killer day

and not in a good way. it's hot here... really hot. i mean, maybe not compared to california or florida, but a lot hotter than we're used to. and we don't have air conditioning. caleb is having a really hard time with it. he isn't sleeping well at all, which is making us all grumpy (and i'm not exactly chipper when it's this hot, anyway) and he's being very clingy. that's hard for me... a clingy baby when it's so hot. all he wants is me to hold him and all i want is to take a cool shower and not touch anyone. they don't exactly go well together. i just have to remind myself that we will make it through and i just need to not lose it.

and did i mention caleb is sick?

first signs

i think caleb signed for the first time! i've been signing with him for a long time and he knows what many of them mean, but he hasn't felt the need to participate. the other day, though, i think he did a sign for drink. what we do is make a "c" with our hand and hold it to our mouths (like we're holding a cup). what he did was hold the back of his little hand up to his mouth. at first i thought he was tired and was going to rub his eyes but then he kept just holding the hand by the mouth. finally, i caught on and he drank a lot! he hasn't done it since, but i'm excited to see it more and more (hopefully!).

6 words...

thanks to my friend hannah, i've been tagged for a meme game. here's how it works... this meme originated over an idea that was prompted by the book written by larry smith & rachel fershleiser. it’s a compilation based on the story that hemingway once bet ten dollars that he could sum up his life in six words. his words were, “for sale: baby shoes, never worn." in another blog i read, melissa summed up her life by the words, "still talks too much in class"

so, i've been challenged to sum up my life in six words. and here they are...

broken mirror: inadequately reflecting His light

i would love to hear what others come up with... i had about 3 i was working on in various forms before this one came together.

chase

caleb and i have been having so much fun playing chase together over and over again. our love seat is in a place where you can go all the way around it. and around it we go! i crawl around one corner and hide and then caleb crawls after me. we have so much fun sneaking up on each other and trying to surprise the other. he's getting to be really quick at crawling and good at listening to hear which direction i'm coming from. he also has gotten smart to the fact that sometimes i get on the loveseat to hide. i'm going to have to come up with some other tricks to outsmart my 9 month old!

opposites attract

caleb is very into opposites right now. we love to play games with them. we do "on-off" with light switches, musical toys, etc. we play "up-down" with toys where we raise them up high and then bring them down into our laps. actually, for caleb it looks more like raising them up and then throwing them down. our favorite, though, is "in-out" and we play this one more than any other. caleb likes to dump all his blocks out of their bin and then put them back in (only to take them out again). we say "in, in, in... the block is in the box" and then "out, out, out... the block is out of the box". he's also done this will all the clothes in his dresser... those were mainly out, though, not much "in" was happening. we've also tried this at the library with their bin of board books. fun times!

happy father's day

i love partnering with troy in this adventure that is parenting.

goodbye chopsticks

caleb's chopstick method of picking up food is no more. and i'll miss it. not that it was effective, but, boy, was it adorable! it came to a screeching halt as soon as i introduced caleb to veggie booty. i had read about it and heard about it on a few blogs i read so finally i just went out and bought it. i thought it would make a good afternoon snack. and caleb LOVES it. the first time i gave it to him he quickly figured out how to feed himself (with either hand) and would often put two to three pieces in his mouth at a time. his fingers went from chopsticks to shovels.

pregnancy...

no, i'm not pregnant. although troy would love to be (he's been ready since caleb was about 3 weeks old) i'm not ready yet. and i want a chance to have my body not sustaining life for at least a couple of months. sometimes i really want kids close together, but right now i'm just not ready.


but anyway, i digress...

now that i have a baby, i LOVE finding out that friends are pregnant (like we did last night). it's honestly one of my favorite things. i love hearing about how they're feeling and about their hopes and dreams for their labor & delivery and their baby's future. i love seeing the bedding they pick out and the maternity clothes they wear. and i love thinking about all the joy they have in store for them. it's so exciting!

tongue obsession

caleb is obsessed with sticking his tongue out. he learned awhile ago, but had to really concentrate on it. now, he does it all the time. like ALL the time. i would be willing to bet that at least 1/8 of his day (that he's not sleeping) is spent with his adorable little tongue sticking out. he especially does it when he's concentrating on crawling fast or climbing something.

celebration of friendship

the weather here is yucky. very yucky. and it's june. not just june, but june 12. give me a break. please! so i'm feeling a little yucky myself. i'm sick of not being able to go out and go swimming (especially since caleb is quickly outgrowing his swimsuit that he's only worn 2 times!)and go to the park and take walks. i'm ready for summer. or at least spring!

all that to say, i need a pick me up. and having my dear friend janell here yesterday helped. a lot! i thought it was time i did something to celebrate friendship. i'm hoping this will help bring a little sunshine into my life since obviously the sky isn't doing that for me. so i thought it would be fun to write about my two closest friends and how i met them. because when i think about them and how they came into my life, it makes me happy. and it makes me excited to think about how God is orchestrating other friendship in my life at this very moment and i might not even realize it!

ps... troy is really my closest friend... but for the sake of this celebration, i'm excluding family.

