Rub the belly...love the belly

Yay for presidents. I got to spend 3 days with Caleb :)

Anyway, random story from the weekend. Caleb will come and give you a kiss if you say "Caleb, give [person] a kiss" or if you say it in Chinese. But it was pretty funny because Gabe had the hickups yesterday and everytime he hickuped, Caleb would stop what he was doing, crawl over, and give Gabe a kiss. Hahaha. Silly.

Oh, lots of new videos uploaded. Some I've referred to in the past and just finally got around to updating. I forget if I blogged about this before. Anyway, whenever take off Caleb's clothes to get him ready for his bath, he'd kind of laugh at or stare at his bare belly while giving it a little rub or a pat. I guess he never really sees his little belly :) Here's a video of this:



Whenever he'd do that, Gabe and I would say "Rub the belly...love the belly...pat the belly" etc. Then after a few times of that, he started to associate the words with the action. I didn't notice this till later when I was telling my parents about how Caleb does this and he started to rub his belly. So this is just another one of the fun things Caleb does now



He also does the handmotions to twinkle twinkle little star, minus making a diamond with his hands. Video to come later :)

Caleb's also walking around a lot now. Here's an older video of him walking around between Gabe and I in his PJs.


HE's acutally a lot better now and walks around everywhere, but it's hard to film because usually he just wants to jump on me or play with the camera, but here's a short Caleb walk:


Oooh, shortly after Caleb turned 1, I started to let him feed himself with the spoon. He was pretty good and it was pretty funny too (I think I have an old video somewhere, I'll have to dig it up), but it was VERY messy. There would be food all over his face, his hair, his bib, his clothes, his fingers, his high chair, the floor, etc. So after a short time, I stopped doing this. Yesterday he grabbed the spoon and started feeding himself. So I let him try again with some dry food and he was actually pretty good!


After proving himself with the dry food, I let him feed himself some applesauce too and he was pretty good. When he dips the spoon in himself though, he either gets very little (which takes him forever to finish) or a whole heap (which usually falls on himself or on the tray or floor). Ah well, we're workin' on it :)

Happy Valentine's Day!

Here's some V-day fun. Thank you Auntie Allison for the cute Valentines day shirts (and jeans, and socks, and rain boots! :) )

(this shirt says "I enjoy ice cream, insightful cartoons & long walks in the playground" :) )


There were 2 innocent tulips that were completely destroyed in the taking of these pictures. Poor tulips.
It started out so innocently:

Then Caleb tore off the bottom of the stem:


Then he started removing petals as if to say "she loves me, she loves me not:"



Before long, the petals were all over the room. In this shot, I asked "Caleb, what happened to the flower?" and he threw his arms up like "I don't know mommy"

Sponge...

Caleb's totally a little sponge now. He picks up all sorts of things from us. For example, my mom's been here about a week now. After changing his diaper, she'll put him in his crib and say (in Chinese) "Grandma is going to wash her hands" and she'd shake her hands. Well, now everytime we say "wash your hands" in English or Chinese, Caleb waves his hands in the exact manner my mom does.

He also learned this from Grandma & Grandpa Shen and his great Auties.



It's a Chinese rhyme that basically means "little bug...little bug flies!" and you're supposed to do with your hands what Caleb is doing in that video. He loves it so much that he does this all the time. He'll motion with his finger until you say the rhyme. When you actually say it, he'll smile or laugh.

One thing he loves even more than that is "Row Row Row your boat." If you're sitting down, he'll often walk/crawl over and sit right in front of you, grab your fingers, and start doing a rowing motion until you say "Row Row Row your boat..." (or do the Chinese rhyme that my parents do with this).

Another thing Caleb does now is he reads books and takes his index finger and goes along the words. He'll go left to right, then go down to the next line and so on and so forth. All the while "reading" out loud. Actually, I'm not sure where he learned this since we don't really do that when we read books to him, and he's definitely never seen any of us do that when reading. Hmmm...I wonder if he's been sneaking out to the library or something when I'm not looking.

Silly Caleb

A little silliness for your Tuesday Morning



Things I'm trying to capture on video (Caleb does these frequently, but gets distracted by the camera :) )

• Caleb singing and playing piano. He sings his favorite song, then pounds on the piano, then sings, then pounds...etc. it's funny :)
• Caleb reading to himself. He LOVES books and sits there and makes a whole bunch of noise like he's reading aloud as he flips through the pages. He also points at things on the page and laughs. hahah

little boy...

Gabe & I always used to watch Caleb on the video monitor as he slept. Usually I'd affectionately refer to him as "my little bean head" becuase his head was shaped like a little bean - one of the many "baby features" he had. A few months ago, we peeked in via the video monitor and noticed his head was less bean shaped. See, here's a pic from Saturday...less bean-like I think.


Anyhow, I think that's been the start of my little Caleb losing some of his baby features. Many people have commented on this lately...*sniff* little baby caleb is growing into a little boy. (His head still seems pretty large to me though :) )

Anyway, here's some other pics on our journey to the park (1 block from our house)

Caleb's Art

When he was around 11 months, we discovered that Caleb loved to play with crayons (see the old post). After a while though, he seemed to want the eat the crayons more than he wanted to color, so the crayons went into the "forbidden toys" pile, only to be brought out for special occasions. But recently when Gabe was sick, we took them out again to make him a get well card. Since then, Caleb's rediscovered his inner artist, making lots of various pieces of "modern art," much like this one from last week:



The scanner doesn't do it justice, he's quite a little Picasso. :) He actually puts a lot of little dots of various colors. And because he hits the paper rather hard, the bits of crayon left behind add nice texture to his artwork :P haha.

Anyway, random Caleb story. Gabe usually likes to sleep in a bit more than Caleb & I, so to wake him up I usually put Caleb in bed with Gabe. Caleb will usually do something like grab Gabe's nose or start singing his "dada" song. But yesterday he actually crawled up to his sleeping daddy and said "dada" and gave him a kiss on the cheek. Then he lay his head on Gabe's chest. It was male bonding at it's finest :)

Another thing Caleb does all the time now is he likes to sit and read books out loud (well, at least his version of what the books say!). He'll sit and flip the book from cover to cover, blabbing the whole way. He'll even point to certain things on the page and laugh. My mom said he especially enjoys her people magazines. Oh boy. I hope he grows out of that one!

bilingual baby

it's so nice having grandma & grandpa shen here. Since they came last weekend, Caleb's learned so much Chinese. :) Things he understands in Chinese now are "give [person] a kiss" (he'll walk over and give a WET kiss), "blow a kiss," "point to your ear," "point to your nose," "show me your teeth," "eat this," and others. Pretty soon he'll have better Chinese than his daddy :P Just kidding.

Also since Grandma and Grandpa Shen have been taking Caleb on a daily walk to the park, he's come to associate his brown hat (see this post from a few days ago) with going out. When he wants to go out, he'll bring my mom over to his brown hat, put on his brown hat, and then point to the door. Hahaha. Such a silly boy.

By the way, thanks Auntie Allison for the cute shirt :) Caleb got lots of V-day clothes from Auntie Ally, more to come on a V-day post. Here's a teaser. haha.

Happy Chinese New Year!

It was especially hard getting him to keep this hat on! (even more so than his brown winter hat below :) )




Oh, here's a shot of his karate chop


Don't mess with my Caleb! :P

Yay!

Yay for better weather and for Grandma and Grandpa Shen visiting again :)

That means more visits to the park with Caleb. He still loves the swings!




But it's sure hard to keep his hat on :)



It sure makes my day to see my baby laugh non-stop on the swings.