Caleb turned 16 months a week or so ago. Every time I look at him he just gets bigger and bigger.
As always, Caleb spends most of his time trying to keep up with his brothers. If he can’t do that, he gets into as much trouble as he possibly can. He does stuff his older brothers never even thought of…(or did I just block it all out?) Whether its moving dining chairs around the house so that he can climb on new surfaces, standing on the kitchen counters to get himself a water bottle, sneaking into the pantry to get food, flushing stuff down the toilet, turning the computer off when I am answering an important email, or any of the other mischief he manages to find…he can sure drive us crazy.
What really has amazed me in the last couple of months is how much Caleb notices about us and how much he attempts to mimic. Sometimes he tries to mimic words or sounds (today “Hola!” was his favorite). Sometimes its our actions or body movements. I love watching him learn and grow.
Below are some fun pictures of Caleb over the last couple of months:
Caleb the “helper”
Caleb’s first time on a tricycle. He doesn’t actually have a helmet yet, so he was borrowing Elias’ which is too large, but it worked for the slow speed we were going. He loved riding around on the trike.
I was trying to make dinner, and the big boys were in the backyard playing. Caleb wanted to go out there so bad. He was distraught… crying and pounding on the door. His brothers went around the corner out of sight and I gave him a piece of cheese to distract him and I got this fun smile as a result.
Caleb wants to eat his food just like we do. He does not suffer those childish small chunks of fruit, for example. He wants to eat his apples whole.
The boys are really into helping me weed right now. I’m taking advantage of it as much as I can. Whenever we go into the front yard, they really want to weed the small patch of dirt just outside of our yard next to the driveway of the flag lot next door. It is not technically our land, but I’ve never seen any of them do anything to maintain it, so after weeks and weeks of saying they couldn’t weed there, I finally let the boys have at it. They were in weed heaven, and Caleb joined in the work.
The weather is finally turning. We’ve had a few non-rainy days in the last couple of weeks, so we’ve gotten into the backyard to do some swinging. Caleb had a lot of fun when Simon pushed him.
I walked into the children’s sunday school a few minutes late after working a bit in the food pantry, and I saw this cute scene. Notice how Caleb is holding the card. He likes to hold it and pretend he is reading it just like we do.
Just this afternoon we were able to stay after school and play on the playground for an hour or so in the sun. Today was Caleb’s first time on the big slide. I got a kick out of his static-y hair too!
I can’t imagine Elias doing the climbing on counters etc that Caleb does. (I can believe that Simon did it, however). My parents had four and said that they would never have survived if any two of us had been the same….. so glory in the diversity of your boys. They are thriving …. and such fun to watch. Sunday it seemed to me that Elias was significantly taller and in one of those lean phases.