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The Fall of Man (or Caleb)

You may have already read the post below about fireworks and how they may disrupt Caleb’s sleep.  Well last night he had a poor night of sleep which prompted me to curse them dirty fireworks.

Around 2am Caleb awakes (or is already awake from Yvonne holding him.  I don’t remember).  I watch him cry and stand up in the monitor, so I head to him and pick him up.  Caleb immediately begins to cry harder and louder in my arms.  I put him back in the crib, he wants to get back in my arms.  I pick him up, he immediately wants to get out of my arms.  What am I to do?  So I just hold him.  And hold him.  And hold him for the next hour.  I’m finally able to get back to my bed at 3:15am, only to see him stir and wake up at 3:18am.

I am done at this point.  Yvonne is sick and just wants our baby to sleep.  So we wait.  3:30, Yvonne says, she’ll go in.  He’s standing in the corner of his crib crying his head off.  This goes on and on.  Yvonne decides to get a sippy cup of water before heading to the room.  After getting the cup, Yvonne is back in our room trying to do something as I’m trying to sleep.  We then hear this *boom* (much like these damn fireworks I hear now).

Uh-oh.  I think Caleb fell out of his crib.  The crying had died down for a few seconds.  As we were running over to his room, that loud cry comes again.  Yvonne enters the room and goes to retrieve him.  He immediately stops crying.  At this point I’m thinking maybe he didn’t fall out of his crib.  I mean if a baby falls out of his crib, he’s going to be hurt and crying, right? So I go back to my bed and return to my slumber.

Yvonne comes back to the room and informs me that he did fall out.  He was in a prone position next to the chair and not crying at all.  Yvonne was all worried, but he just settled down in mommy’s arms and went to sleep.  (Is this what needs to happen to get my son to sleep?  If so, he may have many sleepless nights.)

Caleb seems to be alright from the fall.  At least for today.  Now we have to put the crib sides all the way up.  Of course they make this loud clicking sound when you move them up, which doesn’t help our son sleep as well, but it’s for his safety.  It’s a long way down to reach him now.  Our backs are going to ache.

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Want to be a Ghetto City?

So you just started a town and want to be ghetto.  Where do you start?  Drugs?  Guns?  Prostitution?  Maybe those are just too much for you and you want to be a ghetto city without realizing you’re being ghetto.  How about legalizing fireworks.  There you go.  You’re one step further to being ghetto.

Some of you may know that I despise fireworks.  I can go on and on about the dangerousness of fireworks, but I’ll talk about the sheer annoyance of them.  Now when I say fireworks, I want to exclude the good ones.  The ones done by professionals.  So you cities with fireworks shows and Disneyland are off the hook.  What I am referring to is to the July 4th fireworks show by the inhabitants of these ghetto cities (my neighbors).

Fireworks didn’t bother me as much before a year ago.  It wasn’t until after Caleb was born that my hatred for fireworks grew even more so.  There’s a big problem when your son, who doesn’t sleep well to begin with, has to listen to all your neighbor’s crappy fireworks (both legal and illegal).  These large booms and loud whistles don’t do well to anyone’s sleep, much less a little one year old is sensitive to most and almost everything.  By the grace of God, he’s only woken up once, which we attribute to a night terror, but still I hear them fireworks going on and on.  *wave my fist in the air*

Besides having these loud booms and shrieking whistles, many of the inhabitants in Duarte, CA don’t seem to know how to clean up after themselves.  Don’t you love getting up the next morning having to drive through a bunch of used fireworks?  I just love seeing ashes fly everywhere as my tires go over them.  It is a beautiful sight if you have never seen it.

Update:

It’s midnight now.  And fireworks are still going outside my home.  Duarte, CA is ghetto.  The inhabitants are ghetto => city is ghetto.  Now you’re just ruining everyone’s sleep and not just Caleb’s.

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Happy Birthday

Happy 1 year birthday!

Caleb had his 1 year birthday party a week before his actual birthday.  His actual birthday was when we were at camp.  (By the way, who’s camera was used to take pictures at his birthday?  I have mostly video footage)

Caleb had a blast at his party.  Too much of a blast that he didn’t get much of a nap in afternoon (only 30 minutes).  Of course if that wasn’t enough, after his wild birthday party he goes another baby’s birthday party.  2 parties in one day.  Let’s just say that Caleb didn’t sleep too well that night either.  I believe he woke up 6 times?

