Oh Caleb. Life with you is never boring. It's either packed full of love and sweetness or of mischief and mayhem (not malicious, but mischievous nonetheless). It's amazing how much you've grown since age three. This year makes such a big difference in how well you communicate, how advanced your humor is, and how capable you are of doing things on your own. What hasn't changed? Your absolute love of life. I am so grateful to be on this journey with you.
Stats: 4T/5T clothes. Still sharing everything with Austin, which is my fav. Eyes starting to lean a little more to the hazel side of grey. So full of love for his little sister, he may just burst.
Things to remember about this age:
I would be remiss if the very first thing that I mentioned was not the dynamic- and often dastardly-duo that is Caleb and Sadie. The two of them are troublemakers to the max and they delight in being together. As soon as we get together, they gleefully find each other and take off to play. By themselves they aren't truly troublemakers - not anything more than a normal developmental stage. But together? Whoo-eee. Just in the past six months they have drawn rainbows on my pantry door, climbed onto counters to get into sprinkles, found a container of Tums from David's bathroom and eaten a good portion-plus scattered/hid them around in the basement to come back to later (had to call poison control on that one), dumped out a whole bottle of vitamin A skin serum; plus an equal number of shenanigans at Jenna's house. You may think that they aren't being supervised well enough, but most of these things have happened in mere minutes. The rule with these two is keep your eye on them. Ha. Mischief aside, it's the sweetest thing to see how much they love each other.
-Caleb has had a rough year. His third birthday was spent at the pediatrician with a double ear infection and burst ear drum. Since then, he's had croup (which was scary), an xray for a broken arm (wasn't broken, but was really painful), multiple goose-eggs and fat lips. He and I have been to the doctor for sick/emergency visits more than any other child.
He calls Grandpa-Great (Ramon Walker) his Grandfather, and he talks about him quite regularly.
He has a clever way of speaking. I can't come up with any examples, but sometimes he will say something and I just have to laugh at the phrasing.
-He has been sleeping on the top bunk of the bunkbed in the same room as Lydia and Austin. Recently we moved. him and Autin into their own room and now he's on the bottom, but it was always funny to me that Austin preferred to be on the floor in the toddler bed and Caleb preferred to be on top.
-He loves Lucy and she usually loves him. Until he gets to be too much and then she usually bites him. Poor guy.
-He loves David and sometimes will just pop into his office to tell him something that he's thinking about.
-He earned a new Dinosaur comforterfor his bed.
-My dad got a metal forge for Christmas and Caleb has been entranced with it. He keeps saying that he wants to make a knife like my dad- so one day my dad took him out and let him hit a little piece of metal. He loves it and is so proud.
Christmas with a 3.5 year old is pretty special.
-Okay. This is one of my favorite things that Caleb does right now. He sleeps on the top bunk of the bunkbed and after we read books at night, he has been requesting that we swing him into his bed. He lays down and David grabs his arms while I grab his legs. This would be humorous as is, but it gets better. Not only do we need to swing him into HIS bed. But there is a specific process we are expected to follow. 1st, swing him three times and land him in Lydia's bed. He then says, "This is not my bed, this is Lydia's bed!" 2nd, we swing him three times and land him in Austin's bed. He laughs and replies "This is not my bed, this is Austin's bed! My bed has dinosaurs". 3rd, we swing him three times and on the 4th swing, we lift him up and over the rail into his top bunk. He laughs and says "THIS is my bed!" Life lesson: Don't try to skip any of the steps or you'll have to start at the beginning again. I know that things like this are just small stages. Pockets of funny that bring joy into life, so rather than fighting against it (it's quite the process every night), we will enjoy it for the days/weeks/months that it brings HIM joy until he grows into a new stage.
He REALLY enjoys art and painting. He likes to jump in with the kids whenever they are painting something and I try to give him opportunities to paint on his own. For a while I was hosting a watercolor class for Lydia and three of her homeschool friends. Caleb would always sit at the table and paint along with them. He loves it.
Why do kids love styrofoam so much? It's so fun but SO messy.
We've been doing church at home and one Sunday Caleb came over with a stack of cups and a piece of bread that he proceeded to split out like the sacrament. We didn't let him actually hand it out to everyone. But I thought it was a sweet moment of him trying to be good disciple of Christ the best he knew how.
Some funny things that he's saying right now that we love:
-Yeppity-Yep (and occasionally Noppity- Nope)
-When you ask him which he would rather eat/have/do he responds "Either will do" or "Any will do". It sounds so grown up and it's darling.
-He quite often responds to you saying something with "I don't like it when you say that." It can be excessive praise, expressions of love, instructions to follow, or basically anything.
Here are some more photos from the past six months including Halloween, loving Lucy, fireworks, Doctors office for croup, sharpie on the wall, adventures, and the cheesy smile that I love so much.
Caleb, you're the best four year old around. We love you!
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