Kaleb's First Year in Pictures

Now that Kaleb's first year is complete, I like to look back over the month-by-month pictures that we took to see how he's changed over the year. They change so much and you're just so tired in the beginning that if you don't capture it on film you'll never remember! This has been quite a year as we look back - starting of course with his "early start" to this life but since then, he has been such a happy, easy baby. He definitely likes to stick things in his mouth more than Zachary so we'll need to watch him closely now that he is mobile. Kaleb has mastered the ability to clap now to the song "If you're happy and you know it, clap your hands!." Oddly enough, it does appear that both of our boys really like music - how they were consigned to be born to 2 tone-deaf parents, who knows! You can see Zachary's first year pictorial for comparison by looking at :
(http://amyandkaris.blogspot.com/2007/04/pictoral-review-of-zacharys-first-year.html)

"It's A Boy!" Our first true glimpse of little Kaleb

1 month old - look how tiny he was - amazing

2 months old (his skin tones were so much darker when he was young)

3 months old

4 months old (not very happy here!)

5 months old (ah, back to all smiles!)

6 months old (our little super man!)

7 months old

8 months old (we can sit now on our own)

9 months

10 months

11 months (arms wide open!)

12 months old! (now we love to clap!)

On the Zachary front, we are happy to report that the transition to the toddler bed has been so far, so good. He actually has responded to our "multi-point action plan for 'Back to Sleep'" pretty well and this morning he actually slept in all the way until 6:30!! For all parents reading this whose children sleep in until the sun actually comes up - be thankful!! :) We've had some rough mornings on our way back to good sleep habits this week, but at least the majority of nights have been better than the last month or so, so we'll take it. We had to get very creative in figuring out ways of getting Zachary to sleep through the night again (why would he want to sleep when Mommy comes running for a social call in the middle of the night if he cries?!) and to stay in his room until 6:30. One of his rewards if he does so is that he gets stickers to put up on his "Zachary's Sleep Rules" poster, and Mommy dances for joy!

It is fun to watch the brothers beginning to bond together, and we've included the last picture below of them "playing" together in the sandbox in our backyard. Of course, Zachary usually ends up "accidentally" throwing sand up in the air and it just "manages" to land on Kaleb, but Kaleb seems to take it all in stride.

Phrase of the week: Picture the following prayer - sometimes said at warp speed, but precious none-the-less. "Dear Jesus, help me be better, help me be safe, help me be better, Mommy, Daddy, Kaleb. Help me sleep 6:30. Bless the food. Amen" Karis said today after this lunch-time prayer "We're going to have the best behaved kid ever if this prayer keeps up!"

Ten Years Together!

Last weekend was our 10 year wedding anniversary. It is amazing how quickly time flies – it seems like just yesterday that we were sweltering in the 94 degree heat (oh yeah, maybe it was yesterday! :). We’re hoping to celebrate our anniversary this year by going on a trip to Europe, but details are yet to be finalized. If we do, Amy’s mom will stay and take care of the boys in our absence. One fun thing that we did 10 years ago was to write letters to each other to be opened at 10 year anniversary, and we’ve decided to write new letters now to be opened at 20 years – we’re both in the attempts to get those letters completed!

This week has been a milestone for Zachary – he has now been graduated to a toddler bed. Yes, we realize that most kids at this point have been out of the crib for a while, but seriously, he wasn’t trying to get out until the last few months, so it was very easy to have peace of mind that when you put Zachary in there, he’d stay. This is going to be Night #3 of the new bed, so far so good. He has gotten into a horrible habit of the last month or two of getting up in the night, and then getting up super early (close to 5A). This has led to one very tired child who is prone to tantrums. We’re in the process of trying to break this habit and create one that will allow him to become more rested.

Last weekend we were guests at a friend’s Easter party. This was an Easter party like no other – complete with decorations that seriously looked like a professional did them (very talented friends!), a children’s story about the meaning of Easter and why we celebrate it, cupcake decorating for the kids, an Easter bunny (okay, a dad in an Easter costume, but the kids didn’t know the difference) and of course the requisite Easter egg hunt.

We also had some friends over to our place, and had a small egg hunt, which Kaleb got to be a part of the "egg fun"!

Some college friends of ours are in town this weekend, so we enjoyed an opportunity to get out to the park with the kids, and then later we went out to dinner Saturday night – imagine, an adult dinner without having to try and maintain a conversation and keep your child from destroying the general area! :)

Cute Zachary story - Amy's Dad sent the boys some Canadian money for their birthdays. For any of you non-Canadians, the Canadian bills have a picture of the Queen on them (and she's fairly old in these pictures). Karis showed Zachary the money and said "Zachary, what's this?" thinking that Zachary would reply that it was money. Instead, Zachary replied "That's Grandma!" Ha ha ha - not quite, but it is an old lady!

