spelling vs reading

rumor has it that good readers are good spellers. that is not true for me. i love to read and read a lot, but i am a horrendous speller. i think the disconnected started when i was very young. my parents tell the story of when i was 3 or so and would get into the playpen with my sister, Hanell, to read to her. we had a book that had animal pictures in it. i always used to read the letters and then the word. "P-U-P-P-Y... DOG!"

i'm afraid caleb will have the same issue. the other day, we were playing with stamps. he has a stamp from gram that says HUGS that we were using. and he was reading it to me, "H-U-G-S... SNUGGLES!"

i love that boy!

bedtime conversations

most nights, troy puts caleb to bed while i take care of ali. but on monday and wednesday evenings, troy has class and i'm in charge of both of them. i let caleb play with my iphone while i put ali to sleep and then i get to hang out with him.

after we read a couple of books and brush teeth, we make our way to his room and read his Bible. then i turn off the lights, pick him up, sit on the rocking chair, and then we have the greatest conversations. monday, it was about what's real and what's pretend. we talked about micky mouse, buzz lightyear and woody. we talked about how pretend things are fun, but what we really love are the things that are real: family members, friends, etc.

tonight we talked about heaven. he was telling me that God lives in heaven. he wanted to know what heaven was like and i told him that everything that was the best was in heaven. i asked what he thought would be there. here are some things he mentioned: lots of cool toys, chocolate cow milk, cold chai tea, chocolate candies, brownies, and mommy and daddy. sounds great, huh? then i told him the best thing about heaven was that Jesus was there and we would get to see Him. caleb was so excited about that. he told me that he wanted to go drive to heaven and see Jesus. me too! when the time comes, we'll be called home and i can't wait!

kids' names

following in jessi's footsteps, here's a blog about how we arrived at our kids' names.

Caleb Alan

before we had kids, we talked about naming a son zachary alan. we knew we wanted alan as a middle name because it's troy's dad's name and he had always wanted to name a son after his dad. and zachary just sounded good with alan. but then troy told a couple of people what we

were thinking and i just have this thing about keeping it to ourselves until we're really sure. and the more people talked about our "someday kid" named zachary alan, the more i became convinced that that's not what i wanted. so then finally we were pregnant and i was pretty sure we were having a boy. and somehow, i just wanted the name caleb. i love the story of caleb in

the Bible and i love that he is described as loyal to God. we talked about a few other names, too, but i distinctly remember one time, a few days before our ultrasound, driving home in the car and saying, "ok, if we are having a boy, his name is caleb alan." so the day of the ultrasound, we called all our family and shared with them the excitement of our little caleb alan!

Alia Marie

oh girls' names. so much harder for us. troy loved the name abigail, and calling her abby, but as a teacher i had had a few negative run-ins with abigails. plus, my cousin has a daughter named abigail. and then troy liked the nickname allie, so he thought maybe naming her allison. which is a beautiful name, but also my maiden name and i wasn't quite removed enough from it to do that. plus, i knew the middle name would be marie because it was my grandma's, my mom's, and my middle name. and to go from lauren marie allison to having a daughter named allison marie, was a little strange. so at one point, when i was pregnant with caleb, troy said, "let's just name a girl alia and call her ali." but he was mostly kidding because he thought he had made up the name and wanted something that had more meaning behind it. every once in a while, when we would talk about future kid names, i would bring up alia marie (because i loved it) and he would sort of just shrug it off. fast forward a couple of years and we're pregnant with ali. we went into the ultrasound with a couple of options (of which alia was not one) and we find out we're having a girl. our top choice for name began with a "P" (and i'm not mentioning it because we might use it later and if i share it, i'll start not liking it). but think about the initials P. M. S. yikes. i actually asked the ultrasound tech what she thought of a girl with those initials. she said it was up to me, but she wouldn't do it. bummer. so, we're in the car, after the ultrasound, and wanting to call our families with the news... and a name. so i again mention alia and ask troy to look it up on the computer to see if it is actually a name and what the meaning is. and he does. and we fall in love with it! the name means "my God is Yahweh" or "Yahweh is God". beautiful... and just what we pray for our precious girl. more on the name here.

christmas dates

this year troy and i took the kids on christmas dates! troy bought ali a beautiful little christmas dress and they went to cucina cucina and then out to barnes & noble where they looked at books together. unfortunately they had lousy service at cucina cucina, but it's pretty fun that that's where he took her on their first christmas date since that's where he took me for our first ever date.

caleb and i got all dressed up and we went out to red robin. caleb had the mac 'n' cheese and i had my favorite crispy chicken tender salad. we then split a milkshake! our server was great and kept calling it a date and treated us super well. then caleb had pretty much the whole restaurant watching as he conversed with "Red" the mascot. they talked about their differing shoe sizes (huge and little) and the color of their legs (yellow and normal) and the fact that they were both super ticklish!

it was such a nice and special evening and i'm already looking forward to next year!

recipes by chef caleb

1. cinnamon (best if made in the bathtub)

• one cup water
• one cup "oil"
• mix

2. ice cream

• two special doggies
• two duplos
• one purple silk flower
• mix using a water bottle

3. cranberry muffins

• make ice cream (see recipe above)
• add two stuffed giraffes and a toy elephant
• mix again (still using water bottle)
• bake
• don't forget to blow on them or you might "burn mouth"

to get to the other side...

before nap the other day, i asked caleb if i could kiss his cheek. he said no. i kept asking...

can i kiss your head?

no

can i kiss your nose?

no

can i kiss your feet?

