Caleb's Story: First Babysitter, Sleeping in His Own Room, A Long Sabbath Walk, 9 Months Old & A New Cousin!

Last Thursday, my parents left to go back to Nova Scotia for another 10 or 12 days, so they stopped by on their way out to drop off a couple of food items that would go bad while they were gone. They witnessed Caleb's new favorite thing of pulling the trash can cover off and carrying it around in his walker. They got a big kick out of it!

Friday I worked all day but my mom wasn't around to do the morning shift, so for the first time, I had someone other than a family member babysit Caleb. I had a wonderful lady from our church, DeDe and her 10 year old daughter come over for the morning. I wasn't really nervous because I trusted her, but it is always a little hard to do something for the first time. Caleb ended up sleeping until 9:15 which was very disappointing for the 10 year old, because she was dying for him to wake up! He did great with them and they had so much fun playing with him. They had to leave at 11:45 for a doctor's appointment, so Rad came over until Jen got out of work. Caleb had a good afternoon with Rad and Jen and Jen was especially excited because she successfully got Caleb to take a nap with his swaddle! It wasn't a long nap, but she was very proud of herself since she was not successful the week before.

Friday night I finally took the plunge and had Caleb sleep in his own room. I know it is a little later than normal to be moving him to his own room, but as I think I have said before, the situation is that we are upstairs and his room is downstairs, so it is a little bit different situation. I was actually all prepared to move him around the beginning of July and then our central air downstairs stopped working, so it was too hot to have Caleb sleep without AC. Now, I will say that Steve and I have been sleeping in the guest room this week, which is right next door to Caleb's room, but hey, it is a start! And actually, he is doing very well in his room and has hardly woken up at all in the night. So, I think it is a success and I think tomorrow night Steve and I will go back to sleeping upstairs and see how it goes!

Sabbath morning in the guest room

We had a very nice Sabbath. I fed Caleb during church and then he played during the rest of it. One of his new favorite things is when we stack things up and he knocks them over. He gets a big kick out of it!

While we were in the mother's room, we met a nice couple who was vacationing on the Cape from Long Island with their 2 year old daughter. We invited them for lunch because we were having Rad & Jen, David & Yully, and Anthony & Tiffany over as well (and Ricky ended up joining us too!) So, we had a very lovely lunch of haystacks and Tiffany brought fruit for dessert, because some of us (Jen and I) are trying to avoid dessert right now.

I tried putting Caleb down for a nap right as we were beginning lunch and he had a hard time falling asleep (maybe because he knew he was missing all the fun out in the other room), but he did stay asleep for an hour and 15 minutes once he went to sleep, so that was ok.

After Caleb woke up, we decided to go for a walk with everyone (except for the visiting couple) to the West Barnstable Conservation Land. It is an area with lots of paths and you can literally take a different walk every time you go, because you can keep choosing different paths. Anyway, we had a great time, but took a much longer walk than we originally planned (at least an hour and a half and probably at least 4 miles) because we took a path that took us in a direction we weren't anticipating! We were never lost, but we kept joking about getting stuck out there after dark, because we didn't get back to our car until about 6:45. Here are some pictures from our walk. I actually pushed Caleb most of the way in the stroller even though the pictures are of Steve pushing him. It was quite a challenge going up some hills with lots of roots and rocks to avoid, so I feel like I got a really good workout!

The dogs made it the whole way and were troopers!

On Sunday Caleb was officially 9 months old! I got up and worked and Steve went to the church for a little while before Caleb woke up to help get set up for the school yard sale. He came back with a few toys for Caleb, which they immediately started to play with.

Then I took a break and we all went to a yard sale I had seen advertised on Facebook and it was pretty close to our house. We got a few good things there, probably we will save them for Caleb's birthday. We got a big box of Megablocks for $3 (unoperned), a couple of toys and then we got this power wheel for $6!

After I was done with work for the day, Caleb and I did a little shopping at Trader Joe's and the Christmas Tree Shop. I wanted to get a cheap end table to have next to my glider in Caleb's room, now that I am feeding him in there. I need to have somewhere to put my tablet, because I usually watch Netflix while feeding him. I found a cheap end table and I also found new lamps on clearance for our bedroom, which I was happy about (side note: after I got home, Steve pointed out that the lamps were the same except one had a round bottom and one had a square bottom - I didn't care enough to return one, so they are a little mismatched). Caleb is always obsessed with touching anything that I have in the shopping cart.

Monday was a pretty normal day. We actually went to storytime at the Centerville library at 11:30 and we had fun, but I think Caleb is a little young for it still. We did sign up for a Baby Music class at the Osterville library that starts next Tuesday and it is designed for babies that aren't walking yet, so I am really looking forward to that and I hope maybe we will make some friends there too! Caleb didn't take a very good nap on Monday and we ended up taking a quick trip to Babies R Us to get a mesh crib bumper because now that Caleb is sleeping all night in his crib, he keeps sticking his feet through the slats, so I wanted something to stop that. Here are a couple of random pictures of Caleb playing.

Tuesday morning I had DeDe come babysit Caleb again and I went to work for a half day. Unfortunately, our schedule got thrown off a little because Caleb only slept until 8:00 and then he was showing signs of being sleepy, so DeDe put him down for a nap and he fell asleep around 11:30 and woke up shortly after I got home at 12:30. Here are a couple of pictures of Caleb playing with the handle on my dresser while I was getting changed after work.

I tried to get Caleb to take a nap later in the afternoon because he can't stay awake from 12:30 until bedtime, and as always, he refused to take a late afternoon nap. I left him in his crib for awhile but it was a no go. I ended up having to nurse him to sleep just to tide him over until bedtime. The big excitement on Tuesday was that we now have another member of our family and Caleb has a new cousin! Corey went in to have her 4th baby via C-section on Tuesday morning, which she scheduled because it was Mimi's birthday. She had a baby boy, Colby Cabot Grodack, and he was 7 pounds 14 ounces and 20 1/2 inches long! We are so excited and can't wait to meet him at Christmas!

Wednesday Caleb woke up again at 8:00, so I knew our schedule was going to be a little off. I fed him at 10:00 and he slept a little while he was eating, which I thought was a good thing, because I thought I could then wait until his normal naptime to put him down, but I think the sleeping while eating threw him off, because he was super fussy when I put him down and refused to go to sleep for almost an hour and then he only slept for 25 minutes. I was not impressed, needless to say. He then didn't eat very well either, so it was a pretty frustrating afternoon. We were going to meet Steve and Rad and Jen at Olive Garden for supper, so we left a little early and made a trip to BJ's. Then we went to Olive Garden and had a good time. Thankfully Caleb was not fussy despite not having much of a nap, so that was good.