Caleb at 21 and 22 months

Caleb - 21 months old (April '12):

Caleb's happy dance.  I LOVE this.  I don't know how it started, but it cracks us up every time he does it.  He bounces up and down while swinging his left arm back and forth....

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Caleb's favorite nursery rhyme right now is 'Its raining, its pouring' - he asks for it calling it 'man' in the book of nursery rhymes.  We usually have to say it a half dozen times before he lets us move on.

Caleb loves, and has loved for quite some time, playing 'chase'... around the lap of our living room and kitchen, outside on the grass, or around the dining room table at Nonni's house.  He gets so excited he screams.

One of the things he likes playing with right now is a food truck that we refer to as the 'taco truck' - its funny, it is actually a matchbox car sized food truck that says Almond Joy on the outside, complete with the sunroofs/ventilation lift things and windows for ordering on one side of it.  When we drive around town Caleb loves to look for and point out every truck, tractor, motorhome, and tow truck that he sees, so when he first noticed the taco trucks, I just said 'yes, there is a truck, that is a taco truck,' and he has been pointing them out around town every since.  So when he happened to get this Almond Joy one in a package of vehicles it was perfect!  One day we even tried to recreate it out of blocks... Have to use your imagination a bit...

*Note the smile, finally captured on camera!  Haha...

4/19/12:  Caleb and mommy ate curried butternut squash and veggies for dinner.  Caleb looked at me after eating a few bites and said 'spicy'.  I told him we could add more yogurt on top to make it less spicy.  He kept eating and then when he would come across a bite that wasn't doused in yogurt he said 'too spicy', I would give him some water and redirect his fork, and he would continue until the next spicy bite. Too cute.  I didn't even think he knew what spicy was!

Favorite movie:  Ratatouille (he calls it 'tia').  We went through about a month of watching it once a day...


Caleb - 22 months old (May '12):

A handful of you have been the happy recipients of a "love beep".  This started when we were leaving Papa Jack and Nana Dee's house recently, and I beeped the horn three times to represent "I-love-you".  This is something I have done when leaving my grandparents' house probably since I was in high school, so I explained to Caleb what the three beeps meant, and he started calling it a "love beep".  He loves when we do it, and asks for it when we drive away from just about anyone now, friends or family.  You may be next!  :)

Current top activities:
"Throw bed!" (tossing him onto our bed over and over and over) and "Throw high!"  (Jimmy 'throws' Caleb up in the air above his head, lowers Caleb down to the ground, makes him run to the neighbors light post and back, and then they do it again.  Good thinking daddy!  Gotta get that extra energy out with a little running!)

"Color chalk", aka Sidewalk Chalk.  So far they are mostly single lines that Caleb draws with his chalk, though he has just started to do small groupings of lines, but mostly it ends up all over his face, clothes, and random places like the outside of the garage door, the tree trunk, and the brick on the front of the house.  He doesn't really understand that you can't touch it after drawing the color or it will come off onto you...

Daddy's helper

An early morning 'bath' in the sprinklers.  He was shivering so much, but like most kids, didn't want to dry off...

Caleb loves loving on Landon!

Mommy and Caleb on a bike ride to meet Daddy and Landon for a picnic at the park

New addition to the movie list this month: Mary Poppins

Caleb's is at the stage, with both languages, where his is like a little parrot repeating every sentence (well, simple versions of our sentences) out of our mouths.  I have really been trying to be better about speaking Spanish to him more often, and he is repeating almost all of the Spanish words back to me, too.  I love it that he doesn't have any hesitation at trying to pronounce big words.  I suppose part of that is that he doesn't understand yet that he is trying to say words in a second language.  This morning he randomly starting saying 'Jesus' (Spanish pronunciation), followed by 'a-choo!' and 'bless you', because this is one of the things I have told him that we say when someone sneezes.  I have also bought a few books for him in Spanish recently, and he started picking up on the vocabulary of it immediately  Ex: Diez en la Cama he calls 'diez cama' - a book about ten teddy bears in a bed, and Mis Primeras Mil Palabras,  My first thousand words, he calls 'Mil palatas'... sounds pretty similar when he says it).  

I'm a proud mama :)

Landon is 6 months old!

Really??  That's how we feel, too.  A busy 6 months that passed very quickly!

I had a hard time getting his "month" pictures this time...   First attempt, he just wasn't having it...

(This is the arching when you try and put him in sitting position that I comment on further down this post...)

Close, but not focused or cute by any means...

What are you doing to me mom???