Kaleb has four teeth now, and is wanting to put them to good use - he is always interested in eating supper with us now - getting quite insistent if he's not included (even though he just ate and will soon be eating his night-time bottle before heading off to bed!). He follows us around the house now with his modified crawl and seems to be very intrigued by exploring his world. He has already discovered how to unplug cords from the outlets, and how to close doors. Closing doors poses a challenge as he doesn't then get OUT of the way for us to be able to open the door when he begins to protest being by himself! He continues to be a very outgoing child who prefers to have people around.

Phrase of the week: As we're not 100% potty trained yet, the phrases this week all relate to this journey that we're on:
-"I need privacy!" (Translation - I cannot do my "business" with a parent in the room - please leave and just come wipe my bum afterwards!)
-"Mommy - don't pee your pants, that would be very disappointing" (Translation - I just peed my pants and was told by Daddy that was very disappointing - so now I better share this advice Mommy into this as well - she might have the same problem!)
-Amy: "Zachary, have you pooped?" (Translation - is there a strange smell coming from this child?) Zachary: "Yes, many times! I have no poop left!" (Translation: Mommy, I pooped yesterday, and even though I might just poop my pants in the next 5 minutes, I do NOT have the urge to stop playing right now and take care of my business!" :)

Hoppy Birthday Kaleb!

We had Kaleb's first birthday party last Sunday and the day was just lovely. The weather was a little warm and muggy but all in all, it was very doable. We had our deck open with most of the tables etc outside, and ended up with about 20-25 people here all in all. It was a fairly low-key party - we had some crafts for the older kids to do when they arrived, but after that was done, the kids just played on the swing set outside and with all of the toys in Zachary's room. We had made the decision to move all of the toys into his room so that they wouldn't be under the parents feet, which was a very good thing because EVERY toy was strewn out of the toy box onto the floor by the time everyone left.

We decided to go with an Easter theme for the birthday as we were so close to Easter weekend - so Kaleb's cake said "Hoppy Birthday Kaleb" - it was quite sweet with bunnies on the top and little carrots. One of our early posts on this blog was Zachary's first birthday, and he did NOT want anything to do with his cake. Not so with Kaleb - our tactile child. He started to lunge for the cake as soon as he was put down in the highchair, so Karis had to restrain him just until we could sing Happy Birthday! It was so precious - he started to dig into the cake, and then he'd alternate between putting some in his mouth (first time for sugar for little Kaleb) and then he'd rub a handful on his belly - like a little Buddha! (we stripped him down to his diaper in anticipation of a royal mess!). The only dicey moment was when he rubbed icing in his eye, but once we took care of that problem, away he went until the cake was ENTIRELY destroyed. Ahh, the fun of smashing cake! :) Luckily the party was at our house, so off to the bath Kaleb went - it took two baths in succession in order to actually get it all off of him!

A picture of the "real" cake prior to being consumed

The cake-eating (smashing!) begins!

The final destruction - down to the plate itself

Bath-time!

Birthday Boy opening presents

We also put his birthday announcement on Z88.3 (local Christian radio station) so it was fun yesterday to hear them announce his first birthday - they included a warning "Parents of Kaleb, be sure to have lots of paper towels to clean up the "smash-cake" mess!" Too true, too true.

Gram-Z and Papa-Z left on Tuesday (thanks for coming to celebrate the birthdays!), so the house was very quiet this week. Cakes were chucked (that many cakes in the span of 8 days - no-one can eat that much!) and the rest of the food was taken to work to be consumed by coworkers.

This is as special weekend for Karis and I, but we'll devote next week's post to that so that it gets it's due!

Phrase of the week: (Hearkening back to a post that we had a few weeks ago about keeping this PG, read below with caution!) Amy was bathing both boys last night in which they were having a great time. Zachary laid back in the water to get his hair washed, while Kaleb was sitting beside him. Amy turned around to get the soap, and heard the words "KALEB!! Let go of my p**-p**!! That's MINE!" She turned quickly around to see that Kaleb had decided that Zachary's 'certain parts' would be a really fun toy, and had latched on with a death-grip. Amy was able to divert Kaleb's attention to other toys, but Zachary was a little "gun-shy" after that, so kept his hand hovering over the region to be sure to have a quick protective move if needed!!

Kaleb's first "ride" on the plasma cars - thanks Uncle Kent!

Three Fingers Old!

