13 Months Old

So here is a little update on the things Calder is doing lately.

He has just recently (like, the last couple days) been brave enough to let go of our hands and try to walk!  He has been super sturdy for a long time, I guess he just wasn't ready to do it by himself yet. It has been so exciting!!  He can go several steps consistently by himself, but a few times he has walked as much as 10 steps (maybe a few more) all by himself!  We are so proud of him.  I think it is just a matter of time (like a week or so) and he will have it down. 

He is a bottomless pit!  Calder eats 3 full meals and 2 snacks (sometimes 3) a day. (although most of the time, his snacks are just as big as his meals) He LOVES peanut butter, loved canned green beans (he ate them almost every day for a month!  But he is over that obsession), loves bananas, and will eat pretty much anything we are eating.  

Calder is officially weaned!  Hooray! We were worried for a little while, because he wasn't drinking very much fluids.  But he is doing a lot better at that, too.

He is a climber.  We still have his toy saucer out (mostly because I don't know what to do with it), and the other day he climbed up onto it, and proceeded to sit down in it!  And then yesterday, the dryer door was open and he stood by it, reached all the way to the other edge (like into the dryer), grabbed a hold, and pulled himself up onto the dryer door.  Lately he has been trying to climb onto the kitchen chairs, but can't quite do that yet. (Thank heavens) The nice thing, though, is he knows how to get down from most things now.  We taught him how to get down from the couch by himself, and now he knows how to go down stairs, etc.

He loves the park!  He giggles every time we push him in the swing, and likes the slides, but I think he really likes seeing the other kids and playing outside. (plus, there are lots of things to climb there!)

He still loves books.  He will find a book somewhere, hold it up, and bring it over to me so that we can read it together.

Calder still only has 4 teeth, and I keep thinking another one is going to show up any day by the way he keeps drooling and chewing on things.  But I have thought that for a while, so we will see.

He can touch his toes on command, his belly, and mom and dad's noses.  Most of the time when we are reading, he is able to point out the picture of the dog or lion in the book.  One of the books we have has some bible stories in it, and so he can also point out baby Moses and Daniel in the lion's den.  

He will dance when he hears music (bounces up and down while standing, and shakes his head) and he thinks it is hilarious!

He is getting quite the personality.  We sure have fun with our boy!

Happy Birthday Calder!

I cannot believe our little guy turned one last week!  Time has flown!  I will update about his stats later, this post is long enough just about his birthday...

 One year old!

 We kept things fairly lo-key, and just invited our parents and siblings over for dinner and cake and ice-cream. I did, though, make a cake that I am quite proud of.  It is my first "sculpted" cake. I took pictures of part of the process.

This is 3 cake mixes, or 6 9 inch cakes all stuck together.  I used the pieces that I cut off for the tail, legs, and muzzle.

The next layer of frosting was to make sure everything stayed where I wanted it to, and to trap down any crumbs.

And voila!  A little puppy!  I am pretty pleased with myself, I am going to admit.  Calder loved it, too, which made all the work worth it!  

Here is is the first time he saw it.  He was pretty amazed that there was a little dog sitting on our table! And then for the duration of the week that we had cake left over, he kept excitedly pointing to it.  

He liked opening his presents and seemed to get the hang of ripping the paper.  

And we have had such a fun week playing with all of his new things.  He is fascinated with his new toy barn, and plays with it CONSTANTLY!  It is a very nice break for me, I have to say!

And he loves to cruise around with his new walker.  He always is so proud of himself!

He didn't really try the cake at his birthday party, but he loved the ice-cream!  (and he loves trying to use a spoon. It's adorable, and while he can get the spoon to his mouth really well, he has a harder time getting the food on the spoon, and makes a huge mess.)

He learned how delicious frosting and cake are later that week, though.

We had his birthday party on Sunday, and so on his real birthday, Tuesday, I took him to the dollar store and bought him a mylar balloon.  He was so pleased!  He wrestled with it all day.

Happy Birthday Calder!  It has been such a fun year!

Outside Adventures

It has been uncharacteristically warm this winter, especially the last couple weekends.  So we took advantage of them, bundled up Calder, and headed for the great outdoors.

Weekend Number One: Antelope Island
We went for a hike on Antelope Island.  Craig had never been there before, and I had only ever been there to step in the water (which is kind of gross.) It was beautiful!

Definitely a different kind of beautiful than lush green everywhere, but it was a Utah-desert-in-the-winter beautiful.  We had a lot of fun!  We took the stroller, which was a little difficult at times, (most of the time there was a fairly smooth trail) but Calder was able to stay warm in it.

We even saw a Bison!  I am just glad he didn't see us, too!

Weekend Number Two: the Park
We took Calder to the park for the first time.  He LOVED it!  He couldn't get enough of the swing or the slide.   He had the biggest grin on his face, and would just giggle.  It was so cute!

I guess I know where we will be spending most of our time this summer!

Recap

Well, since it is now February, I figured I ought to write a little about our Christmas.

It is so much fun having a little kid on Christmas!  Calder didn't understand what was going on, but he did love the lights and ripping the wrapping paper, and he does love his new toys. 

 We got to spend the night of the 23rd at my parents' house, and most of the 24th there as well.  All of my siblings were there.  We had a little "Christmas morning" on the 24th.  It was great to spend time with everyone.

