Tuesday, February 15, 2011

Growing Up Too Fast

In just a couple of days Caleb will be 7 months old. At 6 months he weighed 19 pounds (76ish percentile?) and was off the charts for height and head size (no surprise there). He's working his hardest to keep up with Zach.


Love those thunder thighs and little tush
He'll use anything to try and stand up


Caleb's a fast crawler now and is able to join us wherever we are in the apartment. When he catches up with us he tries to climb up our legs until we pick him up. When I'm changing Zach's diaper and Caleb's in the room, Zach inevitably finds Caleb trying to climb all over his face and chest. This often gets both boys laughing. Caleb's also quick to get into whatever Zach is playing with which is frustrating to Zach. Thankfully Zach's reaction is to give me a look that says "get him out of here" rather than knocking Caleb over or something. Caleb's our little shadow.




Caleb hates being left out of things. For a couple of months now we've had to put him in his booster chair at the table every time we sit down to eat because leaving him on the floor makes him upset. Another example is when we were making no bake cookies with Zach and left Caleb to play with his toys. As you can see from the pictures below he was ticked until he was given a spoon to "help".

Caleb loves feeling like a big boy. His favorite solid foods are ones he can put in his mouth on his own (Baby Mum-mums, Gerber puffs, and Cheerios). He also LOVES drinking from cups and sippy cups with water in them.




Teething has been going on and as of about 2 weeks ago Caleb has 2 bottom teeth to show for pain.

Cold carrots make great teethers

Though their slipperiness gets pretty frustrating

Massagers are also surprisingly fun for sore gums to chew on.

Caleb loves looking at and banging at his little reflection friend in our entertainment center

Caleb loves interacting and playing games. He loves sitting across from us and pushing a ball back and forth. He will also repeatedly pull things over his face then kick until we pull the item off and say "peek a boo!"


From day one Caleb has been our little cuddler. He loves to be held tight and to wrap his hands around our fingers. When feeding Caleb he'll raise his outside arm straight in the air and wave it back and forth until I give him a finger to hold. When fingers aren't available he'll content himself with holding onto a nose.



Caleb is such a happy, smiley, and vocal guy. He's got a deep voice like Zach and is often cooing, grunting, and laughing. He only needs someone to smile at him in order to get his whole face to light up. The video shows a pretty typical scene around here. Zach missing his pants is a common occurrence lately since he yanks them off every chance he gets.

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Caleb is such a fun little guy to have in our family. I love watching him learn and grow and share his enthusiasm with the rest of us. We sure love you Caleb!

Sunday, February 13, 2011

You know your wife loves you when ...

Me: "So I did something bad..."
Jen: "What?"
*Passes the Sacrament Meeting program*
Jen: "Are you serious?!"

Apparently when you agree to speak as a couple in Sacrament Meeting you ought to tell your wife before you completely forget about it.

Even so, Jen did a great job speaking with ~10 minutes prep time. Zach "helped" by running up on the stage and leaning over the edge to smile at the congregation, distracting everyone with his cuteness. Within minutes Caleb was with the couple behind us and Zach and I were in the hall. During the rest of church Jen received as much sympathy as I heckles.

Once she made it through the 15 minutes of extemporaneous public speaking, she forgave me and even admitted it was kinda funny. As long as it never happens again.

Saturday, February 5, 2011

Houston's Ice-pocolypse

Over the last couple of days we've been on "freeze alert" which seems to be the cue for Houstonians to panic and expect apocalyptic disaster! It's amazing we survived unscathed.

Here are a few of the ridiculous things we saw/heard:
- Students were told on Thursday that schools would be cancelled because it might snow.
- Some of the offices downtown sent people home early on Thursday because it looked like it might snow. Sadly, Derrick's work isn't so great at over reacting.
- Friday morning we woke to a thin layer of ice on everything so of course all the highways and toll roads were closed. This made it so Derrick had to take the day off. We loved having him here!
- Our brother-in-law almost got stuck on his business trip in Mexico since flights into Houston were being cancelled. His plane was re-routed to land in San Antonio which actually had snow. Go figure.
- We've talked with one person so far whose family stayed inside all day because they were to scared to face the "dangerous" roads.

After chipping the thin layer of ice off our car windows, we "braved" the outside to run errands a lot of the day. The roads had no sign of ice on them but were much less crowded than usual. It was really cool to see tiny icicles coming off of the tips of the palm branches (fronds?). I wish we'd gotten a picture of that.


Now on an unrelated note, I wanted to post some pictures from our last minute Groundhog's Day celebration. We decided right before getting the boys to bed that we'd make dirt cups in honor of the day. Because of our use of baby bowls and rush in letting the pudding set they ended up looking more like mud pies.

Zach's way of helping us cook is to sample as much of everything as he can. The best is when you have the chance to get your hand cover in straight sugar.

Caught in the act while making pudding


Smashing some of our Zach-friendly (non-wheat, etc.) vanilla wafers for light colored dirt or sand


Enjoying the messy goodness now joined by whipped cream (snow) and sprinkles (ants)


Sleepy Caleb really wanted to get some of that goodness in him


Our little gummy bear groundhog which did not see his shadow so it looks like winter will end early.


Monday, January 31, 2011

On your mark...get set...

Go Caleb! This little boy is so anxious to keep up with his big brother that he decided to start crawling at 6 months. Zach's learning quickly that he can't play with the iPad on the floor anymore unless he wants Caleb to end up on top it. I'm also finding that I have a cute little shadow and can't go into the kitchen to make dinner without hearing him "yelling" and chasing me down.

Video: January 22


Video: January 31

This is another of his new skills.

Tuesday, January 25, 2011

Christmas Trip Part 4: The Last of the Pictures

Here are a few more pictures from our Colorado trip that I couldn't resist posting.



My parents got the bear hat with Zach in mind back in September when they were on their Alaskan cruise. It's always a hit with Zach when we Skype.


Zach spent a long time making sure this panda bear was well fed.

I love the tongue sticking out in concentration


Caleb interacting with Jason and Cassie's little girl. She looks pretty resigned at the end to letting him suck on her fingers.

Hooray for chocolate.

Happy to be with Grandpa Jones

Thankfully we got some snow for the last half of the trip. We don't get much in Texas so we had to take advantage of it with shoveling, sledding, and exploring in the open space behind my parents' house.






Now back to 50 and 60 degree weather...

Monday, January 24, 2011

Christmas Trip Part 3: Grand Junction

A couple of days after Christmas my parents kindly lent us their van so we could drive the 4 1/2 hours to visit with Derrick's family for a few days.

Running around during our rest stop where I fed Caleb.


The iPad is an amazing toddler entertainer for car trips. Zach's getting really good with numbers, letters, matching, and sizes with all the free toddler game apps that are available.


Tyson's son Ryan was so excited for Zach to come play. It was so cute to get there and see the toys he'd laid out specifically for Zach. He also grabbed Zach's hand to drag him all over the house and show him everything. We opened presents with Derrick's family and Ryan was happy to help Caleb open all of his and to open presents for anyone else who wasn't fast enough :).

While in GJ we had a great time. We:
- watched movies
- played Wii - it was amazing to watch guys in their late 20's early 30's doing the dance moves on "Just Dance"
- Derrick, Jamon, Jean, and Dad Bowen went snowboarding/skiing at Powderhorn.
- ate lots of food
- played with babies

Ryan and Zach

Caleb with Great Grandma Bowen

Grandpa Bowen and Caleb

Zach and Ryan

Ryan

Caleb and Ryan

Caleb still loves to be swaddling for sleeping




Jamon and Annabel