First Ouchie

Caleb is getting more adventurous and instead of just army crawling, he is exploring on all fours!  He took a pretty hard face plant though to a cd case (rim side up) and he got a cut across his eye.   Luckily his eye was fine but the skin around it was bleeding and he was quite startled by it all!  He recovered quickly with some distraction though so I was happy about that!

Whats a dog to do?

So Caleb found the dog bowl and he thinks it is his personal sensory table.  He loves the texture of the dog food and the water.  Normally I'd fend him off, since I was trying to get things done, I let him play.  Cooper was distressed at how Caleb got to handle his food.  It was bath night for Caleb after some hands in the slobbery dog dish.  

Girl's weekend

We had our quarterly friend gathering this weekend.  Lisa was the lovely hostess and we had lunch at her place.

It was my first night away from Caleb.  Ironically, he slept all night from 11:30-7 for daddy.  Figures!

I had fun with the girls and they introduced me to Red Robin where I enjoyed a Bailey's ice cream shake and Red Robin's burger!  It was all amazing.  We went back and watch a sappy Nicholas Sparks movie and talked about fun things til 1 am.  So much for catching up on sleep but I wouldn't trade it or these girls for anything.

Ball Pit Fun

Aunt Teresa bought Caleb a ball pit.  It was well loved by Chris! I'm sure Caleb will love it soon too!

9 Months

Every month is the best month.  At least that is what my friends who are parents tell me.  I just loved this past month.  This little guy is babbling, smiling, waving, "flirting" and just generally fun to be around.

Eating.

He doesn't care for solids just yet.  If I give him mashed bananas instead of pureed, he spits it out. Finger foods such a peaches and green beans, not so much a fan either-- out they go! But, we keep trying.  He did seem to "nom" on some chicken and get a bit of that down.  He takes a bottle still every three hours.  So far, this boy has been exclusively given breastmilk and I am so thrilled that this continues to work out.

Sleep

Not too much has changed here.  The boy is up for 2-3 hours and sleeps.  He goes to bed around 8 pm and gets up around 2-3 am and again at 6 to nurse and is right back down until about 8 am.  He has been doing all his naps and overnight sleep in his crib.  We officially took the swing down.  He loves to cuddle his "snuggle" blanket and gets covered in his soft white blanket.

Interests & New things

He learned to army crawl.  Over the holiday break I got to spend two glorious weeks with my guy and I finally caved and gave him permission to crawl. He wanted to get around so bad and I finally said, "okay".  :-p

He just simply loves Cooper.  Hands down that is his favorite "thing" in the world!  He loves to play with Cooper. He will drag himself across a room to either get to him or his toys.  He likes to get Cooper's attention by grabbing his toys and waving them around.  He has even learned to "throw" them.  He really loves Cooper's Kong bone toy.  He gets that thing in his mouth and massages his gums with it.  And like the irresponsible chill mother I am, I let him.  Surely, I'm building up his immune system right?

He also loves mommy & daddy.   He loves to turn pages to his books.  He got an animal book at Christmas and, not to my surprise, his favorite animals is a dog --a golden retriever.  He loves his blocks and plastic connect toys.  He loves things with wheels and he loves things like his walker. He turns every toy upside down to inspect it.

He is just starting to favor me and get shy around others.  He babbles things like "dad-dad" and "dada" and likes to mimic sounds.  He is curious about everything and seems to be watching our every move.  He goes to bed happily when he is tired.  He usually falls asleep in the car.  He likes to pick up everything and has a keen eye for the tiniest things on the carpet and picks them up. (Random fact: I still find hay from last Halloween's photo session and he can spot it a "mile" away on a carpet.)

Operation 365

So, in the spirit of the new year, I've been trying to do things to improve myself, our budget, our house and our family.  Some of the changes I anticipate "sticking to" are smaller but meaningful.  For example, I swore that I wouldn't stay at work past 4:15.  We are two weeks in and I've had a few days where I've stayed til 5 but that is an improvement from EVERY DAY til 5.

Other smaller changes are the fact that I want to start budgeting-- I'm starting small.  Cash only for dining out, groceries and clothes.  So far I've learned that I didn't give enough money for dining out so I'm increasing that next month by $35.  But, I will stick to that amount.  This may mean saying "no" to friends or family.  I will probably add another category-- ie fun money but luckily I don't like to have fun so I didn't really have to worry about that this month.  I might also add gas just so I can track how much we really spend on that. However, that would only be half since Chris wouldn't be getting gas at the same time as me.

So, after that side note, you may be wondering, "What is Operation 365?"  I'm glad you asked.  I decided that my house is far too cluttered.  Don't get me wrong, I like to keep things clean but some days I'm tripping over numerous items.  So, my solution is to get rid of items.  I've already had great success this year getting rid of numerous items: pans, love seat, tv stand, excess baby items, baby clothes.  I hope to continue the trend of getting rid of one item per day so that in one year I can have 365 less items.

 

Lunch Date

Today was MLK Jr. Day and so I had the day off work. Chris and I met Rose for lunch at Station 6 pizza and were treated to TCBY.  Yummy Day!!

