Relay for Life

Catching up... as usual. We went to the luminary lighting ceremony at the Relay for Life in June... this benefits the American Cancer Society. It was another one of those terrible, but good things. I never know if I'm going to be glad I went to things such as this... but in the long run, I usually am. I told Caleb that there were lights for Sissy... and he repeated that lots of times. Thanks again to all of you who donated in Hannah Grace's memory...

Sweet boy in his stroller...

So sad that there has to be a track-full of these....

Caleb's new pool

We got Caleb a little plastic baby pool for the backyard... as I've said before, he doesn't necessarily always enjoy the water. He spent the first few minutes clinging to my leg....

Then he decided that it could be fun to splash his feet in the water... and his hands, just a bit. Hopefully he will get used to being in his pool and have a good time with it this summer.

Time flies...

Caleb in his "comfy chair"... and he looks pretty comfy.

Has it really been 2 months since I've posted? I don't even know where to start... but this is a video I took a few weeks ago. We were in the Taco Bell drive through line (I know... I let my kid eat great stuff), and all this sudden Caleb pops out with "I love Taco Bell". I didn't think I heard him right at first, but he repeated it, so I pulled out the ol' Flip cam to catch him. He definitely loves some Taco Bell... and with his little southern voice, the "Bell" has about 4 syllables. He eats an order of rice and a soft taco with no problem at all... and sometimes asks for more.

Some new Caleb things...

*He now says "thank you soooo much"

*Still says things like "Wanna hold you?"... so you say "You want me to hold you?" and he says "Ooookkkk" in this really cute, high voice like it was all your idea.

*He still loves to read- he can "read" several books all by himself. We have this whole routine where we have to lie on his bed and read 2 or 3 books every night... then he says "Momma (or Daddy) lay down with you?"

*He can now climb up on our bed all by himself... and when he's ready to get down, he says "sliiiiide down", gets on his tummy, and slides until his feet reach the ground.

*He knows many shapes... which I didn't realize until he started pointing out circles, triangles, squares, etc. that he finds in his toys, puzzles, etc.

LR zoo

We made a little trip to the LR zoo today. I would love to say Caleb had a great time... but unfortunately, it didn't go quite the way we had planned. He didn't want to ride in the stroller, so he cried until we let him out. We tried to let him walk, but he kept going way ahead and wouldn't stay with us. He cried the whole time we held his hand. I think he looked at about ohhhhh, 3 animals. He just wanted to run loose! Maybe next year...

One of the 3 times he actually looked...

random stuff

Just a few random Caleb facts:

*He loves to wash his hands and brush his teeth (but not so much if you are helping him brush)

*He's still a dancing machine

*He is talking up a storm ("Where daddy go?", "turn light on", etc)

*He likes to say something like, "I play with you?", then he says "Ok" like you were the one who suggested it and he is agreeing to go along :)

*He refers to himself quite often in 3rd person, e.g. "Good job, Bubba" to himself

Caleb, you are one of the sweetest, funniest little boys I have ever met. I hope that somewhere in there, you have some memories of your sissy... we are pretty sure she manages to whisper some things in your ear at certain moments :) You wanted to go in her room twice today which is something you never do. I wish I knew what you were thinking... but I do know that I love to kiss and squeeze your sweet face.

balloons for Hannah

Some sweet teachers at Monitor Elementary organized a balloon release to honor Hannah Grace's memory. All the 5th graders released balloons with little notes attached. These notes had her picture and the link to her caringbridge. It encouraged whoever found one to do something good for someone else. A note was found in Florida (!!!) a few days later, and the sweet woman e-mailed the school. What a special thing...

Caleb and "the haircut"

This is just a random cute picture I threw in...

So, Ms. Amy took Caleb to our normal place to get his hair cut Tuesday, but things didn't go so well. His hair ended up really short on the sides and back and longer on the top with patches in it. So, after hours of consideration at home that evening, we decided to just let Dad go to work with the clippers ("we" meaning mostly Mom- I was slow to relent). He ended up looking really cute, but I just can't stand how much of a "big boy" he looks like now!

A few new things:

*He is putting lots of words together, such as: "Wanna play?", "Wanna hug?", "Sit down with me", "Molly, hush", etc.

*He now gives hugs sometimes on his own- without us having to beg for them :)

*He can now actually count objects with one-to-one correspondence up to 10

*He's learned more colors, like purple, orange, black, etc.

He is such a good, sweet boy... our big problem with him is that he wants to stand up/jump up and down in the booth when we go out to eat. If that's the biggest problem we have, we'll take it!