no

finally, i gave up and asked, "well, what can i kiss?!" he replied, "NOTHING!" i laughed so hard and couldn't wait to tell troy the cute story.

so then the next day i said, "caleb, can i kiss your cheek?" to which he answerer, "NOTHING!"

apparently, the punch line is all that really matters :) he'll be one of those kids who comes up to people saying, "hey, i have a joke... TO GET TO THE OTHER SIDE... ha ha"

keep working on that comedic timing, kiddo!

salmon

a few days ago, i took caleb and ali to see the salmon run. if you've never seen it, it's one of those things that's pretty cool to learn about and way way cooler to get to see. we went last year, too, but caleb was not nearly as interested so it was really more about me and getting out somewhere. this year, though, he thought it was amazing!

it was funny getting to see the big ones up close. he looked at me and said, "fish cute??" in this questioning voice like he knew "cute" was not the word he was looking for. then he changed his mind and said, "fish weird??" again, not quite the right word. so i suggested, "ugly fish!" he looked at me and seconded, "SUPER ugly fish!"

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!

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.

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 :)

sweetheart

caleb is going to be such a good husband someday (and, in the meantime, a great son and brother). today, he and his nana walked to starbucks where he asked to buy me a scone (he wanted a chocolate one but since they don't make those he settled on cranberry... good choice!). then, we he got home, he walked in the door saying "Hi Mommy!" when i came over to greet him, he said "Mommy, cute shirt." love him!!

chocolate brownie

at our favorite zoo, there are four alpacas that we feed every time we go. actually, we just feed two of them because the other two are in a separate pen and one of them likes to spit so we avoid that area! anyway, the two we feed are named Biff and Charlie Brown. but caleb doesn't call the second one charlie brown, he calls him "chocolate brownie." he's so set on this, for some reason, that once when i said "sorry charlie" to him, he replied back with "sorry chocolate brownie!"

opposites attract

at least for caleb they do. he is really interested in opposites right now. his first introduction to opposites was big and little. we started talking about it by making "great big giant" balls of playdough and "little tiny baby" balls of playdough. and then we had "great big giant" dog stuffed animals and "little tiny baby" dog stuffed animals. for a while, he wouldn't even say "big", he would just make some growling, "great big giant" sound. now's he's starting to branch out to explore other opposites...
tight and loose: we talk about this when getting into his car seat. i'll pull the seat belt tight and then way loose. back and forth. it was fun and he learned tight and loose all right... but now every time he gets into his seat, he complains that it is "tight". i'm creating a monster!
loud and quiet: i read in a book (or maybe i saw it on tv) that the best way to teach a dog to be quiet is to teach them the command "speak". then they just start barking when told to bark. anyway, caleb learned loud and quiet in a similar way... playing the drums (aka hitting a pillow with lincoln logs). he was banging too loudly so we taught him how to play loud and quiet. it's cute now to watch him see just how quiet he can be. of course, he still prefers loud.
over and under: i think caleb's gram taught him this one by helping him step over a blanket. for a while he then wanted to put everything on the ground and step over it. and under is an easy one... what little boy doesn't drive cars under tunnels made of blocks?
off and on: actually, maybe this was caleb's first opposite. off was one of his first words. we must have spent hours with him laying on his changing table and asking for the light switch "ott" and "on".
there are probably more, but that's all i have for right now...

mommy's belly

caleb loves talking about my big baby belly. recently he's been interested in measuring it with his little elephant tape measure (just like the one my midwives use!). one day he measured the table and it was "3...4". then he measured my belly, "5...6". so apparently my tummy is bigger than a coffee table. i mean, i knew i was big, but furniture big?! then later, when i asked him how big mommy's belly is, he replied, "13!!", which is the biggest number he knows :) that's like a kindergartner saying "1 million" or a smart alec kid saying "infinity plus 1".

caleb's also been fascinated recently by my belly button. at first, he was a little unsure why it looked so different from what he thought a belly button should look like. so i explained that ali makes my belly and belly button look different, a little funny. so now he calls my belly button an "ali button".

caleb and ali

i know that caleb doesn't really get that the "baby ali" he loves so much now will be an actual crying, eating, taking time from mommy, baby. but it's still cute to watch him develop a relationship with her.

• he love to sing about her in "He's got the whole world in His hands."
• he wants to put lotion on her every day. while he rubs lotion on my tummy, he makes her talk to him. she often says "thank you caleb", "more lotion please", or "nice gentle hands". it's freakin' adorable.
• he talks about reading her the "oops book" (blue hat, green hat).
• today at bella materna, he talked about buying clothes to help "mommy feed ali".
• every time we get in the car, he gets re-excited about "caleb sit ali car seat" or "ali seat belt, caleb seat belt, yeah" since her car seat was just installed a few days ago.

i look forward to watching this special relationship between them develop more and more.

concept of numbers

i think caleb's starting to get the idea of numbers meaning amount. he's been counting for a while... he's pretty good up to 10... but this week he started showing a deeper level of understanding. in the past, when he hasn't wanted to be done with something fun, he's asked for "one minute" or "one time" (one more time). often we grant this request. but this week, he's gotten smart. now he'll ask for "three minute" or "two time". time to start the negotiations :)

progression of the alphabet

i wanted to get this recorded because i know i'll forget as time goes along...
1. A...B...C...
2. A...B...C...D...
3. A...B...C...D...P...Q...X...Y...Z
4. A...B...C...D...O...O...O...P...Qs...Rs...W(pronounced "double")...X...Y...Z

more to come, i'm sure