Christina's birthday celebration

Christina is 27 now.  Where does the time go?  We celebrated her birthday on Sunday and I think it's safe to say we all had fun. We ordered food in. Grandma R played cards and "Toot and Otto" with me, Christina and Ben.  Chris, Grandma F, Ben, and Chris watched the football playoffs.  Matthew explored every room of the house playing with our new toys. Caleb used his new mad army crawling skills to get all around. Mom gave rides in her new 2014 Chevy Altima.  I gave dad and Ben haircuts after these pictures were taken.  I should have taken an "after picture."

Happy birthday little sis, may it be a great year for you!

So many new toys to explore

These two...

Battling for the same toy... both want to slobber all over it!  They crack me up!

My story teller...

All of the sudden, Caleb has been super talkative!  It is so adorable and he gets so animated.  We try to catch it on camera but that never works out.  Tonight, he started telling us stories at dinner time and daddy caught a bit of it on video!  This one gives you a small glimpse think more animated generally, lol.

Check out this adventure:

Perfection

Saturdays are never days of rest for me.  Usually Friday nights I am stressed trying to straighten up or clean my house for my clients.  I make sure batteries are charged, memory cards are available and even occasionally look up ideas for new pictures.  Last night, I got a text from Ben asking if I wanted to play games.  Generally, I'd find a way out of it but this time he came to me.  He had made several freezer meals with me last month and didn't have room for them all so it was also a good excuse to pick them up.  He invited Teresa over too so we all ate together, played a board game and watched, "Now You See Me".  I had a lot of fun.  Caleb is at the best age because he can mostly entertain himself. He just got brave enough to start crawling on my tile floor so I got to see just how dirty that truly is.  But he was having fun too!

This morning I didn't have an alarm set and Caleb didn't get me up until 8:15. We played together for a couple of hours until we woke up daddy.  (He has been working long, late hours.)  We sold our red love seat (yay Craigslist) and then had the rest of the day to have lunch and just be together.  I kind of feel at a loss for what to do with all this time.  I did dishes, mopped our kitchen tiles, and have been generally cleaning.  I made a few purees for Caleb. He is finally becoming interested in eating solids.  I've offered them plenty but he always seem like he wasn't ready yet.

Chris and I took Caleb "sledding".  Oh my gosh, hysterical!  We were out about 5 minutes total because it was really cold!  It was 28 degrees and windy but at least there was glorious sunshine! The sun has really been warming our house and I'm loving it!! So we are only at 3:30 pm and I still have hours ahead of me.  I can't wait to see what the rest of the day brings!  I could get used to family time on Saturdays!!

Winter "Cold Days"

At 5:00 am on Wed January 7th, I had a startling awakening!  I heard a loud crack like glass being hit by a golf ball.  It was dark and I was deliriously tired as I'd already been up 3 times with Caleb through the night. Since the loud sound didn't set off the "Cooper alarm," I decided that I'd investigate when I got up.  Since I had no clue what caused the sound, I figured it had to be something on the roof.  

Fast forward to today when I was cleaning our bedroom.  I pulled back the curtains to let in more light and what did I see?  Our window shattered in the pieces.  It was why the room was dramatically colder and I had to turn the heat up a degree last night.  I just figured it was the negative temps outdoors.  

So, I'll be figuring out how to get this repaired.  This is the year of repairs already. We had someone come take a look at our refrigerator freezer; "repair" it, charge us, and it still is frosting.  

At the bottom was cold day 1 of Caleb playing with his toys.  Caleb started officially crawling on January 6th!!  Now with his mad crawling skills, he can go just about wherever he wants!  Also pictured is Caleb actually eating (sort of) pear slices.  This boy loves his purees and spits out all solids so far.  I keep offering them from time to time.  But, he does love him some good pear and oatmeal puree!  So pears weren't too hard to keep in his mouth today but he still only did like 2-3 small pieces.  This little man is growing so fast!

New Year, New Plan

For about five years now, I've been saying this is the year I'm going to budget and each year February comes and it has fizzled out.  This year, I'm taking it small.  The main discretionary spending I do is 1) eating out 2) clothes 3) groceries.  So the plan is to give myself a limit using cash in these areas.  A while ago I bought Dave Ramsey's money envelope system and I finally blew off the dust and decided to put it to good use.  I found it amazing that on the first day shopping I spent nearly all of  my $100 clothing budget on two pairs of shoes for myself.  But, I was thrilled to find Chris a nice dress shirt marked down from $34.94 to $1.58 with tax at Old Navy.

I may have to re-evaluate my limitations and really learn what is realistic for me to spend in one month.   I generally don't buy clothes or shoes in a typical month and I kind of binge buy at events like Divine Consign. I have plenty of shoes and haven't been in a wedding for a while so I haven't had much of a need.  However, I needed a nice black pair of shoes for work that aren't ballet flats. I found some Sketchers memory foam shoes that can function as dress casual and also keep my feet from becoming covered in snow when I step outside.  Because I'm a sucker for buy one get one half, I got a second pair.  Maybe I'll learn not to do this now that I have set limits for myself.  I guess my true test will come the day I'm shopping and don't have cash.  Do I whip out the debit card or go with out?  Time will tell!