Sink baths and Blow pops

July 23rd-29th, 2012

Yummy string cheese

Whenever Caleb wants to go outside, he goes and stands by the door and looks out the the little window next to the door. Then looks and me and grunts. He does the same thing with the vacuum . . . he crawls up the vacuum and pulls himself to a stand holding onto it and grunts, begging me to come vacuum. He only knocked it over once but managed to not hurt himself.

He did have his hardest fall yet on Friday, when he was drumming on the toilet lid and decided to try walking on his own to me, outside the bathroom. He hit the corner of the wall and then the floor, both of which left pretty good marks on the side of his face.

This week Caleb tried climbing the stairs and succeeded on his first try... Uh oh . . .

He's willing to try more foods and loves fish with rice-a-roni, blackened chicken, grapes and yogurt, but surprisingly does not like baked potatoes. He likes feeding himself, which is very messy so he is still taking a sink bath at least once a day, except this week he climbed out of it. I've been trying to make sure he gets more fruits and veggies, which means Allen and I are eating more of them too.

He loves sink baths!

Anything left in the other sink or nearby on the counter are quickly grabbed to be used as bath toys.

One day this week he figured out how to use the sprayer. He got himself right in the face the first time he did it. It was hilarious!

The doctor said to not give Caleb straight apple juice since he needs the calories/nutrients in formula or breast milk. But he won't take either. So, I've started mixing apple juice with formula. It smells and looks disgusting since something in the apple juice separates the formula and it just looks like apple juice with tons of floaties. He'll drink a little bit of it though.

One night his week it was a little cooler so we went running with dad after work. While we were getting dressed, Caleb found a blow pop from his friend Luke's first birthday party. We let him play/suck on it with the wrapper on and after we were outside I just helped him pull the wrapper down since he was working so hard to get it off.

By the time we got home from our run, he was all the way down to the gum. No more hard candy left on that blow pop!

We've still been going to the swimming pool every afternoon. Caleb loves when there are lots of kids there, he likes to follow them around and watch them. One day this week he was following these 9-11 year-old girls around the spray park part of our pool. Whenever they would look his way, he would give them a huge smile.

A couple of days later, they were at the pool again. One of them swam by us and Caleb again started smiling at her. She quickly yelled to her sister, "Hey! Come over here! It's the cute little boy that was flirting with us last time!" 

Caleb likes to play with his floatie more outside of the pool than in it. 

One day I was going swimming with my friend Cathryn and her baby Luke. They were coming to pick us up and I got Caleb changed into swim diaper. Rather than putting him into a disposable swim diaper, I put him in his reusable one . . . that one isn't very absorbent and I put him into it too soon.

Caleb was looking out of the window to go outside and pretty soon he slipped. I couldn't figure out how the puddle of water was there, and then it hit me . . . it was not water. He had peed and he slipped in his puddle of pee on our tile floor.

He's teething again, which means mouth rubbing and ear pulling.

While on Skype with my family Caleb started to blow raspberries on our ottoman. He did on accident the first time and then thought it was funny. So did I. So he kept doing it and laughing afterward.

Caleb still loves to play the piano.

One night Caleb slept from 7:45-5:15! 9 1/2 hrs straight! I should have gone to bed when he did.

Another night I had a lot of tummy pains. Allen was so nice, he bathed caleb, put his pjs on and did almost all the dinner cleanup!

We had a lazy Saturday but they weren't really showing any good Olympic stuff on TV so we finished watching season two of Downton Abbey.  

9 Month Check-up

July 16-22, 2012

This is how Caleb looks when he's yell-talking: "baa baa baa baa" or just "aaaaaaaahh"

Our little explorer loves banging on the toilet lid and tried climbing into dresser drawer and up the dresser. I always have to remember to close the dresser drawers and the toilet lid. He also loves jumping in his crib while holding onto the rail. I need to lower the mattress. 

He also loves to dump out the trash in the bathroom. One day I found him chewing on a used Q-tip ... sick.

Monday he didn't nap once all day. He fussed anytime we were home. He was happy when we went on a run, to the pool, to Walmart, and to the church to play with Cathryn and Luke in the nursery. But as soon as we got home, he would cry and yell. It was our first time to the pool in over a week because of all of the rain.

 Tuesday was Caleb's 9 month doctor appointment. He didn't get upset at all when the nurse pricked his finger prick and drew blood from it to fill a couple of little vials. In fact, he kept smiling, talking and flirting with the nurse and she input his weight wrong and forgot to enter head circumference. The doctor was confused when she came in. I just gave her the right numbers and laughed.

