The Peaden Life: Caleb Samuel: 2.5 years

Tuesday, September 10, 2019

Caleb Samuel: 2.5 years

Caleb Samuel. You're just the best of the best. 2.5 years has been good to you - and I submit that you're the cutest, sweetest 2.5 year old around. You're chatting up a storm, curious about everything, and have a natural ability to make people smile. You are really throwing yourself into the role of big brother. We love you so much and we are so happy to have you in our family.

Some things I want to remember:

He loves books. One of his favorites right now is "How to Train your Train" and if you pause at the right places he will fill in the words for you. Like, Let's make the call of the Wild Train... Chugga Chugga "Choo Choo!" and How do you know if the train you picked is the one? "You'll know!" I love him. He also loves "The Little Engine that Could" and he will say lots of those words, too.

-He loves his Dad.

-Swimming this Summer was SO fun. He really enjoyed the water and I was always just a little worried because he thinks he's a big kid and he always wanted to be out in the deep end with Lydia and Austin but he's so heavy that his puddle-jumper was always a little low in the water, ha.

-Be still my heart.

Seeing my baby holding our new baby.

Caleb is such a sweet, caring, interested big brother. He loves his "Baby Oocee" and always wants to be by her. I was worried that he was going to be pretty rough with her, but for the most part, he is very gentle with her.

There are too many sweet Caleb-Lucy pictures. I can't choose. In January of 2020 I'll have to come back to this post and remove some pictures so that we can fit everything into our blog books but for now I'm just going to put in ALL of the pictures.

I just love him and I love her and I love how much he loves her.

Back to regular Caleb programming: He's so sweet and fun. This 2.5 age is really the best with him. I always love the 18 months stage, but the heart stopping, joy-filled, giggle-inducing moments have really been coming strong lately.

-He has really been loving this play kitchen that we have down in our basement. He loves playing with the food and pushing the shopping cart - and really everything. I've been trying to make sure that I spend some one-on-one time with him during the day and most of the time he chooses to "Go on a 'venture" which means "go down into the basement with a backpack and get in the red Little Tykes car and drive to the kitchen to play in the kitchen. I usually sit on a little scooter and roll around with him and he loves it.

-Okay. Lets talk about sleeping. In the weeks leading up to Lucy being born Caleb started waking up everynight with night terrors and wouldn't go back to sleep unless one of was laying on the floor next to his bed. I spent most of weeks 38 and 39 of pregnancy sleeping on the floor of his room with my arm through the slats of his crib. Finally, three days before Lucy was born, we moved Caleb into the room with the big kids. It wasn't a great solution, but we were desperate. Things got better for a little while, but they aren't great. Poor Caleb is terrified of alligators (we have no idea where this came from) and he talks about them all the time when he's going to sleep and when he wakes up and even occasionally during the day. Sometimes he wakes up in the night crying because the alligators are trying to get him. One morning I went in to him in the morning and asked him how he slept. He responded "Good!" Then cheerfully he added "The alligators were eating me!" It was so funny and sad but mostly sad. He is sleeping better now that he's in the same room as Lydia and Austin, but he doesn't go to sleep as early because they stay up a little later. d.e.s.p.e.r.a.t.i.o.n.
Also, we joke that we have 4.5 bedrooms and between the six people in our family we are only using three of them (Lucy is in our room with us.)

-He got a balance bike for his birthday and he started the summer by holding onto the handle grips from the outside (sideways) and walking without sitting down - but he's really gotten the hang of the balance bike thing and it is so fun to watch him cruise around on it.

Picking Rasberries with Grandpa Peaden. Caleb loves fruit more than any other food group. It makes up a solid 85% of his diet.

More Caleb-Lucy pictures. Note the picture where he is climbing on the back of the couch right above where she is laying. Ai-yi-yi!

(Also the picture of him lining up all of the trucks. Classic 2 year old move and it's darling.)

This summer was also full of THE HADERLIES!

Caleb and Jason have a special relationship. Mostly the love each other, but sometimes Caleb loves Jason a little too much and Jason gets overwhelmed/afraid of him. Also, sometimes Caleb gets frustrated and has just started biting when he's angry. He doesn't do it often, but he has bitten Jason a few times which Jason HATES. The picture below of the air pump was snapped after hearing Jason say "I'm making Caleb bigger so he won't bite me anymore."

Boating!!! This is Caleb's first real experience on a boat and it was a success. He liked being on the boat, he liked the water, he even liked riding on the tube. I love the water and I love sharing this with him.

One day he wrote me all of these notes. One at a time. They were just little scraps of paper, but he carefully drew on each one and brought them in to me as a gift and they were the sweetest little loves notes I ever did receive.

He's turned into a little chatterbox lately. I feel like he had a word explosion and all the sudden he went from 5-6 word sentences to narrating everything about his life. I love when he calls me his mom. Like "You're my mom, and you gave me this lunch!" Or "You're my mom. My mom? Will you give me water?"

(nope, couldn't cut it down. Had to include all of these pictures.)

More Caleb-Lucy pictures. Sorry-not-sorry. I love them.

Caleb also loves his big sister Lydia and she's so good with him. I love watching their relationship grow. (And she's so good to help me keep him out of trouble.) He adores Lydia. Horses? Not so much. He was not keen on this horse ride at the farm!

One of his favorite things at the pool is to get out and sit on the warm sidewalk with a pile of snacks on the towel in his lap. He's living a good life, this little one. Also, he and Austin wear the same size swimsuit. Summer is really the highlight of childhood.