More Caleb Adventures

I forgot to mention that Caleb has discovered the fun water in our toilets.  If you’ve been to our place recently, we have to keep all the bathroom doors closed.  His bathroom has a toilet lock.  Otherwise, Caleb likes to lift up the toilet lid and throw his head and hands in the water to have some splashing fun.  No pictures of this.  Sorry.  When I see my son in the toilet, my first instinct is not to run and get the camera.

He also loves to unwind all our toilet paper.  He’s discovered that if he keeps turning the roll, the paper keeps falling down next to him.  This is pure joy for him.  No picture of this either. 

Our son has gotten quite a bit taller. He thinned out a lot.  But, he’s learned that he can reach even more things, not just by growing, but by standing on his tippy-toes.

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Last week, I left Caleb in our childproof bedroom to go use the bathroom.  When i came out 1-2 minutes later, our son was smiling/clapping at me from the top of our dresser.  Yes, from the top.  He had systematically pulled out the drawers and climbed up.  And, yes, our son was clapping and obviously proud of himself.  No picture of this either.  I wasn’t about to leave my son 4 feet up on a dresser to run downstairs to get our camera.

I’m sure there’s more.  I have to remember to blog this stuff when it happens.

Haircut Needed

So, when you get busy with life, certain things don’t get done.  Yes, my husband badly needs a haircut.  Don’t get mad at me for putting this picture on Caleb’s blog, Chris.  I couldn’t help myself.

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11 Months Old

Caleb turned 11 months old on Tuesday.  We can’t believe Caleb’s almost one year old!

Over a week ago (last Thursday), Caleb took his first steps.  Well, he’s taken 1 or 2 steps on his own before this… but on Thursday, he walked to me in 5-6 steps.  He tried walking again today outside.  He still prefers to hold onto somebody’s hand or another object.  He also favors clinging to mommy’s legs as she walks around trying to get stuff done, making her do what she now calls the Caleb shuffle.

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He’s been trying to feed himself more often.  Most of the time, he won’t eat unless he gets to try himself.  Yes, our son is determined.  And, yes, Caleb is messy.

Yummy hummus & a giant pretzel stick:

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Caleb’s spinach fun:

 

Also, our son has started throwing infant tantrums.  I knew that we could expect them in the toddler years… close to 2 years old or so.  Did you know there are a few babies who throw tantrums?  Ours is one of them.  It used to be where we would take something away and he would just scream or cry.  A few days ago, I closed his bedroom door since it was time for him to get ready for his nap.  Caleb wanted to go out to keep playing (as always).  He took one look at the door, one look at me, and then flung himself on the floor on his back and starting hitting the floor with his legs/feet and arms/hands while screaming and crying.  Quite a sight. 

Here’s a short video of Caleb with Ellie’s (our kitty) collar.  He pulled it off her neck.  Each time Chris tries to touch it, Caleb yanks it away from him out of fear that it might get taken away.  This is just Caleb’s infant way of saying, “mine!!!!”  Did I mention we have a strong-willed child?

Also, on occasion, Caleb makes it very known that he doesn’t want to be put in his car seat.  He arches his back, yells/screams/cries… grabs at the mirror, at the window, at mommy’s hair.  This almost always seems to draw a slew of onlookers since Caleb rarely does his protests quietly.  No, Mommy is not abusing this child.  And, yes, Mommy is strict and still makes her child get into the car seat. 

 

Besides the tantrums, Caleb’s learning to do lots of fun stuff too.

Caleb is still a little scared of the vacuum cleaner sound, but he loves to play with the vacuum.  I can’t wait until he can help me clean.  Yay! (I know, I know… please just let me dream!)

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Caleb likes to make himself comfy in his stroller

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Caleb loves to clap.  Here’s a 1-second video of it.  We have another better one that we’ll put up once we download it.

 

Caleb loves to sort things.  Give him measuring cups.  Give him regular plastic cups.  Give him things to put into cups.  Give him rings.  Give him blocks.  Sorting things is fun, fun, fun. 

He even likes to put things where they don’t quite fit or belong.  Caleb, that block doesn’t fit into daddy’s xbox!

