In with the big kids!

On Monday, Caleb got promoted to the honest-to-goodness toddler room. They would have sent him a little earlier, but they have to be able to promote someone out of that room before he can come in. There are two things that are delicious about this for me - first of all, he is tuckered when he comes home! Which means that he sleeps through the night! (Although it does mean that I'm consistently waking up to an alarm clock again for the first time in over a year, which is kind of sad.) But the other thing is that all the bigger kids congregate in the gym first thing in the morning, so he LOVES to leave me!

Don't get me wrong, it was devastating at first, but it's nice not to have to feel like a traitor for dropping him off every morning.

Oh, I thought of another upside! His tuition got five dollars a week cheaper! It would have been twenty a week, but they just raised rates for everybody. Which means it's a good thing that he got out of the nursery, or we would have been paying $220/week. And that's just silly.

The one downside for him is that in this new classroom, they are really more stringent about rules and whatnot than his earlier teachers. For instance, he HAS to wear shoes now! He still takes them off, but they shove them back on about twenty times before they give him an hour without them. Also, he's down to ONE serving of milk while at school. And they try to give him a cup before they pour it in the bottle. He's drinks all his other drinks out of sippy cups, but hasn't been as successful with the milk. I don't know why. But we've been working on it, and with them now making a daily effort to do the same, he'll be cupping it in no time!

Zerbets, Sleep Smiles and Body Slams...

This weekend, I took Caleb to get his pictures taken at Kiddie Kandids, which for me, is the creme de la creme of child photographers. (Please don't introduce me to anyone more creme - Wal-Mart photography is already ruined for me. Don't take these guys away, too!)

We got there right when they opened at 9:30, and there were already ten people ahead of us. So we signed up for the first available time, which was two hours and fifteen minutes later. So after doing a little shopping ~ we were at Babies 'r' Us, after all! ~ we went for a ride to try to put Caleb to sleep, and once he was out, I went back to the parking lot and just sat to wait. It gave me the unique opportunity to just watch him in broad daylight while he slept. I'm not sure that anything I've experienced to this point as a parent could really compare with that time. To be able to watch him at rest was amazing and beautiful. And he smiles all the time! Which tells me that his sleep must be pleasant, which warms his mom's heart!

When we finally had the pictures taken, he was still sleepy from his nap, and a little cranky. But they did an amazing job ~ not only was he cute for the pics, he was SUPERCUTE! The photographer actually entered his last picture in a contest. (I think it's just for the people that work there, but it's still good for a proud mom to hear.) It was a great experience, and the shots turned out amazing.

That afternoon, Jonny was working and at his Christmas party, so Caleb Z and I had a whole afternoon at home alone. I think I mentioned about the jungle gym I become when he needs a climbing toy, but has has this one other adorable habit. While Jonathan or I are laying on the floor, he'll yank up our shirt and do zerbets on our tummies! I'll just start howling with laughter, so he'll do it a few more times, and then just when you're in the middle of a giant belly laugh, he'll launch his whole body on top of said belly and do a full body slam. I suppose we'd better stop it before he gets big enough to REALLY hurt us, but right now it's so sweet how he'll zerbet, zerbet, zerbet, BODY SLAM, zerbet, zerbet, BODY SLAM, zerbet...

By the way, now that I've used the word zerbet about a trillion times, let me say that it's the raspberry that he blows on your skin. I could be spelling it wrong, but it's not the kind of thing that's in my dictionary.

On Sunday, we went to see Kevin and Christina - but more importantly, their KITTIES! Caleb chased them around obsessively, and Kevin really tried to get Pico to stand still so Caleb could pet him. But when the kitty was still, Caleb got shy. It's like he was only interested in the chase! It made me giggle. Miss Christina looks like she's ready to have her little girl at any moment! But that little missy better hold off for a bit, since Kevin and Christina haven't decided on a name yet! We think they'll know when they see her.

Oh, and we got to see Auntie Alisa at church on Sunday! We just walked in, and there she was! We had expected to miss her since she goes to a later service usually, so it was a lovely surprise. I adore surprises like that! They make me ever so happy!

Happy Friday!

Last night, Caleb learned to walk backwards! Okay, actually, I don’t know that he LEARNED it last night, but it was sure the first time I’d seen it ~ and he loved it! We were doing a “dinner on the fly,” meaning that I didn’t have him in his highchair while he was eating. He would walk toward me with his little baby bird mouth open, then as soon as he got a bite, he’d walk backward while he ate it. Then walk forward for another bite, then walk backward and eat. He was totally cracking up! I don’t know why I never thought of walking backwards as a form of entertainment!

He’s so much fun! I know I put that in every post, but it just keeps getting to be more fun! He’s developing the “knowledge of good and evil,” meaning that when he does something he knows he’s not supposed to do, he’ll keep an eye on mom and dad’s reaction. It’s hilarious! So when he’s crawling to the place where we keep the Xbox plugged in, knowing it’s off limits, he turns around every few seconds to see what our reaction will be. It’s adorable!

The other fun thing is that he LOVES to use us as a jungle gym! If you lay on the ground with him, he’ll be crawling all over you for so long that your body will ache from his joyful body slams and knees in the throat and whatnot. I’ve never been so happy to be abused…