6/18/12: "go!"

Callen repeated "Go!" today for the first time. :)

Last week, he ate a fruit leather from Whole Paycheck for the first time (I'd never been able to get him to eat those) and he ate one again today so yay for free things from the Kids Club at Whole Paycheck because I might never have known that he'd those. :)

5/11/12: ssss-balloon & pea up nose

Callen pulled out the kids' utensils drawer and is almost squatting over and over excitedly.  I said, "Do you want a spoon?" as I sign "spoon."  He signed "spoon."  I said "sssssssspoon."  He said "sssss" and then signed "balloon" (puts his hands to his mouth and blows).

Smart boy!!  ssssssssss + balloon = spoon  :)

In other news, Callen stuck a pea up his nose at lunch.  I would have never known, but Elodie told me.  I could barely see it up there so I pushed my finger on the bridge of his nose and it popped right out.  Gross!!

Friday, 3/30/12: Park & Blueberries

Today was another beautiful day. Our choke-cherry tree in the backyard is blooming and looks just gorgeous. Too bad it's only really pretty like three days out of the whole year. These photos really don't do them justice. They are so pink!!

So of course we had to take advantage of this beautiful weather. After doing Elodie's school (all our Bible memory verses and then our Bible story on self control and matching coloring page), we headed out for a trip to the park.

Check out little man in his shades! Too cute!!

It's harder than it looks to take a self-portrait while holding a child and looking into the sun. :)

watching some men (teenagers?) play baseball

On the phone with Grammie

wearing mama's bluetooth so she doesn't get cancer :)

Callen ate a TON of frozen blueberries for lunch. Stained his hands really well. Even after washing them, they were still a purplish blue.

After naptime, we made a trip to the post office and then to T@rget.

How cute is this chair that matches her room? Too bad it's $90! Plus, I think she'd outgrow it sooner rather than later. :(

How cute is she?!!

And the boy one to match Callen's room!

And little ottomans that they totally don't need :)

After dinner, we spent some time outside together while Dave set up the sprinkler thing for the grass. We don't want to turn the sprinklers on yet but we've had absolutely NO moisture this entire month so our grass desperately needs some water. Callen accidentally got hit by the water and did not like it one bit. It was quite funny.

3/3/12: my date with L

This morning I had a great time out with my BSF group. It's so fun to be out with ladies that are all growing so much in the Lord and lift each other up. Our group is awesome!

I stopped by home afterwards and picked up Elodie because she wanted to go on errands with me. We got gas and then went to Boulder to get my glasses adjusted. On the way home, I surprised her with a lunch date at P@nda Express, her favorite! It occurred to me that we could probably catch a movie too, so after checking what was playing at the theater and looking it up on PluggedIn.com to see if it was family-friendly, we headed to the movie theater. Unfortunately, we found out the hard way that you can't just show up to the cheap theater on a Saturday afternoon right when the movie starts and expect it to not be sold out. Oops! After big tears and promising to take her tomorrow, we headed to the store to pick up a few things before treating her to a slush on the way home.

Lesson learned! Plan ahead!!

2/25/12: more on C

He likes to go "hide" and have to find him. Most of the time he picks corners and nooks, etc. But sometimes he'll go stand against the wall and just stay very still, like you aren't going to see him. It's so ridiculously cute.

Here's one from him in one of his favorite spots, although this time (from 2/18/12) he stole one of my books. Sorry the second one is blurry...you know cell phones, they're such finicky suckers!

He can also sign "bath." I'd say he's done that one for probably a month now.

He's also started doing something with his fist for yogurt.

He can point to his nose if you ask him where his nose is. And once his pointer finger is on his nose, usually that will lead to him doing "shhh" because his finger is there, so why not? :)

The kid really doesn't like most fruit. Won't even stick it in his mouth. He'll sometimes eat bananas and defrosted blueberries. He likes raisins and dried cranberries.

1/24/12: C ate 1/2 of a PB&J!