He loves the swing

Here are his stats: Height - 29.25" (79%)  Weight - 18 lb 12 oz (19%)  Head circ - 18.75" (96%)
The verdict: he's still tall, skinny, with a large head.

The doctor seemed concerned he isn't clapping or waving and says we need to make sure he's communicating with his hands. I'm not worried at all. He plays games with his hands and has good manual dexterity. He also understands and responds to certain words: jump, kick, gentle, milk, food, more, outside, all done, up, sleep, bath. If we aren't sure what he wants, we will go through the list and he uses his "excited hands" to let us know when we've guessed right. He's got a suck that shows he wants milk (to nurse), a different one to indicate that he wants a drink (apple juice), and he reaches for whatever food he wants.

She also said he is anemic. She said I have to give him iron, but it makes him constipated. So she gave us anticonstipation medicine but that makes his tummy hurt. She also gave the okay to eat all foods, unless it's something he'll choke on.

I told her I thought my milk supply was starting to dwindle and she told me I need to gain weight. She told me to eat ice cream and pizza and to share it with Caleb since she says he could use some weight gain too. I told her that I do eat ice cream almost every day. I'm not sure if she believed me. It's mentally harder to gain weight than it is physically, especially since I'm back to a healthy weight for me (after being too skinny when Caleb couldn't have dairy). Anyway... Caleb won't take a bottle but we're going to try to get him to use a sippy cup more and start supplementing him with formula.

He still loves to read his books.

Friday night we had about a dozen 8-11 year-old girls over to our house for an activity days "slumber party". Everyone wore their PJs, we ate pancakes (The girls loved that, especially since they could put strawberries, whipped cream, powdered sugar and chocolate syrup on them.), sang karaoke, painted fingernails/toenails (only ruined our kitchen table a little bit), and played Twister. After a couple of hours of that many little girls, I think Allen was re-thinking if he wants to have a daughter in the future. :) Just kidding! But it was exhausting. And loud.

Saturday we went to the park as a family. After swinging in the baby swing, Caleb took turns swinging on our laps. 

I've been running every day again and it feels good to not be a slacker anymore. I've also still been helping my friend with her back twice a week. Her teenage daughter plays with Caleb while I work on her back and this week she brought me cookies to say thank you for letting her play with Caleb and for helping with her mom's back. She is so sweet and so good with Caleb! He is such a momma's boy, he makes her work hard to entertain him enough to not come crawling to me.

I'm not sure what else happened during the week. It is all a blur, but I'm sure it was exciting, as usual.

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 . . .

Let Freedom Ring

Patriotic family picture on the fourth of July, with Caleb looking at Dad instead of the camera.

Allen trying to get Caleb to look at the camera . . . and we caught him mid-snap. We were literally rolling on the floor laughing when we saw the picture! We told Caleb we'd explain why it was so funny when he's older.

And then Caleb was done sitting and still was not going to look at the camera.

July 2-8, 2012
Bumbo fun this week:

-Caleb tipped it over on its side while reaching to get more puffs or his apple juice and bonked his head. 

-Caleb has figured out how to pull the tray off.

-He hits the tray and watches the food bounce off of it and laughs.

-He splashes in the spilled food on the tray and sticks his face in it.

Caleb is still as fascinated with hands as ever. He imitates how I make a fist, one time with the thumb out and the next time with his thumb in. He often grabs my hand to open and close it for me, alternating when he shoves my thumb in before closing my fist around it. I think he's going to be a hand surgeon if he keeps this up.

Caleb's hand fascination now.

Flashback to Caleb's hand fascination at 9 weeks old.

Flashback to Caleb's hand fascination at a few days old.

Top right picture: Flashback to hand fascination in the womb.

His new hand discovery of the week is that his fingers fit nicely up Mom and Dad's nostrils. He sneak attacks all the time too! You'll just be playing with him and then . . . BAM! you get hit with a sharp, pokey fingernail as high up your nostril as it can go, which is pretty far!

I think last week I wrote about how Caleb likes to push his forehead up against Allen's and my foreheads and then talk. This week he did it to himself in the mirror (sometimes hitting his head against the mirror harder than he anticipated, I think) and he also did it to Grammy on skype!

The fourth of July was different this year without family to celebrate with and since Allen ended up working 7 hours. He was supposed to have a half day on July 3rd, but that didn't happen either. We did watch half of Independence Day that night before we got too tired to stay up any later (it was probably only 10 pm). 

We're so patriotic . . .

. . . in our red, white and blues.

