Never Mind...It's Official

I wrote a post this morning asking at what point you would consider your baby to be officially walking. Well, Caleb is now officially walking all over the place. Before today, Caleb's record number of consecutive steps was 10, but now it's somewhere between 30 and 40. He's so proud of himself (as are we) and is loving his new trick.

When is it Official?

During a discussion about babies walking a couple months ago, a friend of ours mentioned that we would need to determine what, in our opinions, would constitute Caleb as "walking". At that point, Caleb had only taken 1 step a couple of times, so we didn't give it much thought. A few days after that conversation, though, Caleb took 5 steps. (This was five days after his first birthday.) Then he waited a couple weeks before he did it again. Over the last few weeks, he's added several more steps to his attempts at walking. His most recent accomplishment has been 10 steps, which he's done a couple of times.

As I thought about his accomplishment yesterday, it hit me that 10 steps is a lot, and it got me to thinking, "When is it official?" Though he's taken 10 steps twice now, it's not like he's always trying to walk because he definitely crawls the majority of the time. So I'd love your opinions, when do you think you would say a baby is walking?

1 Year!

*I'm sorry this blog post is more than a month late this time!


At the beginning of this month you started sticking your tongue out and saying, "Num num" when you're hungry or when you see your bottle. I'm not sure where you got "Num num", but it's cute. How nice it is that you're starting to be able to communicate with us more.

I finished weaning you at the beginning of this month, and thankfully you didn't have any problems with it.

You eat pretty much anything I give you--cantaloupe, bananas, grapes, watermelon, tomatoes, black olives, onions, green bell peppers, corn, peas, green beans, rice, beans, etc. The only thing you don't always seem to want is lettuce. I'm thankful that you're not a picky eater, and I pray this trend continues!


























You continually prove to be a little monkey, which is why you had a monkey-theme birthday party. You like to crawl and sit inside drawers, on top of tables, chairs--anything at all that you can reach, and you LOVE climbing stairs.

You took your first step this month. It was just one and it was a few weeks before you decided to do it again (2 days after your first birthday). I've been thinking for months now that you were going to take off walking. This was partly because you've been standing so well for so long and have good balance and are really good and quick at cruising around on the furniture. You'll even dance and squat up and down while standing, but you're just not terribly interested in walking on your own yet. One day, it will come, I know, but for now, I'm thankful to carry you. I know it won't be too long before you'll want to "do it on your own".

You did receive your first battle wounds this month, but you weren't even climbing or anything. Somehow you lost your balance while standing near a metal chair and smacked your face on it. This is not a good picture of you, but you can somewhat see the bruised knot above and between your eyes, the scratches above, below and to the right your right eye and on the left side of your nose. Poor thing!

You have learned how to throw a ball, which quickly became a fun game for you. You would throw the ball to me (or wherever it happened to go), and I would roll it back to you. I praised you for your new trick, but then for a little while, you began to throw other toys as well. Oops! Thankfully you never threw out of anger or anything, and I'm glad that it didn't last long and now you've stopped throwing other toys.

You enjoy putting things inside of other things now; for example, you love putting your duckie into a small plastic cup or putting your bottle into a cup holder.

This month your love for talking on the phone developed. You've always been fascinated by them and wanted to put them in your mouth, but now you'll pretend anything is a phone (usually a remote control) and put it up to your right ear to talk on it. You'll even tilt your head to the right when you do it.

You are truly a happy baby and people still always comment on it, but I've gotten very small glimpses of temper tantrums. Sometimes if I take something from you that you shouldn't have, you'll cry pretty loudly for a few seconds.

You LOVE taking baths as well as swimming.

You rode your first horsey this month. Well, actually, it was a toy horse in the church nursery, but you loved it, which I think is only fitting seeing as how you're a true cowboy now. :)

Your favorite toys this month are balls and your yellow duckie.

You now can say "mama", "dada" and "ba" (ball) and mean what you're saying. At this point, you think that balloons are balls, so for your birthday, you woke up to 12 inflated blue balloons in the living room. You were so excited and immediately started in with, "ba ba ba ba".

You have 5 teeth--3 on top and 2 on bottom.

My favorite thing that you started doing this month was blowing kisses. Oh my goodness, how this melts my heart! We'll tell you to blow someone kisses and you'll open your hand and put it up to your mouth. Instead of moving your hand away from your mouth, you'll just keep it there. Too cute! We wanted to encourage you to keep blowing kisses, so we would say, "Yea!" and clap for you after you did it. Now every time you blow a kiss, you'll start clapping for yourself. You'll also sometimes give me kisses on the mouth when I ask for them.

And now, a final picture that melts my heart. This is so rare now that you're such a big boy, but you're definitely still our baby!

