Caleb's Story: Steve's Birthday, Our 10-year Anniversary, Earlier Bedtime and Saying "Doggie"

One thing that has been a little crazy is that Caleb usually nurses for about an hour and a half before he goes to bed. That is mostly because he is very, very tired by the time he nurses and so he is sleeping most of the time he is nursing. I know that it is a lot, but I haven't thought it was a big deal because I figured if that's what he needs to help him sleep all night, I'm not going to stop him. Well, I finally decided that I wanted to try to cut that down to an hour instead of an hour and a half and that way he would be getting half an hour more of better sleep in his crib instead of while he is nursing. So we started that this week and it is going well. Instead of going to bed between 8:00 and 8:30, he has been in bed by about 7:40 or 7:45 every night and he is sleeping very well and it gives me more time in the evening, so I am enjoying that. He is sleeping until about 5:45, which might seem early to some people, but it doesn't bother me and I think 10 hours is pretty good. Then I feed him and he will go back to sleep until around 8:00 or 8:30. I am happy with that schedule for now, although at some point it would be awesome if he slept 11 or 12 hours straight instead of 10, but I am definitely not complaining about 10 because I know some people who could only wish that their kids would sleep that well!

Anyway, back to our week. Friday was Steve's 35th birthday, but unfortunately, we didn't do too much special for him because of circumstances. My mom had Caleb all day and the 2 of them met Steve and I at an Italian restaurant on our way home from work and we had dinner for Steve's birthday. My dad had been playing golf and couldn't make it in time and Rad & Jen went to New York for the weekend to meet Jen's family, so it was a little disappointing for Steve. We still had fun and had a good meal and we gave Steve some presents, but it is more fun with more people.

Helping Grammy shop for Daddy's snorkel

At an estate sale with Grammy

We went to church on Sabbath, but half of our church had gone on a bus trip to New Hampshire, so we had a very small group, probably smaller than I had seen in a long time. David & Yully were around, so we had invited them over for lunch and we had Anthony & Tiffany over as well. Caleb had taken a short nap during church while he was nursing, so we kept him awake longer in the afternoon before giving him a nap and he would not go to sleep! That seems to happen when we have company over. I think he can hear some of the talking from his room and I think he also knows what he is missing so it is harder to settle down. I ended up having to nurse him to sleep again in the afternoon, so he never actually took a nap in his crib the whole day, but oh well.

Sabbath was also our 10-year anniversary, which is so crazy and hard to believe. We didn't do anything special to celebrate. We honestly are not big on anniversaries. We usually just give each other a card and that's about it! I think we will go out to dinner sometime soon and have my parents baby-sit, but that's about it. I am so lucky to have been married to Steve for 10 years. He is a great husband and father and we are so good together.

Playing in the mother's room during church

Late Sabbath afternoon we took a walk with the dogs as we normally do and then we had a pretty quiet and relaxing evening.

I took this picture because he was holding his pacifier in his mouth weird

Keys are one of his favorite things to play with

Love this picture!

Crazy hair after his bath

Because Caleb hadn't slept well on Sabbath, he ended up sleeping in on Sunday. I mean, he still got up around 6:00, but then slept until 9:00 the second time. Then we ended up going to a few yard sales with my mom and we got some good things. We hadn't been out much this year, so it was nice to go out before they stop for the year. The rest of Sunday we didn't do too much. Steve was working on putting in our new front door, and I worked a few hours, although because of the holiday on Monday, I didn't have to work as much this week. Caleb took a good nap of about an hour and a half and then we went out shopping to Goodwill for a little while. Then we came back and had supper and took a walk with the dogs as usual.

While we were yard saling (we didn't buy it)

Watching Daddy put in the new door

Speaking of the dogs, Caleb is definitely saying his version of the word "doggie". We always refer to Cody and Kylie as the doggies and now every time he sees them he squeals the word "doggie" which sounds a lot like "dada" but is definitely said differently than when he says "dada". So, even though I would still say his first words are "mama" and "dada", I feel like this is the first word that he is actually associating any meaning with because he says "mama" and "dada" for everything. So, it is exciting to see him giving meaning to a word. And as further proof that he knows what he is saying, today when we picked Caleb up from my mom's house, we saw our neighbor Wendy and her dog and he used the same word when he saw her dog and I was pretty impressed with that.

Monday was Columbus Day, but Steve still had to work, so it was a pretty normal day for us. We took a trip to Kohls and K-Mart in the morning. I actually really don't like K-Mart but I was looking for something specific (ice cube trays) and I thought they would have it, but they didn't and that just made me even more convinced that I do not like that store. I did find a pair of khaki pants in Kohls, which is what I was looking for, so that was successful.

Checking himself out in the mirror in Kohls - he loves mirrors!

Monday afternoon for Caleb's nap, I decided to try an experiment. Another thing that I do that is a little unusual is that I am still swaddling Caleb in the morning and for his afternoon nap. He hasn't been swaddled at night for months now, but he seems to do so much better during the day when he is swaddled. Obviously he can't be swaddled forever, so I feel like I need to work on getting him to take a nap unswaddled. So, I decided I would put him down for his nap in just his sleep sack and see what happened. I said I would wait half an hour and if he wasn't asleep, I would swaddle him. So, I let him do whatever for half an hour and he was moving all over his crib and did not seem tired in the least (although this was his normal nap time and he definitely was tired). So, I ended up swaddling him and he fell asleep almost immediately (course, he only slept 30 minutes, which I was not thrilled with, but oh well). Tuesday I tried the same thing and he definitely seemed more tired this time, but still didn't fall asleep in 30 minutes, so I swaddled him and he then slept an hour and 20 minutes. So, I think I will keep trying the 30 minute thing and hope that eventually he will fall asleep during that time and then maybe it will just keep getting easier. We will see what happens.

I had bought some things off of Facebook that Steve picked up for me on Monday and one of the things was a xylophone (for $1) and Caleb really enjoyed playing with it as soon as Steve brought it home. He also was very interested in a diaper box, so I put him in it!

Monday night we had supper at my parents with a new family at our church and it was a wonderful meal and we had a good time socializing but we had to leave early to get Caleb home for bed. I have to tell an embarrassing story that happened while we were there. I had gone into the bathroom and came out and then a few minutes later one of our guests went into the bathroom and immediately came back out and was holding a cell phone and said "I am sorry to say that I just pulled this out of the toilet." Well, it was my phone and it had fallen out of my sweatshirt pocket while I was in there. This is my work phone (Samsung Galaxy 3) and I was so worried that it would be ruined, but it turned back on and appeared to be fine. We ended up putting it in rice for a day to draw out the moisture, but it is 100% fine and I am so relieved, although a little embarrassed.

Tuesday morning we took a quick trip out to Hyannis to meet someone that I was buying something from on Facebook and then we went to Bed, Bath & Beyond to get ice cube trays that I wasn't able to find at K-Mart. We also went to our play group later that morning. I am sad because next week is our last play group, because it is actually supposed to be an 8-week music class, but we are already exchanging contact information to try to keep getting together as a group, so hopefully that will work out.

I had done 3 loads of laundry on Tuesday, so I spent a long time folding it all in the late afternoon while Caleb played in his room. Although he is still not technically crawling forward, he is definitely getting more mobile and does his backward crawling and rolling all over the place. While I was folding laundry, he crawled backwards and got stuck under his crib because his head was sticking out so he couldn't go any further back and he can't seem to go forward. It was kinda funny.

Not much else happened on Tuesday. Today was a work day and my mom was with Caleb all day. She sent me a few cute pictures throughout the day and did comment when we got home about how he is getting more mobile and had crawled around her family room quite a bit.