Baby Wong (Caleb Wong & Caris Wong & Chloe Wong)
The adventures of Caleb, Caris, Chloe & Family
One month later, Caris now weighs in at 8lb, 15oz (9lb, 3oz after feeding, though). That’s pretty good for a baby that started out 4 weeks ago at only 5lb, 11oz. She’s also 21.25 inches long, up more than 2 inches from birth.
Being 2nd born, Caris has kind of gotten shafted in a lot of areas. Pictures is one of those areas. It’s time to be better picture takers with our little girl. When I have a moment, I’ll download the pictures we do have and try to post some up. She is a cutie.
I’m not talking about Caris. But I’m talking about our Compassion International child. Yvonne and I have been sponsoring a child since before we got married. We decided to sponsor one at the National Youth Worker’s Convention the year we got married. Our first sponsored child was named Elizabeth, chosen by me because of her name.
Elizabeth was from Peru. I think at the time we sponsored her she was only 3 years old. But we wrote to her. We sent her pictures. For I believe 2 years we had sponsored her. Then Compassion sent us a letter telling us that she was no longer part of the program. I believe her family started to make enough money and didn’t need to assistance anymore. Something like that. Which means we lost our child.
After losing Elizabeth, we were once again at the NYWC choosing another child. Another little girl from Peru named Mariangela. She was a cutie pie just like Elizabeth was. We’ve been writing her and sending her pictures for the past year and a half. We got exciting with every new letter we received from her with the new pictures. And then again it happens. Compassion calls and tells us she’s not part of the program anymore cause she moved out of the area.
So we were out looking for another sponsored child. We found an 8 year old girl from Peru named Susan. We’re looking forward to writing to her. And also looking forward to see her actually write back. Our previous sponsored children all had teachers write on their behalf. It’ll be fun to actually write to the person.
For those of you who don’t know what Compassion is, please check them out. It’s been such a blessing since sponsoring a child.
I HATE tile floors. Let me repeat that. I HATE tile floors.
All of our lower floor is tile. I hated the tile floors to begin with. They make your feet cold. They make the house cold. You can’t sit on tile like you can on carpet. It just doesn’t give you that warm fuzzy house feeling. I hate tile floors.
So Caleb likes to climb. He likes to climb like a monkey. (ooh ooh) One thing he likes to climb are the chairs in our dining area which happens to be over tile floor. So as he is climbing this one time, he overshoots the chair and lands head first onto the tile floor. He cries of course. He is a tough monkey, and he can get over a lot of bumps and bruises, but this one was bad. He had a bad indention in his skull. Yes, an indention. He survived though and was just left with a bruise on his forehead. But that fall was bad, and could have cracked his skull. With carpet he probably would have hurt himself as well. Maybe a little carpet burn. But when he falls, that tile has no give. All that fall goes straight to his noggin. I HATE tile floors.
Here’s some pictures of the bruise taken today. It’s hard to see in these pictures, but it was much worse when it happened.
Side note: Caris is farting up a storm right now.
We had decided early on what the name of our girl was going to be. It was just a matter of deciding if was going to be Caris Elisabeth or Elisabeth Caris. Now if she had been a boy, that’s a whole different matter. We had trouble coming up with Caleb’s name. Now we’d have to come up with another name?
Well I was still pushing for Obadiah (Obi-Wong). But Yvonne would have none of that. I think Obi would have love that name. We eventually settled with Nathan as the first name. For the middle name, we were going to go with Ezra, I think. Unless that name meant something like Caleb Joshua. A very bold meaning in Caleb’s name and so far he’s lived up to it. We wanted to avoid naming our child a name with a meaning that’s active like Caleb’s. Nathan Ezra would have been it.
But God has given us our girl. We may never have a need to use Nathan Ezra unless we decide to have another again. If that’s the case, then we’ll have to come up with a girl’s name. I’ve already got her first name picked out. Hopefully Yvonne won’t veto this one as well.
This is what most people are here for. Pictures. We took these pictures last Monday. Pictures of Caris, Caleb and the family.
