perseverance is key

the first three times that caleb ate banana, he hated it. he wouldn't eat much, he would make gagging sounds/faces, and he would start fussing after only a few attempted bites. i just sort of accepted that he wouldn't like banana and so wasn't going to buy any more of them. but then my pediatrician said to keep trying foods at this age and my friend, janell, said that her son started liking avocado where at first he didn't. so, i decided to give it another try. and it's a good thing i did!! caleb loves banana!

the problem with caleb...

is that he's always been a good sleeper. because of this, i haven't really had to work on sleep training with him. he has a 45-minute sleep cycle so he will either sleep 45 minutes or 1.5 hours. but, since that's always how it's been for him, i've never really had to teach him to go back to sleep when he wakes up. this is a problem when he only sleeps for a short time because he thinks that whenever he wakes up, it's time to get up. like yesterday, after church, he actually fell asleep in the car on the way home (which never happens) and slept for about 15 minutes. but then, when we got home and he woke up, he did NOT want to go back to sleep because, in his mind, he had already taken a nap. it took a long time to get him to go to sleep but finally he did and he slept 1.5 hours and felt a lot better afterward... if only he could understand that we really do know what's best for him!

that's the last time caleb gets to read a blog!

a few days ago, janell posted a blog about jackson eating avocado and how he likes to try and "help" janell by grabbing the spoon and feeding himself. i thought it would be fun to show caleb pictures of his friend jackson, so i let him look at it with me. BIG MISTAKE! before that blog, caleb would just hold onto his bib or his high chair or reach toward my slippers. but now, he's decided that it would be fun to help me out, too. thanks jackson and janell... we owe you, big time :)

easily distracted... or obsessively focused...

sometimes caleb is so easily distracted, mostly when eating. for example, i can only get him to nurse if it's dark in the room, he's tired, and i play quiet music so that he doesn't hear the outside sounds. and try to feed him in another house, chair, etc... forget it! or, when he's eating solids and i'm wearing my fuzzy purple slippers, he will totally ignore the food and stare at my slippers. i guess he'll be like his dad who often forgets to eat because he's working on something.
but then there are times when caleb is so focused on something that it seems nothing will distract him. like the slippers... or trying to get to his dresser to chew on the knob. no toy will take his attention away from that dresser. i thought this was the time when i could easily redirect caleb's attention to something more productive. but when he gets something in his head, it's very difficult to change his mind! again, he gets that from his daddy.

the colorful faces of caleb

i love taking eating pictures of caleb. especially since all his foods are so colorful! first i had the avocado picture and now this one... sweet potato. he wasn't sure what exactly he thought of the sweet potato at first, but after a while he definitely warmed up to them. lucky for him he gets to eat them again today! if i were a scrapbooker (and recently i have wishing that i was) i would definitely have a page devoted to eating pictures with an emphasis on all the colors caleb wears on his face.

books books books

i love reading and i knew that when i had a baby i was going to be doing a lot of reading to him... and i do. i probably read caleb at least three books every day. sometimes we get through the whole book, other times we don't, but i just think it's important that from a young age he is being exposed to books and being read to. recently, he has discovered that he loves to flip pages. specifically, he loves to close the book after every page we read. it makes the reading harder, but i love seeing his little fingers grasp the pages! also, he now very obviously recognizes faces in books. his favorite pictures are not of animals or objects, no matter how colorful, his favorites are of people.

6 months old

well, caleb is 6 months old. he doesn't actually have a half birthday because of february being so short, but since we're not big into celebrating half birthday anyway, it's fine by us. i took caleb in for his check up yesterday. he's 19lbs 3oz (88%) and 28.25in (95%). he also has a very large head (96%) which the doctor blames for him not being able to sit up :) i got the go ahead to try and work dairy back into my diet and am really hopeful that this time caleb's digestive system will be able to handle it. it's been a long time since i had any ice cream and i've missed it so much! sorbet just doesn't cut it! i'm also going to be working on doing more solids with caleb... making some brown rice porridge and trying out other veggies and fruits. i can't believe that caleb is more than 1/2 way done with his first year of life. it still feels so new to me...