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Tuesday, September 28, 2010

Caleb 16 Months

The alternate title for this post could read: Meet Mr. Chatterbox

Mr Caleb seems to have decided that this talking thing is cool after all and worth practicing. And I have to say its dang funny to listen to him.

Just this morning he looked at the cat and went "No, no no no no no no! Ooow!" He picked up "Ow!" yesterday from me after he totally beaned me in the nose and I went "Oooh! OW!" and he looks at me and matching my inflection perfectly "Ooow!" It was so dang cute. I was like "Thats RIGHT! It hurts! Oww!"

And Mr Caleb can now say "Nigh Nigh" for "Night Night" and "Ah- dah" for "All Done" and "Ooh!" for "Hello!" and "No no" which thankfully has not yet achieved favored word status and is still a little more "nuh nuh" than straight out "no".

He can say really clearly "Yeah!" which is just really adorable.

Its really cute because he's started not only imitating our speech but trying to mimic our inflection. So he can usually get the major syllable of a word and match its inflection to repeat back to you what your saying. So you get things like "Oh no!" becoming "Ohhh O!" as he looks at you anxiously after repeating what you said.

So I accidentally stole this toy from my Mom's house - I swear I was packing in such a hurry I just went "baby toy = pack" and threw it in my suit case, and its this "Light Up Alphabet Apple" and Caleb used to get really frustrated using it. Because it would be like "What letter makes this sound? 'EErrr!'" and he wouldn't get it right and I think he could tell and he'd get frustrated and yell at it and push it away. The toy is wayyy above his developmental level (ie "Where is the X-Ray Fish?") but the scary thing is - its like his favorite toy now and he's starting to figure it out.

I do think that the sound track for it may actually be seared to the core of my soul now I've heard it so many times it makes me twitchy to think of it but he loves that thing and it calls out to you and plays music for a while after you touch it to come back and play before it says "Bye bye!" and shuts off. Well he will come over, turn it on, play with it for a bit, then walk away but once it stops making noise he will come back to turn it on again and then go back to playing.

This is one of those times I'm grateful I'm half deaf or I'd go truly insane.

In other exciting news Caleb actually has enough hair on top of his head I can brush it now. Its a nice sandy blonde and from the texture I think this is his big boy hair growing in finally. Its really adorable.

Monday, September 13, 2010

Caleb 15.5 Months

So I think I got a little spoiled. I had the worlds best behaved baby for so long that it was a shock when he started walking and suddenly decided he had an opinion about things. I learned then to be grateful that for the most part Caleb was still a very mellow, even tempered easy going baby because when he decided not to be... you would sooner talk water in to rolling up hill than get that child to do something he didn't want to do.

But I would still get compliments and questions from strangers who spent any amount of time with him. The questions were almost invariably "Is he always this good??" and the compliments were something to the tune of "Wow. He was SO good!"

So you can see why I consider myself insanely lucky to be the mother of the worlds best baby. But I have to admit the last 2 weeks have been a serious challenge. Caleb is working on a couple of teeth at a time now and it has made him extremely less than happy about things.

It never ceases to amaze me how quickly he can alternate from being completely and totally charming to be absolutely horrible. One minute he's happy and laughing and playing and the next some mysterious force will shift and he's suddenly screaming his little head off and thats nothing you can do to soothe him. It becomes extremely frustrating extremely quickly to be screamed at for no good reason.

But on the other hand I've had some sweet experiences of late. When we were with my folks a few weeks back my Dad was working hard on getting Caleb to say 'I love you'. He got as far as (repeated one word at a time) "Ah.... of..... Oooh!" It was really dang cute. So the other day I was sitting there with Caleb on my lap practicing this and we got as far as "Ah.... of" and while I was praising him for the "love/of" bit Caleb all on his own finished with "Momma!" and hugged me.

