Oscar the Grouch

What is up with this grumpy stage? Caleb has lately been a complete grouch after he wakes up from his nap. Yesterday was one of the worst yet. I'm having a hard time knowing if he really understands what we're saying, or if he gets why he's disciplined. The only thing he stops is the whole stomping the feet thing because he KNOWS that's wrong, but the whining and the crying just goes on and on! Then he's just suddenly better. How FRUSTRATING!

Chris's fam came over last night for pizza. The kids got to have fun on the playground, too. It's too cute watching Caleb and Nathan, and Emily loves to have the attention too! Caleb wasn't happy about going in to eat, but when I told him what we were eating, he smiled really big and shouted, "PIZZAS!" He was, of course, a show off the rest of the night. He really didn't want to play in his room with the other kids; I think he and Nathan haven't been getting along very well, and they pretty much ignored each other the whole night. When everyone was leaving, Caleb was so sweet giving everyone hugs, but one wasn't well received. Nathan pushed him! That was their second altercation in the past 2 days! Caleb did finally get his hug, though, when Nathan apologized. I'm sure they're going to butt heads a lot as they grow up!

wild women's weekend!

I got to go to Women of Faith last weekend. It was my first, and it was fabulous! I didn't even cry as much as I expected. I went with Mom and some women from Calvary, Fairfield. It was nice to get away and hear some fantastic speakers. Some of their stories make you realize how great I've had it all my life. I'm so blessed!

Caleb and Chris got to have some father/son bonding time while I was gone. I missed them, but I know they had fun. They even got to take a trip to Fazoli's and Gander Mountain! Caleb gets into these sayings, and he just keeps on and keeps on. Right now we're on "Whoo! It's hot!", "Uh-oh....what happened?", and "Heeeeyyyy! Wassup?"He's too funny! I loved it when I got home Sat. evening and Caleb ran and gave me a big hug and hollared "Mommy!" It just doesn't get any better than that! He's even learned "I ub u" (I love you). Melts my heart! Of course, he tends to tell Chris more than me, but that's OK!

Ya'll can definitely keep Chris and me in your prayers. We're both back in school for the fall semester, so life's getting pretty crazy! I've been looking at the TONS of stuff I have to read and the papers I have to write, and I'm trying not to get overwhelmed! I know I'll be fine, but it's a little scary to go back to school. The last time I did this, I was single with no kids!

back to school

I had orientation today for my grad school. It was actually very informative. Since the whole thing is online, it was really helpful to learn where all my resources are. I even ran into a couple of people I know! It was also freshman orientation day, and I didn't know so many 10 year-olds are starting college now! The freshmen look so young! It's really disgusting that I was that young looking fish 10 years ago. I made the mistake of thinking I'd just run by the cashier's office on my lunch break to pay my tuition. WRONG! Stinkin' long lines....I finally got everything paid for and got my books. God is really good.....I got a great grant for my classes, and I ended up not needing 3 of the books I had reserved. So, my cost was greatly decreased. Praise God!

Caleb's being good tonight. Last night he was such a grumpy dude. He didn't get a good enough nap, but he didn't want to go to bed either. What a whiny baby! He's sweet Caleb tonight. (Dual personality I guess!) He's been loving on me and playing so well. I even got a little reading done for my class while he played all by himself! Chris got called into work, so it's just us right now, but he should be back soon. Caleb told me he wanted to play with Daddy a little while ago. He's gotten to where he really loves wrestling. He'll push Chris like he's knocking him down, and Chris will just fall over and make a big deal of it, and Caleb just jumps on him and laughs. It's so cute. He also likes being Superman. Chris holds him up, and Caleb stretches out his arms and legs and yells, "UUUPERMAN!!!" Too cute!

happy birthday!

We went to Fairfield Fri. night for a big birthday bash. Chappie's birthday is tomorrow, and my aunt Carol's birthday was Friday, so we had a double party at my folk's house. Caleb and Emily were very entertaining with blowing out the candles. Caleb wanted to "blow it" when we lit Chappie's candles, so he and Emily got to go help. It was fun to hang out with the fam and catch up. I hadn't seen Mike and Carol for a while.

Chris didn't get to go because he was on call all weekend, so we headed home Sat. after breakfast. It was a wonderfully lazy day! Chris and I got to go to the movies in the afternoon, and we just relaxed the rest of the day. Those kind of days don't happen very often!

Caleb is really getting into singing his songs. His latest favorite is "The Itsy Bitsy Spider." Every night when we lay down for bed, he's added this song to my list. I ask him which song he wants to sing, and he says, "I want the spider!" Chris doesn't know the words or the motions that well, so the other night when Caleb asked for the spider, Chris gave it his best shot. In the middle of the song (when Caleb was doing the motions, not Chris!), he said, "I want Mommy." Chris got booted! So, I had to come sing the song and teach it to Daddy.

Yesterday, Caleb was sitting on the couch next to me "reading" his book, and he decided to strike up another song. He looked up at me all serious and sang "Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so." That's about as far as he got, but how cute is that!? He's such a sweetie!

