When the Cat's Away...

Caleb & Dad — home alone... Whoo!

Now, for the big shocker... Emily's clickity-clickin' little fingers aren't drivin' this keyboard tonight. That's right, I have officially hacked in and taken over!

So, I got back into town Wednesday evening just after Emily's plane flew out for Orlando. If you don't already know, Emily is at the Miss America's Outstanding Teen Pageant this week watching Alicia Clifton compete. I'll add in updates as I type. So far this evening, Alicia has successfully made the Top 10 and "nailed her on-stage question and evening gown" (Emily's words).

Okay, so let's get into the week. First off, I'll let you know that Emily has no clue that I'm doing this! Ha! This is the longest absence without Caleb that she has ever had, so hopefully, she'll be happy that I took this week's blog off of her hands!

Everyone knows we're pretty big sports fans, right? Especially when it comes to the Olympics and football. Because of the last week, Caleb now can say and identify soccer, basketball, swimming, diving, and racing (track). He can probably say Michael Phelps, too... From the way that he's been speaking in the last couple of days, I think that he might have even picked up some Chinese.

Let's talk football: Emily=Chiefs, Aaron=Jaguars. I thought it was time to get Caleb thoroughly prepared for the NFL football season. Here is the first picture of Caleb trying on his new authentic Jacksonville Jaguars Maurice Jones-Drew jersey (which Emily doesn't know that I bought!)

Isn't he a stud??

So, I will admit that I had a little trouble getting a good picture of Caleb in his jersey. In fact, I took a total of 17 pictures. Gimme a break - this was an important shoot! Caleb was in what we've clinically diagnosed as a "busy" mood. Here's an example: I would say, "Caleb, will you say hello to mama on the telephone?" Normally, he would immediately respond, "Hi mama!" and want to hold the phone. During a "busy" mood, he just continues what he is doing, and I would end up speaking our familiar phrase (as Caleb), "I'm busy mom".

Caleb was very "busy" as I was trying to take a picture. Here, he has shoved his truck into the ball popper and then thought it would be neat to feed a cracker to his truck. (the truck actually has a front grill that opens, so it's not completely crazy that it would be a mouth...)


Here he is on his way to the fridge (with truck) after I had just bribed him with grapes and milk...


with grapes in mouth, milk in hand, truck in other hand, Olympics on tv...


About the ball popper... so, it causes a tad bit of frustration for Caleb when it doesn't shoot out everything that he shoves in it. For those of you that have one of these, I'm sure that you can sympathize. For those of you who don't know about the ball popper, let me share a couple of videos... In the first video, Caleb shows us how to get his car stuck and then follow up with his familiar request to dad... "apart?"


In the next video, I had just showed him how to get the car out...

(Emily just let me know that Alicia didn't make the Top 5) :(

Well, I feel like we have our house Caleb-proofed pretty well, so we can let him roam free somewhat without too much concern. Here's what happened yesterday...
He snuck into the bedroom, scanned through 19 channels, found a little skydiving on the tube (loves those airplanes), and popped a squat. This is how I found him...

A few pics of Caleb terrorizing the dogs...


It's been fun to watch Caleb's habits and interests develop. Currently, his most beloved toys are his cars. He pretty much has a car with him at all times, and when he's home, he gets them all out, lines them up on the couch, crashes them, races them, puts them in the ball popper, drives them on the dogs, parks them on the couch, etc.


Speaking of cars... Everyone seen "Cars" the movie? "Ca-Chow"? Well, if you're the mother of a young boy, and you're child has not seen cars, you should probably go out right now and buy it. No need to rent it first to see if he'll like it... Just buy it.
Last night I made a big mistake. Emily recently purchased some "Cars" pajamas for Caleb. I got them out when it was bedtime, and when I started putting the shirt on... oops... long sleeves. Us Walton hot natured men can't wear long sleeves in the summer. By that time, it was too late; I had already made a big "Ca-Chow" production about the shirt, and Caleb wasn't going to let go. So, I had to get creative. We took the turtle to bed with us instead...

Dressed as "Lightning McQueen" of course...


Took Caleb to the park today. For some reason, he refuses to use the small step to get up on the playground equipment, so this is what happens...

I'm sure that the brilliant child that he is has gotten it all figured out in his head and knows that the hard work that he does in life is more rewarding. I know he's young, but I'm sure that's his reason. :)

So, here's our other purchase that mom doesn't know about yet. Bulldozers! (or borbobos in Caleb speak) We made a trip to Toys 'r' Us today and survived without too many tears about all of the toys that we left IN the store.

The bulldozer came complete with a hard hat as well...


Here are a couple more funny videos...

Caleb on the zebra after watching the Olympic trampoline competition that he thoroughly enjoyed.

Caleb dancin' like his mama...


I think that about does it. They started framing our house today and have most of the perimeter walls up already! Woohoo! Thanks to the Longs - Grandma (Guanga - try to pronounce that and gurgle at the same time for the correct Caleb sound) and G-Dad ("dadgy" as Caleb says) and Aunt Mo for helping out Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. As far as I can tell in the monitor, Caleb is still breathing, so it looks like he survived his 4 days with dad.

Going along with the Olympic spirit, I'm hoping that I've broken the World Record for the longest and most entertaining blog! I guess we'll have to wait on the judges for that one! Have a great week!

Aaron