Discoveries

This weekend, Caleb discovered his feet! Now he's always grabbing them. If my feet were so cute, I'd grab them too! :)

We discovered something that makes Caleb laugh! Its the word "Poop," especially when repeated. Now it makes much more sense why he always cracks up on the changing table! (because I say things like "Ewwww, stinky poop!" as I change him :P). Here's a little video series about Caleb's happy poop:

In his car seat - Caleb is finishing up his poop..and laughing about it!

Gabe & I experimenting with Caleb - we wanted to see if it really is the words "Poop poop poop" that make Caleb laugh.

Caleb laughing at "poop poop poop"

Normally, I find poop VERY gross (and I can't believe I wrote so much about it in a post), but at least it makes my baby happy! :)

Walking Buddies

Caleb & I love our daily walks (especially when daddy can join). Caleb loves looking around at the trees, sky, etc. and I love holding his hands and looking at him in his hat. :P


While we're on our short daily walk (which by the way, is just 2 blocks from our house to the park, through the park, to the library across the street and back), we encounter lots of strangers who always strike up a conversation with me. Here's some tidbits of the types of people I encounter and the things they say to me:

• The little kids. These guys are my favorite. There was once a little girl riding her bike on the street. She saw Caleb, immediately stopped, threw her bike down, ran up to me and said "Awwwwww..." She gave us a big smile and jumped back onto her bike and left. Haha. Little kids often like looking at Caleb (a few of them yell "BABY BABY BABY!" and run towards us).
• The old ladies. There's lots of grandmothers walking around. They usually speak Chinese to me and try to give me advise. Sometimes they're sensible (like "Try to sleep as much as possible."), but usually they're very weird. For instance, here's some things I've been told: "Pad your bones. If your bones hurt, his bones will hurt. Don't think that you should be in pain just because you're a mommy." "He's very very cute. So be careful. The girls are coming. You should think about his hair." "He can sleep standing. That means you should sit him up more." Usually I just nod my head and smile...and think "either my Chinese is THAT bad, or you're just weird."
• The fellow mommies. They usually say "How old is he? .... WOW, he's very big!" and "I miss when my kids were that tiny."
• The weird neighbors. There's one guy who I always see. He always says hello with a big smile, nods his head and then says "Sandra, you do good work." I'm not quite sure what he means by that, but he says it every time I see him. I guess it's a good thing. There's another Asian-visor-wearing-pregnant lady who says "He's bigger and I'm bigger" with a laugh every time I see her. I wonder what she'll say after she gives birth.

Well, there's more but this is enough blogging for me today. :) So yes, if you'd like to talk to strangers...carry a baby around. Even the firemen (there's a firehouse next to the libary) and my mean mail man now talk to me. haha.

Daily Fun...

Caleb is 5 months old as of Sunday! I already had to retire quite a few of his outfits because they're too short (all 6 month old outfits...so he's moving on to 9 month and 12 month clothes!). Caleb dressed up for his infant dedication on Sunday in this 12 month outfit :)

Anyhow, people often ask me what Caleb & I do all day. And no, I don't just roar at him all day ;) (Although that would be fun!). Here's a glimpse into our daily activities:

• PLAY!
  This is a majority of our time. Caleb plays with his toys & many stuffed animals (usually for Caleb, "Play" = "Grab & stick in my mouth"). He especially LOVES his play mat, walker, swing, turtle, softball, finger puppets, lumpy, monkey, hippo, etc. (Thanks to all the aunties & uncles who gave them to us!)
  We also play some games like peek-a-boo and patty cake & sing songs like "If you're happy & you know it." Oooh, and Caleb LOVES massages (just like Mommy :) ).
• Lunch visits
  We also get a few lunch visitors who come to break bread with me & play w/ Caleb. Also we try to meet up w/ friends & Gabe for lunch too. Anyone wanna have lunch with us before I go back to work in 2 weeks? :)
• Eating
  Caleb still nurses about 5 times day...plus he LOVES to watch me eat. Actually I feel kind of bad that he's not eating solids yet. He stares, salivates, licks his lips & mouths along as I eat. Poor baby!
• Taking a walk
  Or, I guess being carried on a walk for Caleb :) I usually take a stroll to the park and library (very close to our house) with Caleb in a baby bjorn. Caleb LOVES looking at trees (and usually ignores the dogs and cats we pass by on the way). Also, when I'm with Caleb, TONS of strangers will strike up conversations with me, so it makes for an interesting daily journey.
• Reading books
  Yeah, obviously Caleb doesn't read. But he sits on my lap and tries to grab and eat the pages as I read to him. :) We have LOTS of pop-up books and interactive books that make lots of noises thanks to my the grandparents and aunties & uncles :)
• Diaper changes
  This is another 5x a day activity (along with the occasional bath). But this is MUCH quicker than a feeding time :P Plus Caleb LOVES diaper changes. He smiles and laughs non-stop (just like right after he poops ;) )
• Exercise
  This is clearly a Caleb activity, mommy is lazy! :) His exercise is tummy time. He usually does this while grabbing for toys and I root him on, or he watches some Baby Einstein DVD.
• Sleeeeeep
  This happens much too little in our day :) Caleb takes 1-2 naps if we're lucky. And when Caleb naps, mommy gets to nap :)

We'll also, of course, go out and run errands occasionally. It's all fun stuff, I think we should all have babies so that Caleb can have more fiends to play with...uh, or stare at...

Movin' to the Crib...