Update:
My wife informed me that he woke up not 6 times, but 8 times.

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Caleb got some great toys for his birthday.  He had so many new toys he didn’t know what to do with them all.  But his favorite toy (now) has to be his trucks.  He loves those trucks.

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Of course sometimes he just likes plain ol’ boxes.

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And sometimes he likes Tommy in the plain ol’ box.

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His actual birthday was more laid back even though we were at camp.  He had a bunch of people play with him.  He got to play with his trucks around camp.  And then on the night of his birthday, he woke up once at 8:45pm.  He didn’t wake up again until 5:40am!  Almost 9 straight hours of sleep.  I must say I was amazed.  If he could do 9 hours every night, he would have some much more happier (and awake) parents.

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Youth Camp

We came back from youth camp today.  Caleb’s very first youth camp was an incredibly exciting one for him.  He got to play in the dirt.  He had lots of people giving him attention.  He got scrapes from walking and falling down and getting back and then falling down again.  And best of all, he had his best sleeping night ever in his life on his birthday!  Praise the Lord!

Now only if he could sleep 9 hours straight every night.  That would be great.

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Twitter

I just signed up Caleb on twitter. I’m guessing for the most part, most of you don’t know what twitter is. Well it’s this thing that you can send messages to. Kind of like a facebook status. It’s designed around SMS, so if I ever get SMS on my phone, this is where it’ll really get fun with all the tweets.

But for now I might use twitter to update more often. It’ll be quick, but it should be synced. Post should get tweeted. Tweets should will have a daily digest post.

Twitter Page

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Toilet Paper Fun

Here’s a picture finally of the result of one episode of Caleb’s toilet paper fun.  He got distracted by Ellie our cat… otherwise, the result could have been much worse!

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Surprise, Surprise #2

Well this weekend I’ve had quite a number of surprises.  Yvonne for Father’s Day has been doing a multi-part father’s day gift.  For part one of four, on Thursday Yvonne gave me a great shirt.  No, it’s not a Bucks shirt.  It was a “Proud Daddy” t-shirt.  And yes, I’m a proud daddy.

Part two was our “Date #2” on Friday.  Part four was a game day with some guys.  We wound up just playing Wii Fit and watching Eric and John make fools of themselves.  I just make a fool of myself in front of my wife, not other people.

What happened to part three, you ask?  Some of you might have noticed the title of this post.  It alludes to an earlier post by Sloof Lirpa on April 1 of this year.  The contents of that post talked about us having another kid.  Well it’s no longer April Fools and the next April Fools is a long way from now.  Yes, we are expecting child #2.

It is very early in the pregnancy right now.  Saturday afternoon, she gives me part three in an envelope with the pregnancy test.  This part wasn’t her original gift to me, but she changed it on the fly cause she’s slick like that.  Positive pregnancy test.  Our response was much different this time around.

Even though we’ve had such difficult problems with Caleb’s sleeping, we knew we never wanted just one kid.  It’s made us have second (and third and fourth and so on) thoughts about having another child, but it just never seemed right to give Caleb the sole pleasure of torturing us alone.  We weren’t explicitly trying to have another child, but we weren’t not trying to have a child like we were before when we got pregnant with Caleb.  We just knew we didn’t want to have them far apart in age.

So yes.  We’re happy to be expecting.  Of course we’d like a girl this time around, but it’s all in God’s hands.

Prayer Requests:

  1. Since Caleb is still not sleeping well, he has 9 months to get his sleep in gear.  PLEASE PRAY for this not just to happen in a few months, but to happen now.  The toll of not sleeping is not comprehensible to a lot of you, but lack of sleep does no good to anyone.  (Caleb did sleep extremely well yesterday.  Keep praying!)
  2. Pray for a healthy, sleepy baby. It is VERY EARLY in the pregnancy.  Yvonne is only 5 weeks along, so anything can happen at this point.  That’s why we covet your prayers.  Yvonne will be seeing the OB shortly, so we can’t confirm until then that the baby is good to go.