all good things must come to an end

i was just standing in the hallway, holding alia and minding my own business when, all of a sudden, i hear caleb running and yelling, "TWO DOGGIES!" oh no. see, caleb has "special doggie", a little lovey that he hates to be without. but what he doesn't know... sorry, didn't know... was that there were actually two of them. that way we were safe to wash doggie and there would be no freaking out if one got left somewhere. as of today, however, he has two doggies. i think what happened was that #2 (as we call the hidden one) was with the clothes in the dryer that i then put on the bed when i needed to switch laundry. and then caleb went into our room and now life will never be the same.

his excitement was through the roof. here's part of what he said, "two doggies... same same... two tags... two doggie tags... two special doggies... caleb have two doggies... two doggies same... two doggies on head... two doggies sungle (snuggle)... two doggies sleep... two doggies!!" so now what? i can't take it away. oh well, it was good while it lasted!

two funny stories

i just love all the funny things caleb says. and i need to get better and writing them down. so, here we go:

1. the other day we were talking about "owl", which is what caleb calls his grandpa al. we told him that grandpa's name was "alan" just like caleb's middle name. caleb alan, grandpa al. caleb looked at us a while (i didn't really think he understood) and then said, "same, same... caleb and grandpa caleb". almost buddy!

2. caleb loves those bunny snacks. you know, the ones that are like goldfish crackers only taste better and are (slightly) better for you. he loves calling them "honey bunny" and "yummy bunny" because they rhyme. so, the other day we were talking about all the words that rhymed with bunny (honey, funny, runny, sunny, etc). he decided to give it a try and came up with "dog bunny!" then he started laughing as though he knew it wasn't right, but liked it anyway.

inflexible

i've often been a bit disappointed by how inflexible caleb is, at least in regards to sleeping and daily routines. he likes to be in his bed, with the lights off and no noise around. he likes to go to bed at his bedtime after having followed the usual routine of bath, pajamas, books, brushing teeth, reading the Bible, praying, and singing a song. now that he's older, he's ok with skipping a part of the routine as long as he's been warned ahead of time (for example, "caleb, tonight we're not going to take a bath, we're just going to go straight to brushing your teeth"). i was thinking that having another baby it was going to be so nice and different to have one more flexible than caleb (because, in my mind, the only direction she could go was more flexible). oy.

alia is anything but flexible! actually, during the day she's great... naps in the ergo, etc. but at night time, man oh man! she HAS to go to bed when she wants to go to bed, which is somewhere between 6:30 and 7:30pm. miss it and the whole complex is in trouble. last night, for example. we went to community group and she fell asleep right around 7:30. now, on a normal night, she would keep sleeping, i would dream-feed her at 10:30ish (a feeding while she's still asleep) and then she sleeps until about 4ish and then again until 7:30 or so. but not last night. we had to do the unthinkable last night... put her in her car seat (which, in case i haven't mentioned, she hates). so then we get home and spend the next 1.5 hours trying to get her back to sleep. oh my poor inflexible children... and their parents!

run-on words

a run-on word is two words that are strung together as one word with one meaning. caleb has a lot of these. some examples:
feedyou: nursing... "mommy feedyou ali"
holdyou: pick up... "mommy holdyou caleb"
effway: this way... "please walk effway"
getchoo: get you... "bees no getchoo caleb"
mommycomy: come here mom... "mommycomy holdyou caleb please"

you get the idea :)

complements

today ali got a special gift in the mail. robeez! and not just any ones, these ones!

and as soon as caleb saw them he took them over to her and said, "Ali have pretty shoes!" his wife will be so lucky!

button holes

uh-oh. caleb learned about button holes yesterday. why is that a problem, you ask? because now he likes them... a lot. so last night he did not want to wear a normal pajama shirt. no way! (which is something he's been saying a lot lately, by the way... we're trying to redirect him to saying "no thank you") fortunately i was able to find a shirt other than his long-sleeve polo shirt! and today he did not want to take the shirt off so most of the day, he kept pointing out that he had button holes on his shirt. i hope he moves on quickly from this because we're going to run out of button shirts soon!

fear

recently, fear has entered caleb's life. and i don't know why. he's afraid of some things that i can sort of understand: the car wash, bees, etc. and other things that i don't understand: dogs, ducks, bumpy streets, etc. i can't blame the fears on bad experiences because (other than the car wash) he hasn't had any bad experiences. one of my friends suggested that this age is when so much of their imagination develops and so that is affecting his view of things. this could definitely be the case.
but no matter why this is happening, i'm just praying that God would give me wisdom to help caleb not be frozen by his fear. that i could teach him about faith and courage. and that when he runs to me in fear, i could point him to the One whose perfect loves drives away fear.

can't take the psych major out of me

i was sitting here thinking back over my day and some of the conversations i've had. and all of a sudden, i was struck with the urge to do a psychological study. i was thinking about love languages and specifically how they manifest themselves in kids and how much of them are based on nature and how much is influenced by their environment. one of my friends told me that her oldest definitely has the love language of quality time. and i was thinking that was showing up as caleb's #1 also. that got me thinking about birth order and love languages. i'm wondering if oldest children have a greater likelihood of having quality time as their top love language. i wonder if this has to do with all the alone time they had with their parent(s) at the very beginning of their lives. i'm a firstborn, and my #1 love language is quality time (although i have a hard time having quality time unless i'm also getting some "quantity" time... like, i need to spend time with people in order to let them get close to me... but anyway...)
so, if you know your love language, i would love if you would leave a comment with what it is and also what your birth order is. now that i'm not in college, i'm not going to do a full-on study (obviously) but i'm just so curious...

what's that taste?

one of caleb's latest things is that things can taste "weird". like soggy cereal. or pure rice milk. so now we only give a little cereal at a time so it doesn't have time to get "wierd". and we mix rice milk with goat milk. oh the little things :)