I almost cried I was so happy. We had a good cuddle with Mommy repeatedly telling him that he was the absolute bestest baby in the whole world and I'd definitely keep him. :)

And for another kudos to me - for MONTHS Caleb's favorite word was "Dada!" and he would say it over and over and over again. And you'd have me sitting there going "Say Momma! Say Momma! Mooooommma!"  (And he could he'd done it before but almost never when I was IN the room). And Caleb would just look up and me and smile and go "Dada!" And I'd tell him he was a good boy if a rotten snot. And Adam would laugh and tell him he was a good boy.

Well, now he's decided the favorite word is "Momma!" which I am 110% okay with. And the other day I overheard Adam sitting with Caleb going "Say Dada! Dada!" and Caleb smirked at him and happily said "Momma!" I called out "Good boy!"

I tell you, most of the time I do have the bestest baby in the whole world.

We did find (a pharmacy tech recommended them and a couple of friends) some homeopathic little tablets that like melt instantly in his mouth called "Teething Tablets" that do seem to be helping some with the extreme teething crabbiness. I'm glad b/c these are like microdoses of herbs and claim to be completely harmless (hasn't killed any of my friends kids anyways) and I was feeling bad dosing the poor kid with tylenol every 4 hours when he was awake just so I wouldn't kill him b/c that tylenol is really hard on your liver.

This too shall pass. I think I'm really grateful I'm not pregnant right now because it would be even harder to keep from losing my temper if I was hormonal pregnant psycho chick. Its particularly hard because he is so big and he weighs so much, and when he's upset he like wants to climb up you like you're a jungle gym or something and those hard boney little toes digging into your stomach and thighs really fricking hurt. Add that to the screaming in your ear and life becomes dramatically unpleasant.

I guess the biggest things are the fear that something else is wrong and that I can't make it better either way. I'd take him into the doctor but he was worse last week and we did see the doc for his check up and everything was perfect. He doesn't have a fever or any other symptoms just new toofies and CRABBINESS. And I've tried everything but giving the kid whiskey (which a shockingly large number of people have suggested I do) and nothing has made him happy.

Oh well. As my friend Ruth reminded me today: This too shall pass.

PS - I'll post more pictures soon. Its just hard with my wonky camera....

Tuesday, September 7, 2010

Caleb 15 Month Check Up

For the record this was written last Friday (4 days ago) right after the appointment happened and I'm just now getting around to posting it here.

So Mr. Caleb had his 15 month check up and shots today. It was a rough trip at the end of a rough week. Poor baby has been cutting teeth big time this week and having a hard time of it so he was not so much in the mood to be cooperative for the doctor today. But Caleb's been dosed with Tylenol and is down for a nap now so Mommy is getting a breather and life is livable.

Caleb is now 27 lbs 3 oz, 35 inches long (one more inch and the kid can go to Disney land!!) and has a 19 inch head. So he's roughly 80th percentile for head and weight but he is off the charts tall for height. Dr. Curran walked in and goes "Big C! Mr. First Round Draft Pick!" lol He made a point of showing me on a chart just how big Caleb is - he is the same height as the average 27.5 month old child.... at 15 months. That actually means he's LARGER than HALF of the 27.5 month olds out there. I knew he was wearing 2T and I was gonna upgrade him to size 5 diapers but some how I didn't realize he was THAT big.

Its kinda funny - they give me this paper with three little squares (height, weight, head) on it and each has a set of graph lines in the middle of each square for the 5, 10, 25, 50, 75, 90, 95 percentile lines and your kid gets a dot some where on the graph indicating where they are. Caleb's height dot has been at the top line since birth and getting higher and higher each time. This time he's so far off the top of the line set that his dot on the graph is almost up against the top of the square box that holds the chart. lol I'll have to scan it and post the picture to facebook or something.

I was worried that Caleb was maybe a little too skinny for his height (I keep trying to fatten him up but he just gets TALLER) but the doc is thrilled. He says Mr. Caleb looks great, every thing is right on track.

He had to get 5 shots today which was seriously crummy. Caleb hasn't screamed like that since he was little bitty. It almost made me cry again. He got the DaPT, HiB, Prevnar, Polio and Flu shots.

So thats the status. Mommy wants a nap....



I need to take more pictures and post them but my camera is pretty much fried so its gonna take me some doin...