Second attempt... Had a quick few minutes where he was in a good mood so I thought I would try again... Better and more focused pictures, but not a good outfit for the tie, and still not ideal.  Oh well, he's a baby.  What should I expect??  :)
Landon's eye seem to be a different color every day, depending on his outfit and surroundings... mostly a grayish blue, but sometimes they look very green...

We haven't yet been to the 6 month appointment to see how much he weighs, but I would guess he's somewhere in the range of 14-15 lbs.  Landon is sleeping all night, still half swaddled up to his chest, and greets me with a giant smile and kicking his feet excitedly each morning when I go in to get him from his crib.

We are starting to give him solids on a daily basis, thought I think he was probably ready for them much sooner..  So far he is equally as excited and eager about the foods as Caleb was, and I can't spoon it in quickly enough for him.  Hopefully he will be as good of an eater as Caleb!

Landon isn't so keen on the sitting position yet - he always straightens out when we put him in that position - but he really likes standing on laps.  Although he has been smiling for months and he flashes awesome smiles at everyone he looks at, he doesn't laugh as often, unless Caleb is around or we tickle his sides while changing his clothes.  The boys are starting to interact more and more with one another.  Caleb loves when Landon smiles back at the faces and smiles he gives him, and Landon loves watching Caleb spin around and be silly.  These are the moments that will usually get some giggles out of him.

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This picture deserves some sort of clever caption...  Suggestions?? :)

 In this past week or two he has really begun to babble, gurgle, and shriek as he is discovering his voice, and also his feet.

Still fine-tuning that coordination....  ouch.

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"Happy Mother's Day!!"

Caleb gave me a wonderful little gift today for Mother's Day (with a bit of practice beforehand with daddy)...
(it is a video, so you'll have to click the link to the actual blog to view it... sorry, I haven't figured out how to remedy this yet... if anyone knows about this or has suggestions, I'd love to hear them!)

Landon had fun playing with my Mother's Day carnation

...moments before the stem was snapped off of the bloom... 

I am thankful for you, Caleb, and Landon, and love you both so much!!

Landon eating solids

Here's what we did during Caleb's nap today.....

Mr. Helper already wants to feed himself...

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(If reading post from the automatically sent out email, click on the blog post title to take you to the actual blog to  view this video)

Landon at 5 months

On April 14th Landon turned 5 months old.  Here are some of the new things he is up to...

Still wearing mostly 3 month clothes, but this past week or two we are noticing that he is finally starting to fill out a bit... such a little peanut..

Tried rice cereal a few times and got the gag reflex.  Can't blame him... that stuff tastes like cardboard.  He did a bit better with the peas, but it is definitely a work in progress.  (I had a picture of him with a look that totally explained his reaction to the cereal, but can't seem to find it...darn.)

Rolling over both directions now with ease...

Landon now has the coordination to get his paci into his own mouth, as well as anything else he has in his hands.  This also means holding his own bottle, yay!  

                                      

Landon has really started to respond to Caleb's interactions with him.  He is smiling and sometimes laughing at what he sees Caleb doing.

Okie baby?  Lol.  This looks terribly hilarious, but Landon had so much spitup this day that I had to take him home in his socks and diaper.  At least he is still smiling :)

Still a super happy and smiley baby!!

Easter Fun

Although he is pretty young, we thought we would try to dye eggs with Caleb this year...  We were able to color the eggs, but Caleb was mostly interested in using the metal egg dipper to eat the vinegar used in the food coloring bowls!  He ended up with blue lips and a green hand and looked a little like the Hulk...

Look closely and you can see his blue lips.

Daddy and the boys on Easter morning

Tessa loves to love on Caleb, and she gets so excited.. its adorable.  Usually Caleb just stands there looking at her, as if to say 'what in the world is she doing?', but this time it made him smile.  From what I hear, cousin Deacon like to do the same loving on other babies :)  

Caleb did better than we thought he would with the concept of finding and collecting the eggs...  In addition to the plastic ones we put out some of the hard boiled ones we had colored, and he threw those ones into his basket with an equal amount of force as he did the plastic ones (a lot!).  No being gentle for this little boy... he was having too much fun!  Tess was excited for a brief moment about the egg hunt, but then quickly moved on to driving Caleb's (Flinstone peddling) car (or truck, as he calls it).

He is actually saying 'cheese' here.  Caleb has figured out that you are supposed to say cheese when someone is going to take your picture, but he usually says it as he is still playing and never looking up, and without actually smiling, so this picture is a slight improvement... no smile, but he is at least looking at the camera :)

Playing with his new bat and helmet at Uncle Jack and Aunt Gwen's house on Easter day

Love playing ball with daddy!!