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

Wrapping Up the Summer

Quick post tonight as it is late and I am sleepy. We had a good week with some big progress on the house - a foundation!! If everything works out correctly, the framers should be out at the end of the week. Yippee!

Last week was Caleb's final week as a "Butterfly" at Riverfield. This week is in-service, so there's no school, and he'll be a "Frog" next Monday. What a big fella! His teachers shared several disks worth of pictures from the last semester and summer with us. Here are some of my favorites:

Telling Hannah the hamster "Hi"

Practicing his vacuuming skills

Digging in the dirt (they actually grew some plants)

Playing dress-up with hats in the Commons area

Shakin' some maracas (or jars of beans)

Drawing on the class-wide blue collage

Looking out from the playground "Hi big bus"

The first of many mud-pies

Passed out in his crib


We found a good deal on a lifejacket. It is for 30-50 pounds so we'll use it for the next million summers. Unfortunately, none of our friends will want to go swimming with us as there is a huge scary skeleton pirate face on the back. I didn't even look at the back of it until we were home; plus it was the only style left. Oops! Guess the point is that it saves lives, regardless of the undead figure on the back.

Speaking of undead, I have been sucked in to the Stephenie Moore "Twilight" young adult book series about a high schooler and her forbidden romance with a vampire. The first ones came out several years ago but I didn't become interested in them until last week. A co-worker lent me books #1,2,3 for my upcoming trip to FL. I read the first one in a day and 1/2 and polished of the second on Friday evening. I forced myself not to read the third over the weekend so I'd still have something to read on the plane. So good and intense and an easy read. And they are making a movie of the first book that comes out in December (don't think I haven't scoured the web for all sorts of additional info about the books, movie, author, actors, etc.). Highly recommended!

And the other time-consuming piece of our life is the OLYMPICS!!!

We don't paint our faces or anything but we're pretty huge fans, watching day and night and constantly switching among channels to make sure we don't miss anything. Aaron's going to have to keep me posted when I'm in Florida, for sure. Go USA!!!!!!! And Caleb gets into it too, learning all sorts of new words like "soccer" "volleyball" "swimming", etc. He might be rotting his brain with the TV on for hours at a time but it's only once every four years (or two, since we're pretty fanatical about the winter games too).

That's the scoop from us. Have a great week!

More and More "Boy"

There are times when Caleb is very sweet and mild-mannered, even shy. But more and more often, he will turn into this boisterous, adventurous, and half-crazy little man. Not that there is anything wrong with it (in the appropriate time and place, of course) but I can't figure out if it's just something that happens to all little boys or if he learned it from other kids at school with older siblings. One such example happened last week when we went out to look at the lot.


Caleb had already taken a bath and brushed his teeth. Aaron was going to look at the plumbing progress and so we all loaded up, went through McDonald's for a hot fudge sundae, then went to the new house. Caleb was content for awhile just walking along the concrete from the footings but then discovered a big pile of dirt "Whoa dirt!!" He drove his trucks along the edge of the pile for a bit, then decided it was more fun to crawl on top of the pile, roll down the other side, and generally get filthy...in his pjs and with a sundae-sticky face now covered in sand. Thankfully our to-be-neighbor was out chatting with us and let us use his hose to spray Caleb down. Lesson learned: house first, bath later.


We have continued sorting and packing up unneeded things around the house. This does beg the question, "If you don't need it for the next few months, do you really need it at all?" We've been pretty good about choosing wisely between tossing/donating/packing up, if I do say so myself. I was way behind on putting away the clothes Caleb has outgrown so I tackled that over the weekend. Caleb was his usually helpful self, taking clothes out after I put them in and then getting into the storage bins. Not super productive, but very cute.


Part of packing up Caleb's old clothes meant going through bags of bigger clothes friends have given us. What a treasure trove of things that will fit this winter! Caleb's favorite find was a pair of Elmo slippers. Thankfully he can't get them on himself or I'd think he would wear them all the time.


Thursday Caleb and I got haircuts (as seen in pictures from later in the week) but Thursday morning I was combing banana out of his hair - don't ask - and thought it would be funny to put it in a ponytail. I showed Caleb, thinking he'd hate it and pull it right out. Instead he wore it around the house until it fell out then came back with the elastic and asked for me to do it "again". HA!


We went swimming at our friend Leslie's pool with some Sunday School girls and their kiddos this week. It was tons of fun and Caleb was a regular little water baby. It makes me wish that we had found time for lessons this summer, though I did hear that a gym in town does them year round and you don't have to be a member. Since I am turning into more and more of a whale, I might let Aaron take on that fun task with Caleb. They have several horses at Leslie's house so Caleb was totally enamored with them, until they came up to the fence and tried to lick him. Thanks Leslie (and Aidan) for inviting us over!