So, Caleb’s sleep has always been easily disrupted. About a month ago, new neighbors moved in behind us with a dog who loves to bark. I was praying that the dog would quickly learn to be quiet so he wouldn’t wake up my son anymore from his mid-day nap. I noticed shortly after that there was no longer any barking. Yay, prayer answered affirmatively! 🙂 So, Chris & I have been wanting to visit our new neighbors with a welcome gift. We finally got around to going to their house this past Saturday. We learned that they gave their dog to the animal shelter since he wasn’t adjusting to the smaller house and backyard. Awh, now I feel bad. But my son is back to taking longer daytime naps.
Caleb has been talking in his sleep sooo much lately. In the middle of the night, he yells out these words and then goes back to sleep, usually. I’ve just spent the last hour listening to him babble away in conversation with himself. He’s practicing all these sounds, words, and phrases. Kinda cute. But not as much at 5:30AM. This boy just can’t shut off his brain. Sleep seems to always be the first thing affected when things change in Caleb’s life… good or bad things. Oh well, another developmental phase. Hopefully, we’ll have a big boy who can communicate better with us soon. We love you so much, Caleb.
Caris was born at 5 pounds, 11.4 oz. By the time we left the hospital (2 days later on Wednesday), she was 5 pounds, 7 oz. At her 1st pediatrician appt last Thursday, she was down to 5 pounds, 6 oz. It’s normal for babies to lose up to 10% of their birth weight in the first week. The goal is for them to be back to their birth weight by the end of their 2nd week. At her follow up appt yesterday, Caris weighed in at 5 pounds, 14 oz. She’s already bigger than her birth weight. Like her brother, she likes to eat. Go Caris!
Just to update you a little on Caris. She is doing great. At this stage in her life, she is sleeping great. She has problems with wanting to sleep, which is something Caleb has always had, even now. Caris does what a regular baby is suppose to do. She sleeps. She eats. She poops. And she doesn’t fuss much at all. She didn’t even cry when she came out of the womb! Relatively, she has been an easy baby. We get less sleep because of her, but she does make it as easy as possible for us.
Compared to Caleb, it’s almost night and day. Caleb was wailing the moment he came out of the womb. Caleb couldn’t be soothe by simply holding him. We had to pull out all the weapons to get to stop crying at times. And then he didn’t want to sleep either. He required to be held to sleep. He’d cry whenever we put him down. He hated the car seat. No HATED the car seat. From that first cry in his first ride home until he was tall enough to see outside, he’d cry in that car seat.
Not much has changed with Caleb. He’s still the loud boy that he was born as. He cries loud. He screams loud. He even talks loud. But he’s our big boy. And boy has he ever grown. He’s learned to sleep (mostly) through the night. He’s thickening up again. His butt is so big. His feet are so big. His head is so big. I went in tonight to go soothe him cause he was crying right after holding Caris, and my goodness. I keep forgetting how big a boy Caleb is now.
Now we just need to protect his brain until he gets older. There’s the cure for cancer in there.
Among the other things he’s grown into, he’s learned to talk. And not just talk, but talk a lot. They say a 2 year old boy can say an average of 50 words. I said before I thought he knew about 80 words. Well, he just keeps learning more and more each day. We counted the words off the top of our head, and have them listed here.
There are probably more, but this is what we could remember. If you count, that’s 93 words that we know of that he speaks. Sure, they all sound very similar and he doesn’t say them correctly, but they are distinct. Our big boy is a genius.
Of course he’s also very assertive. I’ve been taking him to Gymboree the past few days while I’m home, and he likes them boys with curly hair. He likes them a little too much. So much in fact that he likes to pull their hair and hit them. Or maybe he just likes to make them cry. I don’t know. But we have to channel him in the right direction. At this point, he can be a great leader. Or simply a bully. The latter we’re trying to avoid.
Caleb with his new toy (our new massage thingy) 
Yvonne multi-tasking. This is why she doesn’t get enough rest. She always has to be doing something. 
Caleb eating. He’s so big. 
Caris sleeping. She’s so small 
Their feet. 
We got Caris’ first week pictures today. But their printer was down. Once we get the CD, we’ll post them up. That last picture there was done by Kiddie Kandids.