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.