Procrastinator

Chris is a terrible procrastinator! He had a paper due for his class that he took last month but lost the date it was due. It was due yesterday! So, he while he was picking up Caleb from his grandmother yesterday, she offered us some supper. He called and told me and said that we would just have to get going after I finished eating so he could do his paper. Did this happen??? NO! We sat around and talked, then walked down to his uncle's house, and talked at Nana's some more! What a procrastinator! While we were down at Tony's, I was talking to Chris's aunt and cousin about starting back to school, and we were out by the pool. Chris and Caleb had gone with Tony to bottle feed the baby calf, which Caleb LOVED! When they came back, he wanted to get in the pool, and got so mad that I would only let him dip his feet in! What a fussy britches! Then when we got back up to Nana's, he decided he needed to slide. So, he would slide and run over to us and tell us about it and run back and slide. It was too cute!

We finally got home with enough time to bathe, play a little, and go to bed. All this while Chris was finally working on his paper. Luckily, it didn't take too long for him to finish. I went to bed right after Caleb and fell asleep watching a movie, and Chris came and woke me up to proof read his paper. The things I do for the man I love! I'm glad it got finished....now we're almost ready for the fall semester!

Aggieland

We got to go to College Station this weekend. I haven't been there in a while, so it was nice to go visit and catch up with Rebecca. Mom had been wanting to go see this Southern Living house, so Caleb and I went to Fairfield on Fri. while Chris went to Promise Keepers, and we headed to CS on Sat. The house was, of course, beautiful. I was nervous that Caleb would knock something over or something, but it was fun to see all the neat things in the house.

Caleb had fun playing with Nana and Pop (and Brinkley)! He was so excited when we pulled up at their house and wanted to go directly to the playroom and get to some serious playing! I know Mom and Dad just ate it up! I think they like having him over more than he does! When it was time to head home Sat. evening, he kept telling me know when I asked if he was ready to go. I'm sure if he could talk better, he'd be saying, "5 more minutes, Mom!" We had a fun time, and Chris had a blast in Dallas. I am jealous that he went to eat at Cheesecake Factory without me!

Caleb's head looks great! Chris took the stitches out on Friday. Now it looks like he just has a little scratch on his head. The guy who sewed him up did a great job!

Caleb's been a Daddy's boy lately. Once we got back to town, he has wanted Chris most of the time. I knew this would happen sooner or later! He still likes to cuddle with me sometimes, but I'm just not as much fun as Daddy. They're so cute when they're playing and wrestling around on the floor. We're still working on his saying his prayers at night after we read his Bible story. The other night he said, "God....thank you......AMEN!" It's the sweetest thing!

Random Thoughts

I cannot tell you how excited I am that it's Thursday! For some reason, I am so tired this week! And, it's even better that kids are going back to school next week, and we won't be flooded with immunizations at work anymore! We'll get us a little break until flu season.

It's been a pretty uneventful week, thankfully. Our ER adventure on Sunday was enough excitement to last me for a while. When I went to Chris's parent's house last night after work, Caleb was being a grump....again. He's been grumpy after his naps somtimes for a while now. And this was a while after his nap. My mother-in-law said he hadn't eaten well and wasn't acting like he felt well during the day, and we couldn't get him to eat anything. He just wanted to be a grump. But when something gets his attention, he acts like he's just fine all of a sudden! My nephew was over there (he's 10), and he started acting crazy to get Caleb to play with him. Suddenly, Caleb was in a fine, playful mood! Do babies have PMS???? Oh well, it was still fun to watch him try to be a big boy!

Caleb and I are heading to my parents' house tomorrow while Chris goes to Promise Keepers in Dallas. Even if we hadn't planned this trip already, something tells me that Mom would have found a way to see Caleb this weekend so she could dote on him after his first big injury!

Monkey Man

Caleb's a little monkey! One of our friends dropped by last night to visit, and at the time Caleb was playing well in his room. When someone knocks on the door, he comes running. He has this new thing with shutting a door (like to the bedroom or something) and knocking and waiting until I tell him to come in. Then he shoves open the door and announces himself. It's really too cute. But now he's into this whole letting people in the door thing. So when Doug came over last night, Caleb stayed in the living room. He'd go grab a toy and come back to show Doug, and he was pretty good for a while. It was pretty cute when he was "riding" on his bus. My grandmother got him some fairly large vehicles at Christmas (trucks, tractors, etc) and one was a bus. He sat on it and rode it around the living room. Too cute! Then he decided to become the monkey. He climbed onto my lap and then proceeded to climb from my lap to the armrest of the couch, to the top of the couch and back to my lap. (Our couch is against the wall) He did that about 8000 times while we were trying to visit. Luckily, he was really quiet while he was "monkeying" around!

He's also getting to that stage where he doesn't want to go to bed. We've started getting him to help pick up toys each night before we read his Bible story and go to bed. He threw a huge fit last night while we were picking up toys. He kept looking in his toy box and saying "PLAY! PLAY!" I don't know if thinks the toys are disappearing or what, but he was not happy about them getting shut up in the box. Then he got mad when we turned off the light. He was totally exhausted, but just didn't want to go to sleep. I guess we're full blown in the terrible twos!