Oh, sweet little boy, I can't believe you're ours! How the Lord ever chose us to be your parents is beyond me. We are so grateful for you and for the joy that you have brought into our lives. We prayed for you for so long before you came, before you were even conceived, and yet never in our wildest dreams could we have imagined a more perfect child. Years of prayer, 9 months of pregnancy, 15 hours 43 minutes of labor, 1 hour of pushing, and within the blink of an eye, you were here and our lives were forever changed. An 8lb 10 oz, 21" long bundle of pure joy. We love you more than words could ever express, precious Caleb, and we pray that one day you will feel the same way about your Creator. May a life of pursuing and seeking to glorify Jesus Christ be your ultimate goal and desire!

Happy birthday, sweet Caleb!

Overnight Diapers

Though we've only used them one night, these Huggies diapers are life changing! Our poor son has been waking up each morning absolutely drenched because he had leaked out of his diaper. I'm not talking a little leakage--it's been a ton. Yesterday morning, I went in to get him and found that he was completely wet down his front side. I'm talking all the way from his neck to his wrists and ankles on both sides. Poor guy! Even his sheet and mattress pad were soaked. Caleb hasn't been terribly upset about it, but he's sopping wet and cold as a result.

We tried different brands of diapers and even tried going up a size at night. Nothing has helped until these Huggies Overnight Diapers. We went up a size in these for night, and sweet Caleb woke this morning completely dry. YEA!!! Thank you, Lord, for this brilliant invention!

A Sweet Reminder

Forgive my blogging hiatus. Over the last month, we had Ryan's installation service as Senior Pastor, Caleb's first birthday and birthday party and moved into our new rent house. I have more updates to write (including Caleb's one year update), but for now, I'm just writing about a sweet reminder that I was recently given.

Moving to Graham, Texas was not on our radar. Really moving at all wasn't on our radar, and this obviously isn't a good time to try and sell a home, especially in Louisville, but this is what God clearly desires for our life, and He's not even surprised by the housing market. We're so thankful to be here and have been richly blessed by the love of the people at Graham Bible Church, but there have been some obstacles we've been working to overcome. Lots of little things including getting a local bank account, which can't be done until we get our Texas drivers licenses, which can't be done until we get our car registered here, which can't be done until we get our car inspected here, which can't be done without our car title. Unfortunately, in the mass of boxes and papers, I can't find our car title. I know it's here, but in an effort to save time, I've simply ordered another copy. All this to say, even small things have become a bit of an ordeal.

Selling our home is tough as well. The market has changed drastically since we bought our home 3 years ago, and there's no doubt we're going to lose money selling it, but we're really hoping to minimize that loss as much as possible. Well, there's currently a contract on our house--PRAISE THE LORD--but the morning after our house was inspected, I woke up to an email of repair demands from the buyers. Apparently, the buyers won't budge on what repairs are done and our realtor feels that most of the requests would be common to most buyers. Unfortunately, these repairs are likely to cost several thousand dollars.

Let me pause here to say I'm sorry for all the details, but I'm trying to explain my mindset the day I received this sweet reminder.

Anyway, the money that it will cost to do the home repairs plus the money we have to bring to closing plus the money we're already losing can be somewhat overwhelming. I know our God is good and will provide for our needs, but sometimes it just seems so hard and daunting. I know this probably points to a lack of trust and peace in Him in this area, and this is something I'm working on.

So, I woke up to that repair demand email, then discovered through another email that an order I had placed for pajamas for Caleb was cancelled. Our washing machine broke during the move, so doing laundry has been tricky and somewhat rare, not to mention that Caleb only has 3 pajamas that fit him. (The rest are size 6 months, so there's no way they'd work.) Caleb seems to get a little chilly at night, so we've been having him sleep in anything warm we can find, which has included 18-24 month long sleeve shirts, cargo pants, etc. This kid needs some pajamas, and I was really anticipating this order I had placed 2 weeks earlier to arrive soon. But it didn't because the order was cancelled.

I'm not a crier. At least I don't really think I am--maybe Ryan would say differently, but on that particular day, I remember crying 5 different times. I don't know why exactly I was so emotional, but it was a rough day.

A precious friend here in Graham called me randomly that day to say she was thinking about me and we got to talking about my day, and I mentioned the things that had been frustrating. Well, a little bit later, this same friend calls and asks if she can bring something by. She arrives with a little gift bag containing a pair of brand new pajamas for Caleb. Her son is a little more than a month older than Caleb and had recently received two of the exact same pajamas. This sweet girl had planned on exchanging the second pair, but wanted Caleb to have something to wear that night so gave them to him instead. I was so incredibly touched by her care and thoughtfulness.

I was thinking later that night about those pajamas and was reminded that God cares about our every concern, and He will provide for ALL of our needs. Thank you, Lord, for this sweet reminder!