brushing his teeth

i was in our bedroom folding clothes when i hear a strange sound coming from my closet. i knew caleb had crawled in that direction, but this sound was one he hadn't made before. it was a sort of buzzing. not unhappy, but not particularly excited, either. what could he be up to? i went to find out.
my adorable little monster! he had found one of our extra sonicare toothbrush heads and had put it in his mouth. the sounds, of course, was him brushing his teeth.
that's when i decided to go ahead and get him his own little toothbrush. we brush his teeth every morning after breakfast and every evening before bed. first, he opens his mouth and i brush a bit, then he gets his turn. sometime we even make the tooth-brushing noise. and at the end, we always have to lean over the sink and spit! have i mentioned he's adorable?

first steps

caleb has taken his first steps! woo-hoo. they were relatively unstable and resulted in falling down, but i am so proud of him!!

imagination

i love to watch caleb's imagination grow. it seems to come out most clearly in the kitchen. last night, for example, i decided to make some chocolate pudding to celebrate the premiere of survivor (which, turns out, was moved to next week. total disappointment!). but what was caleb to do? i pulled out a metal bowl and a wooden spoon, showing him how to make an awesome "gong" sound.



next thing i know, i see him stirring the spoon around the bowl, stopping every so often to "taste" his masterpiece. maybe he'll grow up to be a chef. or at least love cooking like his daddy.

because sometimes when you take a good picture, you just want to show it off

we went to the zoo. i took this picture. i love it.

first tower

this is caleb's first "all by himself" tower. he built it on the rubble of one of my towers. just like seattle. sort of.

the blocks were our birthday gift to him. they are these wonderful foam blocks. bite-proof... very important. and neighbor-proof... even more important. right now he's still mostly interested in knocking down our towers. which is funny since he loves to build towers out of everything else. food, toys, diapers, stuffed animals, etc. but he'll get there.

girl's night

there is so much in my life for which to be thankful. today, though, i'm thinking of a few in specific.

i'm thankful for four beautiful (inside and out) women: annie, lexi, marcy, and marilee.

i'm thankful for sons who slept (or at least pretended to sleep) long enough for us to get away and for husbands who stayed home with them because they know it's important for us to have nights out.

i'm thankful that the five of us were put in the same issaquah group even though really only three of us live in issaquah and so probably shouldn't have been so blessed.

i'm thankful that at least one of us had the foresight to bring a camera.

most of all, i'm thankful for the One who connects us.

now, anyone else need a nap?

how caleb feels about weaning

notice the tear and runny nose and red puffy eyes. enough said.

weaning...

i'm weaning. as of today. yesterday i nursed caleb four times. today, three. i think it was harder for me than for him. of course. should have known. i'll stick with this 3x a day routine for a week or two. and then we'll go down to two.

will he ever stop growing up?

trip to the zoo

(mountain) lions, (sleeping) tigers, and (bronze) bears... oh my! yesterday we took caleb to the zoo. it was a small zoo, but the size was perfect to fit in to the space between his two naps. the best part for me was seeing all the macaws out and about where i could have just reached out and touched them. the best part for caleb, i think, was seeing all the bronze statues of animals spread throughout the zoo. he played with the bear and the giraffe mostly.

the size of the zoo lent itself to a few funny moments. the map, for example... it had a "you are here" star. but the point of a map is that we could find where we were while moving around. fortunately, the zoo was so small, the star was never really too far off! also, things were labeled as "the world of camelids" as represented by alpacas... four of them. and the "world of macropods" as represented by one wallaby. :)

i think we'll definitely go back. the good thing about the size is that we could see everything very easily. and it would be fun to sort of get to know a couple of the animals. i can see it being a place where caleb would have a favorite lemur or parrot or something. and we could go visit every week. i think we would like that.

three cute stories...

1. caleb can dance. he dances while standing up. he bounces his knees or shifts his weight from foot to foot in differing rhythms. and only to music. it's adorable!

2. caleb and i were cleaning up a few things in my bedroom when he spotted a picture of troy and i. he looked, pointed, and said, "DADDY!". he sure loves his daddy (unless, of course, his daddy tries to take him away from me).

3. apparently, caleb cares about fairness. the other day he was playing near the bookcase. when i looked over again, he had pulled off one book from each of 6 shelves. he was being very particular about which books he wanted and making sure to only get one from each. funny boy.

special lunch

even though caleb's party wasn't going to be until the 31st, i wanted to something special for caleb's actual birthday. so, that morning, i took him to his favorite toy store where we played with the trains, balls, beads, and stuffed animals.

it gets even better...

for lunch, we went to jamba juice! yum!

birthday boy

a little over a year ago i was having one of the worst days of my life (august 29th... the day i was introduced to pitocin) and one of the best days of my life (august 30th... the day i was introduced to my son).


what a year. he has learned so much, grown so much, changed so much. so have i.


and this weekend we got to celebrate him! some family was in town for the party which made the celebration seem more real. some friends also came by and i think caleb enjoyed seeing so many of his favorite people all in a room together. we had cake, balloons, a great time!

happy birthday, my little monster.