His head is looking good. We're having issues keeping his bandage over the stitches. If we don't cover it, he wants to pick at the stitches, and when we cover it, he wants to play with the bandage! It's a no win situation, but at least the stitches come out on Friday.

battle wounds

Just thought ya'll might enjoy some pics of the stitches. The first is from supper tonight...you can guess what he was eating! I took the bandage off after his bath, so I got some good shots of his first stitches.


This one with his mouth wide open is of him playing with his toys.....looks like he's being the elephant again!
Don't ya' just feel so sorry for the little fella? Even with the stitches, he's about the cutest thing I've ever seen!

Stiches

And I thought my black eye would be the highlight of the weekend! Caleb threw one of his little trains at me on Sat. morning and hit me on the edge of my eye. We have since handled the throwing the toys issue!

However, I was totally wrong to think that my injury would be the best.....we made our first ER trip with Caleb yesterday afternoon! We went with Chris's parents to Scurry (just outside of Kaufman) yesterday to see Chris's dad perform with his band. While they were setting up all their equipment, Caleb was being his normal self running around and playing, being silly like always. Well, he was running towards Chris and tripped. His forehead landed right on the corner of a pew. CRACK! It was a really loud, horrible sound. He, of course, was crying, and at the time I didn't know that he'd hit the corner. He came toward me, and I noticed his head was bleeding a little. I wiped at it to keep it out of his eyes, and here came the flood. We both had blood all over us. At this point, all my nursing training flew out the window! All I knew was that my baby was gushing blood and had this HUGE gash in his head. Chris was coherent enough, though, thankfully! We got it cleaned enough to see that it was way too wide and deep for steri strips. So, off we were to the ER. He now has 5 stiches in his forehead. Poor baby! He did pretty well at the hospital. He screamed while he got his stiches, probably more from being held down than anything else. Since we had ridden with Chris's parents, we had to go back to the church where they were playing. Caleb got TONS of sympathy there! Everyone just doted all over him! We took him to McDonald's for supper before heading home, and you'd never had known anything was wrong with him if it hadn't been for the bandage. (That McD's by the way had the best play place ever!) He's fine now. He just keeps picking at the bandage. So, we've survived our first ER incident. I'm just very thankful it wasn't worse.

So much for a peaceful weekend!

No nap for you!

So, yesterday, my little runt would not take a nap. I tried everything I could think of, and he just wouldn't cooperate! I was bracing myself for a terror child, but he never showed up! Caleb played so hard yesterday, and he never slowed down! Amazingly, he was a pretty good kid. Chris was at work all day and didn't get in till 4 this morning. So, it was just me and Caleb all day long. He did finally crash around 7:15 and slept until almost 7 this morning. I got up with him and let him watch some Veggies so I could sleep some more. Luckily, he was quiet enough to let Chris sleep till about 10. We've even been to the grocery store already! Now we're in for a lazy day hopefully! At least Chris is here today for some of the playtime! I've had the monkey crawling all over me since yesterday!

If you like to talk to tomatoes.....

That's what I'm listening to right now. And Caleb is dancing around singing the Veggie Tales theme song. As tired as I get of these shows, he is too cute when he tries to sing the song! We got the new Larry Boy DVD this week. When I asked Caleb what he wanted to watch this morning, this is what he chose. It's actually not bad! I always like the silly songs, and this one's like an 80s hair band song!

We don't have too much planned today. I'm procrastinating on my last week of homework. I really need to get it done, but I'm having trouble getting motivated! Hopefully, it won't take me too long.

Chris and I got to go out on a dinner date last night. I don't really know why, but it seemed like we hadn't seen each other all week. So, Caleb went with Farrah, Nana, and MeMaw, and we headed to Tyler to Don Juan's. It's my new favorite. Last night was the best yet! We had a good time, and Caleb had a good time getting spoiled! At least he listened to me this morning and slept late (so I could too)! He was ready to play as soon as he got up this morning, so he's been playing hard and stopping occasionally to watch bits of Larry Boy. He's sucha sweetie! He's really bonded with his daddy this week. He keeps asking for him! I don't think he quite understands why we have to go away to work sometimes! Have a great weekend everyone!

Storytime

Chris and I have started reading Caleb a Bible story every night before bedtime. Caleb loves it when we all pile on his bed and read the story. It's really sweet. We'll tell him it's time for his Bible story, and he'll start smiling and, heading to his bed, saying, "BIBLE!" It's too cute! Last night he was more interested in pointing at the pictures andtelling us what was in them than listening to Daddy read, so I took his hand and told him to hold Mommy's hand while Daddy read his story. I guess he thought it was prayer time (since we hold hands while we say prayers), and a minute later he said, "AMEN!" How sweet is that? When it was actually time to say prayers, we told him to bow his head and close his eyes. He got the bowing part down, but I sneaked a glance while we were praying, and he had his head bowed but looking back and forth between Chris and me!