For lunch today, Callen ate a quarter of Elodie's PB&J and then a quarter of mine. My little boy ate half of a PB&J all by himself!

Yesterday, Elodie tried to video chat Katie but it didn't go through so she said she was going to type Katie instead. She wanted to type a sentence so she got her sight words' list and picked out three words to make a sentence all by herself. Then she typed those words and hit send. She typed, "She can jump." I was *so* proud!

We also did what we call our God book ("Leading Little Ones to God") while we were waiting at the allergist. The story was about Elijah and the woman with little bread and oil. I wasn't really sure Elodie was paying attention when I read because there are lots of distractions at a doctor's office, but at the end of the story when I asked the comprehension questions, she rattled off all the answers. I was impressed! Then the nurse said my time was up and Elodie told her, "just a little prayer first!" so we did our ending prayer before the nurse checked my arms. :) *Beaming mama!*

1/16/12: C big eater tonight

Callen ate an entire 1/4 pound hamburger tonight and some sweet potato fries. Way to go bubby!

4/23/11: Callen puts puff into his mouth

Today Callen used his thumb and forefinger to pick up a banana puff and put it in his mouth. He's been trying very diligently to pick up the puffs but they always just stick to his hands and I don't think I've ever seen one make it into his mouth before.

Oh, and I knew that Callen's name wasn't as unique as Elodie's (boys' names are hard!) so it shouldn't be too much of a surprise that I heard a lady at C*stco yesterday call her son Callen.

We're still having a ton of trouble getting Callen to sleep through the night. After a month of trying to get him back to sleep without nursing him, I've given up. So now when I hear him cry, I just get up, nurse him a little and put him back in his crib awake and he usually falls right back to sleep.

4/10/11; C starts food again

I gave C some baby oatmeal again tonight after a few weeks off of it b/c he just wasn't into the whole food thing. I also gave him some carrots and he ate it just fine. We'll try again tomorrow and see if it goes well too. When I first introduced food, he seemed okay with it. Then he would only eat like 1/2 of a tablespoon so hopefully he'll keep it up this time.

4/10/11: C's 7 mos. old ;)

from b@bycenter.com:

After your baby masters the ability to grasp an object, an exciting step follows: transferring it from one hand to the other. For now, your baby will experiment so much with both hands that you won't have a clue which hand is preferred, the right or the left. In fact, handedness doesn't usually become obvious until much later. A preference might become apparent around 9 months, but even then, little ones tend to be ambidextrous, sometimes until they start school.

**I don't remember when C started switching toys from hand to hand but it's been a while now.**

Your baby may have already started feeding himself finger foods, although this can begin as late as 10 months. Once he reaches this stage, you can introduce a sippy cup.

Try giving your baby a cup with a spout and two handles. If he's getting frustrated that he can't get more liquid out of the sippy cup, remove the valve in the lid. If he has trouble figuring out how to suck through the spout, take the lid off and let him drink straight from the cup. (Show him how to tip it back so the liquid flows into his mouth.)

**C's not eating food yet. He just wasn't into baby food so we stopped giving it to him. We'll attempt to reintroduce oatmeal tonight.**

3/18/11: C napping on tummy

Yesterday I thought C might have been napping on his tummy. Hard to tell on the video monitor. Then this morning you could definitely tell he was sleeping on his tummy (put him down on his back) and he was still sleeping on his tummy when I woke him up at 12pm. Now he's down for his afternoon nap and he's sleeping on his tummy again. If I remember right, L did the same thing when she could roll over.

He's also rolled over several times today already and I've still yet to catch him in the act. I only see the evidence after the fact (aka he's on his tummy & I left him on his back). I think he only rolls one way so far. From his back towards his left onto his tummy.

In other news, L's cough seems worse today so I took her to the doctor. They said her ears were fine, her lungs were clear, no wheezing, no boogies in her nose. Her throat looked a little irritated, like from postnasal drip and she had a fever of 99.6F. She's acting mostly fine. Ate lunch really late and then I gave her tylenol b/c her temp was up to 100.4F and I thought she'd feel better & act better if she felt better. (She was cold.) Anyhow, I'm hoping everyone else can stay healthy since Dave's on day 2 of working four 12 hour shifts so I'm on my own through the weekend.

