The Smith Family Adventures

With my first two sons, we eventually reached a time when they had to wear a bib full time because of the amount of drool leaving their bodies prior to getting teeth.

Unfortunately, I have to say that Caleb has arrived at the age of the bib. The past few days he has been soaking through shirt after shirt. It’s time to just move on to letting the bibs catch most of it. I say “unfortunately” because I can’t believe he is growing up so fast! Isn’t he supposed to be the infant in arms? The tiny baby? The one who will stay small forever?

He tried out his first bibs today.

As you can see from the picture above, he was able to get it off pretty easily. The velcro is worn out from two prior boys usage. He took them off and felt them, put them in his mouth, and stared at them. Sometimes he got them so that they lay directly over his face and he couldn’t get them off. Then his little arms and legs would be kicking around, but he waited pretty patiently for someone to remove the bib and put it back on correctly. Eventually, though, he always discarded it.

I don’t blame the little guy. I wouldn’t want to wear one of those full time either. But it is so much easier to change a bib than to change a onesie!

As of yesterday, Caleb is 3 months old. For both Nathan and I the 3rd month slowed down a bit. I still can’t believe he is a quarter of a year old…but this third month did go slower. I’ve been having a bit of a tough time so maybe that is why.

We are loving Caleb more and more each day. He is growing so fast right before our eyes. He’s really developing his own little personality, and he is “talking” and cooing a lot more these days.

Caleb is now sleeping through the night (until 5 am or so) relatively frequently. If he doesn’t sleep through he usually sleeps until 3 or so to give us a long chunk of sleep. He can even put himself to sleep which is something neither of our other boys could do until much older.

During his third month, Caleb has been working on his arm and hand motion skills. He has really started to try reaching for objects. He reaches for toys in his kick and crawl gym, and occasionally reaches for toys. I snapped this picture after he had reached for this elephant toy and brought it down off the tray. He still doesn’t really grasp things, but this is a start!

Caleb also notices himself in the mirror now and gives himself some pretty big grins. I set him up on the bathroom counter and he just smiles at himself. This evening he was even reaching for himself in the mirror.

Tummy time is still super tough. I need to be better about forcing him to do tummy time! He looks like an upside-down turtle. It’s pretty pitiful.

Caleb loves his brothers and smiles at them a lot. He enjoys it when Elias reads stories to him. He is still very much along for the ride. Here he is a few days ago when I was trying to get the boys to say “Happy Birthday” to Baba and James in a picture. I love this picture because he looks like he’s thinking “who are these people and why am I here?”

Caleb laughed his first real laugh last night. What fun! It’s been a wonderful first three months. I can’t wait to see how he grows and changes.

In other news, I feel like Peter Pan. Nathan has decided to kick Caleb out of our room. This his last night with us. Tomorrow he’ll “grow up” by moving to the nursery. I’ll be glad to have my own space back (and I can set up my sewing machine again!), but my momma heart is sad. Time goes by.

When we were little, my brothers and I used to play “house”. I, being the oldest (and a pretty bossy older sister at that), got to decide how things went during this imaginative play. Sometimes I’d even make my brothers start over from the beginning if they did or said something that didn’t go according to my plan. They must have liked me because they almost always did what I said in those situations.

During “house”, I made myself a human, and I made my brother Scott be a horse so that I could ride on his back around the house. I most often made my brother Greg be the dog. I don’t know which is worse. You’d have to ask them.

Last night when we arrived at Ama and Baba’s house for a birthday celebration, I didn’t even have my coat off yet and the boys had already somehow coerced Uncle Scott into being their horse.

It’s good to see someone is picking up where I left off. Like mother, like sons!

The celebrations continue for Simon’s third birthday. Yesterday evening, though, we added more celebrations. Simon, Baba, and cousin James all have birthdays within one week of each other so we decided to have one big celebration.

We all met last night at the Spaghetti Factory. Unfortunately we didn’t think about that fact that it is valentines day weekend, so with a party of 14 it was quite a long wait. The kiddos all did ok, but we left the restaurant after normal bedtime. We headed to my parents for presents and dessert.

Simon and Elias enjoyed opening presents and helping Baba and James open theirs.

We sang a loud chorus of happy birthday for all three birthday boys. James turns one, Simon 3, and Baba 59!

Then everyone enjoyed a chocolate cupcake. Simon and Elias got right to licking the frosting off of theirs. James was a bit unsure at first, but as you can see he ended up enjoying it quite a bit.

Caleb just enjoyed watching everyone.

The night ended with only two out of three children in tears. For such a long day and late evening, I’d say it was a success!

Today is Simon’s 3rd birthday! I can’t say I’m sad to leave the two’s with this child, but Simon wouldn’t be Simon without that fiery personality so I think we are in for some adventures in the threes as well.

