So Far

Me and my babies. (The bundle-to-be is around 17 weeks.)

Wanna see my moves?

It's official! Callum is crawling!! He truly crawled for the first time this weekend. So, we will be able to jot in our baby book...walking..12.5 mos. getting up to standing..around 17 mos. and crawling..nearly 18 mos. Exactly opposite! The best part of his new found abilities is that he completely randomly decides to exercise them. Such as in these photos at Barnes and Noble. Where he would grab a book off the shelf and pretend to browse it just so he could get down on his belly and then crawl a bit only to stand up, grab a new book and start all over.

This is what happens when..

you combine a toddler in gymnastics class that is just learning the crawly-climby's with laying out an airbed for grandma to sleep on.

Adventures in the Pumpkin Patch

It was another gorgeous and sunny weekend for us, with just a bit more of a chill in the air. We were lucky enough to have Grandma Crowley in town to play with us and Paige and her family organized a day out to a pumpkin patch. And, what a pumpkin patch it was...with petting zoos (yes, multiple!) and hay rides and straw jumps and corn mazes and, oh yeah, pumpkins too. Mama even got to enjoy her guiltiest pleasure...deep fried oreos (don't judge until you try them!).

We are continually amazed at how well Cal and Paige get along and have similar personalities. They are so excited to see eachother but are good at giving eachother space and sharing toys. They are also both really good at letting the world know when they are DONE and it is time to pack up and head home. It's such fun to watch them continue to get along and enjoy eachother so well. It's kind of hard to tell in this photo but they are holding hands as they tromp through the patch together.

The best part, of course, of the whole day was the hay ride led by a tractor. Callum was mesmerized and we had to sit as close as possible to the tractor and both he and Paige just stared as it tugged us along. In the excitement of everything, we all forgot to even bring home pumpkins! But, who needs pumpkins when you have memories like these, right?!

Callum LOVED having his grandma around and kept repeating 'ga-ma, ga-ma, ga-ma' and bringing her books and toys. Even now, a few days later he is still wondering where she is and looking around the house for her. At one point, he nearly tripped over my legs as he bypassed me to give grandma his teddy bear. I'm still licking my wounded ego.

October is just the best bloody month!

The weather was sunny and warm all weekend with the leaves in peak fall season. Perfect for our annual trip to Philips Apple Farm! The above quote came straight from Papa as we wandered the orchard and couldn't be truer. In addition to taking home loads of apples and a few pumpkins, we got to see LOTS of tractors, which little C couldn't get enough off...seriously, it was difficult to get him into the apples!

Hard to beleive the difference a year can make, here he is last year sitting amongst the pumpkins.

And this year, lifting them!

Discovering Me! (and other milestones)

It was our week to pick up vegetables at the farm so this Saturday we all hopped in the car ready to enjoy the sunny weather and the changing leaves. While we were driving Callum starts talking away in his car seat. He says "mama" and points to me; says "papa" and points to Kieran and then says "cow-cow" and points to himself! He did it over and over again he was so proud and excited to know himself!

It also seems that after making over the hurdle of learning to stand up on his own, his agility has taken off. This past week he started climbing the stairs and manuveuring on and off his riding toys. It might not seem like much to parents with 'climbers and crawlers' but this has been a real challenge for our little guy. He still prefers is we help him with these things but when we refuse he can do it himself.

10 Reasons Cal is going to make a Great Big Brother

Our 17-month old little guy is going to make a great older brother for lots of reasons but these are the top 10 most important ones:

1. Safety Conscious: He is very good at picking up small objects off the floor or ground and giving them to us, especially tiny leaves and seeds and rocks. He calls them a-bit.
2. Auditory Skills: He can identify a train (trey, trey, trey), airplane (a-men, a-men, a-men), school bus (ga-ba, ga-ba, ga-ba) and bus (ba, ba, ba) just through sound. This is always handy for an older bro, right?
3. Verbal Development: He rarely says a word once, it usually has to be repeated a few times...great for helping a baby develop verbal skills.
4. Help Staving Off Hunger: He's really good at dropping food off his high chair tray, which will leave lots of extra for a crawling baby.
5. Alternative Communication: He has the ability to completely stuff his mouth with food and then sign for 'more'. Again, a useful skill to pass on baby sign language.
6. Love of the Arts: He loves music and is sure to pass this on with his constant requests for either Baa, Baa, Black Sheep (Ba, ba!); I'm bringing home a baby bumblebee (bum-ba, bum-ba, bum-ba); or Itsy-Bitsy Spider (is-see, is-see, is-see all while holding his hands with his fingertips touching).

7. Positivity: He loves to clap and say "yay!" after a song ends, even if it's muzak at the grocery store.

8. Creative Endeavours: He will likely pass on a great ability to improvise. For instance, bulldozers, which are great fun are hard to pronounce so he just calls them am-ama. Why not?

9. A love of reading! He loves to read and frequently asks to have a book read to him. At the same time, he knows when enough is enough and you just have to skip a bunch of pages, close the book and say ba-bye.

10. The ever-important mischief: He will know how to help his younger sibling get up to a bit of trouble. He's just figured out that you can really freak out the parents if you go in the pantry, shut the door, and stay really, really quiet...they don't know where you are!

He'll certainly come up with more older brother tricks of the trade between now and April, but this seems like a good start.

A Life Full of Surprises

Life continues to present us with great big and wonderful surprises. We've been really lucky like that and it turns out that the next few years with be no different. So, the big announcement is that early next April we will be welcoming another little person into our lives! We just found out half a dozen weeks ago and so have started making the rounds with the doctors and everything looks like it's going great. Mama hasn't been too sick, just pretty tired but no real complaints at all. We are trying to teach Cal about how you have to be gentle with babies and he is obsessed with pointing at pictures of babies so that seems a good start. Of course, when Kieran holds Teddy and pretends its a baby and rocks him gently, little C grabs him out of his arms, puts Teddy's nose in his mouth and walks around with him like that. This is his everyday preferred method for holding Teddy but the timing is certainly interesting. Hmmm.

How to Stand

Because our little guy never crawled, he has a little bit of difficulty with general agility. So, he has struggled with getting from sitting to standing despite the fact that he can tear around quite well. So, in cahoots with daycare, we are all working on helping him learn. And, he is now a complete pro! The process itself, is slow and laborious and sometimes involves a face smashed into the ground but he is doing it and he is proud. Here is the process.

This is step 1: turn to the side and put hands on the ground.
And step 2: Transfer onto the knees
Step 3: Finagle from the knees onto the bottoms of the feet (this is sometimes where the face plant occurs and he will persist working his feet to the ground with one cheek pushed against the ground.)
Step 4: Inch feet closer to hands with lots of grunting and heavy breathing and general hard, hard work.
Final Step: Stand up with great pride.

YAY Callum!!