Kaleb-25.5 months

SPATIAL DOMINANCE: Over the past six weeks, Kaleb has learned to put his sandals on all by himself and has proven quite the little helper. One morning when Ammon was really tired he asked Kaleb to clean up his Legos and then proceeded to fall asleep (he admits he isn't proud of that). After a little while, Kaleb woke up Ammon with "Daddy, all done." He had cleaned the entire room, putting legos in their bucket and toys in their bucket. Kaleb also shows his organizational skills at my parents house. When it's time to clean up, he's pretty careful of which toys go into which bins and he is the expert at making sure all the bins fit properly in the cupboard (if you don't put them in just right they don't fit.)

VERBAL FUN: His words seemed to be improving and he always surprises me with the things he has learned. Like shapes and stripes and songs. He now likes us to sing the ABC, Eentsy Weentsy Spider or Twinkle Tinkle Little Star before bed, and he'll often ask us to sing the Apple sing, but we still haven't figured that one out. His favorite phrases right now are "I don't want any" or "I did it!" The hardest thing is when a few of his words sound the same like "Bider" is the word for Better, Spider and Pepper. He also loves water and will announce whenever we pass a fountain or pool or pond in the car. One thing I am particularly happy about is that Kaleb is finally calling me Momma most of the time (instead of Daddy.) He learned this about the same time as most of his cousin's names (Mia is MeeMee, Ellie is Addy, Christian is Chicken, and Mark is well, Mark), so I my head is not swelling quite yet.

HOWDY, PARTNER: A few weeks ago I took Kaleb to the temple with his favorite hat and we did a little photo shoot.

FIREWORKS: I think Kaleb had fun on 4th of July. Since he is more of an observer than a reactor in new environments it can be hard to tell. We got some of our own little light shows and things and set them off with my sister and her family. Kaleb only got a little scared with the first big one that was set off. He liked throwing the poppers and thought the flaming "Poot" (Glow-worms) were kinda freaky.

Overall, this was usually the response he gave to each of the fireworks.

HAIR: Kaleb has great, thick hair, but it is really lazy. We tried to spike it for church "just like daddy's," but his hair just kept falling down. We were finally able to get it into a faux-hawk... kinda. Maybe we will try again later when it's a little shorter again.

BEAR NECESSITIES: Kaleb has always had tons of bears surrounding him at all times, but lately he has grown very attached to the blue bear he got from Landon and Katie the day he was born. He likes to take it everywhere and we have to make sure it's in bed with him. Thankfully he hasn't thrown very many fits when we have to keep it at home, but I feel that day is soon to come. The other day, Kaleb also realized that his toothbrush handle has a bear on it, so now every night after he brushes his teeth he gives the toothbrush a hug and kiss. It gets me every time!!

FUN PICTURES

LAST BUT NOT LEAST: About a month ago, Kaleb had an incident that might have a permanent impact on his future potty training. This story is pretty graphic, so I warn you now it is not for the faint of stomach: Kaleb has pretty regular bowel movements, so I tend to take it for granted the he will have a poopy diaper a day. Well, on this infamous day, Kaleb had yet to poop. It was getting near bedtime and he was letting off some good farts, so by bath-time I figured he would have filled his diaper. No luck, but it did make me a little wary of him taking a bath. Oh, well, I thought and I put him in the bath. About five minutes into it, he starts farting again, saying "I poot" and I started to explain that farts don't make anything but poop does... and then he decided to demonstrate. He stood up and started pooping in the bathtub. Because of my awkward pregnant-ness I wasn't able to grab him in time, and as the ... um... log landed in the water I said, "Look Kaleb, you pooped!" (more to instruct than anything). When Kaleb saw the log floating in the water he started screaming and crying and scrambling out of the tub as fast as his little legs could go!! I was able to put him on the toilet to hopefully get him to finish, but his fear of the toilet made that impossible so I ended up placing him on the bathroom rug. He hadn't quite finished pooping before his little tirade, so needless to say their were streaks on the tub, toilet, his feet and the rug. It took another twenty minutes for Kaleb to calm down. It's been over a month now and Kaleb still has problems taking baths. In fact, he prefers it if we give him a shower. He is also obsessed with poop and likes to look at the contents of his stinky diapers to confirm that he did, in fact poop. A few days after the incident I was able to get a cute little video of Kaleb talking all about how he "Poot (Pooped) in the water."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4yBIevQUWs