Zachary is officially three years old - and did you know that when you're three years old, you need to celebrate with cake three times! Did you also know that CAKE IS YUMMY!!? After this much cake in a span of 8 days, we're just not sure how much more cake that we can possibly eat!

We started off the week by going to Birthday World to celebrate Zachary and Luke's birthdays. It was a small intimate gathering. We've decided to do "big bashes" every other year for the boys, on off years, so that folks don't have big birthday parties to go to two weekends in a row. With this being Kaleb's big one-year party, Zachary's is by default a smaller one - but, when you have yummy cake, does it really matter??? They bounced, rode rides, hunted for Easter eggs, and generally had a blast at Birthday World. We then came back home where food was consumed in great amounts, lots of cake was eaten, and gifts were enjoyed. Zachary's cake was a construction cake as he is very enthralled with the tractors doing road work as we drive every morning. Three definitely seems to be the age where kids "get" the whole gift opening thing. Zachary has never been that interested before.

We were proud of our little guy though as he was easily prompted to say thank-you nicely to each gift giver before proceeding to the next present. Moments like this make you feel like perhaps the manners are sinking in - at least a little bit!

One of the very favorite toys was a Thomas the Train trackmaster set - Karis set it up and the boys played with the trains for a long time.

Papa-Z and Gram-Z arrived late Thursday night, so the boys had a grand time playing with them yesterday. Friday we were joined by Grandma and A. Louise for a small family birthday celebration (celebration #2) - Grandma outdid herself and prepared two awesome cakes for the boys (talents that we just don't have, so thank goodness for Grandma!) - a bunny rabbit and an Elmo! There were many wonderful presents to open, but it kind of gave us a chuckle when one of the immediate favorites was a simple, low-cost flashlight! The simple joys of life! At another humorous point, Zachary and Kaleb were intently playing with each OTHER's gifts! (see picture below with Kaleb holding flashlight and Zachary playing with clipos)

Saturday, Zachary's actual birthday, he got to sit on the birthday chair at Sabbath School as the class sang Happy Birthday. Later that evening, we got together with the Deiningers and the Johnsons to celebrate Kelli Johnson's and Zachary's mutual birthdays (celebration #3!)

On a note unrelated to birthdays, we had several moments this week where the boys shared the same space in a "playing" fashion. It was sweet to envision what will come over the next few years as they learn to enjoy each other's company. The first is a huge box that came as a part of a present that Zachary loved to get inside and hide within - Kaleb was sitting outside and would watch intently as Zachary disappeared and then try and raise the lid so that he could see Zachary inside. The other is a picture of the two boys sitting in front of the fridge playing with the fridge magnet (Zachary still has a hard time sharing this particular toy, so we're working on the sharing concept!).

Kaleb's big bash is tomorrow, so we'll post pictures next weekend of that. Kaleb has gotten in all four front teeth in a short amount of time - hopefully the teeth will give him now a break so that he can recover! He's crawling around like crazy now, and follows us around the house.

Phrase of the week: "Shake your booty" - okay - this was a bit embarrassing as Karis was out with the boys at our local vegetarian healthfood store - at the check-out line, one of the store workers was at the cashier and then began to walk towards the back of the store when Zachary decided to tell him to "shake your booty!" - Karis was a bit appalled, but luckily the gentleman was nice and just turned back to laugh.

Two Teethies to Go, Please

Kaleb has had a low grade fever all week - and we had taken him to the doctor last Thursday to determine if he'd had an ear infection but the nurse practitioner said that it was just some "viral thing" - well, after a week of the fever we now apparently have sprouted one more tooth (so now a total of two teeth) with another two poised and ready to pop on through. It looks like he'll at least have four teeth for his first birthday! :) Still not certain that the fever was only related to the teething as some studies say that fevers are not ever caused by teething, but after talking to many mothers, it doesn't seem so sure.

Kaleb has also decided that he's ready to go up and go---go crawling that is. We've now been told that there are up to "26 official" ways of crawling (this is unconfirmed information, so we cannot personally vouch for its accuracy, but it comes from a reliable source, so we're going with it...) - anyway, Kaleb has picked an unusual method - he gets on all fours (normal fashion) and then he sticks his left leg straight out to the side at a 90 degree angle and uses it to help push/pull himself along. See for yourself the picture series of the process below!

The other news with Kaleb is that he had a hair "trim" last week - just the bangs - but it has totally changed the way that he looks! A picture post soon to follow of the new look.

