The Smith Family Adventures

Caleb has been getting closer and closer to crawling, but hasn’t quite gotten it yet. I remain thankful that he is not too mobile yet. Today he hit a different milestone, though. I set him down on his tummy to play and watch his brothers and went to start making lunch. I peeked my head around the corner to check on him a minute or so later and this is what I found:

He had gone from tummy time to sitting up all on his own! He looked so proud.

That also meant that the crib had to be moved down to keep him safe at night. Time’s a rollin’ on.

We have an inflatable kiddie pool for our backyard. The first time I wanted to use it I could not get our air pump to work. I had to blow it up using my own breath power. Let’s just say I vowed never to do that again.

Since then I have made Nathan inflate the pool because he could make the air pump work. This week is a warm one here and I really wanted to pool inflated so that the boys could play. I told Nathan I wanted the pool and his response was, “I don’t know what to tell you, hon. It’s really easy.”

So…I went to use the air pump and could not make the darn thing work. I’ll admit I may have shed a couple “frustration” tears and a few “feeling inadequate” tears. However, when Nathan got home from work he tried and could not get the air pump to work either. While I am sad about the pool remaining un-inflated, it made me feel better.

All this to preface some fun afternoon activities with the boys today. I wanted to get outside and have some water play, but with no pool I was forced to improvise. I used a laundry basket and a sprinkler, and we had a blast.

Caleb is 8 months old today. I know I sound like a broken record…but I just can’t believe it. He is growing so fast and passing milestones each week without much pomp and circumstance…he is a third born after all.

The biggest change this month has been Caleb’s mobility. He is not crawling yet, but he gets around well enough anyway. He can’t actually move forward, but he gets pretty far on scooting, rolling, and turning around and moving backward. For example, I set him down on the car rug only about a minute before this picture was taken:

Caleb also loves to play with toys, and makes a lot more messes than he used to!

Here he is making an attempt at crawling. Look at his focus! He goes up on all fours or does a plank and then eventually just plops back down on his stomach.

I’m thankful he is still moving slowly. I’ve been getting us re-childproofed bit by bit, but there is still a lot to do!

Caleb now has four teeth. There are two almost completely in, and two that just broke through a couple of days ago. He also has at least two more that are really close to breaking through. He’ll have a mouthful of chompers before we know it. Caleb is finally starting to make progress with solids. He does well with purees now and is just starting to be able to feed himself little chunks. Today he fed himself blueberry pieces and sweet potato “puffs” while I spoon fed him peaches for lunch. At the end I always let him try to feed himself with the spoon. It’s still pretty messy.

This little dude is really starting to show us some of his personality. As a third born, he is loud and proud. He has no problem letting his needs be known. I think he just likes to hear himself “talk” too. If a toy gets taken away from him, I’ve seen him get it back from both his brothers and other kids who don’t know it as well. He’s normally a very happy guy and I just love looking into these little eyes.

Caleb has to be flexible. He gets carried around napping in the car seat while his older brothers get dropped off for camps and play dates.

With Simon and Elias I just stayed home so that they could nap. Caleb doesn’t have that luxury. It’s probably time for him to move out of the bucket seat into a larger car seat, but I can’t bear to take away the car seat naps yet so it’ll just have to do for a bit longer.

Look at those cheeks, though! He’s my big 8 month old boy!

Each year we try to get in at least one trip to Hagg lake with my parents and their boat. It is a lot of fun to get out on the lake and even go tubing! Elias remembered from last year and was very excited. Simon was very nervous. This morning he was starting to say he was scared. Elias tried to help, but was actually doing the opposite by saying things like, “Don’t worry Simon. If you fall out you can just ask a stranger and they will help you find our boat.”

Oh boy. That kid has a few things to learn.

But we make our trips to the lake as safe as can be. No falling out!

