Friday, March 14, 2014

Caleb: 5 weeks and a day

Caleb is now over five weeks old.   He's a happy,  sleepy baby.   He smiled twice for the first time on March 5th.  He has a cute little mostly closed mouth smile.   The first time was during tummy time (unlike my ladies,  he actually likes tummy time).   I was down on the floor next to him and he just smiled at me (first of my kids to smile at me first... He's a mama's boy!).  Then later that evening,  he was on a blanket on the floor and he heard Tom using the jigsaw in the garage.   He got really calm and when the sawing noise ended,  he just smiled.   He's also got a great series going of awesome sleeping poses.   Caleb loves to sleep.   He eats really well every 2.5-3  hours during the day.  Caleb also gets the hiccups after every single feeding.  He goes to sleep for the night after his 9:30pm feeding and usually sleeps until 8 or 9 in the morning with one gas attack around 4ish (after which I usually feed him).   The poor boy gets attacked by gas periodically.   He gets really growly and then passes really loud gas for a solid few minutes.  Before Caleb, I really thought baby gas drops were a placebo for parents because they did absolutely nothing for my girls,  but they totally seem to help him (for which I'm grateful).   He's getting big (though he started pretty big) and his cute giant tummy always seems to be hanging out.   It's so hard to be productive when Caleb likes to just sleep on my shoulder.   I'm enjoying our cuddle time tremendously.   And I'm so glad our little boy has joined the family!

Wednesday, March 12, 2014

Pictures From Marel's Phone

Since Caleb is a third child and smart phones are a real thing now, I need to start a new segment called "Pictures from Marel's Phone" in order for Caleb to not feel neglected and to cover some awesome moments only caught with my phone.

These first two were the view from my bed whilst in labor (maybe they were not included in the hospital post because Tom wanted you all to believe he spent the entire day holding my hand).



Sabrina showed off her brother at home in a "block him with my body" pose:


Caleb did some sleeping:



A lot of sleeping:


He woke up once!


 Make that twice:

 The girls dressed up like this one Sunday and Sabrina said: "it's Church day!"

Tom had a birthday and used his new grabber from nephew, Balo, to eat his carrot cake.  This was after we went to Benihana which was the entirety of our celebration of Tom's birthday (tough having a baby two weeks before your birthday).


The boys got all sportsy after the Seahawks won the Super Bowl:


Caleb got the thumbs up from Sabrina:


Caleb showed his personality.  Rawr:


Double rawr:




I was majorly losing a staring contest one day:


Until I totally won:


Celia got a pretty advanced "learn to draw" book as an early birthday present from Grandma and Grandpa.  Immediately, she opened it up, grabbed a piece of paper, and started freehand drawing some freakishly amazing figures:



Then the girls left for Spring Break to go visit Grandma and Grandpa and Nana and Papa.  Tom and I pulled up the carpet in our bedroom and now after we put Caleb to sleep in the living room, this is how we started spending our evenings: watching Hulu and eating ice cream out of the container in our construction area bedroom.


And this adorable little picture I took of the little man today.  He's getting so growed up!


Saturday, March 1, 2014

February Art

This was a very art-filled month for the ladies (and look how timely I am about posting it!).  It began with a night at Taylor's house.  I had a false labor start on Groundhog Day which just led to a sleepover with the cousins.  Lucky for the girls, Taylor's parents, cousins Tami and Mark were in town for two weeks.  Mark is a retired art teacher and Tami is a project extraordinaire, so they had all sorts of things up their sleeves.  The girls both made Groundhog's Day cards, and when they got to return for three more nights less than a week later (when Caleb was actually born), more art ensued.  When they got home, they just had to keep crafting, so they broke out the giant crafting kit Grandma and Grandpa had given them for Christmas and went crazy.  I only included the paper-based projects they created here.  As you can tell from the scratch-off cards, the girls were quite into women's figure skating during the Olympics (Celia: "I wish it would just always be girls ice skating.  I like the girls better than the boys").  All of Celia's art is captioned by Celia unless stated otherwise.

This is a ticket I made.
(Marel translating: "Before you leave the crafting center, go to the coloring center.")

These are both parts from "Harold and the Purple Crayon."  Another book that's about Harold is called "A Picture for Harold's Room."  Harold's falling off the hill and drawing a hot air balloon.
(Marel addendum: Celia was asked to draw a picture of what happens next)

This is a butterfly human.  The flower is where she lives.
(Marel addendum: Celia told me over and over again when she got home that this was probably the most beautiful picture she has EVER drawn.)

This is a Hawaiian human butterfly.

This is a picture of all the kids in my family.
(Marel addendum: I like that it looks like Celia is ice skating into the picture)

This is a Groundhog Day card I made for my mommy and daddy.

This is what it looks like inside the Groundhog Day card.

This is a picture of one of my green bears I got from my school complaining about fire on the ceiling in her room.

This is the figure skating fairy.

This is someone figure skating on the Olympics.
(Marel addendum: I like the dolphin jumping out of the ice.  The scratch card kits came with stencils that included this dolphin.)

Sabrina's Art from February with captions from Sabrina unless stated otherwise:
This is mommy and daddy and Caleb walking on a street.

This is my Groundhog that I made with Mark.

This is Daddy helping us make our flowers on our house.

This is a figure skater and her lunch box and backpack and the ice skate rings.

This is a card for Nana and Papa.  

This is my butterfly that I made when it was yesterday.
(Marel addendum: By "yesterday" she means nearly three weeks ago)


This is the Baxton's sister and this (pink pipe cleaner) is the hair.
(Marel addendum: The Backson from the "Winnie the Pooh" movie)

This is one of my stamp art kits that one of our stamp kits had stamps in them and glitter in them.

This is something that I'm giving to Grandma and Grandpa.
(Marel addendum: I'm so proud of Sabrina and her letters and writing.  This is the first thing she has written that is an actual word.  And, in her defense, she misheard the "P" in Grandpa and I couldn't correct her because she was doing so well!)

Also this month, I had parent teacher conferences in which we had a wonderful discussion about Celia.  I said she acted like school was boring and she would tell me about her version of "acting out" during worktime (which is pretty mild because it's Celia after all).  Her teacher said she noticed it as well and she told me that several other kids in the class that already can read, etc, just get their work done in five minutes so they can work on other things like writing their own books.  When I talked to Celia about why she spends the whole hour working on two things she could do in five minutes and why she wasn't excited to write her own books, she confessed she was too scared she would spell words wrong (the perfectionist part of her I cannot relate to AT ALL).  I told her she's in Kindergarten, she should be spelling ALL the words wrong!  Nana told her it was called "creative spelling" where you just guess what you think it is.  She got pretty into the phrase "creative spelling" and was off and running.  She practiced making several books at home over the long President's Day weekend and I just received word from her school teacher yesterday that she just completed her first book at school (she's been working on for two weeks), and actually read it to the class (which she told me she did not want to read anything to the class).  So yay!  I include one of her stories she made at home here (mainly because she made it for her Sunday School teacher, so we can't keep it).  Whenever there is a heart, you are supposed to say "Valentine."  And say "Rabbit" when you see the picture of the rabbit.


"One day a rabbit went to see some Valentine Roses."

"Then the rabbit smelled the roses."

"The very last rose was so good that the rabbit kept smelling it!!!!"

"Then the rabbit's owner appeared!!!!"

The end.


The owner is trying to save the Rabbit from the rain, but the rabbit jumps out of the owner's hands on the last page.  Sabrina insists this page ends with you saying "Boing, Boing, Boing."

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