she was really making balloon swords with an occasional request for an animal by the sisters of the team members. Caleb got an orange sword, which came as absolutely no surprise to me.

Caleb had tons of fun playing with the other kids. He ate his dinner in a record amount of time -- I'm surprised he didn't choke on it -- so that he could go play with the rest of the kids. After being there a while, Grace's older sister decided she wanted a different balloon animal, so she got back in line. Caleb, who absolutely adores her, got in line with her hoping to get a black sword.

The line moved unbelievably slow, yet the kids persevered. When it was finally their turn at the front, the lady told them that they could only have one balloon animal, but they could have their face painted instead. Caleb was disappointed to not get his black sword. (They did leave their first balloons at the table with us while they were in line, so either the worker remembered their cute faces or asked them if they already got a balloon and they answered honestly.) When Ellie came back with a flower painted on her face, I couldn't help but recall when Caleb was 1 1/2 yrs old and we took him to a fair where there was face painting and I told the girl painting the kids not to even attempt painting his face because he would absolutely hate it, so instead she painted a little turtle on his leg. So then Caleb came back over to the table to show me the super fast skateboard he had painted on his arm. It was so funny to me that he didn't get his face painted.

Here he is when we got home, with all his goodies (in a pose he planned out in the car when I told him I wanted to take his picture once we got home):




And no, the purple princess bouncy ball isn't his. He borrowed it from Sophie when I made him leave his play date at her house and he was so upset to go. Apparently purple princess balls are a great consolation prize for having to leave a play date.

For Sophie

Last week, we went to the park with a bunch of the little girls in Caleb's preschool class (including several that are on his list of girls that he loves and wants to marry). There were five girls there and then Caleb. Because he was so badly outnumbered, of course it goes to figure that at one point one of the little girls said to him, "no boys allowed." She got put on the bad list (aka Caleb was no longer going to marry her).

Then at church on Sunday (the 15th), when I went to pick him up from his Sunbeams class, he was extremely upset because the girls weren't being nice to him. We get into the car and he is nearly in tears. I ask him what is wrong and he says "nobody loves me."

"That's not true. I love you more than anything. Who doesn't love you?"

"Sophie."

Apparently she told him he was being bad, which he admitted he was, but by telling him so, I guess that meant she didn't love him. (At this point in the story, I should probably tell you that Sophie was also the one that got put on the bad list after the park day.)

So Caleb and I had a long talk on the way home from church about what he could do so that Sophie would love him. I told him he could say nice things to her, and then proceeded to give him a long list of examples. His favorite was that she was creative. We then moved on to actions he could do. First up was being nice to her and never hitting or hurting her in any way. Then as my first example on nice actions we can do, I suggested making her cookies. He got so excited at the idea. He loves to make cookies and thought this was the most brilliant thing I have ever suggested to him.

Once we were home from church, we got started on the cookies. I planned on making oatmeal raisin since we had the stuff for it and I figured if we were giving the cookies away that I might as well make a kind that Caleb won't eat. (He only eats chocolate chip cookies. And only if they're soft.) The recipe on the opposite page was for Giant Oatmeal Raisin Confetti cookies, with m&ms in them. Caleb pointed to the picture and said that's what he wanted to make for Sophie. So that's what we made.

While we were waiting for the cookies to bake, we sat down to draw Sophie a picture. He drew a picture of him and Sophie holding hands. Then he wrote his name on it, and I told him how to spell Sophie's name and he wrote it perfectly. Then he was going to write friends on it, but ran out of room so he used a little creative interpretation on where the letters go. Apparently I need to work on my pronunciation more though, because as I told him how to spell friends, he wrote "friembs."

Finally, we got to take the goodies over to Sophie. He was so super excited about it. Here he is with his picture, outside of Sophie's house:



And her cookies, which he then made me carry since they were so heavy (they were giant cookies after all):


We practiced what he was going to say to her as we drove over to her house. But once we were there, he was too shy and had me say it instead. Well, I whispered loudly to him the words but he didn't repeat them and she heard me anyway. Here's what he wanted to say to her, "I like that you are so creative and I hope you'll be my friend." Her dad, who had been the one to answer the door, then asked her if she wanted to be Caleb's friend and she shyly nodded yes. Caleb was so super excited that she said yes.

He had two playdates with her this week and they both went so well he didn't want to leave. I'm pretty sure she's back on the good list. And I am definitely in trouble when this kid gets old enough to actually like girls.

Mother's Day

Mother's Day was great this year because I got to spend it with this cute boy:


He came home on Saturday, after spending the day with his dad, and gave me a card that he had made for me along with pages and pages and pages filled with orange scribbles. He had written down all the reasons he loves me. And even though there weren't any actually words, I was blown away by the number of pages he felt the need to fill. Just love that boy!

I decided to make roast for dinner since it has to be the absolute fanciest meal a person can make with the very least amount of effort. Then to our utter delight, my awesome visiting teachers/home teachers stopped by with some super yummy treats:


Here's Caleb's "that flash is really bright" smile:


And his "I moved closer to the pie, now are you done taking pictures yet" smile:


More fabulous treats (which Caleb could not be bothered to take a picture with due to his need to eat every last crumb of bread before Mommy could):



I just love his little attitude in the last picture, so I had to post it too. :)

I Still Love You...

Caleb was sitting on my bed playing his guitar and singing to me in hopes of coaxing me out of Sunday nap time.

His song: I still love you even though you're not pretty
Me: You still love me even though I'm not pretty?
Caleb: Yeah
Me: I'm not pretty?
Caleb: You are pretty right now. That's why I love you first. But then when you're not pretty, I still love you.

Um, thanks. I think.

We Need Boy Friends

Three nights ago, as Caleb and I were in the midst of the bedtime process, he said to me, "I'm in love with four girls." So I asked him who the four girls were. He held up a finger for each one as he counted, "Karen, Naomi, Grace." Then he realized that he'd only named three girls (one of which was his mommy) and looked to me for help in figuring out who the fourth girl is that he's in love with. So I named a couple girls that he knows. He then decided he loved them all and held up all ten of his fingers to show all the girls he loves. Included on the list of ten (though I'm not sure there were actually ten) was Nana and Mommy (again).

Then last night, as we're laying in bed, he tells me that tomorrow he's going to get married (meaning today now). He tells me that when he's big he's going to get married and live next to me but right now he's little and four so as a four boy he's going to marry Sophie, Grace, Naomi and Mommy.

"That's a lot of girls to marry," I told him. "I think you should only marry girls that are nice."

He decided that I still qualified for the list because I'm mostly nice and only sometimes mean.

Then he continued with his list, adding Camryn and Nana. (I feel like there were more but I don't remember them now and I just asked him again who he was going to marry and he didn't mention any more -- though he's rather into the idea of marrying Nana so that she'll have to come live with us.)

Apparently we have a lot of play dates with girls. When do girls get cooties? Because if he loves this many girls when he's four, how many is he going to love when he's fourteen?

Little Poser

In no particular order:













And yes, he thinks up these poses himself. I'm much more of the "smile and look at me" variety.

Happy Valentine's Day