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Caleb loves to go through cabinets, especially the ones we’ve chosen to not childlock.  He loves to pull things out of the cabinets/drawers.  And we always find unexpected gifts in cabinets too.  Mommy says to daddy, “Have you seen where Caleb’s green ring is?  He was just playing with it, but it’s missing now.  (10 minutes later) …Oh nevermind, I found it behind the extra diaper wipes, inside the closed cabinet that’s inside his closed bedroom closet.” 

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I’m sure there’s lots more Caleb is learning to do, but this post is getting long.  So, bye for now!

Sick Again

Poor Caleb has had his share of sickness & discomforts since being welcomed into this world.  His eczema started when he was only a few months old.  He has chronic nasal allergies (he’ll be seeing a pediatric allergist next month).  He caught croup when he was 5.5 months old.  He was sick for 3 weeks before going to Hawaii, finally needing to take antibiotics for a sinus & ear infection.  Then he caught a cold when he got back from Hawaii.  Then he had an unexpected allergic reaction to Beechnut rice cereal. 

A few days ago, he had a very unhappy tummy.  That was my first time seeing Caleb puke so much stuff at one time.  It looked like he threw up much more than he ate.  Poor thing.  Green avocado and stomach acid was dripping out of his nose and mouth.  It sprayed a 3-foot radius all over the carpet where he was sitting, hitting his dresser.  Then later in the afternoon, he puked blueberry oatmeal liquid all over the dining area tile.  This time I was more prepared.  I felt Caleb’s spasmic stomach while holding him and moved him quickly to the much more easy to clean tile.  He’s much better now.  Caleb’s just a little apprehensive of eating now, especially anything green.  Who can blame him?

Chris was sick too yesterday.  Really sick.  I haven’t seen him that miserable since before we were married when he got food poisoning from a smoothie he drank at work.  Hmm, stomach flu or food poisoning this time around?  I’m certainly hoping it was just food poisoning.  I’ve been feeling nauseous too, but I have such bad sympathy nausea that I think it’s just from seeing both of my cuties so sick.

Oh, I have a picture of Caleb’s second round of impressive puking.  But I figured there are many who would prefer not to see it.  so here’s a picture of caleb on one of his happier days.  yes, caleb loves to climb everything in his path, including me if i’m in his way.

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The End of Our Hawaii Trip

Yes, yes… I know… we really are behind in our blogging.  We still haven’t finished blogging about our Hawaii trip. 

Our Hawaii Alarm Clock
I forgot to blog about one story while we on the Big Island with Stan, Bel, & baby Noah.  It’s memorable.  While we were in Hawaii, Caleb was our 6:30AM alarm clock.  No matter how late we put him to bed, no matter how many times he would wake up at night, he ALWAYS woke up at 6:30.  On our last Big Island day, Caleb woke up at 7:30AM.  When we saw the clock, Chris & I cheerfully got out of bed and praised our boy for sleeping in.  The pool opens at 7:30AM, so we decided to go swimming.  On our way to the pool, I pointed out to Chris that it’s a gloomy/cloudy day since it was still a bit dark for 7:30.  We get to the pool.  It’s locked, but somebody’s inside cleaning.  He tells us to come back when the pool is open.  We tell him that the pool is supposed to open at 7:30.  He looks at us and says something like, “It’s 7:30 already?  Oh no!!  I’m running late.”  Then he looks at a pool clock and tells us that it’s only 6:45.  What?!!!  We still have no idea how our bedside clock got changed.  It was right when we put Caleb to bed.  Oh well. 

Our Flight Home
We were running really late to the airport, so Stan & Bel came to help us return our rental car and get checked in quickly.  Our flight was with ATA.  Stan knew one of the ATA worker guys.  He was one of Stan’s high school friends.  Stan tried pulling some strings to get us ahead in this long, long slow line (since we were already late).  He found out from his friend that our flight was canceled (though nobody else in the line knew that yet as the flight was only announced as being delayed).  We got pulled out of the line with our luggage.  His friend got us onto the next American Airlines flight back to LAX.  Yay!  Go Stan.  It’s nice to have our Hawaiian connection.  Only a few were given tickets onto this AA flight.  Most had to wait until the next departing ATA flight (I think that was in the middle of the night or the next day).  And out of the ones who received AA tickets, we were the only ones who had our luggage.  You know why?  Because the Wong family was running really late and hadn’t checked in to our original flight like everyone else already had. 

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Yes, Caleb and I got chosen to be personally security checked.  I guess we just look that dangerous. 

