Happy birthday my big 4 year old!

Today is Caleb's 4th birthday! I can't believe it. The time has gone so quickly. What to write about my little "Baylub". He is such a sweet boy. He loves reading books and cars, animals and dinosaurs. He is a low key boy, but also loves to talk and wrestle with Daddy. But for the most part he is content to play cars or read stories. Caleb has been such a good and easy boy, I feel so blessed that God gave him to me.



He is learning so much right now. He is in preschool this year, and is enjoying himself. He does lots of art projects and enjoys his show and tell days! He is currently really figuring out the Alphabet and letter sounds. We have been working on sounding out words a bit and practicing writing letters. He is also very in to counting things and can almost count to 20 (he misses a few numbers sometimes).

This last year has thrown a few challenges in Caleb's path. The main one being the birth of Eli. Caleb loves his little brother, but it has been a hard transition for him. We had a pretty good routine going, and we got lots of Caleb and Mommy time, even with me working part time. But when Eli came along our routine was disrupted and that was challenging for Caleb. He is still figuring out how to "love" Eli without endangering him (part of which I think he doesn't intend to, but the other part I think he secretly does intend to). I also can tell he gets frustrated when I (or Ryan) spend time with Eli and all the attention is not on him. So we are still working on a balance and helping Caleb to realize that the earth doesn't revolve around him (which I think is developmental too)!



The other challenge for Caleb is me being home full time now. We have always had breaks from each other since he was 3 months old and so our time together was always very precious to us. Now, with me being home full time, I can tell we sometimes need those breaks from each other. That's one reason I am glad we chose to put him in preschool this school year. It allows us both a needed break and reminds us how we miss the other one when we are not together. It helps us both keep our sanity.

So through these major changes in Caleb's little life, he has adapted amazingly well, and even though he can sometimes demonstrate some "terrible four" behavior, I keep telling myself that it's normal and just a phase! He is just testing his limits and his independence. Which can be hard, but is normal and needed. We love our Caleb so much and can't imagine our lives or our family without him. He has been such a blessing to us since the day he was born.

Preschool

Well, I know that I haven't updated Caleb's blog since 2008 when he was a few months old. But I thought, since I still update Eli's, I should give a few updates on Caleb as well!

Well, he is a very smart and wonderful 3 in a half year old. He LOVEs reading books. He can look at books for hours, or read books for hours with us. Our favorite present for him has been his Leap Frog TAG system. It's a pen and books and the pen can read the pages of books or say random things when you touch different places on the page. If we can't read to him at any given moment he just gets that out and "reads" his own books. It's also great to take with us to appointments and stuff because he can just entertain himself. Right now Caleb is currently obsessed with all things transportation. He loves fancy cars (not just plain cars, mostly race cars), he likes planes, trains, boats, wave runners. He is biggest into air planes right now. But The boy likes vehicles. He knows most makes of cars by their symbols (like Toyota, Honda, Chevy, Ford and many many more!!) We play a game in the car while driving where he calls out the make of every car (and sometime semi truck, but mostly only Peterbilt) he sees. If he doesn't know I tell him, but he usually remembers after that.
Another big milestone for Caleb is that he just started Preschool today! I think it was harder on me than it was on him. He has been in daycare since he was a baby and has gone to the church nursery for that long as well, plus Adventure Zone at the Y, so getting dropped off someplace isn't unusual for him. He was a bit weepy this morning and was being more difficult than normal (we had a few time outs). But when he got there he just threw his bag in the basket and ran off to play, yelling over his shoulder as he went "Have fun mama!". I kind of stood there not knowing what to do with myself. Then, after calling "bye" to him, just turned around and left. A small part of me wished he was one of those other kids clinging to their mommy's and crying... but not my Caleb he is independent through and through. When I picked him up he was excited to see me but didn't really have a lot to say about it, so I am hoping that eventually he will tell me more of what goes on at Preschool!

And I will, try to update more about Caleb to keep his online baby book going as well!