We were able to spend Christmas Eve and Christmas morning at our apartment, which was so much fun!  I am so glad we got to spend a little of the holidays with just our little family.

On Christmas, we drove up to Mendon and enjoyed church with Craig's family, and were able to talk to his sister who is on a mission.  We stayed that night, and most of the 26th at their house.

We were spoiled, and loved spending time with family, but I think the best part of Christmas is just the feeling you have all season.

Craig was super busy with work all through the holidays.  They had a project that they had to do for the Federal Regulators, and so he spent long, long hours at his work.  Some nights he didn't get home until 2 am!

The project was due on January 9th, so when they finished, he got a whole week off of work! So we took advantage of the time, and went to San Diego!

We stayed with some of our friends who live there.  They were amazing hosts, and we had such a good time!

Calder loved playing with their little girl, who was 7 months old, and we loved to watch them play together!

 We got to go see the ocean, which was beautiful!

 We drove around San Diego.  I couldn't believe how beautiful it is there!  It is seriously perfect.  Green, mountainous, ocean view, and perfect weather.  We watched the sun set from some cliffs overlooking the ocean.  (Calder has discovered how to stick out his tongue, and he (we) thinks it is hilarious.)

 Calder loved pointing at everything.

We walked around part of the old town in San Diego, and saw the Mormon Battalion museum.  It was really neat!

 We had a great trip!  Calder even did well on the drive to and from.  On the way down, we broke the drive into two days, stayed in Mesquite for the night, walked around Vegas the next day and then finished the drive.  He really struggled on the last half hour there, but other than that he did great.  On the way back, we drove straight and I sat in the back seat with him for about 4 hours, but he did so well, I was so impressed.

Thanks again to our friends who let us stay with them and treated us so well! It was just what the doctor ordered. :-)

Learning Pains

One of the only places in our apartment that is strictly off limits to Calder is the gas fireplace in our living room.  No, we never have it on while he is awake, but it does have a pilot light, and a really inefficient cover.  So naturally, since I always make a great effort to keep him away, it is the place he wants to go the most.

Some days Calder does really well about not going over by it at all.  And on those days, I feel so proud of him, thinking that he's learned to stay away from it.  And then there are days like today.  I spent all day trying to keep him away from it.

After lunch, I pulled him out of his high chair, cleaned him off, set him down so he could go play, and began putting food away.  And then I looked up to check on him.  Sure enough, he found the pilot light. And right as I got to him, his little finger found out that the pretty little blue flame isn't very fun, or nice. At all.  

I cried a little with him as I put his hand under cold water, and then I cried some more when I told Craig about it.  The top of his pointer finger is blistered. 

The opportunity we have to be parents in this lifetime is amazing.  It is hard, but so rewarding, and I learn so much just from day to day events.  Like the one today, for example.  Hopefully now Calder will remember not to go by the fireplace, because now he knows what will happen.  And that it hurts.  Hopefully it is a lesson that he will not have to learn a second time.  It just reminded me of all the lessons that I have to learn, several times over again.  Hopefully my little boy and I can both be smart, and remember so we will not have to re-learn too many lessons.

Milestones

The past month, we have met several milestones in our family.

• Craig and I celebrated our 3Year Anniversary!  
• Calder is 91/2 months!  At his nine month appointment, he measured 30 in. long (93rd percentile), and weighed 19 lbs, 4 oz (30th percentile)

• Calder has now been crawling on his hands and knees for a while now.  He is a little explorer!  He has found out that the kitchen cupboards and drawers open, and loves to play in the one drawer that I let him. He can pull himself up to standing on almost anything, and is getting really sturdy.  It is amazing how mobile he is becoming.  

• Calder got his first two teeth.
• Calder learned how to drink through a straw.  What he likes even more than drinking through the straw is blowing bubbles.

In other news, I got a haircut!  It is quite a bit shorter than it used to be (now it's above my shoulders), and I really like it!

Oh, and I am almost done with my Christmas shopping. Just thought I would throw that in there, I think this year is the most prepared I have been for Christmas this early in the ball game.  It is such a great feeling! Calder helped me get it all done, including the decorating.

Hurricane

Ok, so we didn't really have a hurricane, for obvious reasons.

But wind speeds last Thursday morning were clocked at 100 mph, which is technically hurricane speed winds.  It was kind of crazy/cool/scary all at the same time.  It is times like these that I am grateful we are renters; the repairs are not on our bill.  This is some of the damage in our apartment complex.

Shingles were everywhere!  Fences had fallen down, and tons of trees had either broken limbs or the whole tree had come down.

We ended up spending a couple days and nights at my parents' house because our power was out.

The weather forecast showed another wind storm coming on Sunday night, and with tons of debris that hadn't been cleaned up, the Governor was concerned.  He encouraged citizens to do what they could to get things anchored down before the next storm so that more things wouldn't get damaged.  Long story short, the Area Authorities got in touch with the Stake Presidents in the area, and our stake decided that church would be cancelled.  So we spent all day Sunday doing a ward clean-up.  It was kind of fun to see the whole neighborhood band together to get things ready.

The storm on Sunday didn't end up being nearly as strong, and we got everything cleaned up before it hit, so there was no more damage in our area.