We were hoping for a really warm day. Perhaps 90 degrees. Then the lake water feels very refreshing. When we got there, it was in the low 70’s and it was very cloudy. We call it arctic tubing as a family joke. (It’s actually quite pleasant until you get splashed)

Then we had a picnic lunch and it cleared up nicely. Simon was still pretty scared when we were first on the boat and cried unless he sat on my lap. Lunch loosened him up, though, and he agreed to ride on the tube if it went slowly and he sat on my lap. Eventually he decided to sit on his own if I held his hand, and then started asking when it was going to go faster. By the end he was having a blast laughing and riding along like a pro.

Caleb stayed in the boat. He did not like his life jacket. We left the top part unbuckled for him. I know it has a good purpose, but I swear they are trying to choke these babies. We decided since he can’t move on his own it would be ok.

Each of the boys got to have a turn “driving” the boat.

And we all had fun just relaxing as well.

Thanks Ama and Baba for the fun day!

One of the best parts of having family in town is being able to celebrate together. We had a big combined birthday bash for Nathan, me, and my aunt. We decided to go to a Hops game together and then head back to my parents’ house for dinner.

The boys were super excited to see Barley. Barley even had a mini dance party with Simon who was thrilled beyond words.

For this game, we sat on the family burm. Caleb enjoyed sitting with Auntie Jeani and Uncle Jim.

He also enjoyed sitting in the grass and playing with my mom’s ticket envelope. I’m serious! This “toy” lasted him about 20 minutes until Simon took it away from him (we usually don’t let him have paper so Simon thought he was helping) and he let us know in no uncertain terms how he felt about it.

So he took a nap….

Daddy naps are the best!

Nothing, though, beats having a conversation with Uncle Scott. Caleb and Uncle Scott went back and forth making sounds at each other. It was very cute!

Another fun family celebration in the books!

Last summer I decided to put Elias in penguin camp at the zoo. My brothers and I did zoo camp growing up, and I just thought it sounded like fun. He ended up really loving it. He’s been talking all year long about how he wants to do lion camp this summer. I signed him up, and was a bit apprehensive because it would be his first “full day” experience at either a camp or school or whatever. He was nervous about lunch, but I bought him a nice new lunch box and promised I’d pack him something he’d love. I was excited to see how it went…he definitely will need to get used to it considering full day kindergarten starts in a couple months!

Here is my proud lion camper after I picked him up the first day.

I think he liked it!

Seven hours is a long time to be gone so Simon, Caleb and I had a lot of time to fill with fun and other stuff. On Monday I forced them to go to Winco and Costco. Boring mom…I know. We had a lot of fun the other days, though.

On Tuesday, Simon requested a park we had never been to before. I didn’t feel like wandering around the streets until we came across a playground I didn’t previously know existed so I took him to Autumn Ridge Park. I took the boys there all the time when we lived in the condo, but we moved when Simon was 10 months old and he doesn’t remember it at all.

It brought back some fun memories to be back there. As I watched Simon play, though, it really hit me how big the kids are getting.

Elias was never able to navigate the above play structure. Simon had no trouble. At first I was confused. Then I realized that Elias was younger than Simon is when we moved. How time flies!

Caleb enjoyed the park too.

We filled our time with a lot of other fun things. Play dates. Games at home. And of course we visited the zoo ourselves. I let Simon ride the carousel for the first time.

We were lucky enough to bump into Elias’ lion camp group on a zoo tour while we were there. What fun to see him at camp!

We are thankful for the experience of zoo camp and time together!

I got a bit behind on writing for the blog. We had Nathan’s birthday last weekend and we had a blast. The boys baked a cake for Nathan. Elias decided on the flavor: white layer cake with chocolate fudge in the middle and caramel frosting on the outside. They enjoyed the entire process of making the cake, and were very excited to show their daddy when he got home from work. We all hid in the closet and jumped out at him and yelled surprise when he walked in the door.

We were able to fit in dinner and birthday cake after swimming and before a Hops game. We had a busy day! We sang a rowdy version of “Happy Birthday.” I think I told the boys to make a silly face for this pic, but only Simon complied by the time I snapped the picture.

When we arrived at the Hops game it was Disney night. The boys got to get their picture taken with two of their favorite princesses.

I had to endure 9 days of “older woman” jokes between my and Nathan’s birthdays. Now Nathan is 32 just like me.