Caleb 14.5 Months

First a note: Mommy has gone and got herself a Twitter. The account is similarly titled: Fleipaper. You can also search by my name: Ami Fleischaker, or my email address if you have it.

And now on to the stuff you really care about: Our darling boy is now 14.5 months old. He is bigger and more opinionated by the day. He's also increasingly adorable, funny, flirtatious, cuddly and wonderful.

The dance of "I'm Independent/I want my Mommy!!" continues. At times he does NOT want to be held b/c he is very confidently going off after some thing that has caught his eye and he gets TICKED if you try to derail his plans. Other times he'll have a FIT if I put him down when he wants to be held.

Caleb is randomly afraid of some things and completely fearless of things he probably should be afraid of. The other day I flipped on the blender to make a smoothie and he had a category 5 melt down until I shut it off, picked him up and rocked him for 5 minutes. But while initially fearful of the vacuum he'll now walk right up to it. Go figure.

He's also unintentionally hilarious. The other day he was babbling at the receptionist at the chiropractors office and she says to him "Hey! Are you speaking french?" to which Caleb replied in perfect english "Yeah!". It was adorable.

He's capable of saying "Momma" perfectly clearly but he doesn't often do it. He seems to prefer to say "Dadda" and sometimes I think he says it just to get a rise out of me when I'm chanting "say Momma!" As part of my efforts to get the message across I tried patting my chest and saying "Momma" then I pat his and say "Caleb". I've used his hand to do the same thing. Well, he's decided that this means when I say "Say Momma!" he should walk up and pat me in the middle of the chest. lol. Smart little stinker. So now we're trying to teach him baby sign for Momma.

We're making progress with small amounts of baby sign. We've been trying to teach him "All done" when he's eating and so far he can do the hand motion, mostly, and the other day he even got as far as "ah-dah!" It was really cute.

Mr. Caleb is an enthusiastic user of Mommy's cell phone, or really any cell phone he can get his hands on, which is most often Mommy's (Mommy is VERY grateful for the password lock feature on her blackberry). He does love to play with his toy cell phone. He pushes the buttons and then holds the phone to his ear and says "Oooh?!" and then babbles and laughs and trys to hold the phone with just his shoulder like Mommy does with hers. He'll walk around with it. Its adorable.

So far he won't talk to an actual person on the phone. When Grandma calls and wants to talk to him I'll hold the phone to his ear and he just lights up and smiles and leans in, then pulls away to look at it, and then leans in to listen again, and then pulls away and then leans it. Until he's finally decided he's done and ready to go do something else, like try to steal the phone away and push the buttons.

Caleb is also a BIG fan of books. He loves to bring me a book and have me cuddle him on my lap and read him the story. Of course right now "read a story" mostly means I point out the pictures and make imitations of the noises that the animal might make or similar hilarity. He finds this immensely amusing and consequently we read LOTS of stories, several times throughout the day.