Here's Caleb wearing Aaron's sunglasses. What a big boy!


And here's Mr. Intellectual Aristocrat enjoying Caillou (ky-you) on TV. This pose totally cracks me up. Aaron never sits like this so maybe he picked it up from my dad or something?? Caillou is Caleb's favorite TV show. It comes on Sprout and PBS and he LOVES it. He has recently figured out how to turn on the TV in our bedroom and will sit down and ask for "ky ky" until you turn on one of the several that we have on DVR.


Caleb's class at Riverfield has been learning several yoga poses over the last few months. The only one I recognize when he does it at home is the "downward dog". He does it very well and always says "down dog" when he does it then stand back up and says "yeah!". Funny fella. Please disregard the Chuck Norris-like outfit; it is a random tank and pants that I paired together and called pjs.


We have a new roof on the current house so that's another checked-off item on our "to do" list. The new house has below ground plumbing in place and hopefully some progress will be made this week.

Sunday was Miss OK's Outstanding Teen Alicia Clifton's send off party. For those not in the pageant realm, it's a gathering of family and pageant people where the titleholder models the clothes she'll wear at national competition, answers questions from the crowd, etc. And there are always these yummy sugar cookies with cute pink crowns on them. Alicia heads to Orlando this week to begin rehearsals and the crew that will cheer her on (including me) leaves next week. Yippee!!

Several people have inquired about the name-choosing for baby girl Walton. Nothing yet, and we really haven't talked about it much. However, Aaron has threatened to send out a mass email to friends and family saying we've chosen "Wanda". So if you get that, please disregard. Nothing against the Wandas of the world, it's just not on my Top 10 list. We have started at least looking at bedding, etc. Bed, Bath, and Beyond, which I love, now carries baby things (at least on the internet - don't know about in store) so I've been perusing things online tonight.

Have a great week!

The First of Many...

Our excitement for last week happened on Friday night at Lowe's and we don't have pictures or video to show for it.

As shown in last week's blog, Caleb is very into racing these days. He was racing around Lowe's and we made the comment that we're surprised he hadn't bitten it yet. (Note to other parents: NEVER verbalize something like this... you doom yourself!) So, sure enough he goes running down the aisle and falls to his knees, then elbows, and topples forward on his head because of his momentum. We hurry over to pick him up and he is bleeding! Now, I will say that we stayed very calm (I was more calm the Aaron, FYI) but rushed him to the bathroom to get cleaned up. This was another interesting discovery - do you go in the men's or women's bathroom? We chose men's and, conveniently, it was empty. Thankfully, the bleeding stopped quickly and was coming from his nose, which, in my expert opinion, is better than his mouth, tongue, teeth, or lips. The nice guy from customer service followed us in the bathroom to make sure Caleb was going to be OK and got us his cold can of soda from the break room to put on his nose.

Everything pretty much paled in comparison after that, but it was a good week. I did go to a wedding with a totally inebriated groomsman, which was entertaining and mortifying. We also went to our Sunday School class Progressive Dinner. It is a pain to coordinate but is always a good time.

Here are a few fun pics from last week.

Caleb having fun in the sprinkler. He doesn't get that it is doesn't sting so badly when you're not so close to the spicket.


Caleb stuck behind the end table. He looks like he is having fun but, based on a video that's too dark to post, he really was stuck and got pretty frustrated.


Caleb having fun with my boxing gloves. He has really enjoyed some of the interesting things we've uncovered as we sort and pack up this house.


And, to tide you over until next week, here are two videos.

The first is of Caleb trying to figure out what to do with the gloves. His first guess is that they were a hat, so we showed him what they really were, but he ended up back with the hat/gloves.


The second is a short one of Caleb in his favorite chair, anticipating the start of Cars. He LOVES this movie and has started saying "Ca-chow" (what Lightening McQueen says in the movie) whenever you mention Cars.

It's hard to believe but I am already halfway through this pregnancy. Actually, more than halfway since I'll have a C-section at 39 weeks. We don't have a name yet and haven't really done any shopping as far as nursery bedding, clothes, or anything else. I am sure it will all come together just fine.

Have a great week!

Just Another Summer Week

To you loyal readers that used to check the blog every Monday morning that turned into Tuesday morning then the occasional Wednesday morning, I sincerely apologize. I have no excuse other than I've been busy doing other things. I really feel like I have to get back on track or I'll be really bad about blogging when Baby #2 arrives. So here goes...