Since Caleb was born, we've had him sleep in a mini co-sleeper next to our bed. (It's like a cradle that attaches to your bed). It was definitely nice during the early days filled with mid-night feedings. And even though the midnight feedings stopped, it was still nice to be able to lean my head over and see my baby boy sound asleep. We originally decided to get the mini co-sleeper instead of the full size because we figured we'd move Caleb to his crib when he was around 3 months. Well, he started outgrowing the co-sleeper about a month ago, but it was too hard for me to part with Caleb for the night, so we kept him next to us a while longer (even though his arms would hit the sides when he flailed them about). But alas, I've had to face my night-time separation anxiety and Caleb's moved into his crib in his own room a little over a week ago.




I must say, it's hard to sleep without Caleb next to me (even though he's in the bedroom right next to mine and I can hear his breathing through the monitor). I can't imagine how hard it's going to be when I go back to work next month! :(

Hairstyles of the cute & chubby

We haven't cut Caleb's hair yet...and it's definitely getting long. I actually wanted to cut off a lock to save it in his baby book before he looses his baby hair, but I'm afraid that cutting off a lock will make him look funny. Raymond suggested that we shave Caleb's head. I guess I can support the "Bald is Beautiful" concept, but not on my little boy. :) So what hairstyle do you think we should do on Caleb?

This is his current hairstyle:

Here's Caleb sporting a faux mohawk :)

And here's a side part (Gabe hates his hair this way, he thinks he looks like he's from the 50's :) )

Sorry, no pics of him bald :). I would have liked to try him out with a spikey do, but his hair is pretty thin so it doesn't quite work. So what do you think is Caleb's best look?

Sitting Up!

YAY! Caleb can officially sit up now!

I have been occasionally checking to see if he can sit up, but usually he does a pseudo-sit up position (which is really like he's doing yoga, legs crossed and body bent over). Babies are really amazingly flexible :)

But YAY, this morning when I tried he did an excellent job sitting up for quite a while! Whooo-hooo! I'm looking forward to him being able to use high chairs (so I don't have to lug in the stroller or car seat when going out) and the kitchen sink as a tub. haha.

LOL

Caleb is a mystery. He smiles a whole lot, and usually when we try to make him laugh, he smiles back at us. But now, he laughs pretty frequently too. But most of the time, we have no idea what makes him laugh. Or if we do know what makes him laugh, we have no idea why he finds it funny. Sometimes he laughs when we're interacting with him, but we're not doing anything funny or different than usual. Here are some other random things that have made him laugh in the past: Gabe's coughing, diaper changes, stuffed animals at Raymond & Sandra's place, and the wine bottles/wine rack in our house, and of course, his reflection. It's kind of funny though because when he finds an object he finds funny, he doesn't actually keep looking at it. He'll look at it, laugh, look away...somehow glance back, laugh...look away, etc etc.

This morning though, I discovered that he finds my scary "ROAR" funny. OK, maybe it's not so scary...but anyway, here's a clip of little Caleb laughing at it. He actually laughs more later in the clip...

Infant Dedication

We'll be dedicating Caleb at the 11am GrX service next Sunday (April 22). Yay!

Videos

I finally got around to uploading some older videos of a 2 month old Caleb that needed a bit of compression. Here they are:
Deep thoughts: This is around the time Caleb first started making lots of noise. Of course, now he makes a ruckus quite frequently.
Early Conversations: Along a similar note, we try to have "conversations" with Caleb. Of course, even now his replies are still his random "eh eh" "whoooo" and "cooooo" noises.
Bobblehead: Yep, Caleb does an excellent impression of one of those bobbleheads. His neck is much stronger now, but he still bobbles occasionally (but definiltey not this much!)

There's also a few newly uploaded (and not so old videos) on the video page. More to come later today if I'm not too lazy...

What's in a name?

"Caleb" has been in the top 50 most common names since 1997 and in the top 100s for the rest of the 90s. (By the way, check out this site to see the popularity trends of your name!) But in our experience, so many people have had difficulty pronouncing Caleb's name!

I understand that Caleb is not spelled the way it sounds (which is pronounced [Key-luh b] according to the pronunciation key, or practically like "K"-lub). Some people, like Gabe's mom, pronounce it like it's spelled, "Kay-Leb." That's more understandable, but his name has gotten seriously butchered in the pronunciation department by so many people. The first time we took him to the doctor, the nurse came out and said "Suh-leeeeebeh." We didn't respond, so she tried again "Kal-leebeth." We also didn't respond, so finally she said Caleb's middle name "Tyler." Then we looked at each other and said "ooooh, she's trying to call Caleb."

Actually, my mom and uncle often confuse the name "Caleb" with "Gabriel." It's pretty funny. My mom will say "Gabriel is the most important now. Everyone comes to see Gabriel, he's always the center of attention!" and "I saw the new Gabriel videos" etc. They both say that it's difficult because Caleb and Gabriel sound so alike. I find it funny, but I can't say that I agree. :) Thankfully, they're both getting much better at it (although my uncle still slips sometimes and calls him Galeb). Before Caleb was born, a large family dinner and the family spent the whole dinner learning to pronounce Caleb (and asked us why we picked such a strange name).

I know I should have expected it since before we named him Caleb, my coworker told me a story about how she was on a conference call with a Caleb, and asked the question "Is that correct Celeb (like celebrity)?" And he replied "uh, yes, but my name is Caleb." haha. It's just that I always hated when people pronounced my name "Sondra" so I was hoping that Caleb wouldn't run into such issues.

Here's why we named him Caleb - Caleb means Faithful and Bold. In Numbers, Caleb followed the Lord wholeheartedly and stood up in faith. So despite all this, I think it's an excellent name :)