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Caleb slept for only 30 minutes on this plane ride home.  He really had trouble falling asleep and staying asleep.  We tried to make him as comfy as we could, but it was one fussy plane ride home.

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Daddy even tried to help Caleb with his ear pressure by enticing him with a pacifier. 

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We got back from Hawaii on Friday, 3/14/08.  We needed that whole weekend to unpack and decompress from our vacation before Chris went back to work on Monday.  Here’s Caleb helping us unpack.

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Yesterday, I discovered that ATA filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy on April 3rd and ended all of their passenger services to Hawaii.  Good thing this happened after our trip to Hawaii.  We probably couldn’t have afforded to pay for another set of airline tickets.

Dating

Chris & I have been reviewing our annual budget in light of new upcoming expenses that we know of.  Since getting married, we have always been big on making sure we go out on dates. 

In our budget, we had the following line item:

25 dates (x $50 each) = $1250

This made us both laugh.  Since having Caleb we’ve been on exactly 1 date…. for our anniversary.  We’ve tried to go out lots, but on our own, we’ve been out exactly once.  Well, I guess we still “date.”  It’s just different now.  There are 3 of us now on our dates.

Here we are at our date at the Arroyo Chop House.

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9 month birthday

ok, ok… so our son is nearing his 10 month birthday and we have yet to blog on his 9 month one.  we’re a little behind with our blogging.  we’re a little behind with everything!

 

At his 9 month checkup, we discovered that our son is no longer this huge baby anymore.  Always in the 90-100th percentile, he is now in the 50-75th percentile in everything.  Hmm, am I starving my baby?  Strange thing is that Chris and I get different measurements than Caleb’s doc.  Our scale told us that he was 22.5 pounds, and we measured him at 29.5 inches.  Oh well.  We know our munchkin is a healthy, active baby.

Length = 28.25  (50 percentile)

Weight = 20 lb, 14.5oz  (60 percentile)

Head Circumference = 45.5 cm  (50-75%)

 

Grandma & grandpa bought Caleb his first ride-on toy.  Caleb loves it!

 

Caleb’s crib now looks like a white prison.  Since he started crawling, we’ve had to remove the bumper from his crib leaving it completely bare.  Good thing, though… cuz Caleb loves to stand and climb.  He climbs onto our bedside tables already.  He pulls out his dresser drawers and tries to climb them.  He pushes boxes and get on top of them to reach things on higher shelves.  Where did he learn to do all this from?

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Caleb is looking more and more like his daddy.   Both of them are so adorable!

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Caleb still loves his music class, but now he’s more active and can stand and hit the drums hard.

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Awh, Caleb had his first (and hopefully) last allergic reaction.  We tried out a new rice cereal, not thinking that there would be any problem.  Within 5 minutes of having it, he started getting unusually cranky and his face turned red.  Then his eyes and face got puffy and itchy (see picture below).  It was pretty scary.  But our newlywed fellowship was there and prayed for him.  He got drastically better within a couple hours without any need for a visit to the ER or for medications.  Praise God!!! 

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Pupu (mommy’s mom) visited Caleb at the end of March.  I had so much fun with her.

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Caleb now occasionally can fall asleep at church for a short morning nap.  This is far better than the hour or more of wailing he used to do when we took him to church.

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Caleb is usually much better when we go out to eat now.  He loves menus… maybe more than mommy and daddy.

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Caleb’s 1st time on a playground swing.

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More Pictures

Here are some more pictures. We’ve been lazy about posting them up lately. We got this new camera and have been taking a lot of pictures. But the pictures are much larger than what they used to be, so it takes longer to transfer, and thus I’ve gotten lazy.

Here are the pictures from today’s Kiddie Kandid session.

Big Island Travels

We just spent the last 3 days on the Big Island with Bel, Stan, & baby Noah.  Here are some highlights and funny moments.

  • We explored a lava tube and lots of lava rocks. The volcano here is currently active, so we were trying to go visit the site where you can see lava going into the ocean.  Well, let’s just say the boys were navigating and we found ourselves at a totally different spot.  But I must say, where we went was nice too… and probably heaps safer for the babies.  We saw the area of the last most recent lava activity (about 5 years ago).  Caleb was so fussy after not getting any naps and being in a car all day.  He wouldn’t be soothed in our arms.  Finally I had to nurse him while we walked to the lava site.  It was like carrying a sack of potatoes on a hike.   And, baby Caleb decided to have another poop explosion… this time all over mommy’s shirt and pants and the Ergo baby carrier.  It was quite impressive.