Caleb spent most of last week under the weather. Tuesday evening his tummy was a little grumbly. We found out why all day Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, etc. as we went through an entire Sam's-sized box of diapers. He finally rounded the bend Sunday afternoon, a blessing because Aaron and I both really needed to be at work on Monday morning. He never ran a fever and never really had loss of appetite, just a lot of funky diapers. In additional to bowel issues, he started to break out with these spots on his back and legs. And, like any good mom, I circled them when I first noticed them so that I could monitor whether or not they were growing in number or in size. (They did neither.)


Over the weekend we relocated a plant that was running out of room in its old pot. Caleb was very eager to help in the process, as you can see.

Because of the constant diaper changing, the close eye on the spots, and the Oklahoma heat, Caleb spent a lot of last week in just his diaper. Here is a cute picture that shows Caleb driving his car on an unsuspecting (and unappreciative) Lilah. Note: that is dried ketchup from lunch on his chest. We were on our way to the changing table then down for a nap, so I hadn't fought the "clean up" fight yet.

We have continued working on our house and met with the listing agent on Sunday. He was complimentary of the house and of the cleaning, sorting, updating work we've done so far. We will probably list mid-September or early October so we have more time for our "fun" weekend projects. Caleb really enjoyed playing in, on, and around the box that a new shelving unit arrived in.


There is some forward progress on the lot. The footings have been poured and the house has been formed. And in the next week - 10 days the plumbers and slab-layers should be out there. We shall see.

Here is a funny picture of Caleb from a few weeks ago at school. The teachers swear he was eating crackers but it sure looks likes he is enjoying a nice bowl of mud.


Here are two funny videos of Caleb's latest entertainment. He loves to race and will let you know by emphatically saying "Race" or "Mark" (as in "On your mark").

The other is Caleb and me singing Jesus Loves Me. However, his true colors show through when he becomes more interested in cheesin' for the camera than singing about Jesus. Ha!

That's it from here. Try to stay cool in this hot hot weather and have a good rest of the week!

Doesn't Feel Like A Weekend When You're Working The Whole Time

We've had several friends move recently and we were discussing the irony of how you fix up your house to sell it and move without really enjoying the benefits of fixing it up for yourself. Hmmm. But we are moving forward (for ourselves and/or the eventual new owners of our home) and making progress on our projects.

Aaron has painted the guest bath and our office. We've cleaned out and sorted through lots of stuff, taking lots to our new climate controlled storage unit. Why climate controlled, you may ask? Aaron would try to tell you it's for the candles and pictures we're storing there but the majority of the space is for his 23 (!!!) boxes of Sports Illustrateds and countless other boxes and binders of baseball and basketball cards. These precious mementos cannot be subjected to the cruel Oklahoma heat in our attic. I like to give him a hard time but it is amazing how much bigger closets look when they aren't filled to the brim with stuff. I put away all my winter clothes and the summer clothes I no longer fit into since I won't be needing them until after we move. Aaron got out my bin of maternity clothes from the attic but I haven't gotten into it yet (thank goodness for the flowy, peasant-style top that's so popular right now).

Perhaps most different has been the removal of our piano to it's temporary home (thanks BJ and Lisa!). Despite what pictures posted in past blogs may lead you to believe, we don't use it daily and it was taking up a LOT of space in the living room. So it is hanging out in South Tulsa for a few months in an effort to make our living room look large and open.

OK, enough typing and on to the pictures. My parents retrieved our camera over 4th of July weekend in KC so we finally have some pics. Some are from a month or more ago but they are too cute not to post. They should be from most to least recent, not that it matters much.

Mr. Adventurous Climbs the Ladder


Peek-a-Boo, Lilah


New TV-Watching Seat


Naked on the Slide


Naked Lawn Boy (he'll love me for this some day)


Balls Go Splash (not naked)


Really Close Up


Smiling in KC


Sharing (or attempting to) with Cousin Ada


And here are two videos. Aaron must have taken this first one as I've never seen it before. The funny thing is that there's probably 3 minutes worth of video of Caleb just doing this over and over, trying to figure out how things work.


The other is Caleb when we first got the Elmo sprinkler. He was not too sure about it. Now he runs straight for it any time he's in the backyard, regardless of if he's fully dressed or not. He's done the same with the sprinkler system that's been on in the yard a few mornings when we've walked Aaron out to his car to say goodbye. No concept of "hey, I'm in my pajamas which means I am not prepared for water play" for Caleb :)


Have a great week!