Caleb's Story: 9 Month Doctor's Visit, Sleeping Downstairs by Himself, First Playgroup and Grammy & Grampy are Home!

Last Friday my parents were still gone, so I took another half day and had to drop Caleb off with Rad around 11:15 in order to get to work by 12:00. Jen didn't get home from school until about 1:00, so Rad and Caleb were on their own for quite awhile! The report was that he did fine and here are a couple of pictures to prove it!

We were invited to David & Yully's new house for supper on Friday night, so Rad & Jen brought Caleb and Steve & I just went straight from work because it was much quicker that way. They have a very lovely house in Kingston! Anthony & Tiffany were also there and so were Shawn & Camille and the kids who were visiting for the weekend. We had a very nice supper and then I attempted to feed Caleb his bedtime feeding while we were there, but he didn't do well, so we ended up leaving. Oh well.

Playing with Toby, David & Yully's dog

So, Friday night, I finally bit the bullet and Steve and I slept upstairs with Caleb downstairs!! I wasn't sure I could do it, but I did and it was an ok night. A real milestone for us!

Sabbath was a pretty good day. We made it to a good portion of Sabbath School and Camden and Acadia were there as well. Then I fed Caleb during church and then we played with Camden and Acadia in the mother's room.

We had a potluck lunch and then David did a presentation on depression, which was very well done. I was very impressed with how good of a public speaker he is! After the presentation, Carmen took Caleb for a few minutes and he was the center of attention with a lot of the kids, which was cute.

Playing with a plate during potluck

We then went home and changed and then went for a walk with Rad & Jen and Shawn & Camille and the kids. Caleb needed a nap, but it was getting late in the afternoon, so I didn't really care if he slept as long as he stayed happy, because I knew I could just put him to bed early. He did stay awake but was happy, so that was not a problem. We did not take a terribly long walk, but it was still a fun time.

Then we came home and did our story and bath time and then it was an early feeding and bedtime for Caleb.

Saturday night was a bad night, but luckily it had nothing to do with Caleb. Steve and I went to bed around 9:30 (yes, we are party animals!) and someone in our area was setting off fireworks until after 10:30. After 10:00, Steve called the police because it was quite disturbing and the dogs were going nuts. Then we had a major thunderstorm around 2:30 in the morning and it lasted about an hour! Thank goodness there was not a peep out of Caleb, but I sure had a hard time sleeping!

On Sunday, I still got up and worked, even though it was a holiday weekend. I do get paid 8 hours for the holiday, which is very helpful since I usually do 16 hours of work from home, but I have to take Friday off this week because of my mom and Jen being gone and I am hoping to not use any time off, so I wanted to make sure I worked extra to make up for that. I worked 3 hours in the morning and then we met Rad & Jen, Shawn & Camille and the kids and David & Yully at Sam Diego's for lunch. We had a wonderful meal and a wonderful time.

Then we went home and Caleb took a good nap and I did a couple more hours of work. After I fed Caleb, we did a little shopping at Christmas Tree Shop and Trader Joe's. Caleb got his first stickers at Trader Joe's and he loved playing with the paper all the way home.

Monday was Labor Day, of course, so Steve was home, but he was busy working on Rad & Jen's car, so it ended up being a pretty normal day for Caleb and I. I ended up working only 3 hours that day, but it is great to have done 8 hours over the weekend. Here are some random pictures from the weekend.

So close with the crawling, but not quite there!

Doing good with the standing up!

I have been trying to get a picture of Caleb's teeth and this is the best I could do!

One more with the teeth

Tuesday was a busy day for us. My parents finally got home from Nova Scotia on Monday night, so we were very excited to go see them at their office on Tuesday morning.

Then we went home and I fed Caleb before we went to our first playgroup at the Osterville Library. It was supposed to be a Baby Music class, but it ended up just being a playgroup. There were only 3 moms/babies there, so it was very small, but I enjoyed talking with the other 2 moms (and the leader of the class) and Caleb had fun playing with the other 2 babies. They were both girls around 6 months old, but one of them was crawling all over the place, which was crazy! Anyway, I think we are going to enjoy it very much for the next 7 weeks and I am excited!

Can you tell someone is holding something over my head so they would look?

Then we had to go to Caleb's 9 month doctor's appointment at 2:00, so we went back home and I fed Caleb a little more (mostly so he would take a short little snooze since we would be missing naptime) and then we went to the appointment.

Playing in the waiting room

There were 2 things I wanted to talk to the doctor about. #1 was a short-term problem - Caleb has had a diaper rash for over a week and it was not improving. #2 - Caleb's lack of interest in eating baby food. So, it turns out Caleb's "diaper rash" was actually a yeast infection, which is why the diaper rash cream had not been helping. So, we got a prescription for that and hopefully it will go away soon. As far as the eating goes, she was surprised that he was not eating well (considering his weight) and she suggested I become more aggressive in trying to get him to eat. Right now I have only been trying once a day and if he isn't interested, I don't push it. She said I should try 2 or 3 times a day and if it doesn't get better in a month, I need to call her and we will figure out what else to do. He does seem to be getting a little better, but is not always consistent (one day he will open his mouth, the next he will refuse to open it at all). Hopefully it just clicks one day and then he will go to town!

Here are Caleb's 9 month stats and percentiles:

Weight: 21 pounds, 10 ounces (80th percentile)

Length: 29 inches (72nd percentile)

Head: 18 1/4 inches (84th percentile)

The doctor is very happy with his growth (of course) and she is also happy that he is waving and clapping and saying consonants. She thought those things were pretty advanced and didn't seem to be concerned that he is not quite crawling yet. The only bad part of the appointment is that I thought we were going to get away without any shots, because he wasn't due for any vaccines, but they wanted him to have the flu shot, so I said all right.

Waiting for the doctor to come in!

He pretty much destroyed the paper on the exam table

They gave us a book to keep at this visit and he seemed to enjoy it!

We got home around 3:00 and I was debating whether to try to get Caleb to take a nap or just feed him and see if he would sleep while eating. I opted to get him to take a nap, and it didn't go too well. It took him awhile to go to sleep and then he only slept about 20 or 25 minutes, but it was late in the afternoon, so it's ok that he didn't sleep too long.

Yesterday I worked and Caleb went to Grammy's for the first time in awhile. I had to wake him up around 5:45 to feed him and he was so cute when I went in to get him up. He had fussed around 5:00, so I gave him the pacifier and he went back to sleep, but this is how I found him when I went to get him up.

Then, this is a picture of him entertaining himself for a couple of minutes while I was getting dressed.

I was very happy my parents were home and Caleb was at Grammy's again. However, for the second time in a row, Caleb has refused to go back to sleep at her house in the morning. I think she is going to start coming over to our house in the morning again to make sure he doesn't get too off schedule. So, instead of taking a nap around 1:00, he took a nap around 10:30 and then luckily did take a second nap in the car in the late afternoon, so that was good. My mom had a hair appointment late in the afternoon, so she dropped Caleb off at Rad's house for the last 45 minutes before we got home. Here are a couple of pictures from Grammy.

When we got home, we used Caleb's high chair for the first time. We had just been using a chair that clips on to the table, but we decided to set up the regular high chair now that we are going to be more aggressive with feeding Caleb.

He doesn't look too thrilled, but I think he was just tired

This morning, after Caleb got up and ate, we went to the grocery store to get some more baby food and to Babies R Us for a couple of items. Now, Caleb is taking a nap and has been sleeping for almost 2 hours, so that is great!!

Here are a few more pictures from this week as well as a sample of the pictures Shawn took for us in Nova Scotia.