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  • On our trip, Caleb found himself a new toy… baby Noah who lays there like non-moving target.  Poor Noah.  Just wait ’til Noah can roll and crawl well.  He’ll be chasing after you, Caleb.

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  • Caleb fell asleep on the beach.  I put him down in his tent… and he stayed asleep!!!  well, it was for only 25 minutes, but it’s a first for him to go to sleep with lights and sounds without much of a fight.

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  • We wanted to visit a macadamia nut farm.  Stan found one on the internet.  We went there and found this house on a farm.  Very interesting.  Nobody else was there.  We got a nice personal tour of the mac nut trees, kona coffee beans, & avocado & banana trees.  We learned that bananas were originally eaten on the Island by only males.  Females would be killed if they ate this food associated with male fertility.  We found big spiders there.  Chris liked them a lot!  He wanted to take one home with us.

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  • Chris looks mighty cute taking care of 2 munchkins.

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Hawaii Update

I’ve gotten too lazy to come up with a good name, so it will just be this.

Caleb is starting to hate the car again.  We don’t know if it’s the car itself, or if he’s not feeling well, or he simple chose to be whiny and cry-y, but he is.  It doesn’t help that we live out in the boonies, where everything is at least 30 minutes away.  It’s hit or miss with this boy now in the car.  And it’s usually a miss.  We now have to both sit in the front just so that he won’t think that we will take him out of the seat.  If his crying were only softer, maybe we wouldn’t mind it so much.  But boy, does Caleb have one good set of lungs.  Must get it from mommy.

Caleb had his first dip in the pool the other day.  And he had his first swim in the ocean yesterday.  That’s his pale chubby father holding him.

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On that same day we went swimming, we saw a couple of humpback whales just outside our place.  You can see in the distance the whale blowing out air.

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Here’s the beautiful sunset from our place.

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Daddy got a little ambitious on our rest day and wanted to take a short stroll to L&L for a plate lunch.  That stroll turned out to be much further when you’re actually walking.  We stopped at McD’s instead.  Great idea.  You see this half-eaten apple pie…

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Yes, it’s fried.  And I thought these things only existed China now.  The only other thing I could notice different about McD’s in Hawaii is that they serve saimin.  Saimin?  No Taro pie?  No pineapple pie?

I can post pictures of my sexy wife in her swimsuit, but I won’t.  That’s for me and me alone!

We drove out to PCC today.  Not Pasadena Community College (Caleb was confused as well since he goes there every week), but Polynesian Cultural Center.  It’s a long drive.  For those of you who don’t know, Hawaii doesn’t have a lot of roads.  There’s one main road that goes around.  You can check out the map.  So we’re staying out in Waianae on the west coast.  If you look, North shore isn’t very far from us.  True.  We learned in geometry (or maybe even earlier) that the closest distance between two points is a line.  If you look even more closely, you can see that there are no roads from the west coast going anywhere but south.  So you must head south, get on the 1, then go back up north up the 2 in order to get to the north shore.  PCC is over in Laie, which is even further away.  So it’s quite a drive. We had to time it so that 90 minute drive coincided with Caleb’s nap.  Remember earlier how we said he wasn’t liking the car and it was hit or miss?  Today it was a hit, baby!

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(You notice the interstate highways as well?  That’s the first thing I noticed when I saw a map too.  Interstate freeways in Hawaii?  What other state can I drive to?  Oregon?)

Driving along the road to PCC was quite nice.  We were driving along the north shore, and during the winters the waves can be nasty.  This picture doesn’t do it justice from what we really saw.

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PCC was fun.  It was tiring with a baby though.  And the place is run by Mormons, so that’s not so fun.  But it was pretty entertaining.  I do enjoy learning about other cultures (although I didn’t learn that much today).  And it’s fun watching Yvonne participate in things like hula…

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twirling pois…

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And Caleb playing with sticks…

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Enough of that.  It’s time to sleep.  Yvonne isn’t not feeling well, so pray for all of us!  We’re going to need it if you want to see more of us doing silly things.  Or if you only want to watch Caleb playing on the ground in our apartment, then don’t pray.  We would certainly appreciate the prayer though.

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