Caleb 18 Month Check Up

Well Mr. Caleb had his 18 month check up with the doctor today! Our boy is now the same size as the average 3 year old!!! Oh My HECK! I gave birth to that!! 

The stats are: 27 lbs 14 oz, 37 inches tall, 19.5 inch head. Putting him off the charts for height, 80th percentile for weight and 95th percentile for head. The doc says that he looks fantastic and doesn't need to see him again until he turns 2! 

AND just to sweeten the deal we didn't have ANY shots this visit. We did do a TB test but that went really fast and Caleb calmed down amazingly well afterwards. 

I've decided Caleb does know what a stranger is after all because you should have seen the looks he was giving the doctor and nurses. He was all "Excuse you, this is my personal space! Hey! Hey! Stop with the touching! I said NO TOUCHY! I don't know you! MOM!!!!" He like JUMPED into my arms and then started trying to remove the doctors hands and push him away. lol. And the facial expressions were priceless. I think he must have learned a thing or two from his cousin Leah when we were in Texas last week. 

But we're home, a reward sippy has been had and he's now out for a nap! 

Caleb At the Park

So I took Caleb to the park today for the first time in recent months. The disgusting bake you alive Arizona heat does not lend itself to safely enjoying the outdoors with a wee widget. But its cooled down enough and I seriously needed to get out of the house so we went for it.

And at first Mr. Caleb was having NOTHING of it. He was kinda tired (I'm trying to wean him off the second nap because if he takes it he doesn't want to go to bed until like midnight and thats NOT okay), and so initially he did NOT want me to put him down. He did NOT want the swing.

I started to win him over by the two of us sitting and swinging for a bit in the tire swing and then Bre and I took turns going down the slide with him. And then he did another round in the baby swing and this time he enjoyed it (we put Bre at one end of the arc and me at the other so he had somebody cheering him on both ways).

And about then a bunch of other little kids showed up and he was just FASCINATED to watch them play. He would follow them around and just watch smiling. It was really cute. And then he started exploring the play ground and having a good time and played with a couple of toys.

But he finally settled in for a good long round of digging in the sand/gravel of the playground. He was just very intent. First he dug the hole, then he filled the hole. Next he decided to bury his leg. Then he started showing me all the little rocks and pieces of sticks and grass that he would find in the sand. And he did that until it was time to head home.

When I stood him up and brushed him off on the bench before we headed home he had a small PILE of dirt that came out the bottom of his romper. lol. He even had sand in his diaper! He got a bath tonight.

OH and he was so worn out he was rubbing his eyes and walking into the furniture at 9:30. :D :D

So I think it was a success and we definitely need to do it again soon and regularly. :)

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

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.

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....

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...

GO MOMMA!!!

20 years ago today.... I was a little girl who had just been on her first major road trip.

My uncles, along with some family friends, my sister, and I had driven the 20+ hours from Phoenix to Houston. I had no idea what to expect. I was so conflicted b/c in my mind Houston, Texas looked like a city from an old western movie and yet I knew Mom was there because of MD Anderson Cancer Center, which is the best cancer treatment center in the world. And I had such a hard time picturing this big fancy hospital in the middle of a town made of wood buildings and dirt roads with horses.

Turns out Houston was a lot like Phoenix only GREEN. I'd never seen so many green plants and rainstorms in my young life. And MD Anderson was mind numbingly huge and complex.

And my mother .... was a pumpkin.

That was my first thought anyway. When she had left Phoenix she'd had SOME small amounts of hair left. Now she was completely bald and the medicines they'd given her had made her swell up a fair bit and turn a little orange. Clearly, my mother was a pumpkin.

She was in an isolation room. I could see her through double paned glass and talk to her via intercom. I couldn't hug her or touch her. No one could. The doctors administered drugs to her through long plastic gloves built into the opposite wall and once a week a person in a bubble suit could come through the air lock to clean her room. Everything that came in had to be sterilized.

After 3 days of radiation treatments where she received the same amount of radiation that you would have received if you were at ground zero Hiroshima when the bomb went off, Mom had no immune system left. The littlest bug could kill her inside of a few hours.

I remember watching the day of the transplant. We were all gathered around the window. Momma was SO so excited. She held the catheter line up for us to see as they pushed in 3 BIG fat syringes of bone marrow in through the tubes that came through the wall. She gave us a big cheesy grin and a thumbs up!

We went to check on my Uncle Mike (one of my mother's younger brothers) who was her bone marrow donor afterwards. He had 6 little round needle holes in his butt. 3 of them on each cheek. He told Mom that now he can really say that she was a pain in the ass. (In fact until Mikey passed away 2 years go, every year Momma would call him and thank him for saving her life. And every year he would say "I love ya sis. You're welcome but you're still a pain in the ass" lol).

That was 20 years ago. And I still bawl like a pathetic baby every time I really think about it. I have no words to express how amazingly grateful I am to God, to science, to the doctors and nurses and to my Mother for being a fighter and going to hell and back so that I could grow up with my Mommy. I would not be a live today if it wasn't for her.

In so many ways I owe who I am to my wonderful amazing mother. You could not ask for a more loving and accepting, caring and compassionate person. Don't get me wrong - she'll kick your butt up between your ears if you really need it, but only b/c she loves you. I think she has done a SUPERB job of balancing being a mother and being a friend and that is not an easy line to walk.

For better or for worse, hers in the voice in my head. I found that out when I went to college. She's the one I hear, encouraging me, chastising me, reminding me and helping me.

She hasn't always been perfect but I can say this: Whenever it has been pointed out to her that something she has said or done was not right or hurtful or whatever, she never, EVER did it again.

As a kid, shortly afterwards I presented a picture to her transplant physician, Dr. Anderson (who just happens to share a last name w/ the hospital), it said in big crayon letters "Thank you for saving my Mommy's life". I want to say it again. Preferably through a mega phone from the top of a tall building, on the 6 o'clock news and on the front page of every paper in the world:

Thank you to every one involved in making it happen. Thank so much for saving my Mommy.

20 years baby. Here's to 20 more and many, many more after that!!!