We've had some sad news this week, and some happy news - strange how life goes that way. The sad news is that a small plane carrying 14 passengers crashed in Montana - on board the plane were 9 members of the Feldkamp family. Karis has known the Feldkamp family for years as a long-time close friend, Adrian C., is married one of their daughters. Adrian and his wife were not involved in the plane crash but our hearts go out to them at their terrible loss of her two sisters and their entire families. On the other end of the spectrum, Amy's cousin Kim has just welcomed her second baby boy, Lucas, into the world! We're anxiously awaiting pictures of the blessed event.

We're celebrating Zachary's and Luke's third birthdays on Sunday (a week early) by going to Birthday World and then back home for lunch, gifts and "yummy cake" - Zachary's only had cake probably 5 times or so all-told in his short life but he is QUITE clear that cake is yummy!! :)

Phrase of the week: "Good job, me" - We often will give Zachary positive affirmation for a good job, so the phrase "Good job, Zachary" is a fairly common sentence in the house on days that he's behaving himself! Well, one morning Amy and Zachary were puttering around in the kitchen, and she hears him say "Good job, me!" - apparently he felt that he deserved a bit of positive affirmation for whatever he'd just accomplished and Mommy wasn't giving it him fast enough, so he took care of the job himself!

Mom, I need to pump!

Well, this week's phrase of the week is also the title of this post. This gave us quite a chuckle. Every morning, our household is quite "scheduled" as Amy is here by herself with the two boys trying to get everyone ready and out the door on time (which sadly is not happening as frequently as it should be!) - so the morning starts with Amy feeding Kaleb, and then putting him back to bed to sleep until it is time to go to Miss Jennifer's (babysitter). Then, off she goes to Zachary's room to get him dressed and ready to eat breakfast. Immediately after breakfast, Amy then sits down to pump (so that she can last longer at work before needing to pump) - while pumping, Zachary sits beside her (insisting that he is covered up with the blanket because he's "feezing" (clearly he's listened to Amy too long, and is catching the "cold" bug!!) and they read books together. Aside from the lovely bonding time, the ulterior motive for the story-time is that it keeps Zachary out of mischief and otherwise occupied while Amy is "tied" to the green chair.

Anyway, as this happens every morning, Zachary is well versed on what the schedule is, and the general order of his morning. This week, when Amy was getting a few things put together in the kitchen, he grabbed the pump heads off of the kitchen counter and started to run towards the green chair shouting "Mom, I need to pump!" Amy waits for a few minutes, and then peeks around the corner only to see him concentrating very hard on connecting the pump heads to the machine, lifting his shirt (he even had it tucked nicely under his chin to keep it out of the way) and was trying to "position" the pump heads appropriately on his chest - muttering to himself "too big, too big" because his little chest was not big enough to put the pump heads on! Ha ha - what a hoot. Crazy kid.

Step 1: Lift up your shirt

Step 2: Connect the pumps to the machine (notice his little mouth is open with his intense concentration!)

Step 3: Position pump heads and begin process! :)

Kaleb has had a bit of a rough week (and hence so has Mommy!!!) - he ended up coming down with some virus, so spiked a fever yesterday. Kaleb apparently becomes a night owl when he's getting sick because he was awake from 12:30 to 3:00 two nights ago with Amy trying everything in the book to get him to go to sleep. So we're extra thankful that it is Sabbath and a time to rest and rejuvenate in our household! Hopefully this will pass quickly and we're praying that Zachary doesn't get it.

Kaleb is officially a "big boy" now and is no longer in his infant car seat. He is 22 pounds 11 ounces so has outgrown the weight limit. This comes with mixed feelings as it is sad to realize that our "baby" is growing up, but it is so nice not to have to lug that car seat around!!!

We had our first "pool parties" of the year last week when we went to celebrate Braelyn's 2nd birthday and also had a get-together with friends. Zachary forgot his swimming skills over the winter, so it'll be interesting to see how fast/slow he catches back on to swimming independently. The weather should be warm enough to start the boys back in swimming lessons in late April. This will be Kaleb's first foray into swimming lessons (aka controlled drowning lessons!), so we're bracing ourselves for the 3 weeks of crying. But, safety is number one priority when you have a pool! As an aside, having one "brown berry" for a child and one "pale ghost" is really going to take some re-learning - we've never had to worry too much about Zachary and the sun because he has such dark skin that he tans and never burns (not that we've tested this by leaving him out in the sun for hours on end, but you get the picture). Kaleb on the other hand is our little "whitie" - so at the party last week, not only did we not have a bathing suit for him (deprived child!) but we forgot to put on suntan lotion on before leaving the house. Thankfully with all of those little kids around, another mom lent us hers so we slathered him up but good.

Kaleb with his Auntie Kelli splashing in the pool.

Zachary "kicking" around with Uncle Kent.