janell: i met janell in a really roundabout way. see, her sister-in-law worked at the job where i got hired. and she and i got along pretty well. so when another job opened up in my department and janell applied, we thought, "hey, let's give it a shot... at least her character is vouched for." what a great decision! janell and i hit it off right away. there are very few people that i could work with so easily. and we had so much fun. and our work definitely didn't suffer. if anything, we wanted to do better and quicker work so that we could have a chance to have even more fun together. we talked and worked and worked and talked (we were in customer service so we could do that sort of thing). it was wonderful. and one of the things i most dreaded about leaving that job was not seeing janell every day. but we're still friends. and our husbands get along great. and so do our boys. she's the type that i can just be with. what a joy she is and her friendship brings to me.

sheri: it was my freshman year of high school. and it seemed everywhere i looked, there she was. she was in mexican dance with me and drill team with me and speech class with me. and i thought, "hey, if i'm going to always be around her, i may as well be her friend." i am SO thankful for that! sheri has been a great friend through so much of life. she watched me fall in love (and i did the same for her) and we got married the same summer (even shared a veil and cake-topper). our boys are only about 6 months apart and our friendship seems to just be getting stronger. i'm so thankful to have a friend who has been there for so many seasons of my life. and i know she'll be there for so many more. which will make them all the more special.

ahh... i feel better already.

what is going on?

what is going on with caleb these days? he's having serious going-to-sleep issues. not every time, but occasionally. we'll lay him in his crib like usual and instead of just playing for a while or fussing for a little bit, he will start screaming-crying. like he's in pain.

and i don't know why.

at first i considered an ear infection and that maybe it hurt to be horizontal... but he keeps screaming even after he's sat himself up in bed or is standing up holding onto the sides. all he wants is to be in our arms. at first, we thought something was wrong, so we would go to him. but once it became evident that it was just a game for him, we thought we should just let him cry for about 5 minutes to see if he stopped. so we did. and the cried so hard he threw up. so now of course i don't want to do that again. what is going on?! i want him to go back to putting himself to sleep but i also want him to be safe.

and it's all about what i want, right? oy.

maybe God is trying to teach me something.

spices

i'm very excited to start introducing caleb to some spices in his diet. so far we've tried cinnamon and garlic. it took him a while to warm up to the cinnamon, but the garlic he took to immediately (or else i just didn't put enough that he could actually taste it). it's yet another step in the process of getting him closer to eating "big people" food.

happy anniversary

today is the anniversary of a loss in my life. not a very big one, but a significant one. exactly one year ago today, my i lost my appendix. it was a crazy and scary time, made more so by the fact that i was 6 and a 1/2 months pregnant at the time. the day before, i thought i just had the flu and even went to the hospital to get re-hydrated. but the next morning it became obvious that something far more serious than the flu was going on.

the whole day in the hospital i was well cared for by nurses while doctors went nuts trying to figure out what was wrong with me. preterm labor? nope. kidney infection? no. infection in the uterus? thankfully not. in the end, i had an MRI which found my appendix to be "suspicious". so they removed it. the surgeon was wonderful and a labor & delivery nurse stayed with me the whole time monitoring caleb.


the amazing thing was, though, that i never really worried about caleb. i just knew that he was going to be ok and that i would get to meet him and hold him. i was just really thankful that that didn't come until august!

diapers are like chicken pox...

after you've been exposed to them for a time, you build up an immunity to them. at least, that's how it is with caleb and diapers. at first, fuzzy bunz with single liner, totally fine. then, we had to go the double liner route for nights. then it was double liner for naps and disposable for nights. now disposables won't cut it for nights so we're on to nighttime diapers. and i think we'll have to start doubling up on the fuzzy bunz liners during days, too... and not just at naptime. yikes! when will it end?

bobble-head

there's this thing caleb does that makes him look like a bobble head. it's so cute... he just wiggles his head back and forth... and if another person does it back at him, he'll keep going. in fact, while we were in kentucky, he and his uncle luke got into "dance wars" where they would do this back and forth and back and forth. apparently, caleb won. it's especially cute when he does this sitting on the floor or in his high chair (although not while eating) because then you can see his little tush wiggle, too.

masculine sounds

caleb makes a lot of boy sounds. he likes to growl and clear his throat and make these guttural laughs that sounds sort of like a frenchman. it's so funny and so boy and has made me think about how amazing it is that he's already showing boy attributes at 9 months. besides his sounds, he totally loves balls better than stuffed animals, and like lions and alligators better than sheep and kittens (although really, who can blame him?).

prom

so, Mommy Martini is hosting a prom-story carnival where we all get to share our prom stories with each other... i know, fun, right? so here goes...

in high school, i wasn't the dating sort. i was the "i'm going to go off to college and meet the man of my dreams" sort. there were guys i liked and who liked me but i was holding out for college and the man of my dreams (who, by the way, i did find, thank you very much!).

anyway, senior prom. it was the best. ever. and i didn't even go. there was this guy who i was friends with. not even really good friends, but friends. and he knew that i (and a couple of other wonderful, beautiful girls) were not going to prom that year. and he thought that was a shame. so, the night after prom we all got dressed up and went over to his house and his mom made us a 5-course meal. then we went downtown portland took a horse-drawn carriage ride around the city. it was amazing and so fun and so no pressure. and all those boys who felt bad about not asking me to prom felt even worse since i had more fun without them!

finally...

caleb can say "mama"! it's about time! we've been practicing every day since he was about 2 days old. and i must admit i was a little jealous that jackson says it. and then two days ago, coming from the back seat of car comes the sound i've been waiting so long to hear... "mmmmm-aaaaaa... mmmmm-aaaaaa" i almost had to pull over the car and give him a hug!