The good news is that after 5 nights of waking up in the middle of the night and crying for hours, C is finally sleeping through the night again (at least the last two nights). We think he might have been having a hard time staying asleep since we had to stop swaddling him since he could roll over while swaddled. We had also just changed his schedule (dropped a feeding), added his first baby food (oatmeal), got his shots, didn't poop for 5 days (had to add baby prunes to his diet), etc. Basically he had a whole lot of change (not purposely planned at the same time) at once so we didn't know what was going on with him. Plus, we were thankful that Dale & Candy had L almost all those nights so he didn't wake L up too.

1/13/11... L will finally eat peanut butter!

As of two days ago, L finally likes pb&j sandwiches and I've also introduced her to pb&j on graham crackers. She's had them for snacks and lunch. Yay for getting her to like something that has protein!

Monday, 9/22/08...15 mo. old Dr.'s visit...

L's 30.5 inches (50th percentile), 21.5lbs (25th percentile), and her head is 45cm (25th percentile).

oh, and the doctor said she's never seen anyone walk around on their knees but it must be a genetic thing since I did it. Hopefully, L will be walking by her next appointment at 18 months, otherwise they'll send her to a specialist. I think she's fine b/c she walks around furniture and holding our hand(s) just fine. Doctor also said that her picky eating is normal and that it might be time to start giving her timeouts for pulling my hair, taking off my glasses and anything else we say no to that's painful or dangerous.

Friday, 9/12/08...doing better...more milestones...

Knock on wood, I think we're doing better today...both with our health and L's crankiness...at least so far. :) Anyone with kids knows that can change in an instant. L still sounds congested and sometimes has a cough. I'm trying to get caught up with things while L's napping since I feel like I've been in a dark whole the last couple of days.

It seems the only way i can get L to sit still long enough to take a pic these days is to strap her into her high chair!

here's her in one of her new "fall" outfits. I had to wash all her 12-18mo. stuff so she could start wearing it since it was fall-like yesterday and today. The pants are borrowed from auntie K and cousin S. The top I got on clearance in January :) You can't tell but it's a pink top with little silver dots on it...too cute!

More milestones... L can now open the doors in the house. We have the lever kind so she stands on her tippytoes and she can just reach the end of the lever and then pulls it down to open it. I discovered this when I was in the bathroom today and she was on the other side of a closed door! lol!

She's also quite proficient at climbing the stairs. She's needs no prodding; she'll just start climbing and won't stop until she's at the top and through the gate.

L would take 3 or 4 baths per day if you'd let her. She's constantly asking for a bath if we're near the bathroom w/the tub.

She can now reach the kitchen table, which I think I mentioned before, but now she can reach her sippy cup on the table and put it back up on the table when she's done.

She's been "using" a spoon for a while now, or at least demands that she has one if I have one, but she is more interested in taking the food from the bowl (that she's managed to get on the spoon) and smear it all over the tray rather than actually put it in her mouth. Yea lots of oatmeal and yogurt all over the place! (I hope you can sense my sarcasm!!)

Yesterday, she got off the couch all by herself. She gets on her tummy and then pushes herself off so she lands on her feet. Ever since I went to my mom's at the beginning of July, we've been turning her around so that she goes off feet first instead of taking faceplants off the couch, as that was her preferred method whether we had a hold of her or not. Apparently, it paid off and now she knows how to do it herself b/c she did it all morning long. Now to figure out how to get her to be able to get onto the couch herself! She's just not quite tall enough.

Yesterday, she stood in the bathtub for quite awhile without any support. I think she's starting to take more risk with that but she's not about to be rushed into anything! She'll only walk holding on to your hands if she wants to; otherwise, she throws a fit and refuses to stand.