Luckily, when Caleb and I were on our morning walk on the 4th, my friend Cathryn was on her run and stopped to talk for a minute. When she heard we didn't really have any plans, she invited us over for their barbecue. Allen took a break from working around 1:30 pm, so we went to the pool for an hour before heading over to the barbecue. She had made tons of delicious food! I was so stuffed when we left . . . and she sent us home with lots of leftovers! Being with friends and eating good food made it seem more like a holiday than just any other day. 

Picture of what we made with the delicious leftover burger and bacon... mmm!

We had planned to go watch fireworks with some friends but Caleb was exhausted by 7 pm and wasn't going to last until they started at 9 pm. We heard the fireworks and went on our roof but couldn't see enough to make it worth staying up there, so we went back downstairs for Allen to work and me to input our budget info from June. Even though Allen had to work, it was still fun to have him work from home so we could spend time with him while he worked. 

Thursday morning Caleb decided he didn't want to nurse. Then again around noon, would not nurse. A few hours later, would not nurse. I went to activity days and he was happy to play on the floor, watching all of the girls do their skits. On the car ride home he was screaming and tired and hungry so I thought he would eat when we got home and fall asleep . . . no such luck! By that point, I was so full that I was hurting bad and having him just scream and fuss and not eat was frustrating. He eventually fell asleep but my pump does not suck as well as Caleb does. Dang nursing strike caused a plugged duct that was painful, red and swollen for the next few days. 

Luckily the next morning Caleb ended his nursing strike, but only when I would let him nurse sitting up all the way and would only nurse on the side with the plugged duct if I let him stand up. I did get a picture of that to show Allen but it is inappropriate for this G-rated blog. :)

It's not summer without delicious watermelon. Here is Caleb "eating" watermelon for the first time.

Caleb likes to be chased. He will crawl to the computer (because he knows I will come grab him before he gets to it) and when he gets close, will look back to see if I'm coming. If I'm coming to get him, he will turn back toward the computer and squeal as I get him. Sometimes when he sees Allen or I coming to get him, instead of running away, he crawls as quickly as he can toward us. 

Caleb likes to try everything, but as you may have seen in the video of the watermelon, he usually spits it out if it's a new texture. He only choked on the lettuce once in ten minutes of gnawing on it. 

On Saturday we went with the primary children from our church to perform a patriotic program at a senior center. The kids from our class did a great job singing Texas, Our Texas, with words that help indoctrinate the upcoming generations about the greatness of this great state and pass along the state pride. :) The old folks loved all of the cute kids and the songs, even the ones who only woke up for the finale.

Afterward Caleb, Allen and I went to a pool that we hadn't been to that was near the senior center. Here is a video of Caleb talking as he walks under the fountains. 

Caleb has been a talker for a while. He'll just talk and talk and talk, but almost always just vowels and gurgling. This week he perfected babababa. He usually says it with his tongue sticking out, so it's more of a bla-bla-bla, but still really cute. Except when it's really loud during the sacrament. And if I try to cover his mouth, he thinks that means keep making noise because at home I help him do a little indian (native american) yell, "ah-ah-ah-ah" by covering and then uncovering his mouth. (I was trying to be politically somewhat correct, but I think referring to that as an native american yell can probably be construed as racist anyway.) 

Anywho... so, when I cover his mouth, he doesn't know that it means be quiet. He thinks it means, yell louder! Oops. Unfortunately the binky was in the car (that's the usual plug to help him be quiet) and Allen had the car keys in his pocket on the stand, since he was the organist that day. Luckily, with a little bit of sign language, he knew to go get the binky from the car and come find me in the foyer after the sacrament was over.

In summary, Allen had a really busy work week, as can be seen by the fact that he worked full days on his day and a half off and during the weekend. This week I actually got to use some of my skills too! A woman in our ward hurt her back and had heard I could help. She came twice this week and we're making some headway on it.

This one may take a while since it has been hurting for several years and just recently got bad enough to go to the doctor, which she's been avoiding since she thought her only option would be back surgery and kept putting it off. This injury is requiring a lot of problem solving on my part, which is fun when we make progress. Her thirteen year-old daughter comes and plays with Caleb while I'm working on her mom's back. She is great with him! He, however, has been a momma's boy and keeps wanting me to hold him while he plays with her. This is very good for Caleb. He needs to be separated from me more. He does really well with other people if I'm out of sight, but if he can see me or hear me, he thinks he needs me.

One thing I forgot to mention last week: we were at the store and Caleb started fussing so I went to pull him out of the cart and he wasn't coming out. I looked down and he had some how gotten his leg in little slat next to the big leg hole! It took Allen and I close to a minute to maneuver his little leg out of there. I was just glad that Allen was there with me so I didn't have to ask a stranger to help me get Caleb out!