Simon was a little grumpy when he woke up, but as soon as he went downstairs and saw he got to open some presents he was happy. He got right to work….even before breakfast!

He was a nice boy and let Elias open one of his presents.

After breakfast we just played and got a few things done around the house. Then Ama and Baba came over with a wonderful birthday surprise!

Ever since we moved into our house two years ago my mom has wanted to get the boys a swing set. I resisted, but recently have been feeling like it would be a good idea. When my mom asked for birthday ideas for Simon, I told her not to feel obligated, but if she still wanted to, we were ready for a swing set. Less than an hour later I got a return email from her saying they had purchased it. I guess she was excited!

The boys got right to work building the swing set.

Simon and Elias had some fun with the box while Daddy and Baba did the hard work.

A little before noon, Daddy let for a vestry retreat at church. Unfortunately when he arrived, he found out that the retreat didn’t begin at noon…..it ended at noon. Oops! We felt bad about it, but I was also secretly happy to have Daddy home for the afternoon. The swing set didn’t get finished before the rain, but it was finished enough to let the boys try out a few parts.

Simon was very proud to sit on the big boy swing, but decided he liked the slide better after he fell off of it twice. We’ve got some work to do with the big boy swing!

It was a great start to Simon’s third birthday. I can’t wait to see how he grows in the next year. He’ll start preschool and Awana. He’ll be able to do t-ball and soccer mini league in the summer. And so much more!

Tonight, we’ll start by saying bye-bye to the binkies. He only uses them at nap and bedtime, but he is really attached to them. Mommy and Daddy decided three is the age to give them up, and we’ve been preparing him for awhile now…but I don’t think he ever really got it. Hopefully we won’t be up all night! Wish us luck!

Valentines Day is officially tomorrow, but we’ve been getting in the valentines spirit for a few days now.

I am the class party coordinator mom for Elias’ pre-K class and I was looking for candy science ideas to use for the valentines day party. I couldn’t find anything I liked, but decided that kids always love the vingar/baking soda reaction so we could do that. I brought a bunch of vinegar and baking soda along with some food dye to make it colorful and a bunch of different scents (vanilla extract, peppermint extract, raspberry extract, etc) to make it smell good. Then I bought some candy hearts to add in as “love notes.” I called them love potions. The kids at the party had a blast, but Elias just thought it was the best thing. He asked over and over again at the party if we could do it again at home.

Thursday night after the party, Nathan was gone and I was looking for a fun idea to help the time pass, so why not let the boys do more love potions? It got a big messy by the end, but the boys just absolutely loved adding different colors and scents and experimenting to see how the reactions changed each time. It was great fun!

Caleb really has to go with the flow. He gets pulled around to all sorts of classes and schools and play dates. He gets bounced around and kissed by his brothers. He takes it all in stride. One thing he’s never liked, though, was tummy time. In his short eleven weeks he has never been happy during tummy time even once. By this time Simon was an expert tummy timer and spent most of his happy and awake time that way. I’m not comparing abilities of my children…just different personalities.

Yesterday, I was forcing Caleb to do some tummy time and he was pretty fussy. I was trying to engage him with different books and toys, but he wasn’t having any of it. All of a sudden he just plopped down and stopped trying to keep his head up. At first I was worried because he wasn’t making any fussing sounds either. Then I realized he was asleep. The poor kid was so tired and fed up he just went to sleep.

He looked so cute but the whole situation was just so pitiful. In all three boys this was a first! I moved him to a more comfortable situation for his nap and he slept for a couple of hours.

Sometimes I wish this were me. I wish I could just plop down and sleep when things get tough. Ahhh to sleep like a baby…..

Caleb reached 11 weeks of life on Wednesday. He’s hit some big milestones this week.

First, and possibly most important, he slept through the night! Caleb slept 8:30 pm to 5 am or so. Not every night since then, but more than once so we know he can do it!

Caleb is a happy little boy.

He is certainly getting a large belly!

Another change this week is that he is really starting to like his kick and crawl. In previous weeks he would stay happy for only a short time. Now, he is actually very interested in what he sees hanging above him, and he actually kicks the ball. He is becoming more and more alert and interested in his world.

These boys just keep growing. This gives me mixed feelings as a mom. I’m sure someday when they are teenagers I’ll just look back and laugh at myself for feeling all sentimental about my five year old getting “big.” But the boys all pass new milestones each day it seems, and life is just going by right before my eyes.

Elias was very excited about creating valentines for his classmates. I showed him a few ideas online, and he picked the one he wanted. Then we went to the dollar tree to get supplies and he picked out what he wanted to do. He worked hard to finish them in two different sittings. He’s come a long way from last year when he just scribbled his name on a few Jake Pirate valentines from Target.

Here is a close up:

Then today we finally switched him to the shoulder strap seat belt instead of the 5 point harness. We were waiting until he reached 40 pounds. He was so proud.

He’s growing so fast!