Nose biting and standing in his crib

Allen is going to be at a work party until late tonight, Caleb's in bed, the kitchen is a disaster, there are lots of weeds to pull, laundry to do but I finally have a minute that I can blog so I'm going to try my best to ignore everything else and have some "me" time. We'll see how many weeks I can catch up on in the next hour or two!

Check on those sweet new kicks! And his tan legs.

July 9-15, 2012
Caleb has been getting a bath in sink after almost every meal because he is so covered in food. One day he pooped at the end of his meal, so I was just going to rinse his arms and face off in the sink before going to change his diaper. He had other plans... he wiggled out of my arms, right into the sink. So he had a bath in his clothes and dirty diaper for a few minutes until I thought the diaper was going to explode and cause a big mess.
The sink bath pictures are on my phone, which I haven't put on my computer in a long time, so normal bath pictures will have to work.

Caleb loves giving kisses and drools all over my face when he does. This week he started something new in addition to the drooly kisses: he distracts me with large amounts of drool in my mouth and eyes and when I least expect it, he bites my nose and laughs!

Allen had another busy work week. Monday night Caleb and I had to drive downtown late at night to pick him up. He probably doesn't want me to write this, but there was a lot of work stress/drama that was very frustrating for him, this week in particular. I don't like when Allen is unhappy with work . . . hopefully things will change as things slow down and everyone in the office is under less stress.

Caleb has been practicing kneeling in his crib and I think it is partly what is keeping him up when he wakes up at night. By Wednesday, he had progressed from kneeling in his crib to standing in it every time I went to get him out.

Chowing down on watermelon

We had some more Bumbo fun this week; Caleb flipped it all the way backwards during dinner. Allen was feeding Caleb and I was farther away but as soon as I saw him tipping, I made the loudest gasp (that scared everyone more than the actual flipover did) as I dove to try to save him. Allen grabbed the tray before I did so I don't even think Caleb's head hit the table, but it sure made my heart race.

It's hard to tell from his face, but he loves it.

The weather cooled down a lot this week with lots of storms so we didn't get to go to the pool. Our scheduled changed to inside while it rained, go on a walk during the break from the rain, more rain, another walk, rain, another walk, and more rain.

Caleb no longer crawls around us to get what he wants. He does a seal dive over us to get to whatever he wants... unless it's something he knows he isn't supposed to have. Then he tries his hardest to get around me without me noticing that he is going to get the computer cords or fan.

We bought a piano! We found a nice Yamaha Clavinova on Woodlands Online for a great price so we went to look at it on Saturday and ended up driving home with it since the guy selling it had a truck. Unfortunately it started downpouring on our way home. Allen and the piano seller guy had covered it with a tarp but the last half of the drive home, I was freaking out, thinking that we just bought a piano that would probably be broken by the time it got to our house!

We have to take turns playing . . .

. . .because we're all so excited to have a piano now!

Caleb loves playing! I just have to remind him that we don't play the piano with our feet.

We dried it off as well as we could and blew a fan on it for a couple of hours before plugging it in and it worked! We love having a piano in our home again! We had church song books but needed some other things to play so we bought a Disney book, Broadway book and book of piano classics. It felt great to just sit down and play.

Since the piano music store was right next to Famous Footwear, we went in to buy Caleb some shoes. And what beautiful shoes they are! We bought two pairs and I love them both! We bought one size 5 and the other size 6, since he doesn't need more than one pair now, but I couldn't pass up on either pair.

The new shoes. Just wait until you see the other pair, they are amazing.

On Saturday, for the first time in . . . probably 15 months . . . I went on a run by myself. (If you're doing the math, Caleb is only 9 months old but I couldn't run during most of the pregnancy.) I felt so free. I didn't have to push a stroller. I only ran 2.5-3 miles but I did a lot of sprints at the end and it felt sooo good! I also found an iPhone toward the beginning of the run and found the owner a few minutes later. It felt good to return that too. She was very grateful and it made me feel good.

So, Allen and I watched ESPN's 101 celebration fails and laughed through the whole thing. After it was over, I went to take a nap and Allen went in to the bathroom. The next thing I knew, Allen was flying through the air to bodyslam me, and it was like I was watching a replay of one of those celebration fails: I tried not to flinch so I wouldn't hurt him, but he landed with his quad directly on my bent knee and instead of a victorious body slam, he was rolling in pain from getting a dead leg. It was definitely more funny in person than me trying to recreate the moment here, but I wrote it to help me remember it and give me something to tease Allen about later.

Caleb likes exploring. Here are some pictures of him exploring things in our house.

Uh-oh! Don't look Mom, I'm not getting the blinds again.

Caleb's favorite game to play with Dad: he shoves his face into the mattress/pillow/couch/floor to hide from Dad. Then when Dad tickles him or kisses him, he squeals. Then he buries his face again for Dad to come get him again. It is really cute! I started filming too late so I missed getting the game on film, but I got some cute footage of Caleb laughing as Dad gives him wuzzles and kisses.

I think I wrote last week that I've been helping a friend from church with her back. This week she got her MRI results back and she does have a herniated disc, and has probably had it for the past seven years. This has made me think a lot about the mental aspect of pain and healing. She had been improving a lot and was feeling much better from the first time I saw her and gave her hope that she probably wouldn't have to have surgery.

Nothing changed in her routine, but over a two day period from when I saw her and she got her results and I saw her again, her condition was drastically different. She was back to very limited mobility, pain with all movement and even without any movement. By the end of our visit, she was hopeful again as I reassured her that she had been making such great progress and could probably avoid surgery. She can't get in to see a neurosurgeon for close to a month, so we made a goal to have her doing much better by the time she sees him, so he will hopefully recommend a non-surgical route. Hope brings pain relief and improvement, lack of hope brings fear and further disability . . .