Caleb 17 Months

Meet Mr. Insanely Adorable. In the last month Caleb has really been turning on the charm. I love it. He's figured out how to say the "Boo!" part of "Peekaboo!" and so now he's forever popping up from behind, around or over things and shouting "Boo!" with a big delighted smile.

He's a lot harder to photograph now actually because he knows what the camera is, and he wants it, and he's so fast now. I can get maybe one shot and then he's climbing up me like a tree trying to get the camera.

Caleb is also a serious technophile. There are few things that will delight him like getting his hands on the remote or one of the computers. Of course not getting the thing he wants now leads to some rather hysterical to watch foot stomping. It cracks me up. I'm sure thats not the reaction he's going for but more often than not when he's expressing his displeasure with me for not letting him have something and he either growls at me (no I have no idea where he would have gotten that from....) or starts stomping his feet I just wanna laugh at him cuz its so dang funny. But the next step up from there is his pterodactyl scream which makes me more than slightly twitchy so I guess that it all evens out in the end.

Caleb is funny the way he uses Momma and Dadda. He'll go for a week or two at a time and EVERYTHING will be "Momma". Its his favorite word. And I of course enjoy this no small amount. And then he'll go through a phase like right now where everything for the last week has been "Dadda" and I of course find this somewhat vexing. lol. I'm wondering if one of these days he's going to decide that he can use BOTH words. It will be very exciting.

Caleb is using more words all the time. Mostly he babbles constantly but he'll pair words occasionally now like "Oooh YEAH!" and "Oh Wow!" He's still stubbornly resisting learning the three words I'd REALLY like him to learn - which are "Food", "Drink" and "More" just because those would really help make my life run a little smoother. But he's very expressive with his earnest little face. And his voice can be surprisingly deep for such a little person. I'll be very interested to see how it goes as he gets older.

He is also increasingly affectionate. He's usually so very busy getting into stuff that he doesn't often just want to be held, but lately he's started when he's in the middle of playing with toys he'll stop, run over to me, and give me a great big hug or just cuddle for a minute. If I'm really lucky he'll give me a kiss. And then he hops back down and goes back to getting into stuff but I love it just the same. It always makes me feel like a million bucks.

Caleb has gone through another growth spurt recently. He can now wear 2T and 3T sized clothes (although 3T is a little big still). I just can't believe how tall he is. I look at him and I'm like "Oh my gosh! You're a little boy now! Where did my baby go?" This does mean he can now climb on to both the love seat and the sofa and the coffee table and most chairs which has made life all sorts of interesting in that "repeated cardiac stress test" sort of way. We also had to buy a play yard to put around the computer desk because there was absolutely no way to keep him out of it now that he's so tall.

Caleb is also a Little Piggy addict. Be warned - if you do so much as "This little piggy went to market" you will be doing the whole thing at least a dozen times. Unless of course you're crafty and devious and you distract him with a round of "Eensy Weensy Spider" or something similar. Whats really adorable is he'll try to do it back to you sometimes. He doesn't say the exact words but the inflections are all correct. Its really, really cute to watch.

He loves to read books. Lately, instead of bringing the book to me to read to him, he's taken to sitting on the floor and reading the book to himself. He points at the pictures and the words and just babbles away and laughs. Those have to be some dang good story lines the way he carries on.

Also we're up to 7 teeth now. He's got 4 in the front center on top, two on bottom and he's got one of his right molars coming in. I some how thought he'd get the other two on bottom first but he's apparently decided to go for the gusto. Lets just say that "Teething Tablets" are my friends.

We have had some problems with Mr Caleb hitting people in the face. Used to be you'd just grab his hand and say "No no" or plop him on the floor and he'd stop but then he decided it was a great game and funny. Oh and he was tall enough that standing on the floor, if you're sitting on the couch he can still smack you in the face, which was NOT okay.

And since I've yet to reach the point of "kid smacks you, so you smack him back and say "Don't hit!"" making sense to me, so we have instituted Time Out. Yes, if he hits and won't stop, then I dump him in the portacrib I have set up in the corner for just such a purpose. And he gets to sit in there, with no toys while I ignore him for a whole 2-3 minutes. Oh the horrors!

Good news is that its working. There has been a MARKED decrease in the hitting phenomenon since we started with Time Out. So apparently this barbarous cruelty is effective. Cool.

And since this is reaching epic lengths we'll stop for now. I can